I was very pleased to see Hillary Clinton’s call for party unity today — that gives me some hope that we’ll all pull together and win this important election in November. So…do you need another reason to despise John McCain?
Under the malign influence of the wicked and silly Sally Kern, some Oklahomans were trying to pass an awful religious viewpoints anti-discrimination act, which would have simply given further privileges to majority religious views in the state.
Fortunately, Governor Brad Henry has vetoed the legislation, saying
Under current state and federal law, Oklahoma public school students are already allowed to express their faith through voluntary prayer and other activities. While well intended, this legislation is vaguely written and may trigger a number of unintended consequences that actually impede rather than enhance such expression. For example, under this legislation, schools could be forced to provide equal time to fringe organizations that masquerade as religions and advocate behaviors, such as drug use or hate speech, that are dangerous or offensive to students and the general public. Additionally, the bill would presumably require school officials to determine what constitutes legitimate religious expression, subjecting them to an explosion of costly and protracted litigation that would have to be defended at taxpayers expense.
It’s one small step back from the brink of theocratic inanity, hooray!
Michele Bachmann is the Minnesota representative who embarrasses us all. She is, of course, a Republican, and one of the dumber ones — she’s our anti-gay, anti-science, anti-American, far-right-wing kook, and we need to get her out of office … she’s up for re-election this year.
My oldest son Alaric is an activist and organizer for the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party here in Minnesota, and he’s campaigning for the sensible opposition, El Tinklenberg. He’s asked me to promote an event going on TONIGHT, a fundraiser and rally for Tinklenberg in St Cloud. If you’re somewhere in the region, stop by. If maybe you aren’t a Minnesotan, but you’d like to help out financially (really — Bachmann is flaming insane, and the entire country ought to be interested in ousting her), call 320 217 5394 and chip in a few bucks (you might also find my boy on the other end of the phone line. Tell him hello from me.)
Here are the details on the big event.
Please Help Us
DEFEAT
Michele BachmannCindy Harner, Rich Kelly
and
Rick MillerInvite You to Come, Meet and Support
El Tinklenberg
Candidate for Congress in the 6thThursday, June 5
7:00 – 9:00 PMHome of Rich Kelly:
524 7th Avenue South, St. Cloud
Co-hosts include:
Senator Tarryl Clark
Representative Larry Haws
Representative Larry Hosch
Candidate Joanne Dorsher
Candidate Rob JacobsContribute What You Can!
ALL ARE WELCOME!
RSVP to Rick Miller 320-293-3935 rick@tinklenberg08.com
Work fast. I just got this notice myself, since my connection to the internet is only intermittent while I’m out of town.
Sometimes, the politics of science can get ugly, and they don’t get much uglier than this ghastly mess going on among paleontologists. I’ve read a couple of accounts of this story so far, and it sounds to this outsider like a few senior scientists riding roughshod over their junior colleagues and students and appropriating as their own the interpretations and details of others’ explanations. There seem to be shenanigans all over the place, and it seems to be in the interests of all parties involved to resolve the issues.
The sensible thing to do would be to have an impartial review of both sides of the story by neutral but knowledgeable observers — as a non-paleontologist, someone like me would certainly defer to the judgment of such a panel. Well, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science put together a review, supposedly, and did so in such a bumbling, biased, and stupid way that although they decided there was no wrongdoing, I’m persuaded otherwise. Why else make such an effort to assemble a kangaroo court?
Spencer Lucas and his colleagues at the NMMNHS were accused of using the work of William Parker, Jerzy Dzik, and Jeff Martz without proper attribution. To judge this accusation, the NMMNHS put together a committee of external experts that consisted of people who had published with Lucas, one of whom declared his summary judgment before the hearings were held.
Unbelievable.
They’re accused of a serious impropriety, so they blatantly fix the review, packing the jury and even declaring innocence before the trial? That’s compounding a major ethical lapse on top of an accusation of an ethical lapse, and only makes the problem worse. What were they thinking?
Minneapolis is hosting the Republican National Convention this summer, and that means we’re seeing an uptick in sleaze (you might want to avoid public restrooms when these guys are in town). The most bizarre part of it all is that the FBI is looking for villains in all the wrong places.
What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant–someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”
Vegan potlucks now fall within the definition of a terrorist cell, as defined by the US Attorney General? What are they going to do, threaten a mass assault by kumbaya-singing hordes in birkenstocks armed with lumps of tofu?
This is not about protecting citizens. It’s about silencing the expression of dissent, no matter how mild.
While I think a non-sectarian comparative religion course would be a fine idea for our public schools, I don’t trust these bozos at all. Tennessee legislators want to stuff a bible studies class into the curriculum.
“Our government school teachers cannot constitutionally preach the Bible, but they can teach the Bible,” Herron said.
“I want students to study the greatest and most popular book in history. I want young people to understand how the Bible has enormously impacted literature, art, music, culture, history and politics. A Bible course will help students understand our culture and our highest and best values.”
A Bible class is not non-sectarian. A course that begins with the premise that the Bible is the greatest book in history is not unbiased. This is a completely phony bill that is trying to smuggle religious instruction into the public school system.
As usual, I expect the politicians to be completely oblivious to their religious agenda.
California may inspire a whole series of legislative actions. Minnesota has introduced a bill similar to California’s.
The Marriage and Family Protection Act was introduced by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, and Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, on Friday. The bill would make marriage a gender-neutral proposition in Minnesota, allowing same-sex couples to marry. It would also protect religious institutions that have moral objections to same-sex marriage from being compelled to perform such ceremonies.
I love the title of the bill — that will have the wingnuts chewing their tongues in a frenzy.
Today is this semester’s last final exam, and this is the last big push of the semester, so I’m going to be mired in work for most of the day…but once I level the administrative mountain, I’ve got some new squid science to share. Until then, you’ll just have to chew over some of the usual American lunacy for a while.
Obama is gearing up to drape himself with Christian trappings. This will not make me happy. I’m planning to vote for him, but if he turns into yet another Christianist airhead, I will not be campaigning for him.
The reason Obama can’t lose my vote but can lose my enthusiasm is that the Republicans are just plain evil. Rumsfeld was saying the country needed another terrorist attack to keep the Democrats out of office? What a monster.
David Brooks thinks “science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other”, and that the future belongs to a fusion of science and Buddhism. David Brooks knows nothing of science. How did this twit get a gig at the NY Times?
UC Berkeley is going to court this week over their Understanding Evolution web site (that’s an excellent resource, by the way, especially if you’re just trying to get up to speed on the science). At issue is the fact that the site dares to point out that some religions contradict the evidence, and other religions try to avoid conflict with science; that is interpreted to be a sectarian endorsement of certain religions over others. This is where separation of church and state becomes insane: when you are not allowed to point out obvious idiocies because they are protected religious beliefs. Here’s the offending section: I think it’s pretty namby-pamby and bends over backwards to give deference to superstitious nonsense, but some people are apparently irate over a simple, accurate truth statement: “some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science”. They do, but a university isn’t allowed to say so?
Now I unplug myself from the intertubes for a few hours and focus, focus, focus on a pile of stuff most of you will never see.
Glenn Greenwald depresses me. His latest: Our military has been subverting the media with nicely tailored propaganda. I know, I know, so what else is new…but this is straight from Pentagon memos.
I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water. They become part of a “hot list” of those that we immediately make calls to or put on an email distro list before we contact or respond to media on hot issues. We can also do more proactive engagement with this list and give them tips on what stories to focus on and give them heads up on issues as they are developing. By providing them with key and valuable information, they become the key go to guys for the networks and it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts by the networks themselves . . . .
Read the whole thing. Keep it in mind, too, when you see those talking heads on Fox and CNN: those guys are saps who have been suckered by the military. Why do you get your news from the must gullible parrots on TV?
And it’s actually enforced? Two teachers have been fired for refusing to take an oath…an oath that was put in place during the McCarthy witch hunts. Apparently they just left it on the books, but now it’s a hook that can be used to eject troublemakers.
You know, like those rabble-rousing, dangerous Quakers.
The most incredibly ironic thing about this whole controversy is that non-citizens are not required to sign it. Says Marianne Kearney-Brown, one of the fired teachers, “The way it’s laid out, a noncitizen member of Al Qaeda could work for the university, but not a citizen Quaker.”
That’s America for you: the important things are the superficial, meaningless expressions in service of great ideals, and if it means throwing away the actual implementation of those important ideas like civil rights, freedom of expression and conscience, and a faith quietly and sincerely held in order to promote noisy but meaningless demonstrations of loyalty, so be it.
