Commissar

Fear not, I have little doubt we'll be crossing swords again soon.

And this is just a short excerpt from an article in The Independent, a Brit paper: "Eighty 80 years after the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee - when a teacher, John Scopes, was convicted for teaching evolution - polls show that at least 45 per cent of Americans believe God made man in his current form. Only 26 per cent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor, and 65 per cent believe schools should teach creationism as well as evolution." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...ticle315384.ece I don't know where they get their figures from, but if that's true, I'm shocked and awed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/national...?pagewanted=all HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 27 - Science teachers at the high school in Dover repeatedly resisted the school board's efforts to force them to teach creationism on equal footing with evolution in biology class, according to a former teacher who is among those challenging the board in a landmark trial. The conflict in Dover grew so heated that in public meetings board members called opponents "atheists," threatened to fire the science teachers and invoked Jesus' crucifixion as a reason to change the curriculum, two witnesses testified on Tuesday. "We would repeatedly tell them, 'We're not going to balance evolution with creationism. It's an inappropriate request,' " said Bryan Rehm, who once taught physics in Dover and is one of 11 plaintiffs in the suit. The trial here is the first in the nation to test whether public schools can teach intelligent design - the notion that living organisms are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence - or whether the theory is simply a fig leaf for creationism. Outside the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, Alan Bonsell, a board member who the plaintiffs said was leading the charge against evolution in the science curriculum, said the board wanted students to learn about competing theories only because it was "good education." The board ultimately abandoned the equal time idea, stopped using the term "creationism," and instead required that ninth graders listen to a brief statement encouraging them to learn about intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. "We are not teaching intelligent design," Mr. Bonsell said. "I've said that a million times and the news media just doesn't get it. I challenge everybody to read the statement and show me what was religious in the statement." But Aralene Callahan, a former board member, testified that Mr. Bonsell, the chairman of the curriculum committee, said at a school board retreat in 2003 that he did not believe in evolution and wanted "50-50" treatment in biology class for creationism and evolution. The board wanted the science teachers to use a textbook that promotes intelligent design, "Of Pandas and People," but the teachers balked at that too, Mr. Rehm said. For about a year, Mrs. Callahan said, the school board refused to order new biology textbooks. Mrs. Callahan said that when she protested the delay at a meeting, another board member, Bill Buckingham, responded that the biology textbook was "laced with Darwinism." The textbook he was referring to was "Biology." One of the book's authors, Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, was in court here on Monday and Tuesday as the first witness against intelligent design. At a board meeting in June 2004, the plaintiffs say that Mr. Buckingham declared from the podium: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?" Two newspapers in York reported the remark. But the defendants say Mr. Buckingham was misquoted. The head of the school board, Sheila Harkins, said on Tuesday that Mr. Buckingham did say it, but at a meeting nine months earlier while the board considered a resolution to support the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The plaintiffs believe the reference to the crucifixion is so crucial to establishing the board's religious motivation that they have subpoenaed the two York newspaper reporters, who have refused to testify.

couldn't have said it better myself. amazing what a few facts mean. good post hildegard. taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> They're facts only to the extent that they're correct. They might not be, for all we know. Our intelligence hasn't been batting a thousand in the GWOT, as I'm sure you're aware. And let's not forget that our own military leadership has assessed the strength of the insurgency circa two months ago, if memory serves, as being equal to the strength of the insurgency when it all started going down. This means one of two things; either al-Qaeda is heavily involved in Iraq, as plenty of people claim, since the entire point was to 'fight them there so we don't have to here,' and therefore all of these captures and kills don't mean squat on an actual operational basis, or else aQ isn't heavily involved in Iraq, which defeats the whole 'fight them there so we don't have to here' premise. I agree with the argument that OBL isn't as involved in operations as everyone thinks, and consequently, his capture or his (potential) isolation will likely not have a significant impact on day-to-day aQ housework. I get the impression that it's grown to the point where it doesn't really need a mastermind anymore; there are plenty of individual masterminds running their own crap.

You don't think so? I think that's what has the religious right so worried, in all honesty. I think, provided we don't revert back too often to the sort of society that locks our Galileos up, humanity as a whole will eventually have more answers than it ever dreamed of.

What has he won, though, really? Plus, he's starting to show a glass jaw. He's out for a whole season now, and he was doing rather poorly before that. Tack on injuries from past seasons, and you've got a guy who's not worth holding on to.

a) show me b) if so, so what. there's a limit on when you can replace someone? for someone that "had that class," you sure like anecdote without fact or reason. taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A) No. B) Yes. Yeah, I know. Commissar

No, it's a weekly thing, just about.

Well, in related news, we also got al-Qaeda's number 2 man in Iraq recently. For the eighteenth time. Seriously. How often can we claim to have killed or captured al-Qaeda's number 2 man in Iraq? Is the al-Qaeda rank structure something we're unfamiliar with, where OBL is 1, and everyone else is 2? I don't get it.

Well, I think Pennington's career is over, at least with the Jets.

Oh, come on. They censor ****? The word, by the way, can be defined as 'battery-operated boyfriend.'

I watch the Clue movie from time to time, but that's about it. Occasionally some Scrabble. Interestingly, it was through Scrabble that I first learned the word '****' at the tender age of 12; my friend's older sister and her friend were playing with us, and we challenged the word when the sister's friend put it down, and we had to go look it up in the dictionary.

Sorry, but that first-person viewpoint thing looks extremely dumb. And they really need to stop addressing Marines as "soldier" in films.

This country goes through religious revivals every thirty to forty years, for whatever reason. Luckily, they're never very long-lasting, and there's always a backlash. Counting from the McCarthy era, we're right on schedule.

The Bible says that when your brother dies, you take care of his wife and family. It never says polygamy is fine in the eyes of God. It does however say you can see your daughter into sexual slavery. Levitical Law should really just be taken out of the Bible. If you read the first five books of the Bible, you see a story of God talking directly to God, and man distancing himself by asking for a King, wanting Priests, laws, formalized religion, etc. There is no real indication that Levitical Law is the Law of God, but more so really the Law of Ancient Judaism and somewhat the Law of Modern Judaism. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Wait a minute...so you're saying that religious law can change over time? You're actually suggesting that something as holy as the Bible can have parts taken out of it? Blasphemy.

How come nobody sacrifices lambs in churches anymore?

Sproles did a good job, but why on earth would anyone ever take any touches away from LT, even for him?

San Diego better frickin' win.

On the other hand, they could...oh, I dunno, read a book about Chernobyl, and have all they need to know.

It's all public domain information. Anyone determined to actually do something like that is already going to know it, and certainly doesn't need the program. As for the initial issue...I agree. Let's invade both China and Yahoo!, since we're all about spreading freedom dust over here. To tell you the truth, I'm surprised we haven't changed our policies towards China. The whole, "Do your own thing, we'll keep happily trading away with you and count on minimal influence from commerce to magically reform your entire society," approach seems a little low-speed for our illustrious leader, doesn't it?

It's a gaming forum, dude.

I'll get back to you on Monday. I've got the day off, and football's on...something tells me I'm not going to be doing much law reading.

Howso? You're free to disagree with me, though I'm not sure if you do. If you want to talk strict constitutional interpretation, I would say that there's plenty of leeway in the past judgments of equal protection cases - which have primarily dealt with race - to be expanded to this. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> look, you don't know what you is talking 'bout. honestly. you just haven't studied the cases and tht is getting more and more obvious. ep does apply to everybody... you is reading wrong... but that ain't your fault this time. gotta have whole case to comprehend. first, read arlington heights and washington v. davis... then find out about chickens sacrifices in florida... is a RELIGIOUS ep case. you need to show actual discriminatory INTENT, and that is almost impossible to get. is not the race distinction that kills you... is the necessity of INTENT. disparate impact is not enough. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Wait a minute...doesn't the whole reason for "under God" being inserted in the Pledge reveal discriminatory intent right off the bat?

I don't remember accusing you of being a terrorist sympathizer. I simply reported your post because your rhetoric seemed to imply that. The mods agreed with me, so either you take it up with them, or you STFU. At any rate, quit bringing up issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand in an attempt to discredit me. All you are proving is that you're out of better arguments. And so far, that's pretty much it. It's also incredibly sad that you are still holding a grudge against somebody you don't know across half the world. I guess your life must be pretty empty, and that makes you deserving of pity. But don't despair, Commy. There's always Brides-r-us.com. ) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I already used them. I'm married to a Russian, after all. And I hold a grudge against you because you never contribute anything other than, at best, grade-school insults. Hell, you just evoked mail-order brides. I stand in awe of your rapier wit, sir. Now either join the Constitutional dogpile or, like I said earlier, go sit in a corner.

Howso? You're free to disagree with me, though I'm not sure if you do. If you want to talk strict constitutional interpretation, I would say that there's plenty of leeway in the past judgments of equal protection cases - which have primarily dealt with race - to be expanded to this.