Category Politics

Crippling Brains for Jesus

Does anyone need more proof that Ron McLeroy, the newly-appointed Texas State Board of Education Chairman, is a superstitious asshat who’s out to cripple the state’s education system? Here’s what he told his church in 2005:

“Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young-Earth, old-Earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design,” McLeroy said. “And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church is actually a smaller tent than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole, because we are all Biblical literalists…. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about…all of the side issues.”

“Modern science today,” McLeroy complained, “is totally based on naturalism,” thus “it is the naturalistic base that is [our] target.”

What’s frightening is that this assclown is in charge of education in Texas. And as bad as that is, the effect of his militant ignorance won’t be confined to one state: Texas is the second-largest market for school textbooks (after California). This means that publishers will tone down the science in their books if they think it’ll make them more likely to sell in Texas.

Maybe we need a new rule: that someone in charge of X must not be ideologically committed to destroying X.

(HT Texas Observer → Texas Freedom Network → Americans United)

Republican Dogma: “No Taxes”

The GOP is well known as the party of lowering taxes. Case in point, from a WaPo article about the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty also said he was willing to reverse his long-standing opposition to a state gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure improvements in the state.

President Bush on Thursday dismissed raising the federal gasoline tax to repair the nation’s bridges, though _ as proposed Wednesday by House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar, D-Minn. _ at least until Congress changes the way it spends highway money.

I can see the wisdom in lowering taxes sometimes, when they’re prove more of a hindrance than a help. And besides, no one likes paying taxes, so it’s an obvious vote-winner. But the Republicans seem to have raised “lower taxes!” from a slogan to a religious tenet.

Case in point, again from the WaPo, same day as above:

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

Nice going, Dubya! We may be seeing the country’s infrastructure literally crumbling before our eyes, and you want to lower taxes some more.

(HT for pointing me at this.)

Some rather obvious observations about taxes after the jump.

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Due Process Was Overrated, Anyway

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this executive order, which el Presidente signed a few days ago.

Unitary Executive Summary: if Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury determines that you’ve been “threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq” or are likely to, then he just needs to “consult” with the Secretaries of State and Defense (it doesn’t say they have to agree with him, and he can have all your property seized. Also that of your friends and anyone else who helps you, including your defense lawyer (except, of course, if past behavior is anything to go by, you won’t get a lawyer).

Nobody will disagree with the idea that it’s a good idea to seize Al Qaeda assets to prevent those assets from being used to bomb us. But I could’ve sworn that there were already law enforcement agencies in charge of doing just that, and laws allowing them to do it. In fact, I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember a time when warrants were involved. Something about those pesky 4th and 5th amendments or something.

(Note: the 5th amendment only forbids taking private property for public use. There’s nothing in there about seizing your bank account and giving it to one of Cheney’s cronies.)

Remember: they hate us for our freedoms. So if we don’t relinquish our freedoms, the terrorists will have won.

Meanwhile, the sum total of the Post’s coverage seems to consist of a three-paragraph blurb that merely says that this order will be used in the War on Terra (how’s that working out, by the way?), and a passing mention in an op-ed piece.

Glances at History

This is from Mark Twain’s Glances at History, part of an unfinished work about the civilization that flourished between the creation of Adam and Noah’s flood..

The introductory paragraph and the bit about Adam at the end serve as a fig leaf to allow Clemens to pretend that he’s not talking about the Philippine-American war. See for yourself how much of it still rings true 100 years later.

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Debbie Schlussel Tests Poe’s Law

Pop quiz: read the following and try to figure out whether it’s serious, or a parody of right-wing conservatives:

Yale researchers found that male Congressmen with daughters are more likely to vote for “reproductive rights”–the sanitized phrase for abortion: […]

The conclusion they want you to get from this is that pro-life Congressmen are insensitive to women and don’t have contact with any.

But I’d draw a different conclusion: Congressmen who are liberal are more likely to have slutty daughters. And therefore, they are more likely to support abortion for selfish, personal reasons.

Answer: it’s from Debbie Schlussel. I think she’s serious, though obviously it’s really hard to tell.

(HT FSTDT)

Has Hovind Actually Learned Something?

Kent Hovind says on his weblog:

At lunch last week, one of the inmates said, “If I could, I would bomb the Christian Coalition. They are the reason we are here.” I was shocked by his statement! I love the Christian Coalition, but I understand the man’s point. For years, Christians have pushed judges and legislators to be “tough on crime.” Most are thinking about violent crimes when pushing for this type legislation. However, only about three percent of those incarcerated in the United States are incarcerated for violent crimes. The unreasonable sentences people are given have come from judges who have never spent even one day locked up and who brag that they will give out sentences totaling “a million years” during their time on the bench.

Having been here for nearly six months, I will forever be an advocate of closing most jails and prisons. What this type of punishment does to families and society is terrible.

(emphasis added.)

Well, duh. There’s a saying that “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”. Perhaps we can add another saying, that a liberal is a conservative who’s been screwed by the system.

Glad he’s finally figured out what some people have been saying for years. That maybe throwing people in prison willy-nilly isn’t as good as actually doing something about the root problem, that the cost of incarceration (both monetary and its effects on others) may exceed its beneficial effects, and generally that while “getting tough on crime” may be a good slogan, it’s not necessarily the best approach in the real world. (In fact, it may make things worse: apparently the number of murders shot up when Florida passed a law making armed robbery a capital crime: people holding up 7-Elevens would kill the clerk so he couldn’t be a witness; they figured since they were committing a capital crime anyway, then adding murder to that wasn’t going to make things any worse for them).

Minimum-sentencing laws bother me because they take away the judge’s ability to impose a light or suspended sentence if he or she deems it appropriate, even though it’s the judge’s job to learn the facts of the case and determine how justice can best be served. It’s like passing a law that anyone with attention-deficit disorder must take Ritalin: it may be a good idea in most cases, but not all. And why should the legislature, rather than one’s doctor, make that decision?

Anway, just to show that he’s still the same old Kent Hovind, he adds this bit of paranoid nut-jobbery:

I believe that we as Christians are unwittingly funding and encouraging the very prisons that will house the Christians as the New World Order approaches!

In other news, Hovind is apparently now in solitary.

Too Much Packaging

I think I like the idea of a tax on packaging more and more. Not a punitive tax aimed at discouraging the activity altogether, like taxes on tobacco, but just enough to make people stop and think, “Do I actually need this particular bit of packaging?”

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US No Longer a Christian Nation?

James Dobson says presidential candidate Fred Thompson isn’t a Christian:

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added
…

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”

“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.

(emphasis added)

I note that according to the American Religious Identification Survey, in 2001 about 1 million people identified themselves as “Evangelical” — they were outnumbered by Muslims. That’s less than 0.5% of the US population.

So can we expect Dobson et al. to drop the “America is a Christian nation” argument?

(HT PZ.)

Highest-Ranking Elected Atheist Announced

You may recall that a while back, the Secular Coalition for America ran a contest to find the highest-ranking elected
atheist
[1]
in the U.S. Government. Now the contest has ended and
the results have been announced.

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Shortage of Wingnut Presidential Candidates?

The NYT
reports
that the religious right is unhappy with the current set of Republican presidential candidates. McCain once called fundies “agents of intolerance”, Mitt Romney is too liberal, and Giuliani has — gasp! — been married three times.

Call me an optimist, but maybe this marks the beginning of an overhaul of the Republican party: perhaps even Republican candidates have to distance themselves from the fundie wingnuts in order to be electable.

(HT Renew America, of all places.)