Monkey See, Monkey Do

Happy Friday.

Hope is on the rise. No, I am not just referring to the fact that six out of ten people think the current administration is unethical. (What are the other four possibly thinking? It's like that fifth dentist who just won't come around to recommend Trident as opposed to other chewing gums.)

As Kansas rejects evolution in favor of scientific devolution, the inane "debate" about intelligent design has come to a head in a small town in Pennsylvania where residents -- 70% of whom are registered republicans -- ousted all eight members of the school board for promoting the "theory."

Intelligent design should not be taught as an alternative to evolution 200 years after publication of The Age of Reason and 150 years after publication of The Origin of the Species.

Reactionary thinking and the desire to regress rather than progress is a hallmark of the republican party as it continues to coddle and cave to its "base." There is another organization that seeks a retreat to the Dark Ages--its leader is a tall, thin, bearded, 48 year old man who walks with a cane. If you see him, please let someone know.
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A Decisive Election in a Town Roiled Over Intelligent Design
By Laurie Goodstein

DOVER, Pa., Nov. 9 - In the end, voters here said they were tired of being portrayed as a northern version of Dayton, Tenn., a Bible Belt hamlet where 80 years ago a biology teacher named John Scopes was tried for illegally teaching evolution.

On Tuesday, the residents of Dover ousted all eight school board members running for re-election who had put their town in a global spotlight and their school district on trial for being the first in the nation to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in science class. In swept the full Dover Cares slate of eight candidates, which had coalesced to oppose the change in the science curriculum.

"I think the people of Dover are tired of the attention over such a minuscule thing and they want a change," said Lonny Langione, who had served on the board in years past and supported the challengers. "A lot of the people I talked to were upset because the school board came to using taxpayer money to advance their own agenda."

Before it took up intelligent design, Dover was a typical American town experiencing typical growing pains: family farmers selling out to developers, fields sprouting McMansions, crowded classrooms, S.U.V.'s speeding down roads built for tractors.

By wading into the great reawakening of a national debate over the teaching of evolution, the town of Dover was diverted from bread-and-butter issues, and found itself divided in surprising ways.

The lines were not neatly drawn. Christians who belonged to the same church found themselves on opposite sides. Fathers quarreled with sons. Next-door neighbors posted dueling lawn signs. Registered Republicans cast their party affiliations aside to run with the victorious Dover Cares slate when election rules forced all eight of its candidates to run on the Democratic line.

Voters themselves crossed party lines to vote for the candidates they favored. If they had not, the school board incumbents, all of whom ran on the Republican line, would probably have prevailed in a district where 70 percent of voters are registered Republicans.

In the end, the election was close. Only 26 votes separated the winner of one seat from his rival.

"I'm surprised that we won all eight seats," said the Rev. Warren Eshbach, the spokesman for Dover Cares, whose son, Robert, was among the winners. "It shows what good bipartisanship can do."

The incumbents did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The election came only four days after closing arguments in a six-week trial of the Dover school board and administrators in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, about 25 miles to the northeast. Eleven parents had sued the Dover board on constitutional grounds, saying that intelligent design was an outgrowth of religious creationism. The case will be decided by Judge John E. Jones III, who said he expected to rule by early January.

The majority of voters rejected the board's argument that it was only trying to expose students to a variety of theories about the development of organisms. The policy did not tell teachers to teach intelligent design, just to mention it in a statement to be read to students.

The statement said that evolution is "not a fact" and that students can explore intelligent design by reading "Of Pandas and People" in the school library.

The debate over Darwin versus intelligent design has played out in places like Myers Barbershop, where the owner, Barry Myers, has been trimming the hair of Dover residents for 37 years.

"I just don't think we got here by some Big Bang," said Mr. Myers, who said he voted for the incumbents. "I think if they have the right people to teach it, it should be taught."

Teaching intelligent design, he said, would help bring a "moral compass" to the classroom.

His son, Matt Myers, 34, expressed a decidedly different view, saying: "I'm glad the board's been voted out. I don't think science teachers are qualified to teach intelligent design."

Matt Myers said intelligent design should be offered as an elective, a position advocated by several Dover Cares candidates.

The campaign was hard fought and at times nasty. Board members sent out a mass mailing accusing the Dover Cares slate of allying with the American Civil Liberties Union, a group, it said in the mailing, that had also defended terrorists and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. The A.C.L.U. is representing the plaintiffs against the board.

Bryan Rehm, a member of the Dover Cares slate and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, "That's the level they were willing to sink to."

The suit will not be affected by the election in the short term, lawyers involved in it said. The judge must still issue a ruling on the intelligent design policy as it stands. But the new school board, which takes office in early December, could decide to revoke the current policy.

DeLay-ing the Inevitable

Happy Friday.

After the elections of 2000 and 2004 there was much talk about secession; the blue coastal states breaking away from the red fly-over states and taking their tax base with them. I've got a better idea, just secede from Texas. Perhaps that long forgotten war over the territory was better lost...

Exhibit A: The ironic absurdity behind the "selection" of a judge to preside over Rep. Tom DeLay's campaign finance trial. In Texas, judges are elected requiring them to choose a political party and play the campaign game. So, DeLay complained when he got a democrat for a judge. A republican judge was then asked to make a new appointment, but he was removed at the request of the prosecutor, Ronnie Earl. Then a democrat was appointed, but the appointer, Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, was asked to withdraw from the process after it was revealed that:

• His 2002 campaign treasurer, Bill Ceverha, was treasurer of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee;
  
• The PAC is a co-defendant in DeLay's case;
  
• Ceverha was a defendant this spring in a civil trial brought by Democrats who lost state legislative races to Republicans in 2002;
  
• Jefferson was elected to his seat with the help of a $25,000 donation from the Republican National State Elections Committee, a group at the heart of the money laundering charge against DeLay; and
  
• He also received $2,000 from a DeLay-run PAC whose executive director is a co-defendant.

Incest is best in Texas.

Could it happen anywhere else? A trial charging Delay with illegally funneling corporate campaign contributions to Republican candidates during the 2002 legislative races can't get off the ground because all of the republican judges are somehow connected to the defendant.

Of course, while Texas state judges are elected, other states have their judges appointed by elected politicians; as does the federal system. Based on the "logic" of the DeLay case, any judge, anywhere, has some partisan affiliation and can't be trusted to be neutral.

Extreme partisanship long has infected the legislature and over the past fifty years the executive as well. But, now, the last hope for neutrality and integrity, the judiciary, too has fallen prey. Bush v. Gore should have been a clarion call for reform. Instead, the ever persistent status quo has allowed the infection to spread, with no cure in sight. Students of history know what's inevitable when a government becomes so corrupted the corruption becomes acceptable...anyone watching Rome?