stcynic
Posts by this author
November 18, 2004
Jon Rowe has a fascinating couple of posts up about the naturalistic fallacy (also called the is/ought fallacy), natural law, natural rights, and whether public laws should regulate private morality. I hope to return to this subject and give some of my own thoughts when I have more time, but I urge…
November 18, 2004
Seth Cooper, the Discovery Institute counsel I mentioned a couple days ago, has now written, rather surprisingly perhaps, that he supports Arlen Specter for the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee. But in the course of his rather lukewarm endorsement, he makes this statement:
In fact, I find…
November 17, 2004
John Ashcroft, after resigning as Attorney General, gave a speech to the Federalist Society in which he took a final shot at the judiciary for "second guessing" the President and daring to limit his powers in the war on terrorism:
"The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and…
November 17, 2004
Hat tip to Jim Anderson for a link to this study on children raised by two lesbian parents. The study matched up 44 teenagers who were part of two parents households led by two lesbian women with 44 teenagers raised in two parent households with married heterosexual parents, and it also normalized…
November 17, 2004
It looks like, as predicted, the SoCons overplayed their hand and Arlen Specter is going to succeed Orrin Hatch as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. Picking up the endorsement of Hatch almost certainly assures him of winning the caucus vote for that chairmanship. I'd call that the victory of…
November 16, 2004
Brent Rasmussen and DarkSyde (who never tells anyone his real name, I suspect because his first name is Orville or something like that) have begun a series of posts on the Unscrewing the Inscrutable weblog that introduces readers to the various voices within the Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC…
November 16, 2004
Jon Rowe has a post about his odd sense of humor as a test for his readers. If the test was whether we found the same thing funny that he did, the answer is yes. I laughed out loud reading the melodramatic and overly pedantic memo from Robert Reed concerning the proper way to write the Brady Bunch…
November 16, 2004
Perusing the Congressional Budge Office website, I came across some fascinating numbers from the Federal budget. For instance, where does Federal revenue primarily come from? Let's look at the historical budget numbers. In 2003, personal income taxes provided 44.5% of all revenues; in 2000 it was…
November 16, 2004
Astute readers who have followed the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design Creationism movement may have noticed a relatively new name cropping up in the recent press releases concerning the Cobb County case, that of Seth Cooper. Cooper is a recent law school graduate who is now a legal…
November 15, 2004
The title is the name of a conference to be held at Yale University in April 2005, which will include some of the most influential and respected constitutional law scholars in the nation (though the list at this point excludes some names that certainly should be there - Richard Epstein, Doug…
November 14, 2004
Jim Anderson has a textbook example of why the phrase "judicial activism" should be forever struck from all political discourse. It is a meaningless phrase that, despite the pretensions of those who use it 27 times per paragraph, really just means "a judge did something I don't like." Alberto…
November 14, 2004
From Agape Press:
A Virginia pro-family advocate says the people who helped re-elect President Bush don't support homosexual relationships -- the administration apparently does. Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, has worked tirelessly for family values, including the fight against…
November 13, 2004
Timothy Sandefur links to a rebuttal of the "fuck the south" rant that I linked to. He is of course correct that many of the founding fathers were from the south, including some of my favorites and his. And it is true that much of that rant was entirely filled with non sequiturs and ad hominems, as…
November 13, 2004
We've been hearing so much lately about the red state/blue state thing, how the blue states are full of immoral, gay-loving, baby-killing liberal pagans (and all vote Democratic) and the red states contain mostly morally upstanding, family values loving, God-ordained conservative Christians (who…
November 12, 2004
Bob Jones III, the heir to and president of the loathsome Bob Jones University, has written a letter to President Bush congratulating him on his victory. And this letter, folks, is a real gem:
In your re-election, God has graciously granted America--though she doesn't deserve it--a reprieve from…
November 12, 2004
This is very cool. My old and dear friend Aaron Dworkin, director of the Sphynx Organization, has been featured in People Magazine for his work expanding opportunities in classical music for minority students. If I did this right, you should be able to see a PDF of the article by clicking here.…
November 12, 2004
Okay, I know this rant is full of non sequiturs and ad hominems and who knows what else, but it's still damn funny. Go there now.
November 12, 2004
Jerry Falwell, it appears, is tired of being old news and he's jumping back in to the political arena with both feet. The Washington Times is reporting that Falwell has formed a new organization called the Faith and Values Coalition. Cuz you know, the American Family Association, the Traditional…
November 12, 2004
Not content with trying to destroy all moderate voices within the Republican party, religious right groups have now moved on to eating their own for the crime of not being fully on board with their purge for purity. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette is reporting that not only are they after Specter,…
November 12, 2004
The Cobb County evolution disclaimer trial wraps up with closing arguments today. The judge will likely take a few weeks to make a decision, during which time briefs will be filed in addition to the ones already filed. We are finishing up a brief on the question of whether there is any real…
November 11, 2004
The AP has a story about the string of problems Georgia has had with evolution recently and how it has hurt people's view of the state:
First, Georgia's education chief tried to take the word "evolution" out of the state's science curriculum. Now a suburban Atlanta county is in federal court over…
November 11, 2004
Finally, a voice of sanity in the Republican Party and of all people, it's Hugh Hewitt. In the Weekly Standard, he issues a warning to his fellow Republicans:
Fast forward four years. The Democrats have convened in late summer in Cleveland to nominate former Virginia governor Mark Warner and…
November 11, 2004
Boy, if this story is correct, it almost makes you feel sorry even for a guy like Arafat. It seems that Suha Arafat, the obviously grieving widow, would not allow the machines that have been keeping her husband's lungs and heart going for the last 13 days (he has been braindead all along, but under…
November 10, 2004
As some of you know, there is a trial going on in Georgia this week involving the Cobb County School District (CCSD) and their use of a disclaimer on all public school biology textbooks. The disclaimer says:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding…
November 10, 2004
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for providing this link to the short film Submission, by Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was murdered last week by radical Islamic thugs in the Netherlands, presumably because of this film, which depicts the brutal oppression of women in fundamentalist Islamic culture. In the…
November 10, 2004
I'm finding this story absolutely remarkable, have you noticed? It's just astonishing to me watching this coordinated campaign of stupidity and lies being thrown at Specter. The latest is this letter from a group calling itself, ironically, "Frontiers of Freedom" and signed by a bunch of obscure…
November 9, 2004
The Worldview Weekend folks have sent out their latest bit of idiocy to my email inbox, this one written by none other than the Rev. Donald Wildmon. In addition to the regular lies about Specter and what he didn't say, he added this new one:
Specter is the person who killed the nomination of…
November 9, 2004
The school board in Grantsburg, Wisconsin is just asking for legal trouble:
The city's school board has revised its science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.
School board members believed that…
November 9, 2004
A lot of evangelicals seem to think so:
"This was Providence," evangelical leader and presidential adviser Charles Colson told Beliefnet. "Anybody looking at the 2000 election would have to say it was...a miraculous deliverance, and I think people felt it again this year." By allowing Bush to…
November 9, 2004
Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUSBlog has an essay up on potential nominees and makes some interesting points. First, I think he places the abortion question into context:
It is essential to Republicans that the President nominate someone who is very solidly conservative. To pick someone more moderate…