Governor Jindal: Please Practice What You Preach

Herb Silverman has written an editorial in the Washington Post that is likely to hack off any readers of the Intelligent Design persuasion.  It is called "The Stupid Party" and deals with the GOP's fraternization with ID.  As much as I hate to agree with the Post's generally left-of-center arguments, he is right.  He writes:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal recently urged his Republican Party to “stop being the stupid party.” In order to win elections, he also advised Republicans to reject anti-intellectualism. While this sounds like an excellent step forward, it will depend on their interpretation of “stupid” and “anti-intellectualism.”

This is the same Jindal who, in 2008, signed the Louisiana Science Education Act, which also sounds good on the surface. The act allows local school boards to approve supplemental materials for public school science classes as they discuss evolution, cloning and global warming.

Though marketed as support for critical thinking in classrooms, the law was actually designed to open the door to teach creationism and scientifically unwarranted critiques of evolution in Louisiana public school science classes.

If you will remember, the signing of that bill resulted in the law of unintended consequences taking effect. First, the Society of Comparative and Integrative Biology packed up its tent and moved its annual meetings to utah. Then the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology asked the Louisiana legislature to repeal the law, New Orleans CityBusiness wrote that the bill's passage has hurt business in the state, and then, the coup de grace, Livingston Parish elected to test the limits of the bill by attempting to introduce creationism into the school curriculum. Louisiana became persona non grata in the scientific world and the whole escapade reminded your average voter that the anti-science problems that the GOP hav historically had, have not gone away. 

The GOP must take a hard pro-science position and integrate it into its platform, so that when people hear the views of congressman Paul Broun, who won re-election handily, they will recognize them for the dreck that they are. 

Louisiana Continues to Open the Door to “Academic Freedom”

The Louisiana State Senate Education Committee voted on May 27 to kill a bill that would repeal the much maligned SB-70, the “academic freedom” bill that allows teachers to bring additional materials into the classroom to supplement standard curricula in an effort to examine all areas of a scientific topic. Sounds great, huh? Witness Livingston Parrish, where the school board, under cover of the bill, started advocating young earth creationism. According to the current story:

A state Senate committee Thursday rejected a bill to repeal a 2008 law that critics say could change the way evolution is taught in public school classrooms. The measure, Senate Bill 70, failed in the Senate Education Committee. The vote was one for the repeal and five opposed after nearly two hours of discussion. The repeal effort is aimed at the Louisiana Science Education Act, which backers said has paved the way for freewheeling classroom discussions on evolution and other topics. Critics noted that the law has been denounced by the scientific community, including 43 Nobel laureates. “It is fundamentally embarrassing to have the law on the books,” said state Sen. Karen Peterson, D-New Orleans and sponsor of the legislation.

Barbara Forrest, as usual, put a fine point on this legislation:

This law was promoted only by creationists. Neither parents, nor science teachers, nor scientists requested it. No one wanted it except the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a religious organization that lobbies aggressively for its regressive agenda, and the Discovery Institute (DI), a creationist think tank in Seattle, Washington, that couldn’t care less about Louisiana children.

While I think this is, perhaps harsh in its characterization of the LFF, it is true that it lobbies for young earth creationism, which is the matter at hand. Her section on how the LFF got involved and its attitudes toward evolution is particularly insightful. The 2theAdvocate story also notes:

Senate Education Committee Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa and chief sponsor of the law under fire, said the measures requires that supplemental materials brought into science classrooms have to be supported by empirical evidence.

That is a smokescreen. Sites like the ICR and AiG would not exist if they didn't think they had empirical evidence for the young-earth model. That the evidence consists of warrantless extrapolations of local events to global ones or distortions of the fossil record and genetics, is of little matter in this debate.

As the NCSE's commentary notes, this effort to repeal SB 70 was the brainchild of high school student Zack Kopplin and was taken up by other supporters. It was a momentous task which was, given the current climate, perhaps doomed to failure.

Once again, the only “no” vote was from a democrat and the five “yes” votes were from republicans. My conviction that I need to be politically an independent is growing.