E Wayne Ross

Today’s New York Times has a couple of interesting articles on the so-called “evolution debate” (there is no debate among mainstream scientists).

First, in his “On Language” column in the NYT Magazine William Safire scrutinizes “creationism,” “evolutionism,” “neo-creos,” and the PR firm for ID, The Discovery Institute, which just happens to be the subject of the page one story “Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive” of the newspaper.

As part of on ongoing series called “The Evolution Debate”, the article by Jodi Wilgoren examines the Discovery Institute, which is the propaganda machine behind the idea of “intellegent design.” The Seattle-based Discovery Institute (founded in 1990 as a branch of the right-wing Hudson Institute) is funded, not surprisingly, by the same right wing Christians who backed Bush in recent elections, which explains why W. is mouthing their stance on the evolution v. ID “debate.” But the Discovery Institute also gets mainstream backing, including $1 million a year from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

The Times reports that “since the presidential election last fall, the [intelligent design] movement has made inroads and evolution has emerged as one of the country’s fiercest cultural battlefronts, with the National Center for Science Education tracking 78 clashes in 31 states, more than twice the typical number of incidents. Discovery leaders have been at the heart of the highest-profile developments: helping a Roman Catholic cardinal place an opinion article in The New York Times in which he sought to distance the church from evolution; showing its film promoting design and purpose in the universe at the Smithsonian; and lobbying the Kansas Board of Education in May to require criticism of evolution.”

The Discovery Institute also pushed the Ohio Board of Education to adopt a “teach the controversy” approach and helped design a curriculum to support it, according The Times. Institute talking points almost made it into the No Child Left Behind Act, too. “A watershed moment came with the adoption in 2001 of the No Child Left Behind Act, whose legislative history includes a passage that comes straight from the institute’s talking points. “Where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy,” was language that Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, tried to include.”

According to The Times “these successes follow a path laid in a 1999 Discovery manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which sought “nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies” in favor of a “broadly theistic understanding of nature.”

A couple of sidebars…

One of the “Ads by Google” posted on The New Times on the Web version of the Discovery Institute article was:

“Believe in Jesus?
We’ll pay you $75 right now to complete a simple survey!
PaidSurveysOnline.com”

And, as Signe Wilkinson illustrates in this cartoon for the Philadelphia Daily News, it’s too bad W. hasn’t come up with an intelligent design for Iraq.

Austin Community College is facing a barrage of criticism after a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the college told a veteran that his tours of duty in Iraq disqualified him from receiving in-state tuition rates.

College tells veteran he is not a Texan

By Jay Root
Star-Telegram Austin Bureau
AUSTIN – Carl Basham was born in Beeville, registered to vote in Travis County in 1998, holds a Texas driver’s license and does his banking in Austin.

So he was shocked when Austin Community College told him a few weeks ago that he didn’t qualify as a Texas resident “for tuition purposes.” Basham, a former Marine corporal, said he was even more shocked when officials told him why: After two tours of duty in Iraq, he’s been out of the state too long to qualify.

“They told me that I have to physically live in the state of Texas for at least a year,” Basham said in an interview Tuesday. “It kind of hurts.” Austin Community College officials were unable to specify why Basham isn’t considered a Texas resident, only that he didn’t meet state requirements as determined by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. A spokeswoman said privacy laws prevent a discussion of Basham’s case.An official at another college said the fact that he entered the military in another state nearly a decade ago, despite his deep Texas ties, might be the reason.

Either way, two state officials said bureaucratic technicalities should not prevent the decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom from being considered a Texas resident — and paying about $500 a semester in tuition instead of around $2,600.

“Mr. Basham has gone to war for us, and I intend to go to war for him!” said state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, in a letter to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. “We owe it to our returning service men and women to make it as easy and uncomplicated as possible for them to resume their normal lives.”

Likewise, state Rep. Suzanna Hupp, R-Lampasas, who represents many veterans serving at Fort Hood, said she wants to investigate the matter.

“I think we need to look into it further. It doesn’t make sense that people who have bullets flying over their head aren’t treated properly when they get back,” she said.

The higher education board is investigating the case, an official there said.

Basham, 27, said he has to come up with about $3,000 now to pay for tuition and books as he works toward a degree in emergency medical care. Although he expects to get his college paid for eventually by the federal government, he said those GI benefits won’t kick in for several more months, so he’s stuck with high out-of-pocket expenses for now.

Basham’s wife, Jolie, said an admissions officer at the college kept asking for documents proving his Texas residency. He brought in his driver’s license, car registration papers, voter registration card, bank records and tax returns — all sporting a Texas address.

“She said, ‘It’s really your military service that’s holding you back.’ I couldn’t believe that those words came out of her mouth,” Jolie Basham, a California native, recalled.

She said it stung her husband badly to be told he was not a Texan.

“He’s always Texas this and Texas that,” she said. “It’s always been his home.”

Jolie Basham remembered her husband’s reaction when he got his car stolen last year while they were stationed in California at Camp Pendleton.

She said the Texas plates had been removed and mangled, but Cpl. Basham refused to replace them.

“He sat there and hammered ’em out and screwed them back on his car,” she said. “He refused to get California plates.”

Basham, the son of an air traffic controller who often was tranferred around Texas as he moved up the career ladder, lived most of his youth in Waco. During his junior year, he followed his parents to Monroe, La., where he graduated from high school.

It is there that he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Over two enlistments and eight years of service, Basham was awarded a Combat Action Ribbon, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and other decorations. He served as a driver and an auto mechanic in two tours of duty in Iraq, each lasting seven months, he said.

Basham was honorably discharged from the Marines on Jan. 31. He said he got to Texas as fast as he could, but he had to stay in California until his wife, who had pregnancy complications, gave birth in May.

The Texas Legislature has generally gone out of its way to ensure military veterans pay the lowest possible tuition. But it’s not a perfect system, and some veterans end up falling through the bureaucratic cracks.

Donna Darovich, spokeswoman for the Tarrant County College District, said the big problem is that Basham entered the service in Louisiana, even though he only lived 1 1/2 years there.

“It basically doesn’t matter if you’ve lived here all your life,” she said. “Where you enlist is what kind of sets the stage for residency.”

Ray Grasshoff, a spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, could not say how many returning service members face the problem Basham has encountered. But he said officials were looking into his case now.

“Our staff is trying to talk to the ACC staff and trying to figure out what can be done if anything to resolve the issue,” Grasshoff said. “We, of course, support veterans and all they do for the country and want to make sure they get all the benefits they’re entitled to.”

Jay Root, (512) 476-4294 jroot@star-telegram.com

Pastafarians of the world unite!!

Bobby Henderson needs your help in his crusade to get Flying Spaghetti
Monsterism in the curriculum of Kansas’ public schools.

The Kansas State Board of Education is considering inclusion of the George W. Bush endorsed theory of life known as “Intelligent Design” along side the teaching of evolution in science classes. Henderson has written an open letter to the Kansas Board proposing to broaden the number of “alternative theories” Kansas students will learn to include Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

“Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.”

In short he wants one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

If the non-scientific, faith-based concept known as ID – which says Darwin’s Theory of Evolution cannot explain the complexity of creation and instead posits the existence of a supernatural intelligence – can be made part of a science class, then why not demand that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism’s concept of creation be taught as well? Who could argue with that?

Read about Henderson’s efforts in the Hartford Courant.

Share your thoughts with Henderson at bobby.henderson@gmail.com and the Kansas State Board of Education.

And I thought I was the only leftist, anarcho-communist, feminist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist in North America who was rasied a Protestant Christian Fundamentalist!

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Being a Protestant Fundamentalist

The Democratic Party appears incapable of challenging organized fundamentalism and the transformed Republican Party. Many liberals and a good number of leftists seek to restore the New-Deal-to-War-on-Poverty stance of government, but the policies of that era were driven by the organized working class in the first instance and the massive Civil Rights Movement in the second; those government policies were stopgaps to prevent the overthrow of capitalism. Now it is obvious that they did not go to the root causes of oppression and exploitation, and it is doubtful that the reform strategies of the past can be re-enacted today or in the future.

What concerns me is not so much that the ruling class has come to this strategy of populist fascism with politicized Christian fundamentalism as its mass base — after all, capitalism is a corrupt and unworkable (for the many) system — as that so many of those who are committed to social justice, even to a future socialist society, have written off the poor and the working class that they perceive to make up the “mass movement” of this project. Instead of working to unmask the agenda of the ruling class, many liberal and left activists are trying to figure out how to offer religion lite and avoid the issues of abortion, gay liberation, and other “social” issues. One thing I know about Protestant Christian fundamentalists from having been one, however, is that it cannot be substituted by “spirituality.”