stcynic
Posts by this author
March 1, 2004
Rusty has posted another response on Junk DNA. It's a few days old but I'm just now getting around to answering it. If you're following along, you'll find Rusty's original post here and my response here. The basic assertion up for dispute is Rusty's test for creationism:Further research will reveal…
March 1, 2004
Rusty from New Covenant has replied to my post on the religious right lowering its expectations, but more specifically to a comment I made at the end. I ended the post by saying, "The culture war isn't going well for the religious right. Another victory for true decency." Rusty responds:True…
March 1, 2004
Ilona from the True Grit blog has left a rather long and detailed comment on a previous post of mine. I thought it would be better to answer it in its own post since that one has slid down the page. You can view her comment at the bottom. The disagreement began when she said, in a previous comment,…
March 1, 2004
Gary Peterson of Country Keepers has joined Jerry Falwell in blaming gay marriage - and every other thing they don't like that's going on - on evolution. Like Falwell, Peterson is quoting Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, who published a letter on their website with a scare list of allegedly horrible…
February 29, 2004
Interesting article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle titled Culture war being reshaped; Conservatives lower expectations. It points out that in the debate over gay marriage, the religious right seems to have pretty much given up on stopping the trend toward civil unions for homosexual…
February 28, 2004
This is my better half, Lynn. Well, she's 4'10" and about 90 pounds, so she's probably more accurately referred to as my better one-third. The best thing about her is that the fact that she is beautiful isn't even in the top 10 of her most praiseworthy traits. She has an incredibly strong spirit…
February 28, 2004
On Wednesday, Judge Moore's attorneys tried to convince a special session of the Alabama State Supreme Court to overturn his removal from office and return him to his position as Chief Justice. He was removed for malfeasance after refusing to follow a federal court order that he remove the 5000…
February 27, 2004
Ed Brayton has had an interesting 37 years on the planet Earth. During college, he coached high school debate for 3 years, followed by more than 4 years on the road as a stand up comic. Today he is a freelance writer and a partner in a mortgage company and a political consulting firm.
Okay enough…
February 27, 2004
Just discovered a great blog through someone who left a comment on this site. This blog is done by Sheila O'Malley. Reading some of her entries had me laughing out loud in my office. There was one on being a bridesmaid that reminded me of my own experience as a best man. I've only been a best man…
February 27, 2004
Tim Sandefur has a "guest blogger" making entries on his blog by the name of Matt Dunn. Dunn is a dentist and no doubt a very bright guy, but he has been making comments about evolution that I can't help but respond to. It began with this post about a dentist's convention he attended and the…
February 27, 2004
Well, it seems that mblog has managed to fix at least part of the problem. I can now post new entries here, but the comments are still not working correctly. Hopefully that will be fixed soon as well.
February 25, 2004
John Scalzi has written an incredibly eloquent essay on why he, as a married man, supports gay marriage. He asks the same question I've been asking of every person I speak to who is against gay marriage, which is usually answered by nothing but empty rhetoric:I keep hearing how allowing gays to…
February 25, 2004
The Supreme Court issued a ruling today that caught me very much by surprise. The case is Locke v Davey, and it involved a Washington state program that gives scholarships to students based on academic excellence. Joshua Davey was awarded a Promise Scholarship, but when the state found out he was…
February 25, 2004
Someone needs to remind the good folks in Texas that they lost at the Alamo.
February 24, 2004
Well how do you like that, there are poker bloggers! And I just had to discover them 2 days too late to participate in the the Grublog Poker Classic, an online tournament for poker bloggers. Oh well, better late than never, right? That's right, in addition to being a heathen infidel who promotes…
February 24, 2004
Bill Wallo has replied to my post on the 9th amendment. In the process, he dubs me "Ed the Culture War Guy". Rusty has previously dubbed me "Ed the Evolutionist". I'm beginning to sound like a comic book character here, but I shall persevere nonetheless. :)
My position on the 9th amendment, you may…
February 24, 2004
If there is one thing our Congress does better than any other deliberative body, it is their unmatched ability to come up with names for bills that cause one to spit their coffee out and drop their jaw in amazement upon hearing them. On the heels of the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening…
February 23, 2004
Tim Sandefur has responded to my post on Bill Federer and his simplistic version of American history. However, I think he misunderstands the point I was trying to make. He writes,But I must disagree with his response to Federer on the issue of the deity-based belief system of the founding fathers.…
February 23, 2004
In a recent posting, Rusty answers me once again on the issue of testability. He proposes an actual test for both creationism and evolution. This is what he says:But in the strictest sense of the term testability, a falsifiable prediction must be made in order for a scientific theory to be…
February 23, 2004
The more I read of Bill Federer's work, the more he appears to be a poor man's David Barton. Everything is so utterly simplistic it's unreal. Consider the conclusion of this article published, naturally, in Worldnetdaily:America's founders had a "deity-based" belief system. Why? Because:
1. Your…
February 23, 2004
They seem to be in desperate need of a fact checker at the Worldnetdaily. One of their features is called The American Minute, written by Bill Federer. Federer is president of Amerisearch, which is described as "a publishing company dedicated to researching America's noble heritage." Based on this…
February 21, 2004
Jerry Falwell has written an article in - where else? - the WorldNetDaily, entitled How Satan and Darwin Undermined the Church. Quoting Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, Falwell takes the position that things have gone to hell, so to speak, in America because of evolution:He diagramed how bygone…
February 21, 2004
Tim Sandefur wrote a brief reply to me last evening. I think he's right, we don't really disagree, we're just using two different terms. I tend to say that where there is a legitimate governmental interest in a given area, it's a restriction on that right. He tends to say that if there's a…
February 21, 2004
Larry Solum of the Legal Theory Blog has written the 9th amendment post to end all 9th amendment posts (okay, that's not really true - you know we'll all be blathering on about this forever anyway). Larry is a neoformalist on matters of constitutional interpretation and he does a masterful job of…
February 21, 2004
My news aggregator sometimes comes up with fascinating links. This morning one popped up that just left me shaking my head. Someone named Stephen Erwin on GOPUSA, a conservative political website, wrote what has to be one of the most ridiculous arguments on separation of church and state I've ever…
February 20, 2004
Tim Sandefur has responded to my brief mention of his blog earlier. He thanks me for the mention, and I likewise thank him for his. I think he may have misunderstood something I said though. He quoted my statement in response to Rusty that if the government could show a legitimate state interest…
February 20, 2004
One of the principle arguments made by Intelligent Design Creationists (IDCs) is often referred to as "irreducible complexity" (IC), coined by Michael Behe of Lehigh University and the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. The argument is essentially that at the molecular level…
February 20, 2004
Bill Wallo of Walloworld has joined my ongoing conversation with Rusty (see posts here and here) about the 9th amendment. Mr. Wallo is an attorney and a writer. Welcome to the fray, Bill. He begins:From the tenor of the discussion, Ed reminds me of me - way back in undergraduate school, after I'd…
February 20, 2004
Trivial Pursuit has a brilliant post on tyranny of the majority and the preference for judicial restraint the excesses of democracy. I agree with him almost entirely and can hardly think of a thing to add to what he said:I'm far more comfortable relying on courts than legislatures, especially given…
February 20, 2004
The Washington Times is reporting that conservative evangelical Christians are upset at President Bush for a wide variety of supposed offenses. Such religious right luminaries as Gary Bauer and Donald Wildmon are sending up warning signals that evangelicals may just decide to stay home on election…