stcynic

I'm sure some of you remember the brouhaha a few weeks ago over the accusation made by Seth Cooper, Joe Manzari and Michael Francisco that the new Dover school board, voted into office in November, intentionally delayed rescinding the policy because they were in collusion with the ACLU. Well now…

A Federal district court in New York has ruled that a Bush administration requirement that any international agencies receiving funding for programs to combat AIDS must sign an anti-prostitution pledge is unconstitutional. See the ruling here. Two international groups filed suit against the US…

This is interesting. J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative judge and scholar who has often been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee and would certainly be on the short list for the next vacancy should it happen before 2008, has resigned from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. He will…

Agape Press reports that the Traditional Values Coalition, one of the approximately 10,000 different religious right groups all complaining about the same things, is upset that CBS is showing a "pro-gay" public service announcement at the end of a soap opera: A conservative group is criticizing CBS…

At the risk of doubling his daily hits up to a whopping 26 for the day, I can't help but respond to the latest rank stupidity emanating from our old pal dlamming. This glutton for punishment keeps taking brave leaps in the dark, and keeps landing with a resounding thud. He is responding to my post…

In addition to their constant whining about us "Stalinist" evolution supporters oppressing them, it seems the ID crowd has a new complaint: anti-ID "bigotry". Dembski's latest whine declares "Anti-ID bigots -- they're everywhere in the academy, and your tax dollars support them!" He then posts part…

Jon Rowe emailed me a link to this article this morning, wherein Ray Comfort - the boneheaded apologist who thinks ID is true because bananas fit perfectly in the hands of primates - challenges Bill Maher to a debate over intelligent design. Comfort seems to love challenging people to debates who…

One of the things that has happened in competitive debate over the last decade or so is the development of the "kritik" (pronounced just like critique). This was just beginning to come into use when I was getting out of coaching and judging in the early 90s and at the time I thought it was a…

One of the most valuable and interesting trends of the last decade has been the formation of Gay/Straight Alliances in high schools around the country. I think it's valuable because, obviously, I think it's very important for straight people to stand side by side with our gay friends and fight for…

Via Tim Cavanaugh at the Reason blog comes this frightening Q&A session involving Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush's new nominee to be head of the CIA: QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your…

Via Radley Balko comes these two reports. The first is from Arkansas, where a bill has just passed both houses of the legislature that would ban smoking in any car if there's a child in the car. And the Arkansas governor loves the idea: Huckabee said Friday afternoon that the bill sounded like a…

I'm moving up a comment to the front page before the whole thread slips off the edge. The comment is from Dan Hillman and is in response to my bashing of Judge Moore and his followers. When an ally of Moore said that the polls were under-estimating his support, I joked that, ""I think he might be…

I know I've got some poker players among my readers, and though I rarely post about poker strategy, the game Saturday night and the ridiculously long journey home combined to spark some thinking. And since at least one of the guys I played with Saturday night reads this blog from time to time, I…

Casey Luskin has responded, apparently, to my post about his seemingly conspiratorial question for Judge Jones. I noted that he had clearly implied that Judge Jones had allowed someone else to write his ruling. The only alternative was that Luskin was making a terrible analogy. Now he says the…

Okay, more like the exhausted return. We had a great time last night. Mickey is always a fabulous host for these semi-annual parties (though I think I'm gonna do one here this summer sometime and make a weekend of it, complete with lots of ribs in the smoker), if for no other reason than he always…

I'm out of here for the weekend, so don't expect anything new. i'm headed to Bloomfield Hills for one of our semi-annual old debate buddies reunions. We get together, eat steaks the size of hubcaps, play poker all night and have interesting conversation. This time we have two college debate coaches…

This post is sure to bore the hell out of 95% of my readers. Feel free to go on to the next post, please. As my readers know, I am a huge fan of music. I'm also a fan of virtually every type of music, or at least a portion of it. I'm even learning to like country a little bit more. I drive people…

It appears that the tornado ad is finally appearing on my blog. It's been on the other blogs for a couple days now and is now on mine. I know it's annoying, but it's only going to run through Tuesday. We've received tons of complaints about it already and they've all been passed on to the…

Just when you thought all of the clowns had exited the ID car to compare Judge Jones to Hitler and Stalin, Samual Chen of Baylor jumps out of the trunk to add his 2 cents to the fun. Only he's even more blunt about it. He cites the exact same four bad guys from Time's previous lists - ignoring, of…

Okay, this tempest in a teapot over the national anthem being sung in English is absolutely killing me. A Spanish language version of the national anthem was released a few days ago by a British music producer. That sparks protests by right wing bloggers, for some bizarre reason. Seeking…

Boy oh boy, Judge Jones being named as one of the 100 most influential people of recent times sure has the ID crowd's panties in a bunch. First we had Casey Luskin's inane and shameful insinuation that he didn't write the Dover ruling himself. And now we have DaveScot's even more shameful reaction…

There's quite an argument going on in the comments after my post yesterday about government crop quotas. Here's what I think those who disagree with me are missing: the government is doing what would be illegal if corporations did it. If oil companies got together and decided to all limit their…

Casey Luskin has posted a "dream interview" with Judge Jones, all the questions he'd like to ask him. Included in that list is this one: When will you be releasing pre-publication, unpublished drafts of your decision so we can decide who really wrote your published decision? Wow. I didn't know…

This is the kind of shallow, pointless, purely symbolic political gesture that absolutely drives me up the wall: A new resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives calls for the recitation and singing of the Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem and new citizens' oaths in English only.…

Sandefur sent me a link to this article about a ridiculous case of government micro-management of something that should simply be none of their business - the absolute absurdity of telling farmers that they can't grow or sell more than a certain amount of crops. I'll past an excerpt from the…

As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has just issued an interesting ruling in a case called Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. Eschenbach. The case involves the question of whether a terminally ill patient can be prescribed a drug that…

Judge Roy Moore, a genuine theocrat, is running for governor in his home state of Alabama and he's currently not doing very well. The polls show that he is trailing by a 2-1 margin to incumbent Bob Riley. And I found this rationalization from one of his pals rather amusing: The Rev. Patrick Mahoney…

Mexico is on the verge of legalizing virtually all drugs for personal use. The LA Times reports: Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic sold by the same Mexican cartels he's vowed to fight during his five years in office, a…

You probably remember Coach Dave Daubenmire (yes, he still calls himself coach although he was only a high school football coach and hasn't been for quite some time, since he stepped down to became a full time windbag for the religious right). Well he's back with one of the silliest arguments…

While we're on the subject of the Cato Institute, it's worth checking out their new report, written by Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, about Bush's abysmal track record on constitutional matters. It's funny, just a few months ago I had a hardcore liberal accuse me of being a "primitive reactionary" for…