stcynic
Posts by this author
I just found another great blog through a link from somewhere, Opinionistas. This is the blog of a 27 year old associate at a Manhattan law firm. Well, former associate because she just quit her job to write full time after her blog became a huge hit (a million hits in 9 months) and got a ton of…
Eugene Volokh has a post on the subject of amicus briefs that was prompted by the exchange between he, Clayton Cramer and myself over the ACLU. Cramer criticized the ACLU for not filing a brief in a particular case (without ever bothering to answer if he actualy knew they hadn't filed one or just…
Wes Elsberry has already posted about this on his blog, but our friend and fellow Panda's Thumb contributor Mark Perakh has suffered a terrible tragedy: his house has burned down, taking with it virtually everything. The good news is that he and his wife are safe, but he has lost what is in essence…
Fellow ScienceBlogs author Afarensis has posted a series of old posts about ID and human evolution, apparently prompted by my post a couple days about Bombadill's silly claims on that subject. I thought I'd link to all of them so you can see someone with some real expertise in the area take out…
One of the incredible things I've noticed about the raft of pro-ID articles and columns written not by the major ID advocates but by others in the media who support ID, is the degree to which they completely ignore the substance of Judge Jones' ruling. In his ruling, Judge Jones went into…
I know, I know, they lie so often that it's hardly worth pointing it out. But take a look at how brazen this is - they claim that Americans United is contradicting themselves in taking two positions, then they put the actual positions right next to each other that show the obvious distinction…
The El Tejon school district has agreed to cancel their creationism class and not to teach it again, thus settling the case before it went to trial:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today announced that it has settled a lawsuit over a California school district's decision to…
Very important Supreme Court ruling today, which upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law, passed twice by popular referendum. The ruling was 6-3 and fell along fairly predictable lines. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices O'Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens and…
The ACLU has filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the National Security Agency over what they say is illegal wiretapping of American citizens in contact with people in other nations. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of numerous journalists, scholars and organizations whose members have reason to…
Social conservatives, advocates of "morals legislation" and Christian Nation apologists have a habit of quoting William Blackstone on the essentially moral nature of the law. For a good example, see this article by Brannon Howse. Ignore the fact that he amusingly calls Blackstone "America's…
Dembski himself used to post some pretty bad stuff to Uncommon Descent, but the group of acolytes he put in charge of it a couple weeks ago has rapidly proven to be way beneath him in the credibility department (and that's not easy to do). Bombadill, in particular, seems to be completely clueless…
The Washington Post has a good article about the many connections between Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and Jack Abramoff. Reed took millions from gambling interests, funnelled through Abramoff, to mobilize Christian opposition to new casinos, everyone knew that. They've been…
Matt Welch at Reason points out an important connection between Martin Luther King and recent controversies involving government surveillance: MLK himself was bugged illegally by J. Edgar Hoover as part of a longstanding and broad campaign of undermining peaceful dissident organizations. They…
Our old friend and favorite state senator, Chris Buttars, is back in the news again. This time he's appearing before the Eagle Forum to be praised by a group that is right about at the same intellectual level (which is to say, vacuous and ignorant):
Singing to the choir, Sen. Chris Buttars sought…
There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth…
There's a new blog that should be interesting to watch. It's called The Secular Outpost and it's the blog of the Internet Infidels. Contributors include several old online acquaintances of mine - James Still, Jeff Lowder, Jim Lippard and Taner Edis. Very smart guys, all of them, and well worth…
Josh Claybourn has a post up about today being Martin Luther King day. I am very much like him in that I cannot listen to King's "I Have A Dream" speech without getting goosebumps. It is one of the most inspirational speeches you will ever hear (for a realvideo clip, click here), made more so in my…
Jason Kuznicki has a post up about Iran hosting a conference on the holocaust and urging people to be "open-minded" about recent comments by their clearly insane President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the holocaust was a myth. And he has it precisely right that the notion of Iran, a nation that has…
This is why I have so much respect for Eugene Volokh, head of the Volokh Conspiracy and law professor at UCLA, for posts like this. In explaining why he has posted several items taking people to task for unjustified attacks on the ACLU when he is himself critical of the ACLU, he writes:
Why Do I…
I've written several posts detailing cases where the ACLU has defended the free exercise and free speech rights of Christians, contrary to the delusional religious right rhetoric about them. Attorney Allen Asch has more examples on his homepage. Well worth reading.
Stephen Baldwin, who owns the apparent distinction of being the dumbest of the Baldwin brothers (and imagine the competition for that designation), has now become a born again Christian and is showing his faith by harrassing the crap out of people going in and out of an adult book store. Never mind…
One of Dembski's acolytes posted an item at Uncommon Descent about an Indian "cosmo theorist" supporting ID. I'm not sure why he posted it, since it said nothing of substance, it just had a quote from the guy saying that evolution contains a "grave error" when it comes to human evolution, without…
The NCSE's legal blog reports that there is a hearing scheduled on Tuesday in Federal court to hear arguments on the plaintiff's motion for a temporary injunction preventing the school from teaching the course in question while it is fought out in court. There was also a report in the Bakersfield,…
Here's an example of why DaveScot should not be taken as anything more than a troll. Witness this comment about Mark Perakh:
Mark Perakh is a crazy Russian physicist known to say all sorts of crazy things. Russians are notoriously paranoid conspiracy theorists and bald faced liars. My favorite…
Casey Luskin appeared before the El Tejon school board to give them some advice on the creationist "philosophy" course. In short, he told them to cancel it:
From what I can tell, this course was originally formulated as if it would promote young earth or Biblical creationism as scientific fact.…
Jon Rowe and I have spent a good deal of time over the last couple years documenting the numerous fake quotations from the founding fathers that circulate among the religious right continually, almost all of them traced back to David Barton and his pseudo-historical books and videos. No matter how…
In perusing the comments after DaveScot's predictable attack on me, I noticed a comment from Bombadill that I'm going to reprint here and answer simply because I think it offers a good opportunity to spread a little reality around. If Bombadill himself is interested in understanding something about…
By the way, it almost goes without saying, but Pat Robertson is really, really sorry about something he said. Again. After spending several days having his underlings defend his idiotic comments about Ariel Sharon being struck down by God, and therefore losing his financial stake in the Israeli…
I've written before about Rod Parsley, a TV preacher I started watching long before he became such a powerful figure in the religious right. I've written about watching his show one night and seeing him say the following mind-numbing statement:
How do I know that the Bible is the word of God?…
I plan to spend a good chunk of my weekend reading two new books that have recently come into my possession. And the best part is that I didn't have to pay for either of them - the only thing cooler than books are free books. The first is Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo,…