Guillermo Gonzalez responds in the Iowa State Daily to calls on campus for his professional emasculation. He also replies in the Des Moines Register to its article criticizing him for breaching the bounds of science in his book Privileged Planet. Gonzalez is a proponent of cosmic ID and for that offense against secular morality he must be punished. We discussed the matter here a week ago. Here is Gonzalez's letter to the Des Moines Register:

It's important to reiterate that Gonzalez does not challenge Darwinian orthodoxy in his book. His argument is that the incredible fine-tuning of the structure of the cosmos makes it in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ways extremely well-suited for the emergence of higher life forms such as man. Were the values and properties of the forces, constants, and constituents of the universe not almost exactly what they are, life could not have arisen. None of this has anything to do with evolution nor is it denied by anyone in science, but Gonzalez thinks that such precision is more than just a flukish coincidence, he thinks it is an indication of purposefulness.

This belief, which is a philosophical inference drawn from the scientific facts and not itself a scientific matter, is held in contempt by atheistic materialists on the faculty who fear that such telic talk has about it the odor of Christian fundamentalism and who see it as a challenge to their own philosophical suppositions. Thus, lest others be persuaded by Gonzalez's arguments, they feel the need to stifle and gag him.

As Gonzalez says in his letter, this controversy is not about science, it's about religious philosophy, and there's no one so intolerant, so hostile to the free exchange of ideas, as an academic who sees his cherished anti-theistic philosophical convictions, to which he has devoted his entire professional life, come under withering assault. Gonzalez, like Richard Sternberg and others before him, is getting a taste of their despotic fury.

Time for a rock concert or two to raise money for disaster relief in the Gulf, or do the rockers and beautiful people only raise money for relief in Africa? How much assistance will we be receiving from the rest of the world, especially the oil-besotted Arab world? Will the mucky-mucks at the U.N. be calling those who don't help relieve the human misery along the Gulf coast "stingy"? Just asking.

Here's a list of the countries which have promised economic aid in the wake of this catastrophe so far:

No doubt the list will be longer by tomorrow.

Hugh Hewitt commends to us what he avers is an outstanding movie. I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard so many good things about it that I intend to do something I rarely do - go see the movie in the theater. Here's what Hewitt says:

If any of our readers have seen this film please let us know your opinion of it via our feedback forum.

The LA Times strikes a hawkish chord:

There is much good advice here, but it's doubtful that the Democrats will follow it since to do so would be to hand a boon to George Bush. The president is at present reluctant to do what it would take to win more quickly in Iraq because, quite simply, what it would take is more troops, and that might entail some sort of draft, and that's politically undoable as long as the Democrats are yelping and sniping at his ankles.

If the Dems, however, suddenly exhibited the same ferocity toward the insurgents in Iraq that they have shown toward Mr. Bush's judicial and U.N. appointments, then the president would have a green light to increase the size of the military with political impunity and be able to prosecute the war with much more alacrity. The Democrats, of course, find the idea of a Bush success in Iraq insufferable, and it would be made even more so by the fact that they would receive zero credit for it.

The only way the Democrats would take the advice of the Times on this one is if there were a Democrat president in the White House, and that won't happen, if it happens at all, for another three years.

A blog called Conservative Propaganda has an interesting report on the Walter Reed protest and counter-protest complete with photos. The Code Pink anti-war protestors are apparently completely out-matched by their antagonists in terms of numbers, wit, and knowledge about what's going on in the world.

Among the most interesting things about the report are the anecdotes about the reactions of the soldier/patients. The Code Pink group claims to be supporting the troops, but the patients want nothing to do with them and have bluntly expressed this sentiment in the universal sign language of disdain. On the other hand, several of them stopped to thank the counter-protestors.

The guys who have paid a heavy price know who's really on their side and who's merely trying to use them as a prop to promote their agenda.

One of the criticisms of the administration's approach to the current war has been that it seems to lack a grand strategy beyond training Iraqis to take over the burden of fighting it. Andrew Krepinevich, a retired West Pointer, is contemptuous of the calls to withdraw and finds the administration's "stay the course" rhetoric something less than a plan. He presses for an alternative known as the oil spot strategy. In an article in Foreign Affairs that is being widely heralded in the blogosphere he writes:

It sounds like a good concept to this untrained observer, but it also seems that it's not much different than cleaning out a rat's nest and leaving trained Iraqi troops in the nest to make sure the rats don't come back. I'm sure I was mistaken, but I had thought that this is what we had been doing as competent Iraqi forces became available.

Anyway, there's much more to Krepinevich's argument at the link.

Guillermo Gonzalez is an astronomer on the faculty at Iowa State University. He also has co-authored a book entitled Privileged Planet which points out the amazing fitness of our universe for the existence of higher life forms. The book is strongly teleological and for this Gonzalez is being hounded by a group of self-appointed inquisitors of the Church of Naturalism to give an account of his heresies.

The book, as far as I know, addresses only the cosmic argument for design and makes no disparaging mention of biological evolution. Yet, when the Darwinian Torquemadas are determined to commit a victim to the flames, anything remotely close to unorthodox opinions will suffice as a justification.

Even the DesMoines Register has waded blithely into the midst of the fray with an article by Rekha Basu who evidently occupies the Karl Popper chair for the philosophy of science at the Register and who suggests that ISU "issue its definition of what constitutes science, and make sure faculty uphold it."

Great idea. Perhaps Ms Basu has a definition in mind because philosophers of science sure don't. One can picture the science faculty at ISU rushing to clasp their hands metaphorically over Ms Basu's mouth to shut her up, knowing that any definition the university comes up with will either include almost everything or exclude somebody's pet discipline. Science, someone should whisper to Ms Basu, is whatever scientists do. There is no definition for science so clear-cut and universally accepted that the university could force their faculty to "uphold it".

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts composes an amusing and condign skewering of Ms Basu and Professor Gonzalez's other adversaries at ISU. His chief antagonist, it turns out, is an atheistic Bible scholar and professor of religion named Hector Avalos. One wonders where a Bible scholar gets the expertise to criticize an astronomer. That aside, you'll have to read Gene's essay to apprehend the dogmatic intolerance fueling Professor Avalos' crusade against Gonzalez and to appreciate the full measure of his inanity.

Jonah Cohen is not a supporter of Intelligent Design, but he does think it ought to be taught in public schools. He argues that there is so much confusion about what ID is that it should be taught just to dispel the misunderstandings, if for no other reason. In an essay in the American Thinker he sets out four "myths" about ID and proceeds to explain why those myths are, in his opinion, wrong.

The myths, he claims, are these:

You can read Cohen's response to each of these at the link.

Parenthetically, I'd like to call special attention to one of his concluding paragraphs:

As one who taught a full year philosophy course in a public high school for almost twenty five years, the last two phrases were pleasant to read. I don't know that philosophy should be mandatory, but it should certainly be offered as an elective to secondary students. The benefits of studying philosophy are substantial, and it is indeed a shame that more high school students are denied the opportunity to share in those benefits.

On Saturday Viewpoint urged the White House go on offense in making its case for its policy in Iraq. Today we direct you to a marvelous example of precisely what they should be doing. If the White House needs advice on how to make the case for seeing the Iraqi project through to its conclusion they could hardly do better than to read this essay by Christopher Hitchens in The Weekly Standard.

Well, maybe they could do better if they hired Hitchens as a speech writer.

His column is must reading for anyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq, whether pro or con. Indeed, anyone who opposes the war should be refused a hearing unless they first agree to read it.

Hitchens opens with this:

After a page or two of journalistic virtuosity Hitchens concludes his article with this paragraph:

In between those two passages is perhaps one of the most compelling defenses of what America is trying to accomplish in Iraq that has been written in the past twelve months. Give it a read.

My friend Byron Borger passes along a link to an article that will be of interest to anyone who has done any reading in political philosophy. The essay is written by David Koyzis, and in it he considers four main approaches to politics in the contemporary west, pointing out the weaknesses of each.

He concludes with what he believes must be the essential elements of any political philosophy that seeks to maximize human welfare. His crucial sentences are the ones he closes with. He says this:

Koyzis is certainly correct about this. Almost everyone would agree that the task of the state is to do justice, but why do we think that? And how do we know what justice is anyway? Where does our modern notion of justice come from if not from a transcendent lawgiver?

Let us suppose there is no such Being. If such were the case the word "ought" would be emptied of any moral meaning. There would be no content to the assertion that the state "ought" to be just. Why should it? Nor is there any basis for grounding the concept of justice in our notion of equality. If there is no God then Thrasymachus was right when Plato has him declaim in The Republic that justice is merely "the interest of the stronger."

Marx was incensed that the state catered to the interest of the bourgoisie, but as an atheist Marx couldn't rationally say that this was morally wrong (although he tried). He couldn't protest that it was unjust or unfair, he could only resent it because it offended his own subjective predilections. Much of the bloodshed and oppression of the twentieth century, sadly enough, arose ultimately out of Marx's personal pique.

Where do we get our notion of justice from, and from whence do we derive the idea that we are obligated to do it if not ultimately from God mediated through both special revelation and the natural law? Again, if there is no god then our ideas about justice are at most products of our evolutionary past. As such they can be seen as vestiges of a blind process that suited us for life in the stone age, but there is no reason why we should feel compelled to heed them today. They have no moral value or heft. We do not offend heaven if we disregard them. We might offend our fellow man if we discard the popular notions of justice, but so what? To maintain that the state in a godless world has an obligation to provide justice for its citizens is as nonsensical as maintaining that the wolf has an obligation to provide justice for the sheep.

The history of the political philosophy of the last two hundred years is littered with the corpses of attempts to build a just society on an atheistic premise. Such philosophies always have and always will revert, sooner or later, to a might makes right ethic where justice is whatever the ruling power says it is. And, inevitably, the ruling authority will decide that justice is whatever promotes its own self-interest, its own survival, its own hold on power. This was Machiavelli's view, it was Nietzsche's view, it was the view of the heirs of Marx, and it was the view of the Nazis. It will invariably be the view of any state that denies the existence and sovereignty of God.

It is one of the ironies of modernity that a logically rigorous embrace of atheism, which seems to so many to be so philosophically and morally seductive, leads individuals and states ineluctably to nihilism. Modern man can't live without God and won't live with Him. Therein lies the tragic source of most of his troubles.

The Daily Kos had John Thune already autopsied and embalmed on Tuesday. It was a foregone conclusion that the man who staked his political career on saving Ellsworth AFB from being mothballed was a dead man walking. Unfortunately for Kos his judgment on Thune's demise was as dependable as his judgment on just about everything else:

As it all turns out, Ellsworth was given a reprieve, Thune is walking tall in South Dakota, and Kos and the lefties who were gleefully salivating at the pending burial of the man who did Tom Daschle in are now grinding their teeth in frustration. They must feel like Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the road runner.

Read the comments at Kos' site. They're a hoot.

Tony Blankley says what a lot of the president's supporters are thinking:

Why the president will not lay out in convincing terms his rationale for the way in which the insurgency in Iraq is being fought, why he will not explain, for example, why terrorists are allowed safe havens in Syria and Iran, if, indeed, they are, and why he won't address the nation more frequently without merely repeating a bunch of talking points, is hard to understand. If support for the war continues to erode, the reason for it is not that people are tired of the sacrifice our young soldiers and Marines are making in a far off land, it will be because they no longer see the point of it. As long as the defeatism of the MSM is left uncountered by the White House, doubts and misgivings are going to fester, even among the president's supporters.

As long as the sacrifice our military people are making is left unexplained, a sizable portion of the population of this nation will forget, if they ever knew, why we're fighting. We need constant reminding of what's at stake. We need to be educated about the goals and progress of the war, and that's not happening because the task is being left to an inept and tendentious media. In a sense, the administration is letting our military down by allowing support for their effort to be worn away by the steady, unanswered drip of anti-war negativism and defeatism that we read every morning in the papers and hear every night on the evening news.

We need more relentlessness on offense from the White House and a lot less rope-a-dope.

The silver lining of Pat Robertson's unfortunate call to assassinate Hugo Chavez is that it gives Christians opportunity to write wonderful pieces like this one by Marvin Olasky highlighting the beauty of Christian belief:

Such columns are a lovely witness to a post-Christian society whose understanding of what Christians believe is often based upon caricature and misinformation. It almost makes one thankful that Robertson said what he said.

Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles argues that Bush's sagging poll numbers actually hurt Hillary. Here's why:

The anti-war left may well tear the Democratic party apart, just as it did in 1968, if it can't get its way on the next presidential nominee. This would not necessarily be good for conservatives, though it should be. The reason it might not is that if the left succeeds in nominating a Gene McCarthy or George McGovern, it will tend to draw the Republicans leftward to compete for independent moderates. A Rudy Guiliani might, under such circumstances, look very attractive to the GOP, but his social liberalism would be anathema to conservatives.

If the left does not get its way, and causes a fracture in the party, an impotent Democratic opposition could induce complacency in the Republicans and lead them to nominate someone who lacks the principles to be a wise and good leader. This, some would say, is precisely what happened when Richard Nixon won the nomination and presidency in 1968.

Of course, the other possibility is that the left will lead the Democratic party, one way or the other, over the cliff, and the Republicans will by default establish a political hegemony that'll last for a generation. We'll see.

Michelle Malkin has a lot of information and links on the Seattle soldier beatings here. With due respect to Sean Hannity, it's pretty silly to jump to the conclusion, as he does, that this brutality was perpetrated by anti-war protestors taking out their anger on soldiers just home from Iraq. The whole thing sounds much more like an example of just plain thuggery carried out by imbecilic savages who couldn't even spell Iraq.

Parenthetically, reading the material at Michelle's blog one gets the impression that there is no police force in the United States more incompetent and more gutless than that which patrols the streets of Seattle. It'll be a long time before this family goes back there.

The New York Times' David Brooks finds cause for optimism in the new Iraqi constitution:

Read the rest of Brooks' article here.

Gideon Strauss wonders who's keeping the fires burning in contemporary conservativism. Who, he asks, is producing the ideas that infuse energy and vigor into conservative political philosophy.

Strauss suggests a few answers. Here are three more: The conservative blogosphere, the neo-con Weekly Standard and, surprisingly, perhaps, the Discovery Institute.

Well, well. Look who else has endorsed assassination as a political tool:

Watch for the media feeding frenzy over Pat Robertson's remarks to suddenly evaporate once it comes to be widely known that Stephanopolis had advocated pretty much the same thing as Robertson has. The media cares more about using Robertson's words as a cudgel with which to pound a prominent conservative than they do about the actual suggestion itself. If it becomes widely bruited that a high status liberal held similar views to those of Robertson, they'll reluctantly lay aside that weapon rather than have to club Stephanopolous with it as well.

POST SCRIPT: As it happens, I agree with Stephanopolis and disagree with Robertson, but the differences in their positions require the sort of analysis that does not lend itself to sound-bite journalism. It also would sound very much like special pleading were the liberal media to try to justify Stephanopolous' advice after roundly condemning Robertson. It's more likely that they'll just drop it rather than put themselves in that position.

Of all the absurd things Cindy Sheehan has said in the last couple of months this is perhaps the most ridiculous:

As Ms Sheehan herself suggests, the jihadis are not trying to get Americans out of their country. Many, if not most of them, are not Iraqis. They're trying to get Americans out of Iraq because our presence there is a knife pointed at the heart of Islamo-fascist aspirations of a world-wide caliphate and the destruction of Israel.

Nor have Americans either "decimated" the country or "devastated" it. The claim of decimation is so astonishingly ludicrous that one can only conclude that Ms Sheehan is either ignorant of the word's meaning or that she is a fantasist. Deaths of civilians due to American action in Iraq comes nowhere close to .1% of the population let alone the 10% that Ms Sheehan claims.

The claim of devastation can only be made by someone completely oblivious to what is really happening in Iraq. That country today has more and better infrastructure than before the invasion. They have more schools, better hospitals, more newspapers, more freedom, more rights than they ever dreamed of under Saddam. The Iraqi people would be enjoying even greater benefits of American beneficence were it not for Ms Sheehan's freedom fighters who keep sabotaging electrical grids and oil pipelines.

Nor are the insurgents fighting for freedom as she implies; rather precisely the opposite. They're fighting to return Iraqis to a Baathist tyranny or a Talibanic slavery such as prevailed in Afghanistan before George Bush liberated that country from the despots who crushed those poor people under their perverse vision of Islamic law. To suggest that the terrorists are fighting for the freedom of Iraqis, even as they repeatedly blow Iraqi women and children to smithereens, is absolute nonsense and naivete.

The kind thing would be for someone to take this poor woman by the elbow and gently lead her off the public stage. To let her go on making an utter fool of herself is shameful. To use her as she is no doubt being used by the anti-war left is cruel. To publicize her pronouncements in order to score political points against Bush, as the media is doing, is disgusting.

To claim, moreover, that she should be above criticism because of the loss of her son, as Paul Begala asserts, is ludicrous. It's like pleading that a boxer should allow his opponent to pummel him because the opponent has suffered personal tragedy. The compassionate thing would be to ignore her, but since neither she nor the liberal media will allow us to do that then she must be responded to and her invective and fatuities need to be clearly identified as being what they are.

Readers interested in the details of combat in Iraq will not want to miss the latest posting from Michael Yon, a writer who travels with Deuce Four in Mosul. Yon has the gripping account of the combat heroics of LTC Erik Kurilla and CSM Robert Prosser. Amazing stuff.

I have long wondered why legislation such as this was not adopted years ago:

A woman seeking protection from an abuser should not only be given information on how to apply for a carry permit, she should, if desired, be given instruction in how to use a weapon and have a suitable firearm donated to her temporarily out of the vast stock of weaponry police confiscate every year.

Too many women have been killed by spouses and boyfriends against whom restraining orders have been issued. Pieces of paper don't deter everybody. A gun may not deter an angry man either, but it can certainly protect the woman better than a court order can. A woman should be able to feel safe in her own home. Kudos to the North Carolina legislature for passing legislation that genuinely benefits women and children.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has an Al Jazeera interview with a female suicide bomber (before her "mission") and members of her family. One feels sorry for these people who have been indoctrinated with such perverse and abominable values. The girl who blew herself up followed her brother on the road to martyrdom.

No thought here that what these young people are doing in blowing themselves to bits is comitting murder. Apparently, killing Israeli children is a wonderful opportunity, bestowed upon them by Allah, to earn their way into Paradise and to send the infidel children to hell. Why should there be any feelings of guilt or remorse?

We have a question: If Allah rewards male martyrs with 72 virgins, what reward does he offer females who blow their bodies apart for his glory? Maybe Paradise for women is not having to live any longer with abusive men who treat them like property.

Pat Robertson just keeps digging himself deeper. Having clearly called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, Robertson now denies that he did any such thing. We now have a minister of the Gospel not only urging our government to commit an illegal act of murder but also lying about having done so.

This is what Robertson said on Monday night's 700 Club: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we are trying to assassinate him, we should go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot easier than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

By today he was backpedalling away from the clear meaning of his words: "I didn't say 'assassination," Robertson clarified during a broadcast of his "The 700 Club" Wednesday morning. "I said our special forces should go 'take him out,' and 'take him out' could be a number of things, including kidnapping."

He blamed The Associated Press for making him seem to advocate the assassination of a foreign leader. "There are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him," Robertson said. "I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time."

Sorry, Pat, but this is pretty lame. We'd like to stand with you, but as we wrote here, your position is simply indefensible. You know it, too, or else you wouldn't be claiming to having been misquoted.

Of course, the MSM is all over this story, but when liberals suggest that George Bush or other prominent Republicans ought to be killed the only way you find out about it is to read the blogs. Whenever anyone is actually called to task for such ugly and despicable talk they shrug it off as just a joke. The media evidently thinks that a minor figure in the Republican party advocating murder of a foreign president is big news, but that similar figures in the Democratic party advocating the murder of an American president is a yawner.

Blackfive has a lot of background on the kind of young man Casey Sheehan was and the circumstances surrounding his death. America is blessed to have young men like him serving in our armed forces.

The Democrats are in a pickle and their inability to build any kind of political capital while George Bush's poll numbers sag is evidence of their predicament. The problem is the true believers on the far left of the party, which is, of course, a sizable segment of the Democratic population.

These folk - the Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and George Soros types - are indispensible to the Democrats because they have money and the ability to turn out the party's base, i.e. the uneducated urban poor and the rich, effete narcissists in the media and entertainment industries. If the party ignores these radicals to the point where they feel they've been thrown overboard, the party is doomed.

On the other hand the left's vitriolic, anti-Bush, show-no-quarter rhetoric, and their extremist positions on almost every issue are distasteful and unpopular with much of the electorate. The port-side of the Democratic party comes across as strongly anti-American and resolutely anti-common sense. Such positions are sure-fire winners only in Berkeley and Hollywood and the salons of Manhatten and Georgetown.

Thus if the party caters to the left it dooms itself as well. Thus what moderates there are among Democrats seem to be trying to navigate between Charybdis and Scylla. They can't afford to dismiss the left and they can't afford to appease them either.

Hillary is no moderate, but she's trying hard to walk this tightrope. The left believes that she's really one of them and that gives her some wiggle room to say things that sound moderate because the lefties know she doesn't really believe what she's saying. Other Democrats will be doing the same thing as the elections approach. Look for Democrats to take a firm stand against illegal aliens and to sound hawkish on Iraq while at the same time vaguely endorsing imminent withdrawal.

These politicos, by affecting a Kerryesque slipperiness, will succeed only in alienating voters fed up with candidates who have no strong principles they're unwilling to compromise upon. They really have little alternative, however, given the ideological dynamics of their party.

Talk radio host Michael Graham who had been suspended for making the following statement on his radio show at WMAL 630 has now been fired by ABC, the parent company. Here's the offending statement:

This was too much free speech for the Jeffersonians at CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) an organization which seeks to inhibit any negative publicity about Islam in the United States. CAIR insisted that Graham be fired, and the pusillanimous weenies at ABC bowed low and granted their wish. After his firing Graham released this statement:

Thanks to Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer for the information. Maloney has more details at his site.

UPDATE: Matt Drudge has a flash that Graham has just been hired by a station in LA that "still believes in free speech." It'll be interesting to see what CAIR has to say about that.

The New York Times has published the second part of a two part series on the Intelligent Design debate. The writer of part II, Kenneth Chang, does a good job of presenting an even-handed view of the controversy.

Not surprisingly the dyspeptic P.Z. Myers and his acolytes don't agree. They think Chang gives too much credibility to the yahoo IDiots.

You can read Part I of the NYT feature, which was also quite fair, in my opinion, here. Read both articles and decide for yourself whether the Times was fair and balanced or too fair and therefore unacceptable to the Darwinian mullahs.

Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action or GATA has just recently released this interesting piece regarding a letter from the US Treasury Department.

And this:

Today, an individual with an IQ slightly above a sea cucumber can realize that once people "rise" to the level of "public servant", they readily lose all grasp of the concept of serving the citizens that elected them.

I've worked for a state government as a contract software engineer for several years. During that time in that capacity, I have adopted a peculiar philosophy. There is the "trough" and the "barrel". And I have to say, I'm not alone in this discovery as other contract personnel I work with agree.

The "trough" is the government largess that is available to those who want to get a piece of it (at the taxpayers expense of course). They do so through all of the government programs designed to redistribute wealth i.e. tax dollars, from those that have it to those that don't. The perpetrators aren't just the welfare seekers but also include the government employees who just show up but do little or nothing to collect their check.

I can relate a personal experience where a project that cost the tax payers half a million dollars (funded by the CDC) and is overwhelmingly successful beyond all expectations is in jeopardy simply because a low-level state government paper pusher doesn't like the results but perhaps I'll leave that for another post.

The barrel, i.e. "pork barrel", on the other hand, is a higher level of largess. The barrel is closely guarded and controlled by our elected officials and, of course, financed by you, the tax payer. Those who grovel at the "trough" dare not aspire to gain access to the "barrel" because the "barrel" is mostly for corporations.

Our lofty, elected, public servants hold tight reign over the "barrel" and only through lobbyists does one gain access to the "barrel".

Note that the concept of lobbyists is guaranteed in the first amendment of the constitution:

I would think that "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" applied only to U.S. citizens as did those who formed the amendment in 1791.

So why is it that entities outside of the U.S. can hire lobbyists to petition our government for their interests? I'll leave it to those interested to research the numerous examples but, truth be told, our congressmen are inundated by lobbyists paid to articulate and promote the interests of foreign entities. My question is: what right do they have to "petition the government for redress of grievances"?

WSC

MEMRI has the transcript of an interrogation of terrorist captured in Mosul. This is a small portion of the exchange:

Jihadis are devout, despite appearances, and do have religious scruples. Abed and his "insurgent" brothers, being pious Muslims, wouldn't dream of raping and murdering just any woman. Allah would frown on that, perhaps, but if the unfortunate victim is somehow associated with the Americans then Allah evidently approves.

Abed typifies the brand of Islam that the Cindy Sheehans of the world insist we stop fighting. George Bush is a "terrorist" in their eyes because he is trying to extinguish this kind of horror in the Middle East, among other reasons, so that it doesn't spread to our own shores. She and her retinue of groupies and media enablers suffer from a serious form of myopia that prevents them from seeing any consequences to their demands beyond those most immediate. Getting out of Iraq now would end American deaths in the short term and for those, like Ms Sheehan, whose strategic vision is 20/200, that's all that matters.

The bad news is that Arthur Chrenkoff has taken a new job and is no longer able to continue the Good News From Iraq feature on his site. The good news is that another blog called All Things Conservative has taken the baton and is continuing the work.

You can find All Things Conservative's third installment of good news from Iraq here.

This is the sort of thing that gives Christians a bad name:

The Monroe Doctrine, Pat? Doesn't that only apply to outside interference in our hemisphere? Assassination, Pat? Is that something a minister of the Gospel should be advocating? Shouldn't assassination be a measure of last resort reserved for a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Saddam, if used at all? What better way for the United States to lose all moral standing in the Americas than to go around knocking off duly elected presidents when those leaders are not as yet a clear and present danger to the United States or guilty, as far as we know, of severe human rights abuses. Just the suspicion that we were involved in the Chilean overthrow and killing of Salvador Allende did us much harm. The assassination of Chavez would open a diplomatic Pandora's Box that we should refuse to touch unless it became an urgent moral necessity.

The only thing that'll be more strange than hearing an Evangelical preacher call for the murder of a world leader will be the inevitable and sanctimonious moral condemnations of Robertson from atheists who have absolutely no grounds for moral judgments of any kind. They will be quick to point out the conflict between Robertson's advice and his Christian commitment, accuse him of hypocrisy, and condemn his moral character. All of this will give Christianity a black eye, but the atheist has no business making those charges since if his atheism is true, there is no morality, no right or wrong, and nothing more reprehensible about hypocrisy than there is about sincerity and honesty.

Nevertheless, though non-theists have no standing to criticize Robertson on moral grounds, he is, in this instance at least, a considerable embarrassment to those who call themselves followers of Christ.

The American Thinker has a review of Robert Spencer's book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer, as the title implies, does not shrink from portraying Islam as it is, and the picture is not pretty. Consider a few examples:

The review closes with this:

It sounds like a book everyone in the West should read in order to understand more clearly the nature of the contemporary threat to the lives and well-being of our children, and the urgency of continuing the good fight against bloodthirsty orcs wherever they may be found.

The Brits dodge a big bullet thanks to a high level informer (referred to below as a "supergrass"):

One wonders how the Brits "deterred" the attack. Will there be charges filed against the plotters? Are there any plotters left against whom to file charges? If the answer is "no" are there any Brits upset by the implications?

Strategy Page has some interesting thoughts on the situation in Iraq. Here are some highlights. Follow the link for more details:

It's of interest that Islam seems unable to produce honest government. A religion so concerned with whether a man is ritually purified and whether he bows to Mecca five times a day seems ineffective in inculcating genuine virtue in its leaders. Indeed, one wonders what it is about Islam that has proven so attractive to people that millions around the world willingly embrace it. It's a religion of violence, punishment, brutality and oppression and lacks any real basis for love, peace, the celebration of beauty, or human progress. How and why people, especially women, find this satisfying and fulfilling is a mystery.

But, to each his, or her, own.

Senator Bill Frist weighs in in favor of teaching the controversy. Evidently a candidate's stance on the ID/Darwinism controversy is shaping up to be a major issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We're anxious to hear Hillary explain her position:

My friend Ryan Miller at The Buckingham Inquirer argues that such suggestions as Sen. Frist's are impractical. Teaching all sides of this issue, he believes, would be exceedingly time-consuming since there are so many possible alternatives that one couldn't possibly discuss them all and still cover the rest of the curriculum.

Ryan and I disagree on this. There are really only two points of view on the matter of creation that are contending for serious consideration: One claims that everything is ultimately explicable in terms of purely natural processes and forces, and the other is the denial of that proposition. Do the universe and life show evidence of being purposefully designed or do they not? Those are the two major options, and the myriad of other creation myths, legends, and hypotheses all gather on one side of that question or the other.

The assertion that ID should be "taught" in public school science classrooms suffers, however, from a lack of precision. When one asks specifically what it is that should be taught the answer is not always clear. Indeed, what should be taught are the empirical facts of science, but the philosophical assumptions that underlie those facts and which are employed to interpret those facts should be discussed as well, and that's where ID fits in.

In other words, there is little formal content specific to ID that needs to be taught in science classrooms apart from a discussion, perhaps, of how human beings infer design. What teachers could do when they discuss, for instance, the structure of bio-molecules like proteins, bio-machines like the flagellum, or bio-processes like the blood-clotting cascade; or when they explain the exquisite fine-tuning of cosmic forces and parameters, or the incredible coincidences that we find in the astonishing fit between atomic structure, the properties of elements like carbon and oxygen, and the properties of carbon dioxide and water with the physiological requirements of living things -- when these things are presented it could be mentioned to students that there are essentially two ways to think about it all. One way is to see these marvelous facts of the natural world as a grand coincidence, highly improbable and wondrously fortuitous, and the other is to see them as the result of intention, purpose and intelligence. The teacher need not feel obliged to say anything more than that, but if her students ask questions about it neither should she feel she is transgressing some boundary if she seeks to answer those questions as honestly as she can.

Teachers should teach the facts of science and not shy away from discussing the philosophical implications of those facts. That's one way to make science classes exciting.

The objection that philosophy has no place in the science classroom is absurd. Not only has good science instruction always been replete with philosophical assumptions and concepts, it is also, if it is quality instruction, richly spiced with allusions to the historical context in which science has developed. History is not science, of course, but no one suggests it should be purged from our classrooms.

Not only the history of science, but bioethical issues (such as stem cell research and cloning) as well as social and political issues associated with science (e.g. nuclear power and other environmental issues) are all discussed daily in science classes in every school in the nation. Why should one controversy in the philosophy of science be disallowed when so many other philosophical, historical, political, and economic controversies are admitted?

Moreover, for the past thirty years teachers have been frequently reminded that the best learning occurs when students see relationships between different subjects. Nothing should be taught in isolation, the theory goes, but rather instruction should tie together each field in the curriculum. We think that's true and we wonder why all of a sudden there's been a stark change of mind just because one of the disciplines vying for inclusion, the philosophy of science, raises a challenge to the sacred Darwinian orthodoxy.

National Review OnLine runs this piece by its editors on the Gaza pullout. No doubt they're largely correct:

It might also be noted that if Gaza becomes a staging ground for terrorist activity against Israel, and it will, of course, then Israel will be under tremendous pressure to turn it into an uninhabited region by evicting the Palestinians. There's simply no possibility that they will allow terrorists to operate from Gaza with impunity and the only way to stop it, short of a costly and probably futile occupation, will be to make it a depopulated zone. The Palestinians are celebrating now, but if they cannot control the radicals in their midst the sweet taste they're presently rejoicing over will soon enough turn bitter.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer has written an essay in which he makes similar point. It can be read here.

The New York Times weighs in with the first of two articles on Intelligent Design to appear this weekend. The Times works hard to convince the reader that ID is tainted by its association with political and religious conservatives, but nevertheless there is more straight reporting on ID and the Discovery Institute in this piece than one might have expected from the Times.

This article by William F. Buckley will put a damper on your normally sunny disposition, but we do need to be aware of what hazards lay ahead:

Actually, it seems that Buckley and Learsy are understating the dimensions of the calamity high oil prices will wreak. If energy prices go ballistic there will be a world-wide economic depression that will almost certainly lead to war, perhaps on a global scale, as nations contest with each other for access to fuel. Such a war will almost certainly wind up going nuclear as one side or the other begins to prevail.

Have a nice day.

Arthur Scopenhauer observed that, "All truth passes through three stages; First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Intelligent Design has moved from stage one to deep into stage two. An illustration can be found in the strange tale of the scientific establishment's reaction to Richard Sternberg. First a little background.

One of the criticisms levelled at ID theorists is that they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals. ID theorists respond to the charge by pointing out how hard it is to get journals to accept anything critical of Darwinian orthodoxy. Darwinians typically scoff at the implausibility of this reply.

Well, about a year ago Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen Meyer managed to get a paper published in an obscure little journal that called into question the ability of purely Darwinian processes to account for the Cambrian explosion of phyla 530 million years ago. The roof then quickly caved in on the publisher for having the temerity to carry a paper skeptical of the received wisdom of the Darwinians. It was as if one of the Vatican's minions had permitted an article on Satan worship into an official publication of the Church.

The Inquisition of the scientific establishment was thrown into high gear and the editor, a man named Richard Sternberg who possesses not just one, but two PH.Ds in evolutionary biology, was all but burned at the stake for the crime of open-mindedness. His critics argued at the time that he was not in any way mistreated, evidently thinking that professional persecution is appropriate punishment for facilitating free and open debate, but a subsequent investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel has shown that, as ID advocates and Creationists have been saying for years, there are no people less tolerant of contrary opinion than the talibanic members of the church of Darwin. The OSC's findings are reprised in a letter to Sternberg which can be read here. It's a disillusioning eye-opener for anyone who thinks scientists are fair-minded and tolerant folk willing to allow a diversity of hypotheses to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

The Washington Post has a summary of the most recent developments. Here are some excerpts:

We particularly like Eugenie Scott's claim. In her world if you're sympathetic to the notion that other points of view deserve a hearing then you're a "zealot." That pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the modern scientific mindset.

The shooting of an innocent Brazilian by British police was tragic enough. Now it seems that nothing about their story is true. He didn't run from the police, he wasn't wearing a bulky coat, he didn't jump the turnstile to board the tube train, and he may not even have left the house which was under surveillance as a terrorist hide-out.

If all of this is true then the British police have hindered anti-terror efforts everywhere human and civil rights are observed. In the wake of their overly hasty reaction more restraints will inevitably be placed on police to ensure that such a terrible thing doesn't happen again. Those restraints may save an innocent life, like that of de Menezes, or they may, because of a moment's indecision, cost more lives. The mystery is why they shot at all.

Being a big cheese in al Qaida is risky business anywhere but especially in Saudi Arabia. The third jihadi to head up the Saudi chapter of al Qaida in the last year or so has bitten the bullet, so to speak.

Kudos to the Saudi security forces. Let's hope they soon run out of targets.

We have to wonder whether AP reporters Tom Coyne and Ashley Heher actually got paid for this sophomoric piece of guilt by very distant association:

This has to be one of the most stupidly silly pieces of reporting in the national media in the last twenty years. How is anything that Coyne and Heher write here relevant to John Roberts' fitness to serve on the Supreme Court? Why is any of it even newsworthy? The only plausible reason is that the writers are trying to show that John Roberts may have been tangentially exposed to racist influences in his youth, but even if he had been, so what? Who hasn't? What does that have to do with his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court?

As our two cerebrally-challenged correspondents play a desperate game of journalistic Twister, stretching and contorting to come up with something, anything with which to diminish Mr. Roberts' reputation, the rest of us can only shake our heads in astonishment at how low the AP's standards have sunk.

Matt Lauer probably wasn't expecting this:

Powell went on to say, no doubt to Lauer's discomfiture, that "For those of us who have actually had the chance to get out and meet the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here, and we are confident that if we are allowed to finish the job we started we'll be very proud of it and our country will be proud of us for doing it."

I hope Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the lefty anti-war protestors who think our G.I.s must surely be on the verge of mutiny read this soldier's statement. Unfortunately, it'll probably be unable to penetrate the ideological haze that obscures their ability to think clearly.

Cindy Sheehan shouts that George Bush is the world's biggest terrorist. Ben Stein says he's the world's greatest asset. Whether Stein is correct or not (I think he is), Sheehan is certainly not. After all, who would you rather meet on a deserted street, a jihadi from Fallujah, if there are any left, or George Bush?

Anyway, Stein's case for claiming Bush to be a great leader is here:

Stein has a point. In order to defend Western civilization one has to recognize that evil exists. Any politician who sees evil as purely the subjective revulsion of individual or collective taste is completely unsuited for leadership in these difficult times. Above all else we need men and women at the helm who possess a sense of moral clarity and who have not succumbed to the post-modern relativism which afflicts and paralyzes the judgment of so many of our educated elites. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were/are such men. Who will follow in their train? Surely not anyone endorsed by Ms Sheehan.

I remember once seeing a group of children surrounding a mentally retarded boy who was shouting obscenities. The group of children, instead of calming the boy down, coaxed him to continue his behavior because they found it amusing. They laughingly egged him on as he made himself offensive and foolish to anyone passing by who didn't realize what was happening. The whole episode was a sickening insight into the cruelty of which children are capable. I thought of this in thinking about how the media is encouraging Cindy Sheehan and making her protest possible.

Grant that Ms Sheehan is a bereaved mother. Of course, there are many mothers who've lost children in Iraq and Afghanistan. About two thousand of them, but they're not saying the sorts of things Sheehan is. What they are saying is that Sheehan doesn't speak for them, and no wonder.

Cindy Sheehan has, aided and abetted by the MSM, converted her status as a Gold Star mom into a platform from which to make the most absurd allegations about George Bush with total impunity. She had a right to her bitterness for a while, and we should still be loath to question her motives, but her immunity to criticism for the words she's uttering is lapsing and if she wishes to be taken seriously it's time people spoke up and told her that her statements are not only false, they're stupid. They are little more than invective and name-calling. Consider, for example, what she says in this story at The Drudge Report:

This is such incoherent nonsense that it's not worth the time to construct a reply. Let it suffice to say that the MSM is delighted that someone with some (rapidly fading) moral standing can be found who's willing to trash Bush in such a way that it doesn't look like partisan politics. They give her the megaphone to do it with and coax her to shout louder.

Yet the only reason anyone at all listens to her is that her son was killed in Iraq after having volunteered for the military, re-enlisting, and then volunteering to go on a dangerous rescue mission that his status as a vehicle mechanic did not require of him. He was not drafted, he did not have to fight. He freely chose his path. The young man is a hero, but his mother's screeds and wild allegations do his courage and sacrifice great dishonor.

If the media had any decency they would simply avert their eyes from this woman's unfortunate tantrums rather than egging her on. But they are desperate to discredit Bush, and desperate people resort to whatever means lay at hand, regardless of how contemptible those means may be.

Forgive me if I mentioned this before, but our local paper ran an editorial two weeks ago on the president's opinion on having Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. The editorial can be found here. Here's my response, only part of which was printed by the paper yesterday:

The BBC reports that yet another top aide to Abu al Zarqawi has been dispatched to frolic with his 72 virgins:

Maybe next time it will be the psychopath-in-chief himself who gets sent off to his reward.

Al Qaida has a twenty year plan for establishing a worldwide caliphate and The Fourth Rail has the details and commentary:

The rest of the plan can be read at the link. Roggio finishes with this:

Whatever happens, the American people have to be prepared for a long, drawn out conflict. One of the Bush administration's real failings in the current war has been, in our opinion, its failure to keep the eye of the American people focussed on the task of defeating terrorism. They've given us the perception that they're disengaged, that the war is just a side-show to our everyday lives rather than an all-out struggle for the survival of Western civilization. As a result, they've pretty much ceded the battle for people's hearts and minds to the Cindy Sheehans and Chris Matthews of the world.

The war has to be fought not only abroad but also here at home. The administration must repeatedly remind us why we are fighting, what our soldiers are dying for, what the stakes are, and what sort of progress is being made. If they expect the American people to be patient they have to show us the goal and continually update us on our progress toward that goal, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but everywhere the war is being fought. To do less is to risk conveying the impression that what our military is doing is not all that crucial or important and that its time to disengage from a conflict which, for all the White House is telling us, we're not really winning.

Michelle Malkin has a lot of links and other worthwhile stuff on what is probably conservatives' biggest disappointment with the Bush administration, its failure to control our borders.

If the Democrats want a winning issue in '06 and '08 there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who would vote for anyone who campaigns on stopping the flood of illegal aliens pouring into this country every day. The GOP, which has been absolutely delinquent on this issue, would find any credible candidate who promised to put a stop to it tough to beat.

Laer has 32 examples of media bias in their reporting on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. It's an imposing list.

This is an interesting development in the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

Maybe Liu is correct, but one difficulty his team is going to have to overcome, if they're going to show that no intelligent designer was necessary for biogenesis, is designing experiments that show how life could have originated without introducing into those experiments any trace of human intelligence. It'll be a nifty trick if they can pull it off.

The attempt, though, is quite a gamble. If they succeed, their work would be a severe and possibly fatal blow to Intelligent Design theory. If, on the other hand, they fail, their inability to explain how life could have evolved naturalistically will greatly strengthen the argument of those who say that however life came to be, it could not have happened through purely mechanistic processes.

Dennis Prager made the claim on the Hugh Hewitt show today that throughout history those nations or institutions which hated the Jews most intensely were also the nations which were responsible for inflicting the greatest evil upon the world.

I don't know enough history to judge the accuracy of this statement before the twentieth century, but it certainly would seem to be true of the last seventy five years. Beginning with the Nazis in the 1930s and early forties, the Stalinists from the forties to the seventies, and the Islamists for the past thirty years, most of the world's most evil regimes seem to have been rabidly anti-semitic. The exceptions would be, perhaps, those regimes which had little contact with Jews either geographically as neighbors or as citizens within their boundaries.

But for those nations which have had Jewish populations in their midst or resided in proximity to Israel, the degree of evil they perpetrate does indeed seem roughly proportional to the degree of their hatred of the Jews. It is such a bizarre nexus, in fact, that one wonders if there is not some supernatural, some demonic, reason for it based on God's election of the Jews as His chosen people.

Dafydd, who is a secularist balks at this conclusion, but is nevertheless struck by the connection.

Dafydd paraphrases Prager as saying that "The curse of the Jews is to be hated by the most evil men of every generation. The Jews are a barometer of hatred, canaries in a coal mine: to find the greatest evil, find the greatest haters of Jews."

This seems to be a very important insight. As Dafydd suggests, it would be interesting to have some historian check to see if it is borne out in centuries before the twentieth.

Howard Dean on Face the Nation gives us a fine lesson in how to say nothing with a lot of words:

Note that Dr. Dean has stated that we need a plan to get out of Iraq and that the president is responsible for the deaths of 1,850 Americans. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of the transcript.

Obviously, Dr. Dean wouldn't dream of using the tragic deaths of 1,850 Americans who died because Bush is an incompetent, whose deaths were unnecessary, as a political issue.

What did he say the number of dead Americans that Bush is responsible for was again?

People are convinced we need a plan. Bush doesn't have one. Surely the Democrats do because they're going to lead us out of Iraq. Eventually. When it's safe. When it's prudent. Sometime.

So. Having run us around several laps of the track, Dr. Dean finally concludes, apparently, that the President doesn't have a plan so we should vote the Republicans out. Of course, the Democrats don't have a plan either, but we should vote them in. The Republicans should come up with a plan if they want our vote, but the Democrats should not be held to same expectation.

It must be a wild, whacky place inside Howard Dean's mind.

One of the troubling results of the recently concluded ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Churchwide Assembly was a resolution voted upon and approved Saturday which contained rather harsh language against Israel for having constructed a wall to keep terrorists out of their communities along the West Bank. The wall has been very effective in reducing terror attacks, but it has also worked severe hardships on Palestinians who have in some cases been cut off from their farms, orchards, and health care by the barrier. Moreover, the wall in some places intrudes into land that until the 1967 Arab/Israeli war had been understood to belong to the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the language used in the supporting materials for the ELCA resolution is unclear as to whether it is criticizing Israel for building the wall or criticizing the manner in which it is built. There is a significant difference between the two criticisms. The ELCA, in wanting to take a stand for the Palestinians who are suffering because of the barrier, comes across as completely unsympathetic to the right of the Israelis to protect their children from being blown to smithereens by terrorist bombers.

Many of those who rose to support the resolution made it sound as if the wall were erected just to be cruel to the Palestinians. Rarely was there mention of the reasons or need for its existence. Indeed, the most frequent argument heard from the floor was that the speaker had been to Israel and seen the wall and it's really quite awful.

The resolution passed 71% to 29%. A motion Sunday morning to reconsider the action based on its anti-Israeli tenor was defeated. The Assembly would have done well to work toward a more precise expression of its concern, but it chose not to do so.

There was throughout the week a palpable feeling that many of the matters voted upon by the Assembly were little more than opportunities to give many in the hall a frisson of self-affirmation and a sense of their own moral goodness. They seemed to have very little additional purpose.

In the final analysis, there was little actual good accomplished by the Assembly, but it did manage to avoid doing some actual harm. It avoided passing a by-laws change that would have made the ordination of non-celibate homosexual candidates church policy and another that would have made blessing same-sex unions an accepted policy of the church.

How long the Lutheran church will hold out against the cultural tide which favors these changes and which is sweeping through mainline denominations all across the country, is an interesting, and disturbing, question.

Here are some highlights from the most recent newsletter of the Lost Liberty Hotel Project. These people certainly appear to be serious. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what Justice Souter is thinking right now?

If this project is successful it will send a message to politicians and judges everywhere that the people will not endure their abuses of power forever and that they will not be exempt from the laws they impose on the rest of us. To subscribe to their newsletter go here: newsletter@freestarmedia.com.

Here's some good economic news from Iraq:

Is it too much to hope that this gushing increase in output might make a teensy difference in the price Americans are paying at the pump, or is it all being sold to the Chinese?

The anger of any mother who has lost a son or daughter in war should be indulged, and no one wishes to criticize someone who bears that pain. Yet there is reason to believe that Cindy Sheehan, the mother who, much to the delight of the MSM, has been holding a vigil outside President Bush's Crawford ranch, is not just a grief-stricken parent. It turns out that there's more to her than meets the eye. In an article in Front Page on the terrorist advocate and legal defender Lynne Stewart, we find this item about Cindy Sheehan toward the end:

Ms Sheehan's son was a hero who volunteered to serve, and then to reenlist, and then to go on a rescue mission even though he was a non-combat mechanic. No one forced him to make any of those decisions. Now Ms Sheehan is blaming President Bush for the fact that her son is dead and making pronouncements about Israel's policy vis a vis the Palestinians. She seems, unfortunately, to be trying to exploit her status as a bereaved mother in order to achieve political aims quite unrelated to the war in Iraq. No one would have listened to her if her son had not been killed, but because he has she is being deferred to as someone who has gained valuable insight into world affairs and whose opinions merit public notice.

That her story has changed and that she has gotten her facts so completely wrong is worrisome but not nearly so much as the company she is now keeping.

Wretchard at Belmont Club has an interesting discussion of the technology race we find ourselves in against the Islamists in Iraq.

Wretchard goes on to examine how the Improvised Explosive Device is being used by the jihadis in Iraq, how it is evolving, and the ongoing and increasingly successful efforts to render it relatively ineffective. It's worth a read.

Journalists traipse onto dangerous terrain when they presume to pontificate on Intelligent Design. They almost never look good in the doing of it.

Marcia Mercer, for example, inanely criticizes President Bush for answering a question about his opinion on teaching ID. His answer was honest and straight forward, but that's not good enough for the censorious Ms Mercer. She protests, oddly enough, that the president should've followed the example of Calvin Coolidge who, even during the provocative days of the Scopes' trial, said nothing about the subject of evolution.

It apparently hasn't occured to Ms. Mercer that President Coolidge may not have had an opinion on the matter that he deemed worth sharing, but never mind. Her suggestion is too weird to spend any time contemplating. After all, if all occupants of the White House should observe presidential precedents what should a future president do when he finds himself alone in the Oval Office with a young intern and a cigar?

As silly as Mercer's advice to the president was, an essay by Newsweek's resident philosopher Jonathan Alter wins this week's prize for polemical ineptitude. Alter writes:

One wonders where Alter dug up this interesting little factoid. He doesn't tell us and gives us no reason to accept his assertion that we have fewer science majors today than, say, twenty years ago. Even if it were true however, it is much more likely to be a consequence of the reality that science is hard and the marketplace may be offering higher rewards for less difficult pursuits. Alter's assumption that the (unsubstantiated) dearth of science majors is due to right-wing suspicions seems dubious on its face. The "pernicious right-wing notion" that biology is vaguely atheistic, after all, is no more widely held now than it's been since the end of the 19th century.

Moreover, even if the suspicion that conventional biology is hostile to faith is more widely held today, there would be good reason for it since scientists and Darwinian philosophers, especially those who popularize science for a wide audience, keep telling us it is. Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others insist that Darwinism is a universal acid, to use Dennett's phrase, that is corrosive to religious belief. Dawkins is adamant that an anti-religious stance, to borrow from an article on him in the September issue of Discover, is a natural outgrowth of evolutionary thought. The article quotes Dawkins as saying that "It is very clear that much of the opposition to evolution in this country...is fed by the suspicion, which I happen to think is justified, that evolution really is antireligious." Little wonder that people have absorbed the "pernicious right-wing notion."

Alter continues:

Mr. Alter has concluded from his no doubt copious reading of the literature on the subject, and his attendence at the numerous conferences where the matter is on the agenda, that the idea that a debate exists out here in the hinterlands between Darwinians and Intelligent Design theorists is just an illusion. The matter has been settled and we can all just go home. That's a relief.

After proclaiming victory and an end to hostilities, Alter stumbles by irrelevantly citing Mr. Marburger. The question is not so much whether ID is science as it is whether Darwinian naturalism is science. If ID and Darwinian naturalism are philosophical mirror images, which they are, then whatever perquisites one enjoys in science education should also be available to the other. Alter unwittingly confirms this point in his next paragraph:

What Alter fails to tell us is that the Darwinian claim that specified and irreducible complexity can self-organize and/or result from chance, energy, and physical law alone is also unproven and definitely unprovable. It walks like science and talks like science, but it's a purely metaphysical assumption. So why should it be allowed to be taught in public schools?

Alter presses on:

Of course, though perhaps one despairs by this point of Alter's willingness to grasp this, it's not evolution that's under assault by ID theorists. It's the Darwinian version of evolution which denies any role in the process of the differentiation of life to intelligent agency that ID theorists are challenging.

Alter slyly perpetuates in this passage the error that ID is religion. This appears to be a tactic consistently employed by opponents of ID to discredit it among the public by constant repetition of the libel. There is nothing about ID that is religious. It has religious implications, certainly, but then so does Darwinism.

This claim is simply false. The science (More correctly, the philosophical conclusions drawn from the facts of empirical science) has not been demolished. It's been challenged, it's been attacked, it's been derided, misrepresented, slandered, and maligned, but very little of what ID theorists have written has ever been refuted. Alter seems to think that if someone responds to an opponent's argument in strong cadences with an overlay of dogmatic certainty that he has thereby "demolished" his opponent's case.

Alter says that the most clever thing about ID is that it doesn't sound like nonsense. It could be, somebody might tell him, that that's because it's not.

Ah. The old guilt by association chestnut. Rather than use his space to consider what the ID theorists themselves are saying and doing, Alter just trots out some of right-wing boogeymen with which to frighten the children. It's ironic that evolutionists get upset when people concerned about the philosophical implications of evolution quote Richard Dawkins' screeds against religion, but Alter thinks it perfectly reasonable to cite the opinions of Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson as if they were somehow relevant to the question of the merits of ID.

Undaunted by his embarrassing lack of understanding of the topic upon which he professes to instruct us, Alter turns oracular:

"Wreak havoc with his legacy"? Alter adds the office of prophet to his already distinguished roles of in-house scientist and philosopher. That he knows the future with such assurance is breathtaking for those of us limited by the constraints of space and time.

"Harming science"? How, exactly, have Bush's policies harmed science? Alter needs no justification for these simple-minded asseverations, of course. His readers can be expected to understand that Bush is a dolt so whatever Alter says about the catastrophic nature of anything he does just has to be true.

One is left wondering how many books by any prominent ID thinker Alter has ever read. My guess is that the answer is zero, since he understands so little about the matter. Too bad that doesn't stop him from writing about it. It makes you wonder who the real dolt is.

Worried that you just don't have enough to make ends meet? Feeling badly that you can't afford all that you'd like to have? Go here and see how your income stacks up to that of the rest of the world's inhabitants.

The day that Lutherans had been looking toward for two years with a mixture of dread and anticipation has now passed. Three critical recommendations were taken up today by the Churchwide Assembly in Orlando for adoption or rejection.

The day saw much spirited discussion, offered an incredible lesson in parliamentary procedure and, in my opinion, brought out the best in almost everyone present. Even the demonstrators who engaged in civil disobedience by standing in front of the dias facing the Assembly for several hours this afternoon, refusing to honor the Bishop's request that they return to the visitors' gallery, were at least quiet and not disruptive.

The Assembly considered three recommendations amid numerous amendments and parliamentary maneuvers.

The first called upon Lutherans of differing views on the cluster of issues associated with sexuality to find ways to be united. It passed.

The second recommendation would have allowed pastors of local churches to bless same-sex unions. An amendment (which won by just two votes out of almost 1000) got the wording changed so that the reference to same-sex unions was struck. The recommendation then carried by a 67% to 33% vote. This was probably a win for both sides since although the recommendation doesn't endorse same sex blessings in any way, neither does it explicitly prohibit them.

The third recommendation would have permitted the church to ordain non-celibate gay and lesbian ministers. A number of amendments which would have made this very easy to do and some which would have made it more difficult were defeated. The recommendation itself then came to the floor for a vote, and it failed. The tally was close, 51% to 49%, which is no doubt heartening to advocates of gay ordination, but it was actually not close in terms of passage since it needed a 2/3 margin to be adopted.

This result will be national news tomorrow, I'm sure, since a lot of people thought that the Lutheran church would just follow the zeitgeist and elect to ordain gays and lesbians. It didn't happen this time, but the Assembly convenes again in 2007.

So much coverage of the war in Iraq is merely skeletal. We hear only of the number of casualties and nothing of circumstances, tactics, and details of the engagements. This story of a military unit on patrol in Mosul, however, is Pulitzer prize-caliber reporting. It begins wih a discussion of the nature of the ordnance being employed against our troops and segues into a riveting tale of everyday life for soldiers and Marines in Iraq.

Lots of people are confused about the relationship of religion and science. Michael Shermer adds to the confusion:

Shermer has just finished arguing that a consistent evolutionism leads to atheism and then turns around and argues that the God question is not answerable by science. That's a most peculiar juxtaposition of arguments.

He closes the article by urging us to teach science in science class and religion in religion classes, but having told us that science logically entails a religious conclusion, i.e. that there is no God, a school would be violating his advice by following it. Very odd and not very helpful.

Judge Roberts must be stopped by any means necessary. Even if it means twisting logic and inventing slanders to smear him with. Here's the latest:

No doubt NARAL's response is "So?"

This ad is so unfair that even many of NARAL's allies are uneasy about it, but, hey, you have to do what you have to do. Any organization that defends partial birth abortion can hardly be expected to suddenly scruple over distorting the truth to discredit a foe.

Another liberal is driven over the brink by Bush's re-election. They're unable to stop themselves, apparently, from indulging in their hate-inspired weirdness, even at this late date.

Speaking of left-wing weirdness inspired by George Bush, Mick Jagger has weighed in with a new song with which to demonstrate to his fans his political astuteness by insulting the president and his secretary of state. The very clever lyrics go:

Insightful, no?

Mick has sympathy for the devil, but only contempt for George Bush and Condi Rice. Pretty weird.

The work of the ELCA Assembly continues in Orlando, and a lot of the folks in the pew are going to wish that it wasn't. Today (Wednesday) the Assembly voted 75% to 25% to adopt a new hymnal that its critics decried as theologically inept, musically vapid, and very politically correct. The new hymnal will de-emphasize masculine references to God, de-emphasize trinitarian references, and change lyrics of well-known hymns for reasons that no one seems to be able to figure out. Images of God as Father are downplayed because, in the words of one supporter, fathers are too often abusive and oppressive and that's not the image we wish to connote when we talk of God. The individual didn't mention that this view of fatherhood suggests that the Church views families as essentially dysfunctional units and views fathers as overall negatives in the lives of their families.

For the benefit of my Lutheran readers, most of the opposition to adoption of the new hymnal came from the Lower Susquehanna Synod, several of whose members spoke out strongly against it, including the Bishop.

Meanwhile, Lutherans in Assembly adopt what they call memorials, which are non-binding resolutions or statements which express the sense of the church. Discussion Tuesday and Wednesday centered on a memorial concerning world hunger. To read the memorial and listen to some of the discussion one got the feeling that it is the consensus view of many of the Voting Members (delegates) that if only we in the West would give more money to starving people we could eliminate world hunger. In fact, there was no mention in the memorial about what is perhaps the major cause of hunger in much of the world: tyrannical, corrupt regimes, especially in third world countries.

In Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia, and North Korea people are starving because the leaders of those countries are brutal thugs who take whatever we offer and use the money to line their pockets and the food to feed their soldiers. The problem is not an unwillingness in the West to do enough to alleviate the hunger. The problem is psychopathic dictators who have their boot on the necks of their people.

Anyway, your humble scribe entered a motion to amend the memorial to include the statement that the Lutheran Church will oppose tyrannical, oppressive governments whose policies result in chronic hunger among their people, and defended it by stating essentially what is written in the preceding paragraph. It was supported by two different pastors who grew up in Ethiopia and felt very strongly that what was said in the motion needed to be said. The motion carried by a 95% to 5% vote. One critic later sniffed that the amendment was too simplistic and that it blamed the people in Africa for their plight when the real cause of their suffering was greedy Americans.

Thursday, there will be speeches from the floor on whether to bless same-sex unions and ordain gay and lesbian pastors. It should be interesting.

Another British leftist breaks free. Here are a couple of highlights from Nick Cohen's essay about his ideological apostacy and subsequent excommunication:

Plato tells the story of a a group of men imprisoned since birth in a cave, chained to a rock so that all they can see are flickering shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners pass their time debating the significance and meaning of this or that shadow. Their whole existence is spent speculating upon flickering, insubstantial images. The shadows are all they have to put meaning into their bleak lives.

One day one of the prisoners breaks free and climbs up out of the dark cave. At first he's blinded by the brilliance of the sun, but once his eyes adjust he becomes aware of a world infinitely more beautiful and substantial than the dark realm of the cave. He experiences life as he had never known it before. He hastens back to tell his comrades, but they're unreceptive. The cave is all they know. They're comfortable enough, and they don't care to hear of any sun or colors or anything else. They think their former friend mad, and if he persists in pestering them, Plato warns, they may even kill him.

I think of that parable almost every time I hear an account of another lefty climbing out of the ideological cave in which he had been chained.

Biologist P.Z. Myers explains his noted rhetorical felicity in response to a column by John Hawks advising restraint in the Evo/ID controversy:

His only failing? Oh, what ineffable joy it must be to be P.Z. Myers.

Anyway, we can be grateful to Myers for nicely summing up for us the Left's preferred modus operandi in debate of any kind: Try to defeat your opponent through the power of your ideas. If that fails then kick him in the groin. And Myers says, after admonishing all and sundry not to expect him to be less unreasonable, that he's on the side of reason? The man sounds more like a narcissistic neo-nazi brown-shirt.

The following is an imaginary exchange with John Roberts at his judicial committee hearings:

Such an answer would almost certainly bring an end to the questions about Roberts' religion.

We reported several weeks ago on a story that credited abortion on demand for the sharp drop in crime in the U.S. since the 1970s.

David Brooks writes to tell us, though, that the decrease in criminality is only one social indicator that suggests that we are becoming a healthier society. He gives four reasons for this happy state of affairs, and none of them is that we've aborted all the problems:

Brooks may be a Pollyanna, but there certainly is a difference between what our society is today and what it was in the 1970s when it seemed that it was coming apart at the seams. His article is encouraging news, but we wonder how things can possibly be as good as he says they are after having suffered through five years of George Bush.

This is a good argument for the death penalty for crimes other than murder:

Why should these animals, if caught, have their existence subsidized at taxpayer expense, including the taxes that will be paid by their victims and her family. They will live off the state for twenty years or so and then be released back into society while this girls' life and that of her family is doubtless seriously damaged. If a dog behaved this viciously it would be put to sleep. So, too, should people be who would do something as depraved and cruel as this.

Posts on Viewpoint may be a little sporadic this week as I am at the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Churchwide Assembly in Orlando and the folks here have our time pretty much filled from morning till night.

Yesterday's session may be of interest to those following the changes occuring in churches around the country with respect to ordaining homosexual clergy. There are two resolutions to be voted on this week related to the ELCA's handling of gay and lesbian issues. Resolution two would essentially permit churches to bless commited same sex unions and reolution three would permit the ordination of gay and lesbian pastors.

Last evening the assembly, some 1000 laypeople and clergy from synods across the country, decided on the rules which would govern the assembly's voting procedures. To summarize, the conservatives (or traditionalists) wanted to make it harder to adopt resolutions 2 and 3 (although the resolutions themselves were only obliquely referred to, everyone knows that they're the five hundred pound gorilla in the middle of the living room), by adopting rules that would require changes to traditional practice to achieve a 2/3 majority. The liberals wanted to make it easier to adopt the resolutions on sexuality and worked to have these rules struck out or amended.

It seemed that there was good news and bad news for both sides. The liberals' motions to strike out or amend the rules required a simple majority to pass, and this they rarely achieved. However, the conservatives' motions to accept the rules required a 2/3 vote and this they consistently fell short of by a few tenths of a percent.

On balance, it seemed to go well last night for the liberals who managed largely to get their way even though they were often in a 66% to 34% minority. In the long term, however, conservatives can be encouraged that even if they don't have a 2/3 majority, they do appear at this point to have a large enough majority to block adoption of the controversial resolutions later this week.

This is just my take on the events from one little corner of the assembly hall, of course. Perhaps, it will prove to be wrong. I'll try to post further updates on Viewpoint for those of our readers who might be following the issue.

A couple of days ago we did a post on teaching Intelligent Design. Today I'd like to advance the discussion a bit by examining how ID could be presented in public school science classrooms in such a way as to allay the fears, perhaps, of those who see it as a Trojan Horse for sneaking religion into schools.

Science teachers discuss a host of topics in which it would be appropriate to include in the presentation of the scientific content a simple statement that scientists disagree on the philosophical significance of the material being covered. Some believe that the data which they've gleaned from their investigations have a purely natural explanation while others believe that natural processes by themselves are inadequate to explain what they observe and that the phenomena bear the impress of intelligent input.

Consider discussions likely to occur in a high school physics class whenever any of the dozens of forces, constants, and parameters of the universe are explained. These phenomena of physics are so exquisitely fine-tuned that were they different in just the slightest degree life would be impossible. The electromagnetic spectrum, for example, has a vast range of frequencies but only an extremely thin sliver of them is not only not harmful but is also necessary for carbon-based life to exist. Even more astonishing precision appertains to gravity, the strong nuclear force, and other such topics of interest to physics students. A teacher who wishes to enrich his students' understanding might point out that some scientists say this fine-tuning points to intelligence and purpose. Others say it's just a brute, inexplicable fact of nature. But to simply leave the matter hanging, as it were, is to deny students an important piece of information and, worse, to deny them an opportunity to do some good thinking.

An earth sciences teacher discussing cosmology with her classes will present to them the theory of the Big Bang. If she's skillful she might mention that a beginning to the universe implies a cause and a cause implies something which transcends the effect. If the universe had a beginning (like the Bang suggests) then it's reasonable to assume that something caused it. If so, that cause would've been either personal or impersonal, intelligent or not. She could then mention that scientists and arguments can be found on both sides of this controversy.

The earth sciences teacher will also have occasion throughout the year to mention dozens of details concerning the location of the earth in the solar system and in the galaxy as well as its physical structure (size, mass, composition, atmosphere, period of rotation, plate tectonics, amount of water, etc.). All of these properties of the earth seem to be exactly what is necessary for advanced life to be sustained and that the number of geophysical characteristics required by life is so high, the earth, in the minds of some scientists may well be unique in the cosmos.

Some scientists believe, our teacher might explain, that because the earth and universe seem so finely calibrated for the demands of living things, and because it is very difficult to account for how this could have happened just by chance, there must be a nearly infinite number of universes. If there are infinitely many worlds then it becomes more probable that there will be one like our own in which life can exist. Against this view many other scientists argue that talk of other universes is mere speculation and that there's no evidence for any universe but ours, as improbable as it is, and that the precise settings of the forces, constants etc. are better explained in terms of purposeful engineering in the design of the cosmic structure.

A chemistry teacher might well make clear to his students while discussing the properties of water why the chemical and physical characteristics of this substance are absolutely astonishing. Every one of the properties of water make it perfect for the role of sustaining living things. If any one of these properties were even slightly different, life as we know it could not exist. The same is true of a host of elements like oxygen, iron, and especially carbon and carbon compounds, particularly carbon dioxide and the bicarbonate buffer system.

The teacher might note that many chemists are awe-struck by the suitability of these substances for life and consequently conclude that the laws of chemistry are biocentric. Others, however, simply impute this fitness to the "way things are."

A biology teacher discussing the origin of life could rightly point out that there is no plausible theory in the scientific literature which explains how chemicals could have been ordered and arranged by purely mechanistic processes to construct self-replicating, information-filled, living cells. She could also mention that some scientists like Fred Hoyle have argued that the mechanistic origin of life under the conditions believed to have prevailed on the early earth is so difficult to imagine that life must have originated on some other planet and subsequently been imported to earth as spores. Other scientists, she could add, think that the extreme improbability of life emerging as a result of blind, undirected forces suggests that in fact it didn't emerge this way at all, and that it was instead the result, at least in part, of the work of an intelligent mind.

She might go on to instruct her students that a minority of biologists have come to believe that the mechanisms of evolution, natural selection and genetic mutation, are inadequate to explain the rich abundance of both specified and irreducible complexity found ubiquitously in biological structures, biochemical pathways and molecular machines throughout nature. Such complexity, these biologists believe, points at least as emphatically toward intentional design as to blind fortune.

It might also be pointed out that the differences between these scientists are matters of philosophy not science. They don't disagree about the empirical facts so much as they disagree about how best to account for those facts. Darwinians, for example, assume that natural forces and processes are sufficient to account for the vast richness and complexity of life, but this is not a scientific assumption. It does not lend itself to empirical testing or observation. The very act of trying to test it requires the input of an intelligent mind. As such the Darwinian assumption should be no more privileged in science classrooms than its denial.

A science teacher might also have occasion to discuss the wonders of the human brain and wish to note that only brains generate consciousness. How they do it is a mystery but that they do is an amazing fact. Matter and machines are not conscious. Computers are not conscious. Conscious states (feeling, hoping, desiring, hating, guilt, fear, wishing, moral judgment, understanding, believing, doubting, etc.) exist only in brains and possibly only in human brains. Even if a computer could be built that would be capable of "conscious experience" it would never have those experiences unless it were appropriately programmed by an intelligent software designer. The notion that consciousness can arise spontaneously out of the inherent properties of brute matter is a dubious hypothesis for which there is scant evidence.

The teacher could also mention that the marvelous uniqueness of consciousness is nevertheless believed by some scientists to be an inevitable consequence of gathering together the right matrix of biochemical and electrical phenomena. Other scientists are convinced that human consciousness cannot be explained in purely material terms and that it instead suggests the input of an underlying mind.

The preceding is a relatively tiny sample of topics and concepts which could serve as springboards for discussion of the controversy between materialism and Intelligent Design. There is nothing in the above examples which involves anything religious. Indeed, the debate is not a conflict between science and religion. Science is not in dispute nor is religion at issue. It is rather a controversy between philosophical physicalism (or materialism) and a kind of philosophical dualism. The physicalist insists that nothing but physical forces and processes are at play in the universe. The dualist maintains that physical forces by themselves cannot account for the precision, complexity, or high information content of every aspect of the cosmos all the way down to the tiniest sub-atomic particle. Matter, the dualist argues, is only one aspect of reality, mind is another.

Any science teacher would find that discussing these differences in how scientists explain the phenomena they observe in the world with his or her students would spark tremendous interest and learning. Science teachers are always searching for ways to stir a sense of awe in students, but the demand to limit science instruction to empirical facts detached from any philosophical interpretation or explanation of those facts leaves their lessons more sterile than they have to be and deadens enthusiasm.

It's a shame that students are being subtly discouraged from experiencing the exhilarating wonder good science inspires, but the fear that such emotions will lead young minds to questions about transcendence drives secularists into a panic. Better, the tacit thinking seems to be, to dampen the intellectual satisfactions students could experience than to have the physicalist paradigm subject to challenge. So one philosophical position, physicalism, or materialism, enjoys an unjustifiable monopoly in science classes, protected by those who would rather children not think at all than that their thinking lead them to suspect that perhaps materialism is false.

Teachers and others interested in exploring this topic in more depth might want to read one or more of the following: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr, Nature's Destiny by Michael Denton, Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe, The Design Revolution by William Dembski, and Rare Earth by Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee.

Profiling terrorists or drug runners may not be politically correct, but evidently profiling sex offenders is. Here's an interesting article by Daniel Engber which explains how it's done:

Viewpoint offers this suggestion: Two to three points should be sufficient warrant to place the villain in jail until age 65; Four to five points should land him in prison for life, and six or more points should win him an appointment with his Maker.

With President Bush having given his opinion on the matter of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools there's a lot of buzz about the issue in the print media and blogosphere.

Dan Peterson offers an excellent introduction to ID, explaining in layman's terms what exactly ID theorists believe and why they believe it.

George Neumayr has two good articles on the growing intolerance of Darwinians and the increasing appeal of ID. See here and here.

David Klinghoffer avers that the vitriolic response of Darwinists to the inroads made by ID theorists is all about status.

David Limbaugh agrees with President Bush.

Lots of fascinating reading.

No Left Turns' Joseph Knippenberg has done some digging on John Roberts' likely position on first amendment cases involving freedom of religion. He says this:

This is exactly what many Christians voted for George Bush for. Once Roberts is seated, and assuming Rehnquist's health holds out, it appears there may be a return to sanity in the rulings which come down to us from Mt. Olympus on matters of religious expression and many other matters as well.

We stated in a post a couple of days ago titled Sinking in the Mire that the NYT was positively shameless in their obsession to hand Bush a defeat by trying to mine scandal in the adoption records of John Roberts' children.

A day later Chris Matthews decided he would not be outdone by the Times. On his MSNBC show Hardball, which after last night might be called Sleazeball, Matthews interviewed the parents of a young Marine killed in Iraq less than 24 hours before.

The tenor of his questions made it clear that Mr. Matthews sought to exploit the grief of this couple in order to score cheap political points against the administration. The questions he asked follow below. I've omitted the parents' responses, which were pretty much what Matthews was hoping for, because those parents should be given our sympathy, not our criticism. If the reader wishes to see how they answered the questions the complete transcript can be found at the link.

It's hard to come to any other conclusion than that these questions, aside from being dumb, were designed to elicit criticism of the Bush administration and its conduct of the war. That Matthews used people who had just learned that their son had been killed to achieve this purpose is unconscionable. The only good thing about this sordid affair is that scarcely anyone watches MSNBC.

Bill Roggio has some details on how the six Marines were lost in fighting several days ago and also some thoughts on the war in Anbar province.

You'll also want to read Wretchard's analysis of a Department of Defense news briefing with General Carter Ham about the ambush. You'll also want to read Wretchard's analysis of a Department of Defense news briefing with General Carter Ham about the ambush.

Roggio and Wretchard are far more informative than anything you'll find on the evening newscast.

Alvin Plantinga, one of the best known epistemologists in contemporary philosophy, enters the lists on behalf of Cardinal Schonborn:

This last paragraph is especially pertinent. Darwinism is the view that natural processes are sufficient by themselves to have produced the entire biosphere. This assertion, however, is completely untestable. No observation could serve to confirm it or to refute it. It is, as professor Plantinga notes, pure metaphysics which is why it must not be allowed a position of privilege in public school science classes. It is no more scientific nor less theological than the Intelligent Design theorists' claim that natural processes by themselves are inadequate as explanatory mechanisms for the structures, pathways, and processes we find in the biosphere.

Our local newspaper, The York Dispatch, ran an editorial on the president's perfectly sensible comments on teaching Intelligent Design last Wednesday that might best be described as argumentum ad snarkum. The editor wrote:

Well, maybe so. If sarcasm was a reason to accept an implied conclusion then the paper would have a strong case against the Bush administration's attitude toward science-related issues, but it's not and they don't. Each of these issues is framed by the writer in a highly tendentious way. The controversy surrounding global warming, for instance, is not about whether it's happening but about its cause. No one claims that drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will have no effect. The debate is over whether the effect will be significant and permanent. Part of informing one's readers is accurately presenting the facts, but this the editorial fails to do, preferring the rhetorical appeal of snarkiness to the difficult work of thinking.

The writer then gets to the point he/she really wishes to make:

Not a theory? Does the editor mean that ID is not a proposed explanation for a set of observations? Does the editor know what a theory is? Has he/she ever actually read anything written on ID by a prominent advocate?

And what about ID makes it a "strictly religious concept"? Is it religious because some wish to use it to promote a religious agenda? Is Darwinism fascist because some have employed Darwinian principles like survival of the fittest to justify the extermination of the less fit? Is ID religious because it posits a Designer? How, exactly, would that make it religious?

Why is it irresponsible for the president to state his personal views on this issue when asked to do so? He didn't say that ID should be federally mandated. He merely opined that it would be a good thing to stimulate students to think about a very important question. Why is it embarrassing to hold a view consonant with the opinion of the majority of people one leads? Is it that the editor is embarrassed that the president lacks the same level of scientific enlightenment possessed by his/her fellow sophisticates in the media?

Moreover, what does the Dispatch mean by calling the president's words a "fundamentalist mantra"? Does the paper mean to suggest that only creepy fundamentalists believe that an intelligence underlies the world of our observation and that it's appropriate to mention this possibility in a science class? If so, what epithet does the editor assign to those who think it perfectly appropriate to discuss in science classes the view (called Darwinism) that no such intelligence is required to explain the biological phenomena we observe?

What is really "unseemly, irresponsible and embarrassing" is lazy, otiose polemic masquerading as informed argument. The editor of the Dispatch knows nothing of what he/she is talking about so, like a middle schooler caught in an argument over matters he does not understand, the writer just sputters insults. It's pretty immature, actually.

For a more adult response to President Bush's comments go here.

Michelle Malkin wonders why the NYT has the time and resources to devote to looking into John Roberts' adoptions of his children but have been absolutely mute, as has been almost the entire liberal media, about the scandal involving the liberal radio network Air America. Good question.

You'll find lots of links to other commentators on this story as well as a statement of quasi-explanation by the Times at Michelle's site.

Jim Wallis is a good guy, I'm sure, but he says several things in a NYT editorial that suggest that he's just not the guy to be giving Democrats advice. He writes:

If Wallis really thinks that values and religion means only "abortion and gay marriage" to conservatives then he's too uninformed to serve as an effective advisor to the Democrats on these matters. If he's deliberately distorting what conservatives value then he's being dishonest. Conservative values encompass a wide range of moral issues, both social and economic. They include, but are not limited to, maximizing economic freedom, equality under the law, equality of opportunity, minimizing the corrosive effect of the entertainment industry, strong commitment to one's family and God, a commitment to individual and property rights, a bias in favor of innocent life and a commitment to justice for those who harm others, peace through strength, the importance of hard work and charitable giving, a willingness to help those who are willing to help themselves and a reluctance to help those who aren't, and a belief in the wisdom of abiding by the original intent of the constitution written by the founding fathers. This is a little more comprehensive than Wallis' insulting caricature but much more accurate.

Wallis is implying, in other words, that Democrats must cease to be liberals. After all, how can they "offer new ideas and a fresh agenda" without changing who they are?

Is this the new vision Wallis is offering the Dems? Do something for the poor? I'm sure that Democratic pols everywhere are saying, "Gee, why didn't I think of that?"

Mr. Wallis' "new ideas" for the Democrats sound very much like the old ones. Resist tax cuts for the wealthy, resist welfare reform, and establish a guaranteed income. Anyone who wonders how this is any different from what the left has been advocating ever since Karl Marx gets a star.

The environment is more than just clean air, and it's not in trouble because it's getting dirtier. In many ways it's healthier now than it's been in the last 700 years, at least in the developed world. The chief environmental problems we face today are the loss of terrestrial habitat for many species of wildlife and the depletion of ocean fisheries. These problems have little to do with oil. Even so, if Mr. Wallis wants a cleaner more energy efficient future the simplest, most effective long term means to that end is to build more nuclear power plants. The first Democrat willing to support that please raise your hand.

Not only are none of these suggestions new, Wallis gives us no clue as to how any of them are to be accomplished. What he seems to be advising his fellow Democrats is that they should accept what conservatives have been advocating and working toward for decades. Fat chance of that happening.

In order to do what Wallis recommends Democrats would have to repudiate no-fault divorce, moral relativism, their sympathy for single parent households, and much of modern feminism. They would also have to endorse at least some form of censorship and consequently antagonize their deep-pocket friends in Hollywood and elsewhere in the entertainment industry. In other words, once again Wallis' advice to liberals is to become conservatives.

The two things he advises here are mutually exclusive. How do Democrats stop fighting for gay marriage and still demonstrate to the left that they support gay civil rights? Conservatives have been opposing gay marriage while supporting other civil rights for gays for a couple of decades now, and as far as the left is concerned they're all just a bunch of homophobes. To ask the Dems give up the fight for gay marriage is to ask them to cast off another one of the boards in the liberal tree-house.

This is just nonsense. We've had bases in Europe and Asia ever since WWII and so far from detracting from our leadership of the world, it has insured it. As for the need to renounce any claim to Iraqi oil, what claim is there to renounce? The U.S. has made no claim to the oil in Iraq, and for Wallis to insinuate that such a claim exists is bizarre.

Yet again Wallis is trying to revivify leftist ambitions that have long been moldering in the museum of bad ideas. What's novel about the proposal for a strong ICC? It's a terrible suggestion, but it's not new. What's new about the idea of an international quick reaction force? The U.S. has been trying for decades to cajole the United Nations into being something other than a slush fund for corrupt bureaucrats to wallow in, but to no avail. Unless the United States is prepared to use its military muscle no other western nation will. Even if we do employ our power most other nations are content to sit back and say let's you and him fight. The institutions Wallis is talking about don't need reformed, they need abolished.

The question must be asked again: Exactly what does Wallis suggest we do that we haven't done? Hurl money at the problem like Live 8 urges us to do? To what end? Throwing money at poverty only lines the pockets of dictators and undermines the ability of indigenous farmers and tradesmen to make a living because they can't compete with the cheap goods that flood their markets from the donor countries. The U.S. has been the chief agent in trying to alleviate poverty around the world for fifty years and our image is what it is. Tossing more money overseas isn't going to change it. As long as we're successful and they're not their resentment will cause them to hate us. Giving people help only exacerbates the resentment because it makes them feel inferior to have to rely on us and underscores the disparity between our accomplishment and their failure.

Unfortunately, Wallis offers nothing in this essay in terms of either vision or solutions. To the extent that he proffers any substantive advice at all it's that Democrats either need to adopt the same old failed nostrums that leftists have been proposing for the last century and a half or transform themselves into conservative Republicans. The latter course seems much the wiser, but liberal readers of the Times surely aren't likely to follow it.

Just when you think the left can't sink any lower it surprises you:

One would think it couldn't be true, one would think that no one would stoop this low, but then one reminds oneself that these are liberals we're talking about, and for these people standards of decency are all relative to the political demands of the moment.

The New York Times has embraced the ethics of the National Enquirer and has become the journalistic equivalent of dumpster divers.

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail gives a little background to the fighting in western Iraq which led to the deaths of two dozen Marines in the last several days. He also discusses a meeting of disparate insurgent groups that took place recently in Lebanon to try to find some common ground. Apparently there was none to be found.

Details of that meeting can be found at Iraq the Model.

Front Page Magazine's Jamie Glazov has an interview with Joseph Farah of World Net Daily in which Farah claims that the Islamists have plans to detonate nuclear weapons in American cities and that the weapons are already here waiting for the signal.

Such claims are much easier to make than to refute, but I came away from this interview disturbed. Not just because of the nature of Farah's alarm call, but also by his refusal to really explain what his basis is for believing that such a calamity is on the way.

His evidence seems to be that we all know that al Qaida wants to execute a spectacular strike murdering tens of thousands of Americans. We know that Russian nukes are missing. We know that our Mexican border is porous. We know that people like Dick Cheney have said that another terror strike is inevitable. Therefore, Farah concludes, a nuclear strike is imminent. Well, maybe, but the evidence Farah gives us is pretty thin.

Nor does he enhance his credibility when he slyly implies that George Bush hasn't sealed our borders because he's part of a master plan "for global governance being plotted in meetings of groups like the Council on Foreign Relations. You can read its reports. And, I believe this open-borders policy is a direct result of those plans, which have been secretly adopted by our highest leaders, including President Bush."

This response as well as the hemming and hawing he tries to pass off as answers to Glazov's request for supporting reasons for his dire prophecies makes one wonder whether Farah isn't just a part of the black helicopter crowd.

He may be right, of course, or he may be just guessing. There's no way to falsify his claim since no matter how long we go without a strike he could still argue that it's going to happen soon. One way to measure his accuracy, though, is by seeing what happens on August 6th. Farah says this:

Of course, if nothing happens on the 6th that doesn't mean that it won't happen next year on the 6th. Or the year after that.

In any case, Farah hopes he's wrong. So do we. We just think that unless he had more to go on than what he shares with us in this interview it would have been better to have not said anything. Conservatives don't need to have their spokespersons passing off their own speculations as if they were solid fact. One does not go about scaring the bejabbers out of people without having credible reasons for doing so. Credibility, especially in a matter as frightening as this, is too precious to squander.

Teddy Kennedy can always be counted upon to look foolish the more closely one reflects upon his pronouncements.

The Senator has said of President Bush's recess appointment of Ambassador John Bolton that it was "a devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent."

However, according to the sleuths at Powerline, in 1999 things were different. Back then he urged the recess appointment of Bill Lann Lee to the top civil rights post at the Department of Justice. Republicans, who constituted a majority of the Senate, were unwilling to confirm Lee because of his advocacy of racial quotas. According to the Washington Times of November 5, 1999, Kennedy stated, "I have long urged recess appointments to break this logjam -- this irresponsible, unconstitutional Republican leadership position which fails to give people their due and fails to meet the constitutional standard." President Clinton eventually gave Lee a recess appointment.

Perhaps the Senator's brains are so pickled he can't recall what positions he held six years ago. Or perhaps he just doesn't care about either consistency or truth. There are, after all, no Geneva accords governing the rules of engagement in political combat.

The inestimable Charles Krauthammer falls victim to the temptation to disregard Dirty Harry's dictum that "A man's got to know his limitations." Krauthammer, who's right about so much he comments upon in the political sphere, makes the mistake of wading into unfamiliar philosophical waters with all the confidence of one who has tested them many times before. He writes:

Krauthammer simply embraces here the old canard that Darwinian evolution is science and Intelligent Design is religion when in fact neither proposition is correct. Both views might perhaps be best understood as important hypotheses in the philosophy of science. As such, either they're both suitable for discussion in a science class or neither are. I've argued on numerous occasions on Viewpoint that the former position is the more sensible. When science instruction ignores the philosophical implications and underpinnings of the empirical side of science it reduces to a sterile, barren collection of facts of significantly less interest to students than it would otherwise have.

To argue that the philosophy of science has no place in a science class is as silly as arguing that the history of science has no place in a science class. Yet we wouldn't dream of stripping our discussions of Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Kepler, and Darwin of their historical context. No one would suggest that we should henceforth omit all mention of dates because they're not matters subject to experimentation. It's absurd to suggest that Galileo's disagreement with the Church or the story of the Manhatten Project or an account of the work of the early alchemists is inappropriate in a science class. If it's perfectly appropriate to discuss the historical background of scientific ideas and progress then by what logic do we not extend the same acceptance to discussions of the philosophical context and ideas of science?

President Bush has recently urged that ID be discussed in school along with Darwinism. He presumably has no more expertise in this area than does Krauthammer, but he certainly has better instincts.

In another post I'd like to discuss a few ways in which I think ID could be presented by science teachers without frightening the children, or liberals, with the boogeyman of religion.

Hamas, like any benevolent organization might, runs summer camps for children:

Of course, the curmudgeonly Israelis fail to appreciate the benefits being bestowed on the little tykes:

What a slander. To think that the Zionists would sink so low as to accuse peace-loving Palestinians of being so depraved that they would actually encourage their children to become suicidal killers. No wonder there's no peace in the Middle-East.

See more here.

As if to affirm Graham's allegation that the problem is not just fringe Islamists but Islam itself even some so-called moderate imams are refusing to face reality. The most senior Islamic cleric in Birmingham claimed recently that Muslims were being unjustly blamed in the war on terrorism and that the eight suspects in the two bombing attacks on London "could have been innocent passengers":

Meanwhile, the imam at one of the largest east coast mosques, a supporter of Hamas, Shaker Elsayed, rejected any suggestion that Islam needs to reform and should use any means necessary to defeat its enemies.

Islamists like Elsayad and Naseem see world-wide Islam as within their grasp as long as they don't lose heart and do not allow themselves to be deterred from the goal. Thus they must not give an inch to the infidels no matter how stupid their obstinence makes them sound.

How does the University of Rhode Island justify paying this guy? Forget about the fact that, if Mr. Nelson is telling the story accurately, he's a disgrace to the teaching profession. Forget that he's an incredibly sleazy and contemptible human being. Ask yourself what the university would do if he were a heterosexual male making similar remarks to female students. Change everything in this column so that the references were to heterosexual behavior by a heterosexual male and the university would have had his bags packed and desk cleaned out within an hour of the opening of classes whether a student filed a formal complaint or not.

Why are promiscuously homosexual professors so privileged at this school that they are permitted to violate the canons of professional ethics governing teacher-student relationships and defraud their students of an education and still get paid for it? We know what kind of man professor Vocino is, but what kind of place is the University of Rhode Island? It sounds like an academic sewer.

Michelle Malkin has links to all the latest news on the Air America scandal.

Question: Have you heard anything, anything at all, about this scandal on the evening news or read anything about it in your local paper? We didn't think so. Do you remember reading about Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction and subsequent legal troubles? Of course. Why is the elite media only interested in scandal when conservatives are the principal players?

Strategy Page has an analysis of the current political situation in Iraq. Here's an important excerpt:

Nobody said it would be easy, but if it happens in Iraq the whole world will change. If it fails, the Islamic world will descend into a chaos which will reverberate across the globe.

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Max Hastings offers us an excellent essay upon which to reflect. He argues that there are good arguments both to justify and to condemn the use of the atomic bomb on Japan and anyone interested in the continuing debate on this historical watershed should read his column. He closes it with an important observation:

It's hard to disagree with what Hastings writes. I think we have an obligation to try to understand the circumstances the men who made the decision to drop the bomb found themselves in. Even so, there is something Hastings omits from his column which I think is of overriding importance in judging what happened, not just at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also at Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg and many less noted cities.

In all of these, there was a conscious decision to deliberately target civilians for death. It doesn't much matter, in my opinion, whether the death was administered by conventional or nuclear explosives, the salient point is that the intentional killing of non-combatants, women and children, is prima facie morally unjustifiable. I am not saying that it is absolutely wrong. There may be circumstances which would make such a measure necessary, and perhaps such circumstances obtained in August of 1945, but it's not obvious that they did.

We were outraged on 9/11 when 3000 civilians lost their lives to Islamic terrorists. We were incensed that the hijackers targeted innocent people. We called them cowards (which they certainly weren't). We called them evil (which they certainly were), but in what morally significant ways did their deed differ from the fire-bombing of children in Dresden or Tokyo?

I sympathize with the difficulty of the decision those men had to make during WWII. I don't know what I would have decided myself, especially if I had a son slated to take part in the impending invasion of Japan. But I do think we can spare those men harsh judgment without withholding moral assessment of their deed. If we seek to justify deliberately killing innocents now it will only make it easier for us to yield to the temptation to do it again. Even as I write Rep. Tom Tancredo is defending his call to nuke Mecca if a terrorist uses a nuclear weapon in an American city.

We are fortunate to be in possession of precision weapons today that our fathers did not have and which enable us to target combatants without deliberately harming non-combatants. We have, as best as can be discerned, used these with great care and effectiveness. They have relieved us somewhat of the moral burden previous generations of Americans carried. Even so, there are many times in war when the temptation to kill indiscriminately must seem overwhelming. To the extent we excuse what was done in WWII we make it more likely that it will happen again today in the war against Islamic terrorists.