Friday, December 23, 2005

The NSA Wire-tapping Program

Much ado has been made about President Bush's directives to the NSA to wiretap some terrorism suspects without first getting a warrant from the FISA court. If you listen to the Left, you'll get gleeful accounts of how crazy, wrong, and dishonest this president has been regarding this whole program. Liberals very clearly think they have caught the president red-handed doing illegal things.

Listen to people who know the law and have studied this case, however, and you get a far different viewpoint. Some conservatives are not totally convinced of the program's legality, and others are thoroughly convinced. None that I have seen, who have studied the case law honestly, are out there calling for impeachment, as the liberal democrats are.

John Hindraker's piece at PowerLine blog should serve as the definitive (and exhausting to read) bit on the legality of the program. And Andrew McCarthy's piece at National Review is both compelling and funny. And Ann Coulter weighs in, as well, in her usual acerbic way. Here is the beginning of that rant:

I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9/11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.

With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war... In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese — many of them loyal American citizens — and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free.


She never fails to "put it out there" and stir the pot.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

A Homerun for Atheists

Today, a federal judge sided with parents of schoolchildren in a Pennsylvania town, who sued their school district for changing their science curriculum to include a disclaimer that said "evolution is a theory, not a fact," and proposing Intelligent Design as an alternate theory of the universe. The judge was very vocal in the ruling, not just saying the school board was wrong, but slamming the entire ID movement to begin with. It was a truly ugly day for ID proponents (including Yours Truly).

The Facts
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is just that -- a theory. It touches on a lot of subjects and has never been proven, despite 150 years of research attempting to do so. It is virtually impossible to prove the central tenet of Darwinism: that all life originated from a common ancestor. Looking at all the species on Earth, no one has ever found fossils or bones of any "missing link" species -- those types of animals that show a transition from one species to another. There are a number of other problems, as well, with the theory. Many books have been written describing these problems. Many scientists have authored papers and books describing their concerns about the theory. Some debate (not a lot) has taken place in the scientific community on the subject. I say "some" because generally, secular scientists dismiss those scientists who dare to disbelieve Darwinism, and routinely name-call or otherwise hurl insults at them. They rarely address the issues raised.

Intelligent Design is another theory -- also largely unprovable -- that basically states that the more rational and logical approach to the origins of life and the universe lies in the actions of an intelligent entity. Proponents will typically rattle off many of their main concerns with Darwinism and other related origin-of-life theories, then propose ID as a more reasonable alternative. They will rarely bring up God, for a few reasons; the most important of which is that the theory doesn't depend on it. It simply states that when you observe things that are particularly complex or extremely unlikely to happen by chance, a reasonable person would also consider the possibility that some intelligence was at work doing these things purposefully.

To me, and to ID proponents, these things seem like common sense. And because ID is straightforward, theists are likely, once they've actually listened to some well-spoken person go over it, to buy into it and at least consider its rationality.

The judge in the Pennsylvania case did not agree.

Here is the text of the disclaimer that the school board required to be read at the outset of the science class. Ask yourself how this seems unreasonable or like prosyletizing:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
Hardly the rantings of bible-thumpers. This is the reasoned approach that is the ID movement.

Yet in this particular case, ID proponents were few and opponents were many. Since ID mainly states the case that evolution is simply a theory, not a fact, and doesn't put ID out there as something that can be proven in any way, the school district got slammed hard. The district, represented by the normally able Thomas More Law Center, offered no peer-reviewed documents in support of its theory or in opposition to evolutionists'. ID's stance that supernatural forces are at work in the universe is unprovable, and supernatural causations are by definition excluded from "science," so they got burned from several directions at once. The judge just chewed them up and spit them out.
His comments:
...this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.


What Doomed ID?
The reason why the court (the judge) ruled against teaching ID seems, in reading the court document, to rest on the notion that ID is simply "creation science" or "creationism" re-packaged to be more palatable to a sophisticated audience. In fact the court writes, after 20 pages of support, that "The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism."

Creationism is the idea that what the Bible says about the formation of the universe in the Book of Genesis is literally true, word for word. Putting aside the fact that Genesis had the more consistent and (ultimately, proven) accurate description of the creation, or "Big Bang" event than science had proposed until recently, Creationism always was a theology-based idea. It was rooted in the Bible and garnered very little scientific evidence to support itself. Creationists, for example, believe that the Earth is 4,000+ years old, which is just old enough to have included Adam & Eve and the Torah, from the Bible. Science actually proves otherwise, and very few people take, or ever took, Creationism seriously.

ID, on the other hand, is based in science, not on the Bible. It suggests that as we progress with science, more and more evidence is emerging that points to a supernatural cause in the origins of life and the universe. It points out that while you can't empirically prove God exists, you can observe things in the universe that are so statistically improbable as to be called virtually impossible; whole chains of these types of things; and infer the existence of this supernatural power as a result.

Endorsement of Religion
The court went on to state that, of the disclaimer offered at the biology class "we find that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion." In other words, somehow if you put out a disclaimer that Darwinism is a theory, and offer an alternate for students' consideration, this is somehow akin to the school district having an official religion. This is patently ridiculous. And in the end, it's offensive to me as a Christian. But it's not really a surprise. This society has been drifting further and further away from its Christian roots in favor of secularism/atheism for many years, now. It's frightening, and if it goes much further, this country will be in serious danger of collapse.

At the end of the day today, Frank Pastori, a Christian talk-show host on KKLA here in Los Angeles, and a proponent of ID, told callers to his show tonight that, flatly, "ID is dead. It's over." While that seemed really alarmist to me at the time, having spent time reading the entire 139-page court opinion on the trial, I can see why he said this. The ID community utterly failed to stand up for its ideas in a big case, and the rest of the scientific community had it together. They made the ID team look like fools.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Jesse Jackson: Beyond Stupid

Jesse Jackson's Cause du Jour this week was the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams up at San Quentin. Williams founded the "Crips" street gang in South Central L.A. several decades ago, and was sent to death row for brutally murdering 4 innocent people in cold blood, at point-blank range, with a shotgun. 25 years later it's time for him to pay the piper, and along comes Jesse Jackson to get a little news coverage for himself.

Obviously everyone expects this from Jackson by this point, but he went a step further with this cause: Besides being self-promoting and ridiculous in his assertions of Williams's innocence and "victim of the system" status, Jackson, a preacher, compared this murderous thug to the greatest biblical characters of all time.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard Jackson on the radio saying that Williams was like Moses: misunderstood. Then a few days later, he repeated this and added Saint Paul to the list of people Tookie was like. Finally, when Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Williams, Jesse Jackson said the governor was like Pontius Pilate. That, of course, means Tookie Williams, multiple murderer and founder of one of the most violent street gangs in L.A., is like Jesus Christ himself.

Why the media or anyone continues to take Jesse Jackson seriously is way beyond me. Now the "Reverend" is out comparing killers to God. What is next?

Monday, December 05, 2005

Little Lefties More Disgusting than their Parents

I have now seen everything:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004021.htm

De-Christmasing Christmas

Jeff Jacoby (a practicing Jew) at Townhall.com has written a concise opinion on one instance of the de-Christmasing going on in New England right now. There are obviously examples of this all over the country (the waitress at BJ's told us "Happy Holidays" last night), but each year Christians get a little more miffed and are now finally starting to fight back.

"We're trying to be inclusive," says the Boston parks commissioner, explaining why the white spruce that was sent from Nova Scotia under a giant banner reading "Merry Christmas, Boston" became a "holiday tree" on her department's website. But suppressing the language, symbols, or customs of Christians in a predominantly Christian society is not inclusive. It's insulting.
The article is a good, quick read.

John Gibson wrote a book that's out right now called, "The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought" and has devoted a website to its follow-up, as well. Here are a few items posted as examples on Amazon's book description:
  • In Illinois, state government workers were forbidden from saying the words "Merry Christmas" while at work
  • In Rhode Island, local officials banned Christians from participating in a public project to decorate the lawn of City Hall
  • A New Jersey school banned even instrumental versions of traditional Christmas carols
  • Arizona school officials ruled it unconstitutional for a student to make any reference to the religious history of Christmas in a class project
In short, this is not "freedom of religion" or "inclusiveness", it's discrimination of one particular religion, Christianity, by exclusion.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

What President Bush SHOULD be Saying

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal has a fantastic fake speech today, one that conservatives wish the president had delivered.

Enjoy it here.

Coulter on John Murtha Love-Fest

Ann Coulter posted a great column today on GOP reaction to John Murtha's call for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Her point was one I've made before - though admittedly she does a 10x better job than I could - that conservatives are far too nice sometimes when arguing with liberals. They sometimes appear to lose because they can't bring themselves to street-fight the way liberals can.

The article is a quick read, and funny. Here's an excerpt:

Can't Republicans disagree with a Democrat who demands that the U.S. surrender in the middle of a war without erecting monuments to him first? What would happen if a Democrat were to propose restoring Saddam Hussein to power? Is that Medal of Freedom territory?

I don't know what Republicans imagine they're getting out of all this love they keep throwing at Democrats. I've never heard a single liberal preface attacks on Oliver North with a recitation of North's magnificent service as a Marine.
and:
The only Republican congressman who did not offer to have sex with John Murtha on the House floor was Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio. While debating Murtha's own proposal to withdraw American troops from Iraq in the middle of a war waged to depose a monstrous dictator who posed a threat to American national security, Schmidt made the indisputably true remark that Marines don't cut and run. (She was right! Murtha voted against his own proposal.)