Monthly Archives: November 2005

ID

It Takes a Lawyer…

ABQjournal: ID

Adopts Oldest Trick in Lawyers’ Book By Sergio Pareja, Law Professor

It’s about time for a law professor to chime

in on the intelligent design debate. … What is needed is a simple explanation of the issues combined with an explanation

of the legal strategies involved. … [mjh: always start with a joke to put your readers at ease.]

In

this country, it appears that there now are four primary views on the origin of life.

First, there is atheistic evolution. …

Second, there is theistic evolution. …

Both of these first two views on the origin of life are completely

compatible with evolution as it now is taught in public schools.

The third view on the origin of life is the strict

creationism view held by fundamentalist Christians. The first two views are not compatible with this third view and, as

a result, evolution as it is now taught in public schools is in direct conflict with strict creationism. …

Intelligent design is

the fourth view on the origin of life. ID takes advantage of the fact that scientists have not proved every detail about how life

evolved. Specifically, ID aims to find failings and gaps in evolutionary theory. It asserts that the only explanation for these gaps is

some supernatural occurrence or, in other words, an action by God.

ID does not say “God,” but ID advocates are not talking about

aliens. …

So why are scientists so threatened by ID when they are not threatened by theistic evolution? And why do strict

creationists appear to embrace the teaching of ID in schools? Because ID says that we have scientific evidence that God regularly and

frequently uses miracles to alter the natural flow of things.

If this is true, it means that scientific observation is

worthless. We can never know if our observations mean anything because God may have altered the natural flow of things. …

For

example, if high school students accept the “scientific” theory that the creation of the human little toe is a miracle, then it is only a

small step to convince them that God could have miraculously placed fossilized dinosaur bones around the world to make the world appear

to be billions of years old.

Suddenly, creation four thousand years ago in six 24-hour days is equally as plausible from a

“scientific” standpoint as evolution. That goal, I believe, is what is really driving the ID movement.

ID ignores faith’s

wonderful role. Matters of faith, by definition, cannot be proven by science; if they could, there would be no need for faith. …

Our society has been unique from the start in that our most influential founders took a reasoned approach to virtually

everything, especially science. [mjh: “from the start … a reasoned approach to virtually everything”? well,

that may be a bit self-congratulatory]

PS: I hope someone will read Pareja’s entire piece specifically to tell me what

he meant by “the same tactic that lawyers and law professors have used for ages.” I missed something there. mjh

other voices

Soapbox Survey

Several interesting letters Tuesday in the ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor. mjh

I give a hearty second and amen to Patricia Carpenter’s suggestion

for a live tree as the National Happy Holidays Tree. I agree it is awful to butcher a grand tree every year. New Mexico’s tree was 85

feet when selected and then trimmed to 65. What a dumb ritual.

Bob L. Easley of Placitias says Ojito is a “playground for the

urban pseudo environmentalist.” Since most people use “environmentalist” as an insult, what kind of insult is “pseudo environmentalist”?

I thank Brittmarie Perez for her thorough trashing of Dimdahl’s latest dreck.

Over in ABQjournal: Speak Up! (why is this separate on the Web?), I

almost agree with:

THE CHRISTIAN right and evangelists are no better than the Muslim terrorists. They are trying to

turn our country into their view of the world.— P.B.

Though it may be easier to live here with

our extremists than theirs.

On the other hand, I give an exasperated WTF to

this:

LET THE PARTY begin! Now that more than 2,000 have died in Iraq, the Democrats and their allies can move full-

speed ahead with their seditious agenda. Ultimately, though, their actions will destroy this country.—

M.W.C.

Dump Duhbya

minority moderates

Moderates Unhappy but Sticking With GOP for Now By Claudia Deane and Chris

Cillizza

One potential wedge is the role of conservative religious groups in determining the party’s agenda. In the most recent

Post-ABC News poll, 44 percent of GOP moderates said that conservative religious groups have “too much influence” in the Bush

administration, compared with 17 percent who thought those groups didn’t hold enough sway [mjh: how can one be a

moderate and think that?]. About a third saw religious conservatives as appropriately influential. …

The poll offered a

couple of consolations for the Republican leadership: First, conservatives in their party still outnumber moderates (55 to 39

percent in the most recent survey). Second, few moderates currently see the Democrats as an appealing alternative. Asked which

party they would support if the midterm elections were being held now, 13 percent of Republican moderates chose the Democrats, and 80

percent stuck with the GOP.

The

Political Center Makes a Comeback By David S. Broder

In Congress and in constituencies across the country, last week

demonstrated a powerful and welcome trend: After a long eclipse, the people in the political center, the moderates, have regained

their voice and are reasserting themselves. [mjh: yeah, all 39% of them] …

Now that public mood — which was amply

demonstrated in last Tuesday’s off-year voting — has stiffened spines in the Capitol. On Thursday at least 22 House Republican

moderates balked at cutting programs for low-income people and at opening portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil

drilling. They forced the leadership of their party to pull a budget bill endorsed by the president and containing those provisions.

It was the second successful rebellion by the long-scorned Main Street Coalition [mjh: aka RINOs to their disdainful cohort], which also nudged the Bush administration to reverse itself

on encouraging pay at less than prevailing local wages for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.

Dump Duhbya

Checking FBI Spying

This is the FBI, not the CIA. But now that those

troublesome walls between departments have been removed for efficiency, are their also secret FBI prisons? mjh

Checking FBI Spying

IN THE PAST FEW weeks there have been

two significant disclosures concerning the rules that govern domestic spying, just as the House and the Senate are preparing to reconcile

versions of a bill to reauthorize key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

The first was a release by the FBI of internal reports

documenting violations of the rules of domestic surveillance in national security cases.

The second was a story by Post staff

writer Barton Gellman revealing that the number of “national security letters” — a kind of administrative subpoena used by the FBI to

obtain normally private records — has exploded since the passage of the Patriot Act and now reaches 30,000 per year.

These

reports open a timely window onto the question that animates the debate over the Patriot Act: How responsibly is the government

using its spying powers? Though they don’t provide a complete answer, the new disclosures are troubling. …

… at least 13 cases between 2002 and 2004 of violations serious enough that the FBI itself determined they must be reported to

an executive branch agency called the Intelligence Oversight Board. Moreover, the case numbers on the released documents suggest that

there were hundreds of potential violations examined by the bureau during that period. This is cause for concern.

Rising Support Cited for

Limits On Patriot Act By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Congress edged closer yesterday to limiting some of the

sweeping surveillance and search powers it granted to the federal government under the USA Patriot Act in 2001, including a provision

that would allow judicial oversight of a central tool of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts, according to Senate and House aides.

Dump Duhbya

U.S. criminal code

Much Ado About Tuesday

Scott McClellan went to great pains to try

to prevent Voice of America reporter Paula Wolfson from reading aloud from this section of the U.S. criminal code.

US CODE: Title 18,1001. Statements or entries

generally

Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive,

legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or

covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or

representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or

fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Dump Duhbya

I Can’t Keep Up with the Scoundrels or their Scandals

While it is possible Abramoff

didn’t actually deliver a meeting with Bush in exchange for money, it is actually possible he did. Either way, it says a lot about

Republican ethics that he would say he could. mjh

Lobbyist Sought $9 Million to Set Bush Meeting – New York

Times By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 – The lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a

West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny,

according to newly disclosed documents.

The African leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, met with President Bush in the Oval

Office on May 26, 2004, 10 months after Mr. Abramoff made the offer. There has been no evidence in the public

record that Mr. Abramoff had any role in organizing the meeting or that he received any money or had a signed contract with Gabon. …

A document from Mr. Abramoff’s files that was released last week by a Senate committee shows that in the summer of 2003 he pushed

to sign President Bongo as a client, even offering to travel to Gabon immediately after an August golfing vacation to Scotland “with the

congressmen and senators I take there each year.” …

Mr. Abramoff, a Republican fund-raiser who once was one of the most powerful

lobbyists in Washington [mjh: and a good buddy of Tom DeLay, whom he flew to Scotland for golf, as I recall], has been indicted in

Florida on federal fraud charges. He is also under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington and two Senate committees.