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So I was just watching the 1955 version of Daddy Long Legs on TCM, and this type of movie has always creeped me out. What is it with “classic” movies, where there’s always some fifty-something or sixty-something guy romancing an 18 or 20 year old girl, and nobody finds anything wrong with this? My Fair Lady is another example. What’s up with that?

When discussing the harassment of a private company by government, I neglected this telling little nugget from Maxine Waters.

“And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be all about socializing…. uh, umm… will be about… basically… taking over… and the government running all of your companies.”

Thank you for your honesty Ms Waters. No wonder American liberals are so in love with Hugo Chavez. Pretty frightening, is it not?

Here’s a little ditty Alan gable writes today on An American Front Porch:

“Tom Delay wrote a little piece over at Townhall.com yesterday that broadly outlined a 5 point “conservative agenda”. Over the next 5 Fridays, I think I’ll direct my thoughts on each of these 5 and try to lay out what I think the conservative movement should be doing.

The first facet of a new conservative agenda is victory in the war on terror. No issue in this or any election, carries greater significance. The initial front of this war is the two-headed beast of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can all agree that a free and stable Iraq is in the best interest of the United States as well as the Iraqi people. What this President and each chief executive over the last 50 years has lacked is the willingness the break the enemy’s back. Lincoln had Sherman deal the knock out blow by means that seem to many like brutality. Can we forget Hiroshima/Nagasaki? This country has seemingly lost her willingness to finish. A conservative agenda should hinge on this idea; that we must end this war quickly and with victory. Conservative leaders, armed with Reagan’s sense of military strength, must lead this charge. My vision of this plan will be wildly unpopular at first and will require a great deal of persuasion but once implemented will be one of our finest hours (because there is nothing Americans love more than military victory).

Implementation of a short term draft would be necessary. Quick victory will require an overwhelming troop presence. An increase or troop surge from the approximate 125,000 troops to a half million would be sufficient. Draftees would be called to 6 month terms of service. Many of the professional soldiers already in Iraq would be placed at the borders to seal off all incoming and outgoing shipments. If we seal the Syrian border, then we stop the bleeding and give the insurgents no escape route. The rest would be placed in the highly volatile areas of the major cities. The drafted soldiers would, over 6 months, perform a broad sweep of every inhabited corner of the country. All weapons, explosive devices, sling shots, or cap guns would be confiscated from each Iraqi home with the exception of those soldiers and law enforcement officers of the Iraqi government. Our troops, allied with Iraqi forces, would systematically and very quickly take the teeth out of the insurgent forces, relegating them to rock throwers. Once the sweep is finished, the American drafted forces will come home and there time and efforts will be rewarded by a grateful nation. A skeleton crew of approximately 75,000 troops will remain in Iraq to perform border security and complete the training of a new generation of Iraqi soldiers. With the removal of weapons from insurgent forces, the Iraqis will have the ability to take control of their own country.

This is one conservative’s vision of the goal of a peaceful and economically friendly Iraq. What say you?”

Consider the source. Vincent Bugliosi knows law. In his career at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial was the Charles Manson case.

Bugliosi, who supported John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid, believes President GW Bush should be tried for murder and is publishing a book next week that outlines his case: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Considering his 100% conviction record, I’d say he probably has a good case.

Naturally, the wingnuts will scream “BDS… BDS.” To that, Bugliosi offers this about his book and his case:

“… whether I’m giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read“

Regarding the crime:

” …in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That’s just common sense. “

Bugliosi suggests that the death penalty would be appropriate for Bush.

Read more…

It’s time for a frogmarch.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) issued a subpoena today to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for testimony about politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), including the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was jailed for bribery in what was widely seen as a political prosecution.

If Rove refuses to testify voluntarily and ignores the subpoenas, he will be held in Inherent Contempt of the House of Representatives.

No American is above the law. None of us should be able to ignore Congress without consequence. If Mr. Rove ignores a subpoena from the Judiciary Committee, then the House of Representatives will pass an Inherent Contempt citation and exercise their right to send the House Sergeant-of-Arms to arrest Mr. Rove and bring him before Congress to testify, by force if necessary.

The reality is that Congress has few options left against an Administration that totally refuses to submit to any type of reasonable Congressional oversight. Congress has both the right and obligation to investigate these matters. Never before has an administration so upset the checks and balances inherent in our Constitution. If the Congress does not do this, they effectively forfeit their power to investigate the Executive branch.

Rove is not the first White House official to ignore Congress. We have seen a pattern of refusals based on laughable claims of executive privilege. First, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers ignored subpoenas on the investigation into the firing of US Attorney Generals for partisan political motives.

It’s time to kick some ass and hold these crooks accountable.  Bushies control the Attorney Generals office and the Federal courts, so the Congress MUST use their Constitutional rights to enforce this subpoena !

A friend of mine forwarded this article to me for Newsweek by a writer named Michael Hirsch. I thought it was an interesting, albeit inflamatory load of a read.

There’s so much there, that I would offer you all go visit.

I love my South. It’s home. No where else would feel quite the same. It’s not perfect, but then again nothing’s perfect. In the South though we are a little different. We hold dear to life. A little bit of magic and time gone by breathes in everything you touch.

If you don’t like it. It really doesn’t make us lose sleep.

In the “World From Washington” Hirsch writes, among other things:

“In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee led an ill-advised incursion into Pennsylvania. His army was defeated at Gettysburg, and thence afterward Lee beat a fighting retreat until the South lost the Civil War. One hundred and forty-five years later, the South—or what has become the South-Southwest—has won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores—in Pennsylvania and everywhere else.

This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants—the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers—and cultural weight.”

Why, Ed Bailey….are we cross?

Mass media today has an easy mantra. If things go bad, then blame the highest ranking conservative you can find, then religious people, then Southerners. If you can lump all of them together, then happy birthday to you.

We have been maligned for stereotyping others. We have been maligned for not being willing to understand “broader America.” We have been maligned for being unsophisticated religious zealots. All the while, our greatest critics take the intricate weavings of Southern culture and narrowmindedly stereotype, pigeonhole, and condemn.

“You know, I hate all Southern people. All they do is generalize.”

What are your thoughts on the “Southernization” of America. Is Hirsch right? Are our poor-folk Celtic roots taking over the national landscape riding roughshod over the world? Is the answer to all these problems just sitting back with a dash of that New Jersey charm?

Perhaps if this is indeed the “World From Washington,” is there any doubt why we want none of it?

(Drop on by AnAmericanFrontPorch.com for continued comments)

I find it utterly despicable that Congress has the nerve to call up the President of a private company and publicly harass him for, heaven forbid, making a profit. We are talking about a man that has absolutely no control over the price of crude oil as traded in the future’s market, a man that has no control over the Fed’s weak dollar policy or national debt, a man that has no control over the fact that the vast majority of domestic oil is off limits thanks to the actions of the very thieves he is forced to answer to, a man who would love to build another refinery if only Congress would let him.

But to the neo-Marxists/Chavezites that occupy the United States Senate, nothing, and I mean nothing is worse than a private company making money.

Here is an example of what was said by the Senator from the People’s Republic of San Francisco. Read more »

In this post, the author brilliantly contrasted Barack Obama’s proposed talks with Iran to those put forth by Defense Secretary Gates, by comparing what Gates was proposing to what Reagan did with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. He also compared Obama’s suggestion with how Kennedy met with Krushchev from a position of weakness, and how that did not work out so well.

Some guys in the New York Times also see the similarities between Obama and Kennedy.

But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.

If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate.

You can find them for a dime a dozen…Bush Bashers, that is. The term ‘Mob’ is an apt descriptor of the hordes of these Democratic (and some wayward Republican) Bush Bashers today; led by a few loudmouthed partisans and whipped along by the Main Stream Liberal Media, these ‘mob’ members, when under the influence of groupspeak, come across as the most mindless, cowardly, and ignorant bunch of idiots we’ve ever seen; truly the effect of the MSM’s relentless BDS on most simple twodigit television watchers can be construed as ‘mob rule’. The laziness and the ‘ease of use’ of BDS to blame every sort of problem on President Bush attracts every slackwitted lunatic capable of putting two words together (as evidenced by the success of KOS and most of the other fringe Marxist-school blogs…Democratic Underground, Sadly, No!, Firedoglake and the Huffington Post, just to name a few).

Do these silly-putty groups have any real, solid gripes? Other than just falling in line and playing follow their noxious leaders? Not really. President Bush will be judged fairly by historians, long after these basement boyz are back at their bongs.

I ran across this article written by Eric Dondero, who publishes The Libertarian Republican…

“George W. Bush has won not one, but two Wars under his administration: Afghanistan and Iraq. We caught Saddam Hussein, and then hanged him a year later. We killed his two ugly bloodthirsty murderous sons Uday and Qusay. After a year of the media crying “We may have got Saddam, but Zarcawi is still loose,” we got him too. The War in Iraq was simply one of the most glorious victories for the United States Military in the history of our Nation. Afghanistan was won with lightening speed; less than 6 weeks. Both countries today are living under relative peace and calm with struggling but steady near democratic governments. They are beacons of light for the entire Middle East and South Asia.

“Then there was Katrina: A stunning success by the Federal Government response, mainly the brave Coast Guard. Bush himself deserved a great deal of credit for the Feds’ very rapid response. But it was a complete and utter disaster for the Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the New Orleans Mayor Nagen. (Remember the infamous school bus incident where Nagen’s fleet sat in the parking lot instead of being used for evacuation?) How did the media spin it? Can’t blame the woman Governor nor the whiny ever-complaining puppy-eyed Mayor. Blame it on Bush and the Republicans, of course.

“Economy? Going on 7 years of solid growth thanks to the Bush tax cuts early on in his administration and the general Pro-Business deregulation climate promoted by administration officials. Media spin? Once again, Housing Crisis, not the fault of creditors who engaged in highly speculative lending to people who had no earthly means of buying and sustaining payments on a home. Nope. Blame it on Bush.

“Energy? Media spin, blame it on Bush, not the Environmentalists who won’t allow us to drill at the ANWR and off our Coasts. Story after story about Bush’s failures on bringing down gas prices on average Americans. Meanwhile the media covers up the fact that nearly 30% of each dollar put into one’s gas tank goes to the government at all levels by way of a myriad of taxes to state, federal and local governments.

“Republicans share some of the blame, but not for issue stances, rather for being so naiive in face of such a massive liberal media onslaught. Sure, some fight back. Fox News is an outlet for regular GOP talking heads. But mostly Republicans cower in face of the liberal media Titans. They refuse to go for the jugular, cuss, scream and shout at the liberal media thugs, for fear of being perceived as “too unfriendly.”

“The fact that Republicans have sunk so low, simply shows that it’s very difficult to defeat the liberal media. They are all-powerful. It’s not the GOP’s fault. Conservatives and libertarians need to take every opportunity to point out the massive bias in the liberal media against limited government principles. Or else, we’ll continue to see the GOP brand sink in the polls amongst gullible Americans.”

On my side, we, the ‘good guys’, who do not follow the mindlessness of the BDS mob, have our work cut out for us. I’ve always thought of politics as a pendulum, swinging from side to side; never really ’sticking’ for long on either side, and probably best when crossing center. We are swinging wide left now, it seems. But as long as we can keep the marxist, fascist Leftists who now run the Democratic party from totally taking over, eventually things will return more to center.

And these ‘mob’ BDS Bush haters we are seeing so much of in today’s pestiferous political punditry pools? Bush is leaving January 19. No more BDS, boys, you’ll have to find somewhere else to wank. Eventually these anti-Bush mobs will turn on each other. The KOSKook sorts will find that no matter how hard they want to attain Marxist purity that just won’t happen; the Al Gore global warmalists will go on a ‘break’ after finding that Earth’s climate is not theirs to use as political tools; the anti-war fringe is already running out of complaints as both Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s fledging governments allow for people to choose and live their lives without cruel dictators; and I suppose the rest of the majority of these slack-jawed yokels will tune in Survivor or some other thirty-minute sitcom and wait for the next Olberdouche or Michael Moore or MSM talking vomitus head to siren-call them to arms. Or five fingers, as the case may be.

Now, I’m going on vacation. See you sometime next week.

I saw this on a display for US flags at Lowe’s here in Memphis. Click the image for a larger version:

I laughed my ass off when I saw it. The market, it seems, has decided, and the “English is our official language” idea is pretty much dead, in market terms.

At least in her mind. 

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Hillary Clinton compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women.

The current stalemate over the two states’ primary votes threatens to replicate the disputed 2000 presidential election in Florida, she warned an elderly crowd in Palm Beach County - one of the jurisdictions where Democrats allege voters were disenfranchised in 2000.

The pointed speech marked the kick-off of a last-gasp effort by Clinton to prolong her  Democratic presidential campaign by making the states count, which would cut into rival Barack Obama’s leads in popular votes and pledged delegates.

“In Florida, you learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren’t counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner,” she said. “The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: if any votes aren’t count, the will of the people isn’t realized and our democracy is diminished.”

To illustrate what I was trying to tell hardheaded Tgirsch in the comments of this post, this Rasmussen poll revealed that “62% of voters would prefer fewer government services with lower taxes.”

Yes, believe it or not, almost two thirds of the country still value liberty over the security of the nanny state. Sadly, the GOP has drifted away from conservatism and toward modern liberalism. Not a good move, obviously.

HT: Ben Cunningham.

Neal Boortz is a little more cynical.

I’m not buying the poll. America today is an America of big government. This is the America of “what has the government done for me today.”

I would like to think – and in fact used to think — that most Americans are truly Libertarian at heart. But then when you dangle in front of them these fancy entitlement programs and wealth envy rhetoric, they are like fat kids at MacDonald’s … you can’t resist temptation, because it all looks so darn good.

Cecily Friday just doesn’t get it. To defend Nevelle Obama, she quoted the Secretary of Defense who said,

“We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them..”

Notice that I highlighted the words “develop some leverage”.

Remember the two examples Obama used in justifying his historic stupidity in regards to foreign policy. One of those examples was Gorbachev in the 1980’s. Remember that Reagan was in office four years before he sat down with Gorbachev, and he didn’t show up at the meeting with his hand out. He showed up from a position of strength. After four years of military buildup, and talk of SDI, the time was right to talk to the Evil Empire. In any negotiation, business or political, you always want to be the one that can afford to walk away. Thanks to the military strength that Reagan built up, he had that power, and walk away is exactly what he did early on. The Soviets recognized that they held the weaker position, and the rest is history.

The other example was Khrushchev and Kennedy. Kennedy did not meet with the Soviet leader from a position of strength, and because of that, the Soviets considered Kennedy to be weak. This negotiation from a position of weakness set off the Cuban missile crisis and put the world on the brink of nuclear war.

Obama, who apparently hasn’t learned from history, would prefer we follow Kennedy’s example, not Reagan’s.

Folks, this guy’s naivety is dangerous.

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Signed by 31,000 scientists.

Oh, and this letter from Frederick Seitz…

Research Review of Global Warming Evidence
Letter from Frederick Seitz

“Enclosed is a twelve-page review of information on the subject of “global warming,” a petition in the form of a reply card, and a return envelope. Please consider these materials carefully.

“The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.

“This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

“The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.

“It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.

“We urge you to sign and return the petition card. If you would like more cards for use by your colleagues, these will be sent.”

Frederick Seitz
Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
President Emeritus, Rockefeller University

Signing that petition?

Here’s just the Z’s… Read more »

Just the mention of his name, causes the panties of Tennessee liberals from Memphis to Knoxville, to simultaneously wad up. Aunt B is so obsessed with Bill that she has written not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six, yes that’s six posts about Bill Hobbs within the last week.

I don’t know Bill personally. I met him once at a Channel 2 blogger gathering, but only briefly. One thing I do know, is that nobody pisses off Tennessee liberals more effectively than Bill.

That’s a good thing, by the way. It’s actually good for the liberals, because if they somehow make it through a whole day without being outraged, appalled, shocked, or offended, then they are in danger of being happy, and happiness threatens their survival as a species. They need someone to make their blood boil in order to survive, and Bill is kind enough to deliver.

This guy is a piece of work. A Tennessee State Representative, DEMOCRAT, Nashville,  gets caught driving drunk (makes a complete fool of himself during the arrest), and again with his pants down, having an affair with a lobbyist. So what does he do? Cry and complain on the floor of the House, threatens the press (and ‘those things called “blogs”‘), with sanctions if we can’t behave. From Kleinheider’s new digs…

“The right to a free and open press though comes with a responsibility, and from my experience over the past year, that responsibility is not being lived up to,” Briley (D-Nashville) said from the main House podium.“We used to talk about the politics of personal destruction. Well that’s no longer what’s going on. It’s the publishing of personal destruction, and we owe it to ourselves to do better than that. We owe it to the rest of our society to do better than that.”

….Briley said that government needs to be “as open as possible.”

“But the press needs to understand that if they’re not responsible with that information, that they’re not going to have access to it anymore,” Briley said.

What a flaming anal pore!

This guy should never have been elected in the first place. A scion of Beverly Briley (Metro Nashville’s first mayor), Rob must have thought that last name would shield him from scrutiny and give him more free rein than an ‘ordinary’ Rep should have.

He’s gone, now, resigned.

Let’s hope his political future stays as dim as his reasoning.

Doing what Republicans do best, McCain rallies support for himself by repeatedly stoking fear of Iran’s belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Playing upon the ignorance of the American people, and exposing his own, McCain often incorrectly portrays Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if Ahmadinejad has a significant role in formulating Iranian foreign policy. He doesn’t. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iran’s National Security Council set Iran’s foreign policy, not Ahmadinejad. This gaffe even seems to be calculated at influencing the American people since McCain said:

I mean, the fact is [Ahmadinejad’s] the acknowledged leader of that country and you may disagree, but that’s a uh, that’s your right to do so, but I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.

Well, as long as Americans think that Ahmadinejad is the boogeyman, and McCain is the boogeyman killer, that’s all that matters to McCain. The impression is more important than the reality to McCain. Focusing on the rants of Iran’s lunatic president enables McCain and other ignorant war hawks to create the impression that Iran is an irrational enemy with whom negotiation would be pointless. Not surprising from the same ignorant bunch who had no clue of the dynamics of Iraqi Sunni and Shiite sects before launching an invasion into the country.

UPDATE:
Sen. Joe Biden [D-Del] argued the U.S. should exploit the rift in the Iranian leadership between Ahmadinejad and the theocracy, saying “a sophisticated foreign policy” would “take advantage of that division.”   Unfortunately,we’ve not had an intelligent and sophisticated foreign policy.

Mark McKinnon, John McCain’s chief media adviser said Tuesday he is stepping down rather than campaign against Barack Obama. “I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy,” said McKinnon. Electing Obama, he added, “would send a great message to the country and the world.”
Nevertheless, McKinnon said he would vote for McCain. (yea right…)

In other campaign news, the Democratic candidates raised a combined total of $54 million in April to John McCain’s $18 million (McCain’s best month to date).   Obama raised $31.9 million, Clinton - $22 million.

Watch Republicans do what they do best: evade issues and protect their corrupt superiors, in the case, President Bush.

This video is awesome: Watch Administrator Stephen Johnson evade simple straightforward questions about whether or not he had certain discussions with Bush about key environmental issues. Republican Congressman Darrell Issa [R-CA] tried to come to Johnson’s rescue but committee chair, Henry Waxman heatedly rejects Issa’s interruptions and threatens to have him physically removed from the hearing … YEA!!! Watch this AWESOME video.

C&L:

Why is it that conservatives consistently appoint people to head agencies who have nothing but contempt for the issues those agencies are supposed to oversee? … The problem lies not with government, but rather with the stooges who run the government and appoint their incompetent cronies to fix problems they have no intention of fixing.

UPDATE - Bush Administration caught in yet another lie:

Despite the EPA Administrator’s obvious effort to protect Bush, Wired and the LA Times report: Congress has a smoking gun proving the Bush Administration meddled in the Environmental Protection Agency ruling that denied California the authority to strictly regulate the amount of C02 and other auto emissions.

When he denied the state’s request earlier this year, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson claimed the ruling was his and his alone. Yet a House investigation that has examined more than 27,000 pages of records and the sworn testimony of eight EPA officials revealed that Johnson faced intense pressure from the Bush White House to reject the state’s request, which would have required automakers to cut emissions of C02 and other pollutants by 30 percent by 2016.

Bottom line: the Bush Administration LIED. They said Johnson ”made an independent decision.”

Polls clearly show most Americans believe humans were created directly by God in the present form. Are we surprised!? This relates to two independent factors: America is a religious culture, and… Americans are also scientifically illiterate and embrace psuedoscience, according to a report by the National Science Board. A portion of this report found [here] on the government’s National Science Foundation website, deals with public scientific literacy. Some quotes from the report:

“In addition, belief in pseudoscience (an indicator of scientific illiteracy) seems to be widespread among Americans…. Researchers have concluded that fewer than one-fifth of Americans meet a minimal standard of civic scientific literacy … it is possible to conclude that most Americans (two-thirds in 2001) do not have a firm grasp of what is meant by the scientific process. This lack of understanding may explain why a substantial portion of the population believes in various forms of pseudoscience. “

So, why are Americans scientifically illiterate? Consider this: One in four U.S. high school teachers devoted classroom time to creationism or intelligent design, and one in eight presented creationism as a valid alternative to evolution, says a poll published in the Public Library of Science Biology.

Ouch. Even the Vatican’s chief astronomer says ‘Intelligent Design is not science’. Is the Vatican a high enough religious authority for you?

It is clear that the concepts of evolutionary biology are clearly not within the grasp of most Americans. The National Science Board says that it is important for basic scientific literacy to be better able to “participate in public discourse on science-related issues.” However, most Americans believe the dinosaurs and humans coexisted, most do not know that electrons are smaller than molecules, and barely half know that it takes one year for the earth to orbit the sun. 70% of college aged adults (18-24) could not find New Jersey on a US map, 87% could not find Iraq on a world map. Take into account, these are national polls, the scores for say … Tennessee - I dare say would be much lower.

Watch how the fraud of intelligent design was pushed in the Dover case in the PBS NOVA documentary: Judgment Day. It discusses the fact that 150 years later, new science and discoveries continue to confirm and refine Darwin’s basic theory.

Since most of the attacks on science seem to be coming from the right wing, it leads one to believe that education is a liberal virtue.