I heard a news report today on KUT.org that Governor Rick Perry recently appointed Don McLeroy to head the Texas State Board of Education.  This is a man who is clearly anti-science and is working to let Intelligent Design into the Texas Science curriculum.

You can listen to that news report here.

Given these recent developments, it looks like the battle on how Science will be taught in Texas schools could be heating up very soon.  If you want to get involved, there is a group called Texas Citizens for Science that is working to help insure that pseudo-science and religion stay out of the Science classroom.

In the last few months there have been three major changes talked about or happening that will affect small media outlets cost structure and their ability to be heard.

1)  Magazine postal rate changes hiking the rates for smaller publications by as much as 30%.

2)  Net Neutrality, or the lack thereof, that would allow network providers to charge websites more for priority service, hence making it harder for small websites to compete.

3)  Internet Radio Royalty rate increases changing the cost structure for web radio to the breaking point.

Does it appear that the large media conglomerates are trying to squeeze out all their smaller competition?

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The clip below is an excerpt from a much longer talk that Ken Miller gave entitled The Collapse of Intelligent Design.  This excerpt explains how scientists deal with a new idea versus how the creation scientists deal with their ideas.  The entire talk is nearly 2 hours long and well worth watching if you are interested at all in the arguments that are used by the Intelligent Design crowd and how they are easily debunked.

Read on to see a few more great clips from this talk.

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I ran across an article on msnbc.com today about 3 protesters who disrupted the morning prayer in the Senate because it was being given by a man of the Hindu faith.

Read the article here: Hindu Prayer in Senate Disrupted

Watch the video here: Hindu Prayer Disrupted

It seems these people were upset that the man represented a religion that was not monotheistic.  Talk about intolerance.  I thought the first amendment allowed for freedom of religion.  Isn’t this exactly what is being represented here?  Why should these people think that their form of religion should be the only one represented?

I’m not exactly happy about the Senate opening every day with a prayer, but if they are going to do that, I definitely want to see a variety of religions represented.  By doing so, it in some small way can help to reinforce the concept of freedom of religion and maybe show that we can be accepting of all religions.

Just thought I would post some links as a reminder why we celebrate this day.  Without these documents and without the adherence to these documents, we would have no reason to celebrate.

Declaration of Independence

Constitution of the United States

Bill of Rights

Have a safe and happy 4th!

President Bush has been supporting the funding of what he terms “Faith Based Initiatives” by the Federal Government since the establishment of that office in 2001.  This initiative allows Federal tax dollars to fund Faith based groups, in effect, violating the establishment clause of the first amendment providing for the separation of church and state.

Recently, the Supreme court in a 5 to 4 decision, disallowed any individual from questioning this program in deference to a nearly 40 year old precedent.  Why?  Because this money was not appropriated by Congress, but instead was money appropriated by the Executive branch through an executive order.  In other words, the money was already appropriated by Congress to the Executive branch to use as they see fit.  But it seems to me money is money, why should it matter whether the money came from the Legislative branch or the Executive branch, it is still taxpayer money being used to fund religious organizations.

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