More Three-Dot Monte

These topics from yesterday's pass are pretty much talked out, at least as far as I'm concerned, but each does merit some brief (or not-so-brief) mention:

*Brendan Miniter throws in his two cents on how the White House and majority Republicans can start acting like they're in power in Washington, D.C., and therefore stay in power after next November. Nothing that hasn't been said before in some form or another, but Pachyderms are notoriously slow learners where aggressive partisan self-interest is concerned.

*This Rocky Mountain News piece on the creation-evolution feud by University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos proves refreshingly that here is a libertarian worthy of the name:

A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes "what every rational person knows to be the case," or "simple common sense," or, more concisely still, "the truth." In other words, the truly orthodox never think of themselves as orthodox. This allows them to crush all dissent to their orthodoxy with a good conscience, since what reasonable objection could there be to sincere attempts to stamp out self-evident falsehoods?

Thus we have just been treated to the remarkable spectacle of liberals shouting hosannas to the heavens in praise of a federal court ruling that makes it illegal to even mention the existence of a dissenting point of view in a public school classroom. The court held that a Dover, Pennsylvania, school board violated the Constitution when it mandated that a short statement be read at the beginning of the school year to ninth-grade science classes.

The statement noted that students are required to learn Darwin's theory of evolution; that there are gaps in the evidence for this theory; that an alternative theory called intelligent design exists; that the school library contains a book that students may consult if they wish to learn about this dissenting point of view; and that they are encouraged to keep an open mind about theories in general....

This is the statement that Judge John E. Jones decided "established religion" in the Dover public schools. Not replacing the Darwinist curricula with ID; not even teaching both side-by-side; just a mention that evolution is merely a theory, not fact, and that another theory exists, and the school library has a book on it.

In other words, telling students the truth about origins, and that by the very definition of science, no theory of origins, not ID or evolution, can be "scientific" by definition because nobody was present at the beginning to observe either Genesis 1 or the "Big Bang," neither can be empiracally reproduced, and what forensic evidence there is is, to be overly, bending-over-backwards charitable, inconclusive.

False orthodoxies cannot withstand the truth, and resort to circular reasoning - "Science has refuted theories such as intelligent design, because science is based on the postulate that theories such as intelligent design cannot be true" - and, ultimately, the jackboot to keep themselves and their adherents entrenched.

Or, to encapsulate Professor Campos, "mental retardation" usually precedes the "Spanish Inquisition."

*Jim Geraghty manages to let sarcasm be the sour cream of wit on the NSA leak scandal without ever once resorting to the "T" word:

If, in the not so distant future, you happen to find yourself dead, severely injured, inhaling radioactive fallout, or simply breaking your own neck from the intensity of convulsions from al-Qaeda’s release of nerve toxin, remember, you may be going through intense pain, and being killed before your time – but you’re dying a well-informed citizen! Imagine how much worse off you would be if that leaker and that reporter had never met, and these government programs had continued in secrecy!

Yeah, just imagine....