SEATTLE—Discovery Institute has sent a letter to the Pennsylvania State Legislature opposing a proposed bill that would authorize school districts to require the teaching of intelligent design. In a letter to Rep. Jess M. Stairs, Chair of Pennsylvania’s House Education Committee, Discovery Institute officials stated that they “strongly oppose any effort by the government to mandate the teaching of intelligent Read More ›
Do you think there is too little or too much regulation? Though the appropriate amount of regulation may be in the eye of the beholder, we do have objective evidence of the growth of federal regulation.
The Annual Regulators’ Budget Report by Susan Dudley of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and Melinda Warren of Washington University’s eidenbaum Center has just been released.
Their study shows both the cost and number of regulators continues growing far faster than inflation and population, which means in real terms we are becoming an increasingly regulated people. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the most of federal regulation has gone from $2.3 billion in 1960 to $38.9 billion expected in this next fiscal year. This is a greater than fourteenfold increase. The number of regulators has grown from 57,000 in 1960 to more than 240,000.
Read More ›Of all the fundamentalist groups at large in the world today, the Darwinians seem to me the most objectionable. They are just as strident and closed to argument as Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, but unlike those two groups the Darwinians enjoy intellectual respectability. Darwinians and their allies dominate the scientific establishments of the West. They rule the campus. Their militant Read More ›
For Immediate Release June 20, 2005 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES SETTLES LIBEL CLAIM OVER EVOLUTION ARTICLE ROSEVILLE, CA — The California Academy of Sciences has settled with a California parent, Larry Caldwell, who raised a potential libel claim against the organization over its publication of a false and defamatory article authored by Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Read More ›
The recent news reports from Andijan, Uzbekistan, were troubling. The arrest and trial of local businessmen in the region sparked riots where there had been continuing civil unrest. The government of Islam Karimov, an ostensible U.S. ally in the war on terror, blamed “Islamist” incitement and launched a crackdown on the protests, killing many, possibly hundreds, of civilians. The situation Read More ›
In a recent interview with USA Today (March 23, 2005), Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and a critic of intelligent design, states incorrectly that “[design theorists] aren’t published because they don’t have any scientific data.” Similar critics of intelligent design have said similar things. Initially, it’s not clear what Forrest is arguing. Obviously she’s not Read More ›
The basic function of government is to protect person and property, but all too often government does just the opposite. In their zeal to protect us from financial fraud, government officials recently engaged in a series of actions that have cost tens of thousands of innocent people their jobs, reduced U.S. international competitiveness, and destroyed more than $1 trillion in value for American shareholders.
Every American now suffers from the excesses of certain prosecutors and judges, and from Congress’ tendency to pass legislation aimed at correcting what they perceive as problems without thinking through the consequences of their actions. In the wake of the Enron scandal, the government went after Enron’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, and destroyed the company. The Supreme Court has just overturned the conviction of Arthur Andersen. The government’s irresponsible attack on the company cost 28,000 innocent people their jobs and made the auditing business less competitive, which has substantially increased auditing costs for every U.S. company. That, in turn, hurts their employees, suppliers and customers.
New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer has just suffered a defeat at the hands of a jury for trying to convict a stockbroker for noncriminal actions. Mr. Spitzer has used intimidation against a number of companies, charging them with actions that may not even be crimes. In essence, he “blackmails” them into paying large settlements under the threat of destroying their business (like Andersen), though they may be innocent of any wrongdoing. These unfairly induced, forced settlements are costly to innocent stockholders and current and potential employees.
Read More ›DEBATE OVER INTELLIGENT DESIGN President Bush said this week that schools should teach both evolution science and intelligent design in schools. Two professors review the debate over teaching evolution or intelligent design in public schools. TEACHER: The jaw, if it were here, would be almost directly under. JEFFREY BROWN: What should American students be taught about the origins and development Read More ›
TOPEKA, KS – A new draft of science standards to be presented to the Kansas State Board of Education this week is drawing praise for recognizing that students need to study all the scientific evidence relating to chemical and biological evolution. At the same time, the new draft standards make clear that they do not cover the concept of intelligent design. Read More ›