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Follow evidence wherever it leads

How can guardians of the status quo protect Darwinism from competition in the classroom? One way is to play a definitional game, arguing that intelligent design isn’t science. They do this by claiming that when a scientist argues that something in nature was designed, she does so only because we’re ignorant about the details of how it arose naturally. Opponents Read More ›

China’s Strategic Direction

Much was made about “people power” and the coming of democracy to Central Asia when the repressive government was toppled by street protests in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. While I am a firm believer in the great power of freedom, and predicted a successful Iraqi election, I am uncertain whether such optimism is warranted in Central Asia. What Read More ›

Federal Judge Rules that “Fostering Critical Thinking” About Evolution has Secular Purpose, but Invalidates Cobb Co. Sticker Anyway

ATLANTA, JAN. 13 – Despite ruling that “fostering critical thinking” about evolution “is a clearly secular purpose,” and agreeing that the Cobb County, Georgia school district had secular, not religious reasons for adopting a textbook sticker dealing with evolution, a federal judge today struck down the sticker as unconstitutional. “Given the tepid defense of the sticker presented by the school Read More ›

Incompetent Defense by Cobb County Attorney May Have Caused School District Loss

ATLANTA, JAN. 13 – The decision by a federal judge in Georgia to overturn a textbook sticker about evolution may have been aided by the school district’s own lawyer, according to the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. Seth Cooper, an attorney and legal analyst with Discovery Institute, faulted school district lead counsel Linwood Gunn for putting on Read More ›

Right Questions in Right Order

Knowing what we now know, would you design our tax system, Social Security system, the United Nations and the World Bank as they are designed and now operate? Unless you are brain dead, you would have answered no to all the above. International organizations and government programs were all established to solve a perceived problem at the time of their Read More ›

An Epistle for the New Religion of Transhumanism

James Hughes may be a bioethicist and a professor of health policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, but his real calling is as an evangelist for the nascent materialist quasi-religion of transhumanism. In this sense, Hughes’ first book, Citizen Cyborg, is not merely a polemic; it is an epistle urging transhumanists to remain true to the tenets of their Read More ›

How to Define Success in the War on Terror

“What is success?”

So asked a senior federal law-enforcement official at a recent meeting I attended in Washington, D.C. The context was the war on terrorism.

This was not a rhetorical question. The official was mulling over how to measure success in the counter-terror war. He seemed uncertain and appeared to be seeking an answer for himself.

What he did know, however, was that whatever success may be in such a war, domestic law enforcement — by itself, in any case — was not enough.

One significant difficulty is that the culture of law enforcement does not lend itself neatly to dealing with strategic-intelligence issues. Long having been rewarded for “cracking” individual cases and presenting glossy press conferences, law enforcement has been confounded by a murky environment in which to “catch them in the act” is not only extraordinarily difficult, but can also represent a fatally late failure.

To deter terrorists from launching attacks is better than catching them in the act, but as the official asked, “How do we know whether what we do has a deterrence effect?” In other words, how do we know if our homeland-security measures actually deterred attacks — for there have been none since 9/11 — or have the terrorists merely been waiting and preparing for the “right moment” to strike again?

In the absence of hard, measurable data, the official considered the effects of our protective efforts to be marginal at best — psychologically reassuring to the public at large, perhaps, but not particularly central to the core issue of combating terrorists.

So preemption has been offered as the more-effective solution. Since passive, defensive measures alone cannot possibly protect against every single terrorist attack, taking the fight to the terrorists before they can carry out their plans has become more attractive and acceptable.

Read More ›

PBS Yanks Science Film on Intelligent Design From Website

SEATTLE, JAN. 7 — PBS has pulled from its website a science film examining the theory of intelligent design, after selling the film for two years on its website, and airing it on dozens of PBS stations across the country. “It’s chilling that suddenly in the midst of a national debate over intelligent design PBS, funded by taxpayer dollars, decides Read More ›

Curious Case of Somaliland

What is Somaliland? Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know. Very few people know, and that is the beginning of the problem. Somaliland is not Somalia, but is a part of what used to be Somalia — and it may or may not be an independent country. As you may recall, Somalia was the country in which the famous “Black Read More ›