Free Republic

By MARTHA RAFFAELE Associated Press Writer DOVER, Pa. (AP) -- The Dover school board on Tuesday rescinded its policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes, two weeks after a federal judge found the concept was religious and not scientific. There was no discussion by members of the Dover Area School Board before the voice vote Tuesday night. The policy, approved in October 2004, required that a statement be read to students about "intelligent design" before ninth-grade lessons on evolution. The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."...

Also today, Dover's board might revoke the controversial intelligent design decision. Now that the issue of teaching "intelligent design" in Dover schools appears to be played out, the doings of the Dover Area School Board might hold little interest for the rest of the world. But the people who happen to live in that district find them to be of great consequence. Or so board member James Cashman is finding in his final days of campaigning before Tuesday's special election, during which he will try to retain his seat on the board. Even though the issue that put the Dover...

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:Evolution in ActionElizabeth Culotta and Elizabeth Pennisi Equipped with genome data and field observations of organisms from microbes to mammals, biologists made huge strides toward understanding the mechanisms by which living creatures evolve The big breakthrough, of course, was the one Charles Darwin made a century and a half ago. By recognizing how natural selection shapes the diversity of life, he transformed how biologists view the world. But like all pivotal discoveries, Darwin's was a beginning. In the years since the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, thousands of researchers have sketched life's transitions and explored...