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Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said Sunday that the leader for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, would be "absolutely" qualified to be president, should the voters elect him. But, he said, "I believe that my talent and my background and my experience, which has led to my judgment, ... qualifies me more." In his first Sunday talk show appearance since locking up the GOP nomination last month, McCain criticized Obama and others for making too much of his comment that the United States could remain in Iraq for 100 years, or a period similar to...

"My husband has such a great commitment to me and to my campaign. You know, he loves me. Husbands and wives get out there and work on each others' behalf. I certainly did that for him for many years. And I'm very grateful for all of the help he's given both supporting me, along with our daughter, and making the case for my candidacy.”

Coming off the Iowa Straw Poll the momentum for the Ron Paul 2008 campaign continues to build. Congressman Ron Paul has finished in the top 5 in 16 of the last 17 straw polls and can claim 1st place victories in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and Alabama. In comparing results head-to-head, Congressman Paul has blown away most of the field, defeating Rudy Giuliani in 15 of the 17 polls and John McCain in 15 of the 16 polls. There are straw polls coming up all across the country so be sure to check in with your local GOP to...

Ron Paul received 216 votes for a commanding first-place finish in a straw poll today sponsored by the West Alabama Republican Assembly. Mitt Romney came in second with 14 votes. The poll was open to Alabama residents.

10 Reasons Why Ron Paul Should be Vice President August 16, 2007 If Ron Paul fails to win the Republican nomination, it may seem absurd to consider Ron Paul as the vice presidential running mate to any of the other Republican presidential candidates. But before you think so, we have brainstormed this here at our office and found that Ron Paul would make the best choice for Vice President. The major item of concern in choosing a vice presidential running mate is to select someone that can help you win and to find someone whose strength is your weakness. In...

Ron Paul Quietly Converting GOP Believers By John Fout TheStreet.com Political Correspondent 8/9/2007 12:20 PM EDT Why haven't conservatives leaders embraced their own ideals and come out to support Ron Paul in public? I pondered this issue in an article in June. I saw Paul as the one second-tier candidate who might have a chance of a breakout from the pack. It turns out I might have got it right. He has remained the most popular GOP candidate on the Internet. This genuine outpouring of support is rivaled only by that for Barack Obama.

Ron Paul big on 'Net, but media don't notice Clarence Page August 8, 2007 WASHINGTON Of all the interesting little fish swimming beneath the currents of the major candidates in this presidential campaign season, none is making waves as surprising as those kicked up by Rep. Ron Paul. The Texas Republican, who embraces a libertarian point of view, has been riding an unimpressive 2 percent in the polls, but if the presidential election were held in cyberspace, Paul would probably win hands down. Paul's supporters flood online polls, such as the unscientific survey ABC News invited viewers to join after...

Rep. Ron Paul Isn’t Going Away * When he deigned last month to include Ron Paul in his Sunday morning show, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos told the Republican presidential candidate that he’d bet every last cent that Dr. Paul won’t end up in the White House. He’s right, of course. But that doesn’t mean that the 71-year-old congressman from Texas isn’t a surprising force in the 2008 race. He commands far more attention—from the media and from his opponents—than his low standing in the polls seems to warrant, has amassed an ideology-defying army of true believers through the Internet, and actually...

Paul preaches nonintervention, less government By Bret Hayworth Journal staff writer Leave a comment. | Share delicious digg newsvine | Small | Large LAWTON, Iowa -- Pledging a return to constitutional principles, Republican Party presidential Ron Paul contended Tuesday it is time misguided economic, foreign-policy and education moves are turned around. So many policies or programs the federal government has enacted in recent decades don't have an origin in the Constitution, so they should be stopped, said Paul, a congressman from Texas. He cited the Federal Reserve System, federal funding for public education, federal income tax and entitlement programs such...

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul began running television campaign ads Tuesday in Iowa. The spots for the Texas congressman began just days before a straw poll in the first presidential nominating state. The 30-second ads will be in rotation in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City. Campaign spokesman Jesse Benton declined to reveal the cost. The ad features Paul speaking to a crowd of supporters while an announcer repeats the Texan's fiscally conservative campaign themes. Various statements flash across the screen, including "Stop the national I.D. Card." Benton said the ad, the first of two for TV, will be...

Ron Paul Odds Slashed From 15 to 1 to 8 to 1 Following this weekend's Republican debate in Iowa and some extensive mainstream coverage and sound bytes., 2008 US Presidential candidate Ron Paul's odds to become the next Commander-in-Chief have been slashed further from 15 to 1 to 8 to 1.

DOVER — Some voters post candidate signs in their front yards or sport supportive bumper stickers on their cars. They donate money and volunteer to answer phones. Kelly Halldorson is planning a long-distance show of support for her candidate this Saturday — a 38-mile walk to be precise. Halldorson, a 34-year-old political activist, will make the journey on foot from the doorstep of her Dover home to the steps of the statehouse in Concord to raise awareness about the presidential bid of Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. "I've had enough," Halldorson told the Herald about her reasons for making...

Ron Paul: The Internet's favorite candidate By Declan McCullagh Story last modified Mon Aug 06 06:16:00 PDT 2007 ARLINGTON, Va.--Ron Paul is a Republican congressman and U.S. presidential hopeful who, in the usual shorthand of political journalists, is known as a "long shot" for the White House. Paul's poll numbers award him less than 2 percent of the vote among Republican candidates, and he was unceremoniously excluded from an Iowa debate in June organized by a tax watchdog group that happens to share his political views. Even otherwise flattering articles consign his candidacy to "the realm of dreams, not practical...

M.C. Rove gettin' down with his bad self during the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C.

TOKYO -- In the background of the birth of Intelligent Design theory is the explosive increase over the past half century in our knowledge about cells. Scientists have discovered that cells are filled with tiny molecular machines not even dreamed of during Darwin’s era, when the cell’s structure was unknown. The example of a molecular machine easiest to understand, and researched for long time, is the bacterial flagellar motor. Various kinds of bacteria depend on this machine to generate propellant power. Scott Minnich, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Idaho and a leading ID scientist states, “The flagellar...

TOKYO -- Intelligent Design (ID) theory claims that the complexity of life cannot be explained by Darwin’s evolutionary theory, nor can the origin of life or the birth of the universe be elaborated by naturalism (a materialistic theory in science), that tries to explain them by a purely materialistic process. It proposes that they can be far better explained by assuming the involvement of an intelligent designer. With heightened debate over the theory in 2005, numerous articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines. But many of these articles tend to be biased and, like the U.S. liberal media, label ID...

Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist    08/30/2006   Supporters of evolution often tout its many benefits.  They claim it helps research in agriculture, conservation and medicine (e.g., 01/13/2003, 06/25/2003).  A new book by David Mindell, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard, 2006) emphasizes these practical benefits in hopes of making evolution more palatable to a skeptical society.  Jerry Coyne, a staunch evolutionist and anti-creationist, enjoyed the book in his review in Nature,1 but thought that Mindell went overboard on “Selling Darwin” with appeals to pragmatics: To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if...

Political automated phone calls are the most cost-effective way to reach your constituents. The cost is minimal compared to other media, and the effectiveness is unsurpassed. Automated calling will allow your campaign to target your message to your constituents, give them valuable information, and help you capture valuable data to win your election. Also, unlike other media, you will be able to reach your constituents exactly at the time of day of your choosing. You can place your calls in the middle of the day to target answering

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.” Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing. If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless...

(AgapePress) - The president and CEO of a creation apologetics group says the U.S. is ahead, not behind, in science, as claimed by a recent worldwide study on belief in evolution. A researcher from Michigan State University studied beliefs about evolution in 34 countries, including the United States. The study found that in most European countries, at least 80 percent of adults believe in evolution. However, in the U.S. only about 40 percent were whole-hearted believers in Darwin's theory -- and 39 percent called it "absolutely false." Jon Miller, the MSU researcher who conducted the study, attributes his findings, in...

Voters in Kansas ensured this month that noncreationist moderates will once again have a majority (6 to 4) on the state school board, keeping new standards inspired by intelligent design from taking effect. This is a victory for public education and sends a message nationwide about the public’s ability to see through efforts by groups like the Discovery Institute to misrepresent science in the schools. But for those of us who are interested in improving science education, any celebration should be muted. This is not the first turnaround in recent Kansas history. In 2000, after a creationist board had removed...

What’s the Matter with Kansas? Dishonest Darwinists -- coming to a state near you. By David Klinghoffer ----------------------------------- State school-board elections don’t normally receive much national media attention. Yet the school-board primary race in Kansas on Tuesday, representing a key front in the Darwin wars, was an exception. Will Darwinism be taught as unquestionable dogma? That’s the question that voters decided. In Kansas, it seems it will. Kansas has been one of five states with biology curricula that include instruction about the evidence both for and against neo-Darwinism, requiring that students learn about the “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory. Darwin...

A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound. “Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute. West said the group will start an information campaign over the Internet immediately and possibly start a radio campaign. He declined to say how much the center would spend. The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly-contested State Board of...

Defending “design” in Dover (Pennsylvania, USA) School policy that questions Darwin and informs about intelligent design goes to federal courtby Pam Sheppard, staff writer, AiG,USASeptember 26, 2005The debate over how origins should be taught in America’s public school science classes takes center stage in US federal court today (September 26) where the idea of intelligent design will be the main act. While no cameras will be allowed in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania courtroom, much international attention will be focused on the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District [see previous web article Will intelligence prevail in Dover, PA?].During...

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers suing the Dover Area School District for exposing its students to the controversial theory, sprinkled his testimony with references to DNA, red blood cells and viruses, and he occasionally referred to complex charts on a projection screen.Even U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was a little overwhelmed."I guess I should say, 'Class dismissed,'" Jones mused before recessing for lunch.Dover is believed to be the nation's first school system to mandate students be exposed to the intelligent design concept. Its policy requires school administrators to read a brief...

Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller. On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for...

Theory's largest national supporter won't back district The Dover Area School District and its board will likely walk into a First Amendment court battle next week without the backing of the nation's largest supporter of intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based nonprofit that describes itself as a "nonpartisan policy and research organization," recently issued a policy position against Dover in its upcoming court case. John West, associate director of Discovery's Center for Science & Culture, calls the Dover policy "misguided" and "likely to be politically divisive and hinder a fair and open discussion of the merits of intelligent design."...

Editor's Note: This article is the first in a special LiveScience series about the theory of evolution and a competing idea called intelligent design. TODAY: An overview of the increasingly heated exchange between scientists and the proponents of intelligent design. COMING FRIDAY : Proponents argue that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, but a close look at their arguments shows that it doesn't pass scientific muster. Science can sometimes be a devil's bargain: a discovery is made, some new aspect of nature is revealed, but the knowledge gained can cause mental anguish if it contradicts a deeply cherished belief...

We have created a welfare state where everyone feels that they are granted food, tv, ect... I am, and so are you, paying for this. We have been supporting the majority of the evac's in NO (who can work) for year's and now we get hit again because of a Katrina. These people who love for NO and need to go to work and fix it, it's not FED it's local--state responsibiliy. The majority of the refugee's you see on TV have been on FED assistance for there whole life, this is the welfare state hard at work...It needs to...

WASHINGTON - Americans are divided over whether humans and other living things evolved over time or have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, according to a new poll. People on both sides of that argument think students should hear about various theories, however. Nearly two-thirds of those in a Pew Research Center poll, 64 percent, say they believe "creationism" should be taught alongside "evolution" - a finding likely to spark more controversy about what is taught in the schools. That controversy could be related to the difficulty of measuring public sentiment about teaching evolution, creationism or...

A major three-part series in The New York Times, running August 21-23, 2005, was devoted to the ongoing evolution/creationism struggle in the political, the scientific, and the religious sphere. Accompanying the series in addition were a William Safire "On Language" column investigating the etymology of "intelligent design" and "neo-creo" and a marvelous editorial column by Verlyn Klinkenborg on deep time and evolution. (In a further acknowledgement of the importance of the issue, the Times's website now has a special section devoted to its evolution coverage.) Overall, despite a number of minor errors, the series succeeded in portraying "intelligent design" as...

Catching up on back news this past few days — I was out of the country for the first two weeks of August — I caught President Bush's endorsement of teaching Intelligent Design in public school science classes. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," President Bush told a reporter August 2, "so people can understand what the debate is all about." This is Bush at his muddle-headed worst, conferring all the authority of the presidency on the teaching of pseudoscience in science classes. Why stop with Intelligent Design (the theory that life on earth has developed by a series...

Paleoanthropology: Start Over?   08/22/2005     The September issue of National Geographic, featuring the African continent, has arrived in homes.  On page 1, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote about the quest for early man, asking, “Are we looking for bones in all the right places?”  The bulk of the article describes the “messy” story of human origins.  It used to be clean-cut, he said, but no longer: Scientists are good at finding logical patterns and turning data into a coherent narrative.  But the study of human origins is tricky: The bones tell a complicated story.  The cast of...

Intelligent design - coming to a school near you   David Jensen says the evolutionists' perspective relies on unproven scientific facts and theories. Picture / Greg Bowker   27.08.05   By Chris Barton   Science teachers say it has no place in the classroom. Christian educators say children shouldn't be denied alternative views. Science teachers retaliate that it's not science, it's religion behind a mask and they don't want a bar of it. Christian educators argue they can teach it alongside traditional science, so what are science teachers so afraid of? Science teachers' blood begins to boil. "It's not...

Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Four experts with very different views weigh in on the underlying question. By COMPILED BY DAVID VAN BIEMA >FRANCIS COLLINS Director, National Human Genome Research Institute I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified. If God, who is all powerful...

My mother says she is a Darwinist. I’m not sure of all the things that could or should imply. I take it to mean the she does not believe that the Cosmos and all that it contains is the result of the will of a Supreme Being. Nature just exists and that is all there is to it. Asking what is the purpose of human existence is a nonsense question. It has no meaning. As we have no conscious origin, we have no conscious destination. Hence no purpose. This idea is quite troubling to many humans as we are quite...

We've seen the little symbols on the backs of cars: The "Jesus fish" and the "Darwin fish." The Jesus fish eating the Darwin fish. The Darwin fish eating the Jesus fish. It makes for entertainment while commuting, but this front of the culture wars won't be won or lost on the freeway. The creationists realized that they were not getting enough traction in their bumper- sticker campaign against the theory of evolution. So biblical literalists have come up with a new strategy: leave the word "God" out of the public argument, and come up with one that sounds more scientific....

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox.

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox. Such was the case a few columns ago when I broached the subject of Intelligent Design (ID) after President Bush indicated his receptiveness to ID theory being taught alongside evolution in the public schools. The hostile e-mailers pointed out what a consummate idiot and criminal trespasser I was for treading on their real estate. They demanded I stick to law and politics, not because I know much more...

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being? The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain. Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher...

Compared with fields like genetics and neuroscience and cosmology, botany comes up a bit short in the charisma department. But when scientists announced last week that they had figured out how plants grow, one had to take note, not only because of the cleverness required to crack a puzzle that dates to 1885, but because of what it says about controversy and certainty in science -- and about the evolution debate. In 1885, scientists discovered a plant-growth hormone and called it auxin. Ever since, its mechanism of action had been a black box, with scientists divided into warring camps about...

Quick: Define miosis and mitosis. Explain mitochondrion and chloroplast. Now briefly, what's RNA? The biology teachers assembled at the University of Colorado last week for a seminar on teaching evolution know most Americans are clueless about basic science. They find our ignorance exasperating. But it also explains a lot. With most people content with being scientifically illiterate, it's no wonder so many believe intelligent design is a scientific theory. It unequivocally is not. It's a religious belief, a political issue or an abomination destined to cripple Americans in global scientific achievement, depending on your point of view. But it is...

On those rare occasions that I write a column touching remotely on science, especially if I depart from the conventional wisdom of the greater scientific community, the contemptuous e-mails fill my inbox. Such was the case a few columns ago when I broached the subject of Intelligent Design (ID) after President Bush indicated his receptiveness to ID theory being taught alongside evolution in the public schools. The hostile e-mailers pointed out what a consummate idiot and criminal trespasser I was for treading on their real estate. They demanded I stick to law and politics, not because I know much more...

By SEATTLE - When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars. After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing...

WASHINGTON (AP) — More teens are saying there are drugs in their schools, and those who have access to them are more likely to try them, said a Columbia University survey released today. Twenty-eight percent of middle-school-student respondents reported that drugs are used, kept or sold at their schools, a 47 percent jump since 2002, according to the 10th annual teen survey by Columbia's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. The number of high schoolers saying drugs are at their schools rose 41 percent in the last three years, to 62 percent, the survey said. Twelve- to 17-year-olds who...

You know that TV crocodile hunting team Steve and Terri Irwin? Well those two can expect some competition in days to come. Scientists in northern Australia have been collecting blood from crocodiles in hopes of saving humans. Studies in the late 90s showed that several antibodies in croc blood killed penicillin-resistant bacteria. More recently it has been discovered that crocodiles’ immune systems can kill the HIV virus. American scientist Mark Merchant says the reptiles “tear limbs off each other, [but] they heal up very rapidly and normally, almost always without infection.” Aussie scientist Adam Britton adds: “The crocodile has an...

On August 1, 2005, a group of reporters from Texas met with President Bush in the Roosevelt room for a roundtable interview. The President’s remarks suggest that he believes that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught so that “people are exposed to different schools of thought.” There have been so many articles since his remarks that it’s useful to read the relevant portion of published interview: “Q: I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think...

President Bush last week spoke three sentences in response to a Texas reporter's question on the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design." In doing so, he lit a match under a powder keg. "Christian" conservatives rejoiced. Scientists and liberals recoiled. "Intelligent design" suggests that creation is too complicated to have occurred through natural selection. Its advocates distance themselves from "creation science," but similarities abound. The clash of science, belief and culture is not new. When Copernicus replaced Ptolemy's Earth-centered universe with the solar system, he dedicated De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium to Pope Paul III and made clear that his motive...

Did you hear the news? Evolution is no longer a theory. It’s a fact! I know, I can’t believe it either. Wait, you haven’t heard about this breakthrough discovery? Well, you might want to check with Professor Colin Purrington, an evolutionary biologist who teaches at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Professor Purrington says, “Evolution is a ‘theory’ like gravity is a ‘theory.’”

Exactly eighty years after the Scopes "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, history is about to repeat itself. In a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in late September, scientists and creationists will square off about whether and how high school students in Dover, Pennsylvania will learn about biological evolution. One would have assumed that these battles were over, but that is to underestimate the fury (and the ingenuity) of creationists scorned. The Scopes trial of our day--Kitzmiller, et al v. Dover Area School District et al--began innocuously...