Free Republic

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is spending $347 million to construct what they refer to as a “state of the art” brand-new court tower. Yet, many taxpayers are unaware of the details behind this project and the reason why this project continues may be found in the money.Maricopa County is facing a $138.2 million budget shortfall. In response, numerous county employees have been laid off in recent months, including 40 Superior Court employees that would staff some of these offices to be featured in the court tower. Also, county law enforcement has been cut by 15% and Sheriff...

Censorship in Texas: Fighting Academic and Religious Discrimination by James J. S. Johnson, J.D.* "Stop the presses!" That was one of the effects of the decision of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) in Austin, Texas, on April 24, 2008, when the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School (ICRGS) was told that it could not move its 27-year-old Master of Science program to Texas, nor could it recruit students from Texas to apply to its California graduate school. Why? Because ICRGS does not teach science from an evolution-only viewpoint...

Texas Hold ’Em Part III: Calling Ronald Wetherington’s Bluffs About Human Evolution in His January Texas State Board of Education Testimony As a final installment in my “Texas Hold ‘Em” series calling the bluffs of Texas evolutionists, I’d like to highlight one section from Discovery Institute’s rebuttal to Ronald Wetherington’s Testimony before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE). Wetherington, who is a professor of anthropology at SMU, testified extensively to the TSBOE about human evolution, his area of expertise. Wetherington stated regarding human origins that we have “arguably the most complete sequence of fossil succession of any mammal in...

Natural Selection Studies Based on Bad Statistics March 30, 2009 — Hundreds of studies claiming to show natural selection may be wrong, say scientists from Penn State and Japan.  PhysOrg reported today that “several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results.”  Many studies of human evolution have relied on these flawed methods.  If the methods were wrong, the conclusions are unreliable.  “Of course, we would never say that natural selection is not happening, but we are saying that these statistical methods can lead scientists to make erroneous inferences,”...

Using Religion to Suppress Debate on Evolution By John G. West Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute Evolution was back in the headlines this week as the Texas State Board of Education voted 13-2 to require students to "analyze and evaluate" major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations, as well as adopting a critical thinking standard calling on students to "critique" and examine "all sides of scientific evidence." The vote was a loss for defenders of evolution who had pushed the Board to strip the "analyze and evaluate" language from the evolution standards and gut the overall critical...

Darwinists Trick Themselves in Texas The New York Times got the preview story wrong, and the Washington Post editorial writer probably was too rushed to question the charges of "creationism" coming from the National Center for Science Education, the Darwin-only lobby. So this week's important decisions by the Texas Board of Education (TBOE) on how to teach evolution were predicated in the media by the big question of whether teachers should provide both "strengths and weaknesses" of Darwin's theory. Those words might sound benign, readers were told, but they really are "code words" (take the press' word for it) for...

Texas State Board of Education Votes To Require Students to Analyze and Evaluate Evolution By: Staff Discovery Institute January 22, 2009 AUSTIN, TX--The Texas State Board of Education today voted to require students to analyze and evaluate common ancestry and natural selection, both key components of modern evolutionary theory. The surprising vote came after the Board failed to reinstate language in the overall science standards explicitly requiring coverage of the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. "The Texas Board of Education took one step back and two steps forward today," said Dr. John West of the Discovery Institute. "While we...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's utilities, refineries and large factories must transform their operations to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new climate plan before state regulators. On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board was expected to adopt what would be the nation's most sweeping global warming plan, outlining for the first time how individuals and businesses would meet a landmark 2006 law that made the state a leader on global climate change. It would hold California's worst polluters accountable for the heat-trapping emissions they produce _ transforming how people travel, utilities generate power and businesses use electricity. At...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Snow is falling in the New Orleans area.</p> <p>The National Weather Service says a mixture of sleet and snow is falling Thursday morning from Baton Rouge east across much of southeastern Louisiana.</p> <p>The winter weather closed some schools and created hazardous driving conditions.</p>

The upcoming battle over what public science textbooks should teach promises to be no less contentious than the battles of the past. The Texas State Board of Education held a public hearing Wednesday, November 19, 2008, about the state’s science standards, which Board members will vote on early next year. Some interest groups are outraged that certain individuals still do not believe that particles developed into people all by themselves, and they are gathering their arguments to influence the Board, whose decision will affect millions of schoolchildren’s science curricula. One such group—Texas Freedom Network (TFN), billing itself as “A Mainstream...

“May you live in interesting times.” No one knows with certainty if this proverb is a famous Chinese curse or not. However, one can certainly accept the fact that these times are indeed interesting…meaning troubled…in many spheres including economics and international broadcasting. While the fine points of US international broadcasting are debated among a fairly small circle of interested participants and observers, the globalized financial markets appear to be poised on the brink of collapse. What’s the connection? Not long ago, a book was published with the title “Dow 36,000.” This book was authored by James Glassman, the most recent...

Moderator- Following is a suggestion to add a feature to this board. Feel free to move this as it is clearly not news. I post it here because I hope that it will generate the greatest amount of feedback. I have no programming experience whatsoever so I don't know if it is possible or if it were possible if it can be done cost effectively, but the suggestion would be to rate the stories posted on a scale from 1 to 10 and then show the top rated stories in a sidebar similar to the "Breaking News" sidebars on the...

Extreme Financial Crises in the State of Nevada! In a time of extreme financial crisis in the State of Nevada those most critical of the Governor and other elected officials fail to be looking in those areas most responsible for wasteful spending. The first person that comes to mind is Jim Rodgers. Rodgers continually asks for more money for education, but when was the last time he asked one of his reporters to investigate the Clark County School District and the rampant wasteful spending? In what appears to be a case of “school board gone wild”, the school district keeps...

The government is to sponsor a theological board of leading imams and Muslim women in an attempt to refute the ideology of violent extremists. The committee, to be announced this week, will issue pronouncements on areas such as wearing the hijab and the treatment of wives and is part of a government strategy to counter radicalism. It will rule on interpretation of the Koran and promote the moderate strain of Islam practised by most British Muslims. It will also comment on controversial issues affecting Muslims living in Britain, including whether or not they should serve in the armed forces. Its...

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry's appointment of Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education drew mixed reactions from some members and observers of the board, which sets policies for the Texas public school system. McLeroy, a Republican dentist from Bryan, has served on the board for the past eight years and is a past vice chairman. One supporter called him a "solid conservative," while a critic labeled him an "ideologue" with an agenda. Perry spokesman Robert Black on Tuesday called McLeroy "a principled leader who will do a great job." McLeroy was re-elected last fall to the...

Senator Hillary Clinton... rarely discusses her Wal-Mart tenure... In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, had a problem. He was under growing pressure from shareholders -- and his wife, Helen -- to appoint a woman to the company's 15-member board of directors. So Walton turned to a young lawyer who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is based: Hillary Clinton. Clinton's six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart... remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career... Fellow board members and company executives... say Clinton used her position to champion personal causes,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz lashed back at critics Monday who he alleged were conducting a "smear campaign" against him and vowed he would not resign over what he termed unfair charges. In a statement to an investigating bank panel looking into whether he broke ethical and other rules in a pay-and-promotion deal he directed for his girlfriend, Wolfowitz said the treatment of the issue has become "circus like." Video More video Iraq war architect clings to his World Bank job amid a corruption probe. CNN's Zain Verjee reports (April 20) Play video "I, for one, would...

Universal Health names ex-Sen. Rick Santorum to board By Gabriel Madway Last Update: 5:06 PM ET Apr 16, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Universal Health Services Inc. said late Monday former Senator Rick Santorum has been appointed as a director. Santorum, who served in the Senate from 1995 until 2007, becomes the King of Prussia, Pa.-based hospital operator's ninth board member.

Madison - The executive director of the state Republican Party filed a notarized complaint today that members of the state Elections Board broke the open meetings law, seven weeks after Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher said he had evidence showing a violation. Rick Wiley, who heads the party, submitted a complaint that says members of the board agreed to vote to punish the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green before an Aug. 30 meeting. Because those members constituted a majority of those voting, their agreement was illegal, Bucher has said.

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation Wednesday creating a sex-offender management board to improve the state's oversight of sex offenders and foster communication between law-enforcement officials. The bill closely resembles a bill Schwarzenegger vetoed last year. The 2005 parole of convicted rapist David Allyn Dokich to Mead Valley, an unincorporated community south of Riverside, highlighted a lack of communication between state and local agencies. The sheriff's department had little notice of Dokich's arrival. Under AB 1015, a 17-member board will oversee the management and treatment of sex offenders. The goal is to reduce recidivism and protect the public. In his veto message...