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Image by ljfullofgrace via FlickrCreationism has become a possible minor issue here in Florida recently as instructional materials committees conduct a scheduled review of materials and recommend new textbooks for the state’s classrooms. A book meant for marine science classes contained some unusual language that raised red flags for a couple of members of one committee. “Life on an Ocean Planet” (a Florida edition published by Current Publishing Corp with a copyright of 2011, ISBN 978-1-878663-66-5) contained a two page informational sidebar entitled “Questions About The Origin and Development Of Life” that is packed with good ol’ fashioned creationist language. No, I am not exaggerating; it’s really packed. For a purported science book, these two pages manage to mangle basic science concepts to a jaw-dropping degree while at the same time injecting a laundry list of tired creationist objections to evolution.Read their entire post here.
Arizona Shouldn't Use Tax Dollars to Fund Religious Education, Says the American Humanist Association"
ArizonaWashington, DC--The American Humanist Association filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court today asking the Court to affirm a lower court's decision that the Arizona statute that permits awarding taxpayer funded scholarships on the basis of religion violates the First Amendment.
A PDF of the amicus brief can be found here.
Arizona created a program in which dollar-for-dollar income tax credits are granted to individuals contributing to school tuition organizations (STOs). The STOs use the taxpayer funded donations to fund scholarships for students to attend private schools.
However, when awarding the scholarships, the statute permits STOs to specify which schools a recipient attends, thereby denying students true school choice. In recent years, over 80 percent of the scholarships dollars went to private religious schools.
"STOs should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion in awarding taxpayer-funded scholarships," said Bob Ritter, staff attorney at the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, legal arm of the American Humanist Association.
The American Humanist Association argued in its amicus brief that because the STO program is a conduit for funding private education with tax dollars, the Arizona statute violates the First Amendment's prohibition against government establishment of religion to the extent scholarships are used to fund private religious education.
The amicus brief asks the Supreme Court to affirm the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the scholarship program violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for the rights and viewpoints of humanists. Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended through more than 100 local chapters and affiliates across America.
Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God.
Image by Nick Atkins Photography via FlickrEven in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”
~ Pope Benedict XVI
"[Pope Benedict] saying secularism and atheism = lack of virtue and morality = Nazism."
Image via WikipediaA single letter from the FFRF to a Bellwood, Pa middle school closes the book on a bible club. The principal and school's attorney quickly respond to the issue: School says it will drop Bible/Library Club
The Bible/Library Club that was a homeroom activity at Bellwood-Antis Middle School in Bellwood, Pa., has been dropped by the public school district after a complaint by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on behalf of a parent.
September 20, 2010
FFRF sent a letter Sept. 13 about an Aug. 30 flier that was sent home with students listing the club as one of four that students could participate in during the first-semester homeroom activity period. The other three are chorus, band and cartooning.
The description for the Bible/Library Club, supervised by librarian Susan Crawford, says: "Students will assist in the various library activities of organizing and returning books to the shelves and creating bulletin boards. Students may participate in various 'Christ' centered activities such as devotional readings, Bible study, prayer and games."
FFRF received a letter from Principal Donald Wagner dated Sept. 14: "The club name has been changed. The new name of the club is Library Club. There is no reference to the Bible and there will not by an 'Christ' centered activities, devotionals, prayer or Bible study."
That letter was followed up by one dated Sept. 15 from David Andrews, a school district attorney. "The superintendent was not aware that this club was being conducted during the school day." Andrews said the district "has taken immediate steps" to discontinue it during the school day and will not allow it to be led or supervised by a teacher.
"The district will permit the Bible/Library Club to meet before or after school as a student-run organization," Andrews said.
Cover of City SlickersI was reading a wonderful post on The Religion Virus by Craig A. James titled, "The Scandal of Atheism".Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?Don't ask me why. Sometimes my mind goes on a random tangent.
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.
Image via WikipediaAnd if it is legal, is this a good idea?Living Stones Academy a start-up Christian school opened this month with 42 kindergarten through fifth-grade students in one leased hallway of the U-shaped Grand Rapids Public Schools Southeast Academic Center.Apparently, the organizers of the school have never heard of a Christian academy inside a public school either. I wonder why?
Nine former DEA heads held a press conference this morning to promote their letter to Eric Holder, asking the Justice Department to intervene and challenge Prop 19 if it passes (PDF). They claim that since the Justice Department moved so quickly to oppose the Arizona immigration law, it’s their obligation to do the same here.Bruce Fein, member of the Just Say Now advisory committee who served in the Justice Department as Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan, responds:[W]e note that the Department of Justice acted quickly to assert the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause in its recent suit to declare null and void certain provisions of an immigration bill passed by the state of Arizona. We would expect the Department of Justice to act just as swiftly and for the same reason to uphold the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the preemption provision of the CSA to prevent Proposition 19 from becoming law.
Says Aaron Houston, Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and co-founder of the Just Say Now campaign: “This is the same ‘Reefer Madness’ rhetoric they used to fight against medical marijuana. We’re talking about making sure they could continue to arrest sick and dying people who used medical marijuana. It’s the exact same argument we heard then, that the sky would fall, but it hasn’t.”Nothing in the Constitution requires a state to prohibit as a matter of state law and prosecution what the federal government has chosen to prohibit as a matter of federal law and prosecution. Proposition 19 leaves the power of the federal government to enforce federal prohibitions on marijuana trafficking or use unimpaired. It would be flagrantly unconstitutional for Congress to attempt to force states to enact laws prohibiting under state law conduct that Congress has prohibited under federal law! DEA needs remedial education on the Constitution.
Another Appeals Court Weighs Pledge in Schools
It seems that one way or another, the controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is headed back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, in Boston, heard arguments last week in a case challenging a New Hampshire law that requires schools to set aside time daily for students to voluntarily recite the pledge.
As with a past case and a pending case out of California, the New Hampshire suit challenges the inclusion of the words "under God" in the pledge.
A federal district court upheld the New Hampshire statute in February, ruling that the law has the permissible secular effect of "teaching our country's history to the elementary and secondary pupils of this state" and that it does not have the effect of coercing children to support or participate in religion.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation appealed the ruling to the First Circuit, and it enlisted longtime pledge challenger Michael A. Newdow, of California, to argue its case.
Sheri Qualters, of The National Law Journal, has this account of the Sept. 9 oral arguments in Freedom From Religion Foundation v. United States. A recording of the oral argument is available on the 1st Circuit's Web site, although it takes a bit of navigation to reach the right place under the "Court Calendar" button.
The statute is being defended by the state of New Hampshire, and the U.S. Department of Justice intervened to defend acts of Congress that added "under God" to the pledge in 1954 and reaffirmed that version of the pledge in 2002.
Newdow, the physician and lawyer who has crusaded for years against "under God" in the pledge and the motto "In God We Trust" on the nation's money, maintains a Web site that has briefs and documents from both sides in the New Hampshire case.
In March, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against Newdow and a group of atheist parents who challenged school-led recitations of the pledge as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The court said the pledge was predominantly a patriotic exercise. I blogged on the decision here.
Newdow is seeking review by a larger of panel 9th Circuit judges in the case involving the Rio Linda Independent School District in northern California.
Newdow was also behind an earlier case challenging the pledge in his own daughter's school, which the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in 2004 but disposed of on procedural grounds in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow.
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Image by Getty Images via @daylifeWhile I would expect most police officers to say no to marijuana and other drugs I find it interesting that Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca is fighting California's Proposition 19 (California's Control and Tax Cannabis proposition) while touting Scientology's drug treatment programs. It sounds as though Sheriff Baca has gotten into the evidence locker again.
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