Thursday, March 17, 2005
Pitch Documents Well-coordinated Anti-evolution Scheme.
Tony Ortega, managing editor of The Pitch, Kansas City's alternative news weekly, takes on the whole anti-evolution movement in "Scopes Snoops" in the March 17 edition just hitting news stands now.
Ortega uses research on the right-wing slush fund used to elect Christian fundamentalists to the Kansas State Board of Education done by Red State Rabble and Josh Rosenau over at the Thoughts From Kansas blog, but he pushes deeper into the story by showing just how long the creationists and intelligent design "theorists" have been hatching their plan to hijack science education in the state.
Ortega gets the whole sordid tale from Harry McDonald, chairman of Kansas Citizens for Science, a group that has been fighting for a number of years to defend science education:
If you want to get a good overview of the war that's been raging over evolution in Kansas since the late 90s -- and catch up with the latest machinations of Kansas' midwest mullahs -- there's no better place to start. A must read.
Ortega uses research on the right-wing slush fund used to elect Christian fundamentalists to the Kansas State Board of Education done by Red State Rabble and Josh Rosenau over at the Thoughts From Kansas blog, but he pushes deeper into the story by showing just how long the creationists and intelligent design "theorists" have been hatching their plan to hijack science education in the state.
Ortega gets the whole sordid tale from Harry McDonald, chairman of Kansas Citizens for Science, a group that has been fighting for a number of years to defend science education:
Six years ago, McDonald explains, the school board formed a committee of professionals to recommend new science standards, and, just like this time around, that committee came back with a sensible plan to teach kids about evolution. In 1999, however, as soon as that plan was handed to Abrams, he moved to put in an alternate plan that he'd cribbed from an anti-evolution group. Abrams' maneuver was so baldfaced, McDonald says, that it created a major public backlash. A year later, an angry Kansas electorate bounced the conservatives, and the new board immediately rescinded the creationist garbage from the state's standards.
If you want to get a good overview of the war that's been raging over evolution in Kansas since the late 90s -- and catch up with the latest machinations of Kansas' midwest mullahs -- there's no better place to start. A must read.
