Free Republic

A federal judge tried to avert skepticism of Charles Darwin’s theories in Dover, Pa., but doubters remain unconvinced. According to Discovery Institute (DI) Senior Fellow Dr. John West, DI’s involvement and position on the 2005 Kitzmiller case was distorted in media accounts of the controversial case involving intelligent design science. “We want schools to teach more about evolution, not less,” said West, adding, “We don’t want to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.” Dr. West, who is also an associate professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University, made these remarks at a recent Discovery Institute’s book event at the...

SEATTLE, Washington - The Dover, Pennsylvania school board is on trial in the state capitol. Their crime? They wanted to tell high school students once a year that evolution is only a theory. They also wanted to mention an alternate theory: Intelligent Design, or ID. That was too much for some parents. They sued, claiming ID is religious and therefore illegal in school. The judge will decide the case in the next few weeks. So is ID really just religion in disguise? Do both biology and astronomy support ID? And who are these people promoting ID? To answer those questions,...

After the price of oil quadrupled in 1973, Syria and other Arab states put pressure on Saudi Arabia to use its new wealth against Israel. Part of the Saudi government's response was to lead a campaign against support for Israel in the U.S. On their own, however, the Saudis lacked the connections and savvy to affect American-Israeli ties. To make up for this, the Saudi state recruited help. In "The American House of Saud" (Franklin Watts, 448 pages, $18.95), Steven Emerson, a journalist and former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chronicles anti-Israeli activities undertaken in recent years...