Biology textbook hearings prompt science disputes [Texas]

Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | 08 July 2003 | MATT FRAZIER

[RightWingNilla]

A lot of unguarded bridges around this time.

[CobaltBlue]

>>About your examples - what is the relevence of these - to say that they are justified by their existence?<<

Over the past 210+ years, Americans have decided that interstate highways promote interstate commerce and are useful in time of war, so interstate highways are constitutional (commerce clause and defense), even though the founders never thought of them. Same for the internet.

Constitutional justification for public education - which, by the way, is primarily funded by localities via property taxes - appears to be grounded in the provision that the federal government is supposed to promote the general welfare. That's in the Constitution, too, in the Preamble.

I realize you don't think public education promotes the general welfare but you've been outvoted. It appears to me that your energies could be put to good use by trying to improve public education, or putting in vouchers and alternatives, but it's a free country.

[f.Christian]

EQUIVevOCATElution plACEmaker !

[bondserv]

To VPN with the Holy Spirit you must be authenticated to begin to use the network properly. Reading encoded messages without the encryption key makes the data unintelligible.

Why else would Jesus criticize the religious people of his day for overlooking the significance of the encryption key. (Faith in God rather than themselves).

[PatrickHenry]

... to promote the general welfare. That's in the Constitution, too, in the Preamble.

Permit me to respectfully disagree. The preamble, lovely though it is, does not grant any powers to Congress. In Article I, which does do that, there is the power to tax for the general welfare. I suppose it's controversial now, but originally the expression "general welfare" was intended to be a limitation on the taxing power. The idea was that the national government wouldn't tax the people to pay for purely local projects (now called pork barrel projects). Such were originally vetoed by the first Presidents.

Anyway, Congress has no "general welfare" power. If there were such a thing in the Constitution, there would be no need to list any other powers.

[bondserv]

Jesus asked the religious leaders 9 times "Have ye not read?". They were not taking the Bible literal enough.

Many of these men were the "learned" teachers of the Old Testament He was speaking to.

The message is all there for those who read the Bible with personal humility and reliance on God. Jesus attacked the religious leaders so frequently because they didn't take the Bible literally and projected their own ideas ahead of scripture. (Traditions of Men)

[MitchellC]

Over the past 210+ years, Americans have decided that interstate highways promote interstate commerce and are useful in time of war, so interstate highways are constitutional (commerce clause and defense), even though the founders never thought of them. Same for the internet.

I'm talking about application of the values that the government was based on, not the founders. The interstates example seems perfectly in line with those values; WIC, public education, etc., for example, do not.

I realize you don't think public education promotes the general welfare but you've been outvoted. It appears to me that your energies could be put to good use by trying to improve public education, or putting in vouchers and alternatives, but it's a free country.

I appreciate the constructive suggestion (seriously - the rest of the people in this thread now seem to be engaged in petty sniping), but I disagree with those as solutions to the public education problem. Government involvement in schools is the inherent, major problem. These fights over what to teach children about God, origins, the government, purpose, destiny, etc. are all symptoms of that bigger problem. Vouchers, tax credits, and similar initiatives would spread more government influence into private schools. It seems far off now, but if you want to remove government from where it doesn't belong, you've got to start somewhere.

[js1138]

Don't you find it strange that the article praises the Bible for its spread-spectrum resiliency against deterioration of the message, and at the same time warns you that you must use precisely the correct frequency (so to speak) to read it or else its message will be "false or distorted"?

I sense a design flaw there...

As far as I can tell,Just about every Kenneth in the world claims to have just the right frequency, but no one has the same one. Just as everyone has a piece of the one true hologram, but they don't seem to be cut from the same master.

[f.Christian]

No weakness hesitation holds barred bring them on placemaker !

[Virginia-American]

G3K: The statements about the mutation in either are totally made up like almost everything in TO. Let's see a real article

Stultis: Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics (Another argument in the evolution-creation controversy) by Edward E. Max http://www.TALKORIGINS.org/faqs/molgen/

Shame on Stultis! Didn't you pay attention to G3k? NOthing in TalkOrigins counts!

(Even though it references the original research.)

To G3K: How about all the other retrposons, ancient viruses, pseudogenes, etc, that very nicely, in great detail, confirm the family tree of the monkeys and great apes that had been proposed by biologists? It's not just the LGGLO and ascorbic acid (although I find this one of the most striking)

[CobaltBlue]

>>The preamble, lovely though it is, does not grant any powers to Congress.<<

True, but it talks about the values of the founding fathers, which is what I was focussing on, not powers.

>> ''Its true office,'' wrote Joseph Story in his COMMENTARIES, ''is to expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them. For example, the preamble declares one object to be, 'to provide for the common defense.' No one can doubt that this does not enlarge the powers of Congress to pass any measures which they deem useful for the common defence. But suppose the terms of a given power admit of two constructions, the one more restrictive, the other more liberal, and each of them is consistent with the words, but is, and ought to be, governed by the intent of the power; if one could promote and the other defeat the common defence, ought not the former, upon the soundest principles of interpretation, to be adopted?''<<
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/preamble/index.html

>>Anyway, Congress has no "general welfare" power. If there were such a thing in the Constitution, there would be no need to list any other powers.<<

As far as the argument that Congress has no "general welfare" power was resolved against you in 1936, in the case of U.S. v. BUTLER, 297 U.S. 1 (1936), see page 66. " While, therefore, the power to tax is not unlimited, its confines are set in the clause which confers it, and not in those of section 8 which bestow and define the legislative powers of the Congress. It results that the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution."
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=297&invol=1

The Court then declared what Congress enacted (portions of the Agricultural Act of 1933) to be unconstitutional, anyway, because the effect was local, not general, and so intruded into the sphere of state government.

Stone had the better argument in his dissent, I thought, under the circumstances: " As the present depressed state of agriculture is nation wide in its extent and effects, there is no basis for saying that the expenditure of public money in aid of farmers is not within the specifically granted power of Congress to levy taxes to 'provide for the ... general welfare.' The opinion of the Court does not declare otherwise."

Anyway, there's your slippery slope.

[CobaltBlue]

"As far as the argument that Congress has no "general welfare" power was resolved against you in 1936" should read "The argument that Congress has no "general welfare" power was resolved against you in 1936."

See also South Dakota vs. Dole.

>>The Constitution empowers Congress to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. Incident to this power, Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds, and has repeatedly employed the power "to further broad policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives." Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 474 (1980) (opinion of Burger, C. J.). See Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 569 (1974); Ivanhoe Irrigation Dist. v. McCracken, 357 U.S. 275, 295 (1958); Oklahoma [Page 207] v. Civil Service Comm'n, 330 U.S. 127, 143-144 (1947); Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937). The breadth of this power was made clear in United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 66 (1936), where the Court, resolving a longstanding debate over the scope of the Spending Clause, determined that "the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution." Thus, objectives not thought to be within Article I's "enumerated legislative fields," id., at 65, may nevertheless be attained through the use of the spending power and the conditional grant of federal funds.

The spending power is of course not unlimited, Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 17, and n. 13 (1981), but is instead subject to several general restrictions articulated in our cases. The first of these limitations is derived from the language of the Constitution itself: the exercise of the spending power must be in pursuit of "the general welfare." See Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619, 640-641 (1937); United States v. Butler, supra, at 65. In considering whether a particular expenditure is intended to serve general public purposes, courts should defer substantially to the judgment of Congress. Helvering v. Davis, supra, at 640, 645. 2 Second, we have required that if Congress desires to condition the States' receipt of federal funds, it "must do so unambiguously . . ., enabl[ing] the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation." Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, supra, at 17. Third, our cases have suggested (without significant elaboration) that conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated "to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs." Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U.S. 444, 461 [Page 208] (1978) (plurality opinion). See also Ivanhoe Irrigation Dist. v. McCracken, supra, at 295, ("[T]he Federal Government may establish and impose reasonable conditions relevant to federal interest in the project and to the over-all objectives thereof"). Finally, we have noted that other constitutional provisions may provide an independent bar to the conditional grant of federal funds. Lawrence County v. Lead-Deadwood School Dist., 469 U.S. 256, 269 -270 (1985); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 91 (1976) (per curiam); King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309, 333, n. 34 (1968).

South Dakota does not seriously claim that § 158 is inconsistent with any of the first three restrictions mentioned above. We can readily conclude that the provision is designed to serve the general welfare, especially in light of the fact that "the concept of welfare or the opposite is shaped by Congress . . . ." Helvering v. Davis, supra, at 645. Congress found that the differing drinking ages in the States created particular incentives for young persons to combine their desire to drink with their ability to drive, and that this interstate problem required a national solution. The means it chose to address this dangerous situation were reasonably calculated to advance the general welfare. The conditions upon which States receive the funds, moreover, could not be more clearly stated by Congress. See 23 U.S.C. § 158 (1982 ed., Supp. III). And the State itself, rather than challenging the germaneness of the condition to federal purposes, admits that it "has never contended that the congressional action was . . . unrelated to a national concern in the absence of the Twenty-first Amendment." Brief for Petitioner 52. Indeed, the condition imposed by Congress is directly related to one of the main purposes for which highway funds are expended --safe interstate travel. See 23 U.S.C. § 101(b). 3 [Page 209] This goal of the interstate highway system had been frustrated by varying drinking ages among the States. A Presidential commission appointed to study alcohol-related accidents and fatalities on the Nation's highways concluded that the lack of uniformity in the States' drinking ages created "an incentive to drink and drive" because "young persons commut[e] to border States where the drinking age is lower." Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving, Final Report 11 (1983). By enacting § 158, Congress conditioned the receipt of federal funds in a way reasonably calculated to address this particular impediment to a purpose for which the funds are expended.

The remaining question about the validity of § 158 --and the basic point of disagreement between the parties --is whether the Twenty-first Amendment constitutes an "independent constitutional bar" to the conditional grant of federal funds. Lawrence County v. Lead-Deadwood School Dist., supra, at 269-270. Petitioner, relying on its view that the Twenty-first Amendment prohibits direct regulation of drinking ages by Congress, asserts that "Congress may not use the spending power to regulate that which it is prohibited from regulating directly under the Twenty-first Amendment." Brief for Petitioner 52-53. But our cases show that this "independent constitutional bar" limitation on the spending power is not of the kind petitioner suggests. United States v. Butler, supra, at 66, for example, established that the constitutional limitations on Congress when exercising its spending power are less exacting than those on its authority to regulate directly. [Page 210]

We have also held that a perceived Tenth Amendment limitation on congressional regulation of state affairs did not concomitantly limit the range of conditions legitimately placed on federal grants. In Oklahoma v. Civil Service Comm'n, 330 U.S. 127 (1947), the Court considered the validity of the Hatch Act insofar as it was applied to political activities of state officials whose employment was financed in whole or in part with federal funds. The State contended that an order under this provision to withhold certain federal funds unless a state official was removed invaded its sovereignty in violation of the Tenth Amendment. Though finding that "the United States is not concerned with, and has no power to regulate, local political activities as such of state officials," the Court nevertheless held that the Federal Government "does have power to fix the terms upon which its money allotments to states shall be disbursed." Id., at 143. The Court found no violation of the State's sovereignty because the State could, and did, adopt "the `simple expedient' of not yielding to what she urges is federal coercion. The offer of benefits to a state by the United States dependent upon cooperation by the state with federal plans, assumedly for the general welfare, is not unusual." Id., at 143-144 (citation omitted). See also Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S., at 595 ("There is only a condition which the state is free at pleasure to disregard or to fulfill"); Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 482 (1923).

These cases establish that the "independent constitutional bar" limitation on the spending power is not, as petitioner suggests, a prohibition on the indirect achievement of objectives which Congress is not empowered to achieve directly. Instead, we think that the language in our earlier opinions stands for the unexceptionable proposition that the power may not be used to induce the States to engage in activities that would themselves be unconstitutional. Thus, for example, a grant of federal funds conditioned on invidiously discriminatory state action or the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment would be an illegitimate exercise of the Congress' [Page 211] broad spending power. But no such claim can be or is made here. Were South Dakota to succumb to the blandishments offered by Congress and raise its drinking age to 21, the State's action in so doing would not violate the constitutional rights of anyone.

Our decisions have recognized that in some circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which "pressure turns into compulsion." Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, supra, at 590. Here, however, Congress has directed only that a State desiring to establish a minimum drinking age lower than 21 lose a relatively small percentage of certain federal highway funds. Petitioner contends that the coercive nature of this program is evident from the degree of success it has achieved. We cannot conclude, however, that a conditional grant of federal money of this sort is unconstitutional simply by reason of its success in achieving the congressional objective.<<

SOUTH DAKOTA v. DOLE, 483 U.S. 203, 206-211 (1987)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=483&invol=203

[bondserv]

1 John 2:27
27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

A key to the above passage that tells a person if they are reading the scripture correctly, is that ye shall abide in him. All true believers develop a desire to know Jesus better. Which eventually translates to studying the Word of God, and spending time in prayer.

John 14:26
26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Tim 6:3-5
3If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;
4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.

goodseedhomeschool was not free in the above area.

Matt 16:12
12 Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

Thankfully Jesus came to heal the sick, not the well.

[ALS]

To: VadeRetro

Would a theist truly be satisfied with an argument which meekly asserted "well . . . the Almighty is at least responsible for the flagellum of a bacterium?"

God of dysentery?

3,890 posted on 07/17/2003 2:16 PM CDT by js1138

[CobaltBlue]

I do believe in reining in the federal government, as a matter of general principle.

I joined the Federalist Society as a law student immediately after it was founded.

Over time, though, it's become clear that everybody has different ideas about what "limited government" means.

For example, should the Constitution be amended to tell states who they can and cannot marry? Is that what is meant by "limited government"?

[balrog666]

"I do believe in reining in the federal government, as a matter of general principle" - placemarker!

[f.Christian]

By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'"

While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process."

In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

This was the ... openly admitted blueprint --- for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren't often publicly expressed, they're apparently still known within education circles.

[PatrickHenry]

You're correct about U.S. v. BUTLER, which pretty much revised the old understanding of the Constitution during the New Deal days. Prior to then, it was well understood that the "general welfare clause" did, as I said, limit the taxing power. George Washington vetoed at least one spending bill for that reason. So did Madison. And those guys knew what the Constitution was all about. Alas, today it's a whole new ball game.

Over time, though, it's become clear that everybody has different ideas about what "limited government" means. For example, should the Constitution be amended to tell states who they can and cannot marry? Is that what is meant by "limited government"?

Right, it's somewhat controversial. I have views on this. Strong views. More than enough to sidetrack the thread. I think we should save it for another day. But as for the marriage issue, I see this (here comes a stretch) like the Dred Scott issue. If a state creates a status for a person (slave, spouse, whatever) and expects that status to be recognized all over the country, it's more than a local issue. Status-creating laws are a special situation, and need special treatment. I'm still mulling it over.

[CobaltBlue]

If it makes it any easier for you, let me tell you the following things.

For the most part, marriages which are legal in one state are legal in all states, under the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution.

However, no state has to recognize a marriage celebrated in another state which is so antithetical to the laws of that state as to violate public policy. In those cases, the state may treat the marriage as void.

So, one state may allow homosexuals to marry, but they can't force other states to recognize the union.

Caveat, the same argument was used about marriages between blacks and non-blacks, so called "miscegenation."

If you allow blacks to marry whites, then you're on the slippery slope, it was argued. Next thing you know they'll allow bigamy and sodomy and who knows what.

[PatrickHenry]

If it makes it any easier for you ...

That's not a good way to begin a post, unless you're quite certain that you're addressing an ignoramus. And in such a case, why post at all?