Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sent strong signals Monday that he would use all his clout to help federal appeals court judge Samuel Alito win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Time and again Specter used his Monday afternoon press conference to defend President Bush’s nominee to the high court and to justify some of his controversial rulings. ... Assurances to abortion rights supportersSpecter seemed to go out of his way to try to persuade abortion rights supporters, of whom he is one, that Alito is not beyond the pale. He said Alito’s dissent in a...

Design vs. evolution discussion Monday Friday, March 8, 2002 Catherine Candisky Dispatch Statehouse Reporter State education officials never imagined they would receive so many inquiries about the upcoming debate over the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution in the science curricula. "We've been overwhelmed with the amount of interest,'' said Ohio school board President Jennifer L. Sheets of Pomeroy. "There are a lot of media outlets that want to attend and just in the past few days we heard there were some school groups interested.'' The intense interest prompted the Ohio Department of Education yesterday to move Monday's panel discussion ...

Panel weighs science-standard bill Wednesday, March 6, 2002 Catherine Candisky Dispatch Statehouse Reporter Ohio lawmakers waded into the battle over evolution in public classrooms yesterday, opening hearings on a pair of conservative- backed bills designed to ensure that students also are taught alternative views on the origins of life. Supporters say the legislation is needed because proposed science- curriculum guidelines under review by the State Board of Education shut out such concepts as creationism and intelligent design. Critics say the concepts are untested and call the move a guise to get religion into schools. "It's neutral about religion,'' Rep. ...

Dinosaur discoveries wow Boston Sensational fossil discoveries were unveiled on Monday, including the most primitive wishbone yet found in a dinosaur. Also presented was an exquisite skull from a tiny crocodile that could help provide vital new evidence on when the landmasses of Africa and South America split to take up their current positions on the planet's surface. The finds were described by Paul Sereno, one of the world's leading dino hunters, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Dr Sereno, from the University of Chicago, told the meeting that science was ...

The Dispatch tries to verify the identity of those who submit letters to the editor, but this message presented some problems. It arrived on a postcard with no return address: Dear Representative Linda Reidelbach: Evolution is one of my creations with which I am most pleased. It was signed, God. The Dispatch cannot confirm that this is a divine communication, but the newspaper does endorse the sentiment it expresses: that there is room in the world for science and religion, and the two need not be at war. The newspaper also agrees that Reidelbach, a Republican state representative from ...

Ebola-style killer virus sweeps Afghan border By Tim Butcher in Quetta (Filed: 10/04/2001) THE largest outbreak in history of a highly contagious disease that causes patients to bleed to death from every orifice was confirmed yesterday on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan. At least 75 people have caught the disease so far and eight have died. An isolation ward screened off by barbed wire has been set up in the Pakistani city of Quetta, and an international appeal has been launched for help. Evidence suggests the outbreak of Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever emanates from within Afghanistan, raising fears of an epidemic if ...

This essay originally appeared in The New Yorker, Dec. 13, 1999. It is adapted from chapters 19 and 20 of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, by Robert Wright, published by Pantheon Books in January, 2000. Copyright 2000 by Robert Wright. (Please note that a central argument of this essay--that biological evolution is directional--is made in much greater detail in the book.)    THE ACCIDENTAL CREATIONIST Why Stephen Jay Gould is bad for evolution. BY ROBERT WRIGHT FOUR months ago, when the Kansas Board of Education voted to cut evolution from the mandatory science curriculum, few people were more ...

THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS In fact, there's no surplus at all. It is not "your money": it was spent long ago. Social Security was supposed to have a separate source of funding and be self-sufficient. But, because of the baby boom, it is inevitable that there will come a time when expenditures (benefits) will exceed the revenues from that funding source (FICA). Until that time, Social Security runs a "surplus", and the money piles up. Except it never really piled up - that "surplus" (FICA revenues left over in any year after benefits were paid) just went to ...

JOHN F. HAUGHT, Ph.D. Georgetown University THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN IN ADAPTED AND ABBREVIATED FORM FROM JOHN F. HAUGHT, SCIENCE AND RELIGION: FROM CONFLICT TO CONVERSATION (MAHWAH AND NEW YORK: PAULIST PRESS, 1995), PP. 47-71. In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his famous treatise on "evolution." It is one of the most important books of science ever written, and experts today still consider it to be largely accurate. Theologically speaking, it caused a fierce storm of controversy, and we are still wrestling with the question of what to make of it. Does Darwin's theory perhaps ...

Longtime creationist apologist Tom Bethell crows about the discovery that the proteome (the number of different proteins in our cells) is 10 times as large as the genome (the number of different genes that produce them). THREAD II HERE The principal actors had appeared in the White House last June -- Francis Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics. Now they were back with a supporting cast and a more detailed analysis, in the Capital Hilton Hotel, with the TV lights glinting off the ballroom chandeliers, 250 journalists packed into the hot ...

Evidence for Creationism IS real. It can be found. In fact, instead of just continuing to hammer away at Evolution, which has left creation researchers in the position of appearing to define their new "science" only by what it is not, Creationists have put forth some amzaing evidence and predictions founded in the growing field of Creation Science. Creation researchers have strong arguments for their theories, and here are just a few. #1:Well.... wait. There aren't any. Sorry, false alarm.