Free Republic

Darwin won. Moderate Kansas State Board of Education candidates pulled off a victory Tuesday, gathering enough might to topple the board’s 6-4 conservative majority. A victory by incumbent Janet Waugh, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Lawrence, and wins by Republican moderates in two districts previously represented by conservatives left the tables turned heading into the Nov. 7 general election. “If we change the board around, we’ll be able to make decisions that we think are right for our students,” Lawrence school board member Craig Grant said. Grant had worked to defeat the conservatives who attracted international attention and...

In a veiled attack on creationism, the world's foremost academies of science on Wednesday called on parents and teachers to provide children with the facts about evolution and the origins of life on Earth. A declaration signed by 67 national academies of science blasted the scriptural teaching of biology as a potential distortion of young minds. "In various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied or confused with theories not testable by science," the...

Ricky Nguyen and Mariama Lowe never really believed in evolution to begin with. But as they took their seats in Room CC-121 at Northern Virginia Community College on November 2, they fully expected to hear what students usually hear in any Biology 101 class: that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true. As professor Caroline Crocker took the lectern, Nguyen sat in the back of the class of 60 students, Lowe in the front. Crocker, who wore a light brown sweater and slacks, flashed a slide showing a cartoon of a cheerful monkey eating a banana. An arrow led from...