The Man-on-Dog Boy

I haven't gone after Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) for a while, but he continues to amaze me. Now that the Dover School District has been raked over the coals by a federal judge for their adventure with ID, Santorum is disturbed to discover that some of the Board members may have had a religious motivation for pushing the policy. Like he didn't know. (Please keep in mind that the Philadelphia Inquirer labeled him "one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century." He also ripped off the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for his kids' educational costs.)

But the day after a federal judge ruled that the district's policy on intelligent design is unconstitutional, Santorum told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was troubled by testimony indicating that religion motivated some school board members to adopt the policy.

However:

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the center, said Santorum's withdrawal came as no surprise because, several weeks earlier, the senator had indicated that he was unhappy with the center's involvement in the case. "It is a very controversial issue, as you know, and he is involved in a very hotly contested Senate race, and it's probably in his best interest," Thompson said Thursday.

That sounds about right. And he just keeps digging himself in deeper:

Santorum said he disagrees with the Dover school board's policy of requiring the teaching of intelligent design, rather than just teaching the controversy surrounding evolution. He said the case provides "a bad set of facts" for a test on whether theories other than evolution should be taught in science class.

The problem is, there's no "good" set of facts. All this BS about "teaching the controversy" is just that: there is no scientific controversy, and no scientific controversy is going to be generated by a religious doctrine. As soon as a legitimate scientific controversy exists, I'm sure no one will have problems with teaching it, although probably not in high school right off the bat. You don't teach new theories in high school, you teach established science.

The only controversy here is political.

In light of which, here's a statement from Donald Wildmon's AFA blasting Santorum.

I found this instructive:

[Diane] Gramley (president of AFA pf PA] said in conclusion, "The majority of Americans understand what is at stake and want the controversy to be taught. They want their child's teachers to have the academic freedom to openly discuss Evolution, Intelligent Design and even Creationism. The majority of Americans, and especially Pennsylvanians, do not agree with Senator Rick Santorum or Judge John E. Jones."

1) Science is not subject to public opinion polls. 2) These jerks do not want an open discussion of evolution and the religious nutfudge doctrines that oppose it. That's the last thing they want. 3) "Academic freedom" is not something that they want to wave around wildly, because academic freedom means thinking independently and asking hard questions, which is not in their worldview.

AmericaBlog asks some questions to which we all know the answers. He wonders at the continually shifting positions of the radical right, subcategory religious fanatic. One more time: it's not about belief, it's about power. It's been amply demonstrated time and time again that the wildmons are compulsive liars. It's been demonstrated that their political arm is all about expediency -- let's think about the long history of stealth candidates, overly broad legislation touted as achieving limited ends that turns out to have epochal consequences, distorted "information packets" distributed to voters in which it's almost impossible to find an actual statement of fact. They're sneaks and liars. Got it?

I'm way past being nice about it. Let's just call it what it is: lack of moral fiber.

If I sound a little annoyed, it's mostly because I'm tired of the MSM parroting these goons as though they had some legitimacy. When they stop calling ID a "theory" and start holding its feet to the fire, then maybe I'll regain some patience.