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Daily Archives: June 3, 2007
Evolution question is complicated, Brownback says
June 3, 20071:03 a.m.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., explained in a New York Times commentary what he meant when he said, during a show of hands at the first GOP presidential debate, that he didn’t believe in evolution. “If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true,” he wrote. “If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.”
Brownback said that “the premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.”
But on the National Review Online, conservative John Derbyshire responded that saying “here is Brownback talking about evolutionary biology” is a bit like “saying: ‘Here’s Paris Hilton talking about partial differential equations.’”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Being conservative means controlling hubris
June 3, 20071:02 a.m.
“Here is the core of a conservative appeal, without dwelling on ‘social issues’ that should be, as much as possible, left to ‘moral federalism’ — debates within the states,” Washington Post columnist George Will wrote. “On foreign policy, conservatism begins, and very nearly ends, by eschewing abroad the fatal conceit that has been liberalism’s undoing domestically — hubris about controlling what cannot, and should not, be controlled.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Veep does prize his privacy
June 3, 20071:01 a.m.
Turns out Vice President Dick Cheney considers much more than the membership of his energy task force to be none of the public’s business. An administration letter filed in an open-government lawsuit reveals that the Secret Service was told last fall to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, claiming the log was subject to Cheney’s control under the Presidential Records Act. And after inquiries last year about how many times convicted crook Jack Abramoff visited the White House, the administration and Secret Service decided that White House entry and exit logs also were presidential records not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Guess when they call the White House “the people’s house,” they just mean some of the people.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Kansas kids punished by citizenship rule
June 3, 20071:00 a.m.
It will take the state seven months to qualify thousands of Kansas children for health care coverage, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. The problem is the misguided law that Congress passed last year requiring proof of citizenship in order to qualify for Medicaid benefits. It was aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from receiving benefits, but it mostly punished legal Americans who didn’t have a copy of their birth certificates or other documentation. In Kansas, the backlog of cases is 18,000 to 20,000. Way to go, Congress.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
