News, infrequently and forgetfully updated when I'm irritated about something
24 July 2003
Okay, so I haven't updated anything in a while.
Here is a Wall Street Journal
editorial illustrating the hypocrisy of politicians in opposing school choice
in Washington, D.C.
Senators Arlen Specter and Mary Landrieu, both on the Senate Appropriations
Committee, voted for a measure which would implement vouchers in D.C. in 1997,
knowing Bill Clinton would veto it.
Now that it's up for a vote again, with a president who would be happy to
sign it, Specter and Landrieu have changed their minds.
8 April 2003
(This is in response to a
news story about a Tennessee school board voting to
exclude three biology textbooks based on their including
evolution)
Mrs. Jean Simerly
Mr. Mike Treadway
Mr. Charles Finley
Mr. William Miller
Mr. William Padgett
Mr. Don Talbott
cc: Dr. Don McNelly
Members of the Blount County Board of Education:
I read, on a national newswire, about your recent vote to deny the
adoption of three new biology textbooks because of their evolution
content.
Refusing science books due to their science content is irrational and
irresponsible, contrary to the interests of your students, and an
unconstitutional imposition of your beliefs into public school
policy. If you are unable to seperate your moral or religious
convictions from your duties and responsibilities as a paid member of
the Board of Education, then you should resign. To skirt
responsibility and criticism by refusing to vote, as four of you did,
isn't an excuse.
Not too far in the future, people will read about your anachronistic
behavior as a footnote in the chapter with those who told the first
transoceanic explorers
that they'd fall off the edge of the earth and those who persecuted men
like Galileo and Copernicus for daring to suggest that the Earth wasn't
the center of the universe – people whose beliefs were dictated to them
by others rather than by minds and reasoning with which they were
endowed, whether by nature or by creator.
If, as the saying goes, people are judged by the company they keep,
then you'll
rightfully be remembered with those people – speed bumps on the road to
progress and knowledge.
Kevin Kretz
Bedminster, NJ