Squeezing Us

This is not an endorsement of NozzleRage.com about whom I know nothing except that they've made a video which is a pretty good parable of the consequences of our failure to become energy independent:

HT: PowerLine

RLC

LSEA

John G. West at National Review Online explains why the recently passed Louisiana law protecting teachers who try to promote critical analysis of ideas in their classrooms is a good step for Louisiana and the nation. If you haven't been following this act as it has been buffeted and battered along its way through the state legislature suffice it to say that it has been opposed by the usual enemies of free speech and academic freedom among the Darwinists and other secularists, but in the end only three legislators voted against it.

Here's West's introduction:

To the chagrin of the science thought police, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an act to protect teachers who want to encourage critical thinking about hot-button science issues such as global warming, human cloning, and yes, evolution and the origin of life.

Opponents allege that the Louisiana Science Education Act is "anti-science." In reality, the opposition's efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with them is the true affront to scientific inquiry. Students need to know about the current scientific consensus on a given issue, but they also need to be able to evaluate critically the evidence on which that consensus rests. They need to learn about competing interpretations of the evidence offered by scientists, as well as anomalies that aren't well explained by existing theories.

Yet in many schools today, instruction about controversial scientific issues is closer to propaganda than education. Teaching about global warming is about as nuanced as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Discussions about human sexuality recycle the junk science of biologist Alfred Kinsey and other ideologically driven researchers. And lessons about evolution present a caricature of modern evolutionary theory that papers over problems and fails to distinguish between fact and speculation. In these areas, the "scientific" view is increasingly offered to students as a neat package of dogmatic assertions that just happens to parallel the political and cultural agenda of the Left.

You can read the rest of West's article at the above link. To read more about LSEA you can go here.

RLC

Why I Won't Vote for Barack Obama

Voting is a grave responsibility. When one casts one's ballot he votes for the kind of future he wants for his children and grandchildren. John McCain would not ordinarily be my first choice for President, but he is, by my lights, far more qualified for the office than is Barack Obama.

Obama voted "present" almost 130 times in the Illinois state senate, refusing to take positions on tough votes, but he roused himself sufficiently to vote against a bill that would have given protection to babies born alive after a failed abortion procedure. He surrounds himself with shysters, charlatans, and unrepentant terrorists. His early experience as a community organizer was working with the far-left group ACORN which has a reputation for voter fraud and other malfeasances. He often seems to take multiple positions on issues of importance and switches his position when it's politically expedient (a partial list of such changes includes his views on nuclear power, FISA, gun laws, campaign financing, Jerusalem, NAFTA, gay marriage, welfare reform, and Iraq. He even vowed in 2006 that he would not run for president). He sacrificed his pastor and friend to political expediency after telling us that he couldn't do such a thing and was willing to denigrate his own grandmother to advance his political fortunes.

He chooses Clinton administration officials as policy advisors while promising to break with the politics of the past. He opposes increasing our oil supply and any restrictions on partial-birth abortion. He favors open borders, high fuel prices, higher taxes, tax-payer funded abortion, and the redistribution of wealth from producers to non-producers. He also favors increased regulations on business, a universal health care plan that will, many experts claim, diminish the quality of health care in the country, and a toothless foreign policy.

Moreover, he is very likely to appoint judges and justices, like Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, who will use their power to create law rather than to interpret it, and has promised that he will appoint jurists to the Supreme Court who will uphold Roe v. Wade. At least that's where he stands as of today, tomorrow might be different.

Other than his personal charm and likeability he has nothing to commend him. He has no r�sum�. He has never been an executive or administrator. He has served neither in the business world nor the military. His only previous employment was as a "community organizer", whatever that is, and he has served in the U.S. Senate for about 150 days. There is nothing in his background which qualifies him for the post of either Chief Executive or Commander-in-Chief.

Abroad we are faced with an enemy determined to annihilate our way of life, our culture and our children. At home we are oppressed by an enormous regulatory bureaucracy and a culture of litigiousness that oppresses and stifles innovation and public life. Senator Obama is ill-prepared to confront the first - he was, in fact, endorsed by the terror organization Hamas - and is actually favorably disposed toward the second.

In short, based on what we know of him, I fear his election would be a grievous setback for our country and its people.

RLC