A bill designed to repeal the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act went the way of the dodo Thursday in the Senate Education Committee; members voted 5-1 to defer the bill, tantamount to killing it.
Backed by letters from more than 40 Nobel science laureates, a heady array of national science organizations, university professors, high school biology teachers, the Louisiana Association of Educators and a petition with more than 60,000 signatures — all of them in favor of repealing the act, which Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law in 2008 after near-unanimous passage in the Legislature — Sen. Karen Carter Peterson’s Senate Bill 70, alas, fell on the deaf ears of a committee evidently beholden to or fearful of the forces of epistemological regression. (Yes, I just wrote that.) Only Sen. Yvonne Dorsey, a Baton Rouge Democrat, backed passage of the repeal and opposed shelving it.
The intrepid, ill-fated charge to repeal the act, which opponents consider a conduit by the religious right for introducing Intelligent Design, i.e., creationism, into Louisiana public school science classrooms — no reputable state or national science organizations lobbied for the LSEA — was led by Zach Kopplin, a 2011 graduate of Baton Rouge Magnet High School and the son of Andy Kopplin, the former chief of staff to Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco who now serves as first deputy mayor and chief administrative officer for the city of New Orleans.
“This law undermines science because creationism is not science. It does not belong in public school science classes — put it in a religion class, a philosophy class, a history class, but not in science classes,” the grad told the commission at the start of the hearing, adding that there’s “no scientific debate over the theory of evolution — there’s only a political debate because some people want to suggest evolution is only a theory. In everyday use the word ‘theory’ is sometimes used to describe an unproven conjecture like, for example, the theory that Carl Weiss wasn’t Huey Long’s murderer — that’s open to debate. But in science a theory is very different. Major theories like gravity or the theory of evolution undergird entire branches of science and have been thoroughly tested and retested and shown to have predictive ability to explain natural phenomena. They are hardly unproven conjectures; they are the basic building blocks of modern physics and modern biology respectively.”
Peterson made a final, impassioned plea for the repeal’s passage moments before the committee’s vote, although at that point it was clear via the body language of the panel and an inane rhetorical gambit by Sen. Julie Quinn, R-Metairie, that the bill was dead in the water. “We’re selective in when we want to listen to experts. When we’re talking about the economy we bring in economists. When we’re talking about roads and bridges we bring in engineers. Why don’t we afford the same to science? How do you ignore 42 Nobel laureates?” Peterson asked the committee. “It is fundamentally embarrassing to have this law on the books.”
Hear, hear, Sen. Peterson.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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