From "teach the controversy" to "teach nothing"

In the wake of the Dover decision, Florida Gov Jeb Bush was being oh so careful to side step a Miami Herald journalist’s question about intelligent design.

In Florida, education officials and science teachers will be reviewing the state's science curriculum in 2007 or 2008, after the governor has left office, and ''it is possible that people would make an effort to include [intelligent design] in the debate,'' Gov. Bush told The Watchdog Report on Wednesday. ''My personal belief is we ought to look at whether our standards are high first,'' he said.

You can almost see the First Brother’s handler in the background nodding encouragingly. Then he blew his cover:

The Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin's theory of evolution?

Bush said: ``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''

One Thirty Nine

Ok, I did go away on vacation, but I've been back for several weeks. During that time my blogging activity has been confined to reading, not writing ... well, aside from a few comments I've left at other blogs. So, I'm feeling guilty and for that reason I'm making this one teeny post:

The Dover trial has been decided and THE COURT FINDS FOR THE PLAINTIFFS!!! I've glutted myself for the past several days reading the commentary and the commentary on the commentary. I've downloaded the 139-page decision by Judge Jones but haven't read it all yet. I will. You can find a link to it on the NCSE Dover Trial page.

The excerpts I have read are stunning. It will make an excellent textbook for the ongoing battle to protect science education.

[I've got letters to the editor and posts for this blog whipping around in my head, but I still have to get a bunch of holiday cards out. I need to be more disciplined]

One final thought for now. There has, of course, been much gnashing of teeth by the ID spokepeople, who quickly got their talking points out to their followers. Fun new Google game: Identify key phrases in the talking points and do periodic searches on Google News to see how many times they are being copy&pasted into articles, posts and letters ... and by whom.