The Texas Observer

After six hours of often mind-numbing debate, the State Board of Education has mercifully passed a final version of new science standards that will guide the content of science textbooks and curriculum for the next decade.

Reporters and members of the public packed the meeting room in Austin today to see if creationists on the board could succeed in poisoning Texas science classes with a requirement to teach so-called weaknesses in evolutionary theory. On that front, the pro-evolution side mostly won the day (more on this in a minute).

But perhaps the most notable aspect of today’s proceedings was not what the Board members did, but how they did it. Dysfunctional doesn’t quite cover it. These folks make the Texas Legislature look organized and deliberative.

Imagine a policy-making body run by the Smothers Brothers with help from the Three Stooges and you get some idea of what it’s like to sit through a State Board of Education meeting.

The board has supposedly been working on these science standards for a year, yet members were still debating topics as mundane as word choice on this, the very last day. There were quite a few substantive amendments, of course, but they took a while to get through. Most of the amendments were hand-written (see photo below). Sloppy scrawl and poor spelling (one key amendment included the word “expirimental”) made proposals hard to read. It typically took at least 10 minutes of discussion before all the board members could even understand what some amendments were proposing.

Board Chair Don McLeroy, the dentist from Bryan, didn’t help. McLeroy’s frequent bumbling of parliamentary rules left some board members confused. “OK, we’re going to get this right now,” McLeroy would say. At least twice, fellow social conservative David Bradley interrupted McLeroy’s ramblings to summarize and clarify exactly what the board had just done, so the minutes would be correct.

“Slow me down if I get too fast” McLeroy said at one point.

“I’ve been trying to,” Bradley quipped.

You can read our earlier dispatch on today’s meeting here. Also, the Texas Freedom Network live-blogged the meeting, and has a good play-by-play of the amendments and maneuverings (from the pro-evolution side of things) here.

In the end, the pro-evolution side won several significant victories today. The language that required students to examine the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution is gone from the standards, presumably forever. (In its place are some rather harmless-sounding compromise phrases that ask students to examine “all sides of scientific evidence of the scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking.”)

A statement from TFN this afternoon says the new language is better, but still will allow social conservatives to pressure textbook writers into including doubts about evolution. Perhaps, but if there’s wiggle room there, it’s very small.

Similar compromises were struck in the sections governing biology and Earth science classes. Pro-evolution members removed the most controversial, anti-evolution language and replaced it with compromise phrases that encourage critical thinking and examination of all sides. For example, the board removed language that McLeroy had promoted that would require students to learn how certain parts of the fossil record supposedly disprove evolution.

When this junk science was taken out, McLeroy launched into a lecture. He said that examining flaws in the fossil record was the scientific thing to do. He also added that genetics was the true basis of science and that evolution had simply hitched itself to genetics. “Evolution goes back to a man [Darwin] who basically came up with philosophical speculation.”

The board finally compromised on language that satisfied both McLeroy and the pro-evolution board members, asking students to examine “scientific explanations concerning” different elements of the fossil record.

Again, there may be some maneuvering room there for social conservatives in future debates, but not much.

In the end, it seems, after much debate and effort, the school children of Texas were saved from the whims of the State Board’s seven social conservatives.

Others of us weren’t so lucky.

Lynn Woolley, a right-wing radio talker on Sen. Dan Patrick’s KVCE, had a jaw-dropping op-ed in the Dallas Morning News yesterday. The piece—headlined “Greed is not a dirty word”—is one part high-school kid regurgitating Ayn Rand, two parts spaced-out rant and, for flavor, a pinch of two-bit demagoguery. Woolley’s op-ed wouldn’t be worth mentioning but for the fact that apparently talk radio hosts now run the GOP.

As such, Woolley’s op-ed is the perfect crystallization of the far-right’s views on the economic crisis, the stimulus package, and the role of government and markets. It also illustrates how the messengers of the right-wing are trying to divert the public’s (righteous and rightful) anger over the AIG bonuses into a free-market fundamentalist, anti-government frenzy.

Here’s Woolley—a Christian and author of a book called Clear Moral Objectives—defending greed, evidently his favorite of the seven deadly sins:

It seems like everybody is beating up on greed these days. In the wake of the AIG bonus scandal, pompous members of Congress, the Obama administration and the media are disparaging the very concept. It’s time someone stands up for greed because without it, there would be no United States of America.

Greed—the desire to make a profit—is the engine that runs a free-market democracy, and that is precisely what President Barack Obama is trying to change. He wants to spread the wealth around so that people who are not greedy can have the same things in life as those who are. But here’s the rub: Why should someone work hard to get an education, develop a skill and become successful, only to have government take away part of that success and hand it to someone with no initiative?

Woolley calls himself the Secretary of Logic. His Web site is BeLogical.com.

But what about the AIG bonuses? They’re hard to defend, but not nearly as bad as bonuses for political hacks and government insiders at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Chief among those is former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines who stepped down Dec. 21, 2004, during an investigation that accused Fannie Mae of cooking the books so its officers could earn huge bonuses. Raines got as much as $90 million.

Raines profited from a corrupt government spoils system devoid of honesty and ethics while AIG’s bonuses were negotiated in advance and then enabled by the Dodd Amendment. It is a fact that the current crisis is artificial—wholly created by government. (Emphasis mine.) 

And there it is, the belief at the heart of hard-right conservative ideology: That the unfettered free-market can do nothing wrong and that government can do nothing right. Even now, when anyone with eyes can see that our economic system—built on, if anything, unchecked greed—suffered from a lack of government regulation, Woolley still believes (and it is a belief) that the “current crisis is artificial—wholly created by government.”

Wow, just wow.

UPDATED BELOW

After a year of fierce debate about how evolution should be taught (or not taught) to Texas school kids, the State Board of Education is expected this morning to give final approval to new science standards.

But not without one more fight.

The board is quarreling once more over the exact wording of the curriculum requirements.

Just to review yesterday’s action, a reference to the “weaknesses” of evolution was removed from the standards, although creationists on the board passed several other amendments that diluted science lessons.

Debate has just begun. The board is about to consider an amendment by Cynthia Dunbar that would require students to examine evidence “supportive and not supportive” of scientific explanations. Critics have said language like that may be an effort to sneak unscientific doubts about evolution into science classes.

Updates to follow.

UPDATE: Board members reached a compromise on Dunbar’s amendment (see above). The compromise language removes the words “supportive and not supportive,” but permits students in all science classes to examine “all sides of scientific evidence….to encourage critical thinking.” That language leaves a slight opening for bringing criticisms of evolution into the classroom. But it’s a much softer standard than the “strengths and weaknesses” language that creationists on the board have been pushing for.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The board is debating standards for biology classes. Lawrence Allen of Houston has offered amendments that would remove language that creationists passed into the standards in January. Scientists have strongly criticized this language, which would require students to examine so-called flaws in the fossil record. Chair Don McLeroy gave an impassioned defense of the unscientific language, arguing that the fossil record doesn’t always support the theory of evolution. “Evolution goes back to a man [Darwin] who basically came up with philosophical speculation,” McLeroy said.

Moments ago, the board voted (8-7) to remove the unscientific language McLeroy inserted in January. The board has taken a 10-minute break. When it returns, Allen has four more amendments that remove other lines of unscientific language from the standards. It appears the pro-evolution side has the votes to prevail today.

More updates to follow.

Pro-evolution advocates no doubt enjoyed the morning half of today’s long-anticipated State Board of Education meeting. They prevailed in the headline fight: A proposal to slip into the science standards a reference to “weaknesses” of evolution was beaten back.

But things changed this afternoon.

The seven social conservatives on the 15-member board mostly got their way this afternoon. They passed a series of minor amendments that, with a slight word change here and there, diluted the state’s science standards and the teaching of evolutionary theory. Critics say these proposals open loopholes in the standards for the teaching of unscientific theories espoused by religious conservatives. (The same approach was tried, quite successfully, at the board’s meeting in January.}

“We’re opening the conversation and broadening it to alternative theories,” said Barbara Cargill, a socially conservative board member from The Woodlands. “We know there are a lot of questions about the fossil record.”

Terri Leo, an ardent social conservative, passed an amendment requiring biology students to “analyze and evaluate the evidence regarding the formation of simple organic molecules.”

Board Chair Don McLeroy passed an amendment that will require science curriculum and textbooks to “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell.”

Cargill snuck through an amendment that struck a reference to the Universe being 14 billion years old. “It clarifies this for our teachers to let students know that there are differing theories for the age of the Universe,” Cargill said, adding that she was simply trying to add a sense of “humility” to the science standards.

Pro-evolution members offered several amendments themselves, many from Lubbock’s Bob Craig, to undo the social conservatives’ victories from January. Nearly all of those amendments failed.

The change in fortunes occurred largely because of Rick Agosto of San Antonio, who voted against the social conservatives in the morning and mostly with them in the afternoon. Agosto is viewed as the key swing vote on the board. He voted against the “strengths and weaknesses” language in January and again this morning, despite fierce lobbying from religious groups in his district.

Agosto wasn’t alone. Several other pro-evolution board members voted with the social conservatives’ this afternoon.

The board will take its final vote on the science standards, which will set content of classes and textbooks for years to come, tomorrow. The board can add in or take out language up until final passage.

So one last fight is likely tomorrow.

Social conservatives on the State Board of Education are trying once again this morning to inject doubts about evolution into Texas’ science classrooms.

San Antonio’s Ken Mercer, part of the board’s seven-member social conservative bloc, tried to put the much-debated “strengths and weaknesses” language back into the state’s science standards that guide the content of textbooks and curriculum. Mercer’s amendment to a final draft of the science standards would have required science teachers to discuss the so-called weaknesses of evolutionary theory in their science classes.

A few minutes ago, Mercer’s amendment failed by one vote (the tally was 7-7).

Corpus Christi’s Mary Helen Berlanga missed this morning’s vote, though she isn’t one of the board’s social conservatives and would be expected to vote against the strengths weaknesses language.

The board will take a final vote on the science standards tomorrow.

Unless one of the other members has a last-minute change of heart, it appears the strengths and weaknesses language won’t be included in the new science standards. That would be a huge victory for the pro-evolution side.

More updates to follow.

Some U.S. Senators (Lieberman) and Texas’ own Governor Goodhair say that President Obama is not doing enough to fight drug cartels with the border security plan he announced yesterday. It should be noted, however, that his plan at least acknowledges that Mexico’s drug problem is our drug problem too. And it emphasizes (gasp) communication with our neighbor to the south which is something our leadership has not engaged in, oh, eight years. Obama’s plan quadruples the number of U.S. liaisons working with Mexico in a binational effort to fight the drug cartels. This is a much needed and — dare I say it — logical step in coordination and communication between the two countries.

The word logical never entered the Bush Administration lexicon which focused on building border walls that cost $12 million a mile.

Obama does two things in his plan that Mexico has been asking for for years: a focus on the reduction in drug use in the United States and a crackdown on guns flowing south into Mexico. It’s not easy living next door to the world’s largest arms dealer. Mexico has often requested help from the U.S. Congress in reducing the number of guns funneled into Mexico. Obama’s plan relocates 100 ATF officers to the border in the next 45 days to fortify ATF’s Project Gunrunner aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

Finally, it is good to see that the plan focuses on the treatment and prevention of drug addiction.  Several decades of fighting the war on drugs has done little to stem drug use in the United States. It’s time to focus on prevention and treatment rather than building more prison complexes — sorry Geo Group.

And while the border wall boondoggle is not mentioned in Obama’s security plan, there is $100 million set aside for fences and virtual technology along the border in the economic stimulus bill. In a story yesterday by the Rio Grande Guardian, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was quoted as saying that her agency would finish the existing tracts of fencing — bad news for many Brownsville residents. With regards to new areas of fencing she said it would be in combination with technology and manpower. Napolitano seems to be de-emphasizing the use of border fences — another logical step . I’m getting nervous. I’ve used the word logical three times when talking about the federal government.

The U.S. Border Patrol plans to begin the aerial spraying of 1.1 miles of Rio Grande riverbank with herbicide to knock out an invasive weed called carrizo cane. The non-native plant species sucks up water and grows to heights of 20 feet obstructing the view of the river. This prevents Border Patrol from apprehending illegal crossers and smugglers.

The move to spray the chemical Imazapyr along the river has residents on both sides of the Rio Grande extremely concerned. Some have even compared Border Patrol’s maneuver to the Agent Orange herbicidal warfare that went on during the Vietnam War. The Observer will have more on this debacle in its next issue.

In the meantime, two residential areas in the “spray zone” Barrio de Colores and Barrio el Cuatro have filed a civil lawsuit demanding that Homeland Security redo its environmental assessment and include residents in the planning process this time. The plaintiffs make the important point that the environmental assessment does nothing to prove that Imazapyr won’t harm children or anyone else for that matter.

Border Patrol was supposed to start spraying today but Mexico put a stop to it for now. Apparently, Homeland Security did not confer with Mexico before deciding to carry out the aerial spraying according to a Laredo Morning Times story today. Imazapyr would be applied near Nuevo Laredo’s water plant a big concern for the city’s residents.

If the pilot project is successful, Border Patrol plans to spray 16 miles of riverbank.