The Texas Observer

Sci·ence /noun/ def: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.

We had to go to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary to make sure the definition for science had not changed in the past year, whew!

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) might want to check Webster’s too. Last Friday, the Board’s Certification Advisory Committee recommended that the Institute for Creation Research be given the power to grant Master’s degrees in science education.

Dominic Chavez, director of external relations for the coordinating board, says that the Board- appointed panel would give its positive recommendation to Commissioner Raymund Paredes and the Board for consideration at its next meeting January 24th.

“If it were granted it would be an interim step,” says Chavez of the authorization. “It’s a two year window where the the school can work in Texas, but they have to meet a number of criteria.”

Criteria? That might be tough when the Institute teaches that dinosaurs are only centuries old instead of millennia. Were our great great grandfathers dodging flesh-eating theropods in their Model Ts?

The folks that comprise the committee that made the recommendation include: Dr. Judith G. Loredo of Huston-Tillotson University, Dr. Helen Sullivan of Arlington Baptist College, Dr. Robert C. Cloud of Baylor University, Dr. Johanne Thomas of Texas A&M Prairie View, Dr. James P. Duran of UT Austin and Dr. Theodore J. Wardlow of the Austin Presbyterian Seminary.

They are appointed to two-year terms by the coordinating board to make recommendations on whether private institutions should be authorized to issue degrees in Texas.

The Creation Institute has spun off some interesting offspring, including, Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. At Ham’s museum, you can see a naked Adam, his naughty bits covered with a lily pad, reaching out to pet what looks like a mountain lion in the Garden of Eden. Smiling humans are also pictured alongside their dino friends. On the political front, Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” novels and one of the founders of the institute, is stumping for Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

Texas’ Attorney General Greg Abbott showed his true colors Friday delivering a ruling on whether or not Speaker Tom Craddick acted within his authority during the waning days of the 2007 regular session — including weighing in on whether the Speaker could be impeached or was subject to the rules of the Texas House.

Oh yeah… This one is a real profile in courage. Abbott’s office promised to have the decision on Friday — and they dumped it into empty newsrooms all over Texas at exactly 10:15 p.m. Friday night — when television producers were fully halfway into their shows, and when many daytime reporters were at home — in some cases thanking goodness they didn’t have to read the ruling.

And what’s it say, you ask?

Well, from the summary, it appears Abbott has ruled that “a court would likely conclude” that 1) “the Speaker is an officer of the state”; 2) the Speaker is “subject to impeachment”; 3) that fact “does not mean that impeachment is the only means of removing a Speaker”; and 4) Abbott is “declining” to interpret the House Rules.

The upshot? At first glance, it’s a ruling that would have been better off unissued. Score one for Craddick. As we say in Spanish, the “auto-golpe,” the self-coup appears to have legal justification, at least for now. Might this have something to do with the fact that the same donors give to Craddick and Abbott?

Here’s a link to the opinion, it’s the last one of 2007.

Here’s a comment from the speaker’s office, courtesy of the Quorum Report:

“The speaker welcomes the attorney general’s opinion and his acknowledgement that the rules of the House, as well as the interpretation of those rules, are matters to be determined solely by the members of the House. The attorney general’s opinion affirms the speaker’s position on all issues, including that the speaker is an officer of the state, who serves a two-year term of office. “Now that the attorney general has rendered his opinion, the speaker looks forward to continuing to work with legislators on the important business of the state.”

And from two of the speaker’s antagonists in the House, Jim Keffer (R-Eastland) and Byron Cook (R-Corsicana):

“In football terms, the Attorney General’s advisory opinion has punted this issue to the courts and has fumbled in its attempted summary. Craddick is elected from his Midland district which is only 1/150th of the people of Texas. Based on this, we strongly disagree with the unprecedented contention that the office of Speaker is a statewide officer.

“Furthermore, it is unprecedented to contend that the House Speaker is subject to removal by a vote of the Texas Senate. Sadly, the Attorney General’s advisory opinion only reaffirms the adage: ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Tom Craddick’s declaration of ‘absolute authority’ is an abuse of power and undermines the basic premise of democracy in Texas government.

“We firmly believe Craddick’s application of ‘absolute authority’ has violated constitutional rights of members of the legislature and the constituents they serve. We firmly believe our state constitution did not create the Texas House Speaker post as a dictatorial position.

“It is our understanding of the state constitution that the Speaker is a legislative post constructed to serve the members of the Texas House of Representatives as a presiding officer over its operation. Because of the Attorney General’s own admission of a lack of clarity by past Court cases, it now appears that the integrity of Texas Government is still at a critical crossroads.

“Enough is enough. The people of Texas need to let their local representatives know that they’ve had enough of Tom Craddick’s one-man dictatorship.”

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Chris Comer, the Texas Education Agency’s science director, was forced out of her job last month for promoting a talk by a critic of intelligent design. Now, it appears that TEA employees can also jeopardize their jobs for not having a sufficiently sunny attitude about the current education scheme in Texas. In October, Lizzette Reynolds - the same person who called for Comer to be fired - found a “fire-able offense” in an email sent by Cami Jones, TEA’s director of early childhood development, according to copies of agency e-mails obtained by the Observer.

This revelation comes as Reynolds, a TEA deputy commissioner, tried today in the Statesman to distance herself from the Chris Comer firing.

The offending line came at the end of a long e-mail Jones sent to Pam Schiller, a freelance early childhood consultant and author, answering a question about upcoming revisions to the Pre-K curriculum. “I long for the good ole’ days when we were making good things happen for young children. Those were the days….take care….” [See the emails here, here, and here.]

Someone forwarded this email to Reynolds who, clearly outraged at this display of bitter nostalgia, emailed Jones’ supervisors later that day with a short message: “Unbelievable!! That last line is a fire-able offense. I want this documented. Let’s talk.”

Jones’ immediate supervisor, Monica Martinez, had already spoken with Jones about her email “a few minutes before [Martinez] saw the email from Lizzette.” Nonetheless, Martinez suggested that someone “may need to follow up and tell [Jones] that I am not the only one who has concerns,” ostensibly referring to Reynolds. The records trail peters out at this point.

However, TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe confirmed that Jones is still working at the agency and evidently has not been fired. Ratcliffe wouldn’t comment further and suggested that the Observer file an open records request for Jones’ personnel file to learn more.

When contacted yesterday, Chris Comer, the former science director and Jones colleague, said her attorney had advised her not to speak to the media. However, in previous on-the-record comments to the Observer, Comer recalled that Reynolds had warned Jones not to write or say anything negative about TEA again.

Pam Schiller, who has known Jones for over 20 years, said Jones is “very much admired and loved by the early childhood community.” As far as the offending line in the email, Schiller believes Jones was specifically referring to a program the two worked on in the late 80s and early 90s called transitional first grade, a sort of extra year between kindergarten and first grade for struggling kids.

“I read nothing into that [line],” Schiller said. “That would be something I would say too. This is not the easiest time in life for children. They are under incredible pressure and so are the teachers.” Schiller and Jones are both at odds philosophically with the No Child Left Behind, high stakes testing regime that is increasingly imposed even on young children.

Schiller said Jones has butted heads with the No Child Left Behind partisans who run the show at TEA. “I think Cami has a difficult time there,” Schiller said. “She is kind of Don Quixote. She fights for the rights of children in a sturdy way. She is firm in her philosophical foundation of what she thinks is appropriate for small children … I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t looking for a way to make her quiet.”

In the interview with the Statesman published today, Reynolds baldly asserted that she “doesn’t think there is a muzzle on anyone [at TEA]. Everyone can express their opinions — goodness knows I have many — but we are a state agency and must respect the beliefs of Catholics, atheists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone.”

If you blinked you probably missed it last night. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Committee tabled consideration until January of the Institute for Creation Research’s request to grant degrees in Texas.

Commissioners don’t exactly seem eager to take this on. When asked if the commissioners wanted the subject read out at the meeting, they mumbled “no thanks” and the subject was tabled until the next board meeting on January 24th.

“It would seem odd for a state agency to certify a science degree at an institution that doesn’t teach science,” says Dan Quinn, Communications director at Texas Freedom Network.

Odd indeed, but then again, this is Texas.

If you are trying to look busy in the office today, the Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Committee on Academic Excellence and Research is scheduled to hear a pitch from the Institute for Creation Research at its monthly board meeting. The ICR wants to be able to grant graduate degrees in Texas. To check out the board meeting currently underway click here.

The ICR certainly is cutting edge. According to the institute, based in Dallas, “flexible blood vessels” discovered in dinosaur bones proves that dinos have only been around for centuries instead of millenia. Also, in the ICR’s December issue of Acts & Facts, the ICR’s director of research, Dr. Vardiman, discusses his scientific project called RATE (that’s radioisotopes and the age of earth for the uninitiated). His findings have led to the major conclusion that the Earth is thousands — not billions of years old. Dr. Vardiman admits he’s still struggling with some pesky scientific questions, however, such as how Noah and his family could have survived the massive dose of radiation unleashed from “accelerated decay” of organic matter during the Genesis Flood.

We confess we were baffled when former Austin state Rep. Glen Maxey announced earlier this year he would jump back into elective politics — and into a contested Democratic primary, no less — to run for, of all things, Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector.

You may be thinking, Good God, man, why? No one’s less popular around town than the tax collector. And, besides, Nelda Wells Spears has served ably enough (our taxes seem to get collected…damn it) for 16 years.

Maxey said he initially became interested in the office because he thought that Spears was planning to retire. “Ms. Spears… was telling everybody she was going to retire,”Maxey said. But, when it became apparent that Spears did not plan to retire, Maxey says he decided to continue — because he says he can do more with the office, and he has accused Spears of “not showing up” for Travis taxpayers.

Maxey, known as one of the best organizers in the state, was last seen running unsuccessfully for Texas Democratic Party Chair, and heading the 2004 Texas campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (now Democratic National Committee chair).

Maxey said he thinks he can register more voters and be a voice at the Legislature and appraisal board in both the property tax debate and the issue of equity in appraisals.

Spears has been Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector since August of 1991, when she says, she felt like she had some hands-on experience with the office and was appointed to the job by the Travis County Commissioners Court. She won the office outright in 1992 and has been winning it ever since — by virtue of the county’s high voluntary collection rate and equally high number of registered voters compared with other urban areas in Texas.

Spears says she has provided the leadership that has led to those results, and she said she will be running on her “record of results.”

Like most primaries, this one is getting testy.

“This office is not doing its job,” Maxey says. He pointed out that Spears, who as Assessor-Collector is on the Travis County Appraisal Board, has a 12 percent attendance record there. “She’s abdicated her duty,” he told me.

Spears counters that the board slot is a non-voting position and that it was not the intent of the legislature that a local Assessor-Collector should play a significant role in the deliberations and action of the Central Appraisal District (CAD).

Spears said it’s Maxey’s prerogative to run, but has suggested he should have run for the Legislature.

Travis County Democrats normally have few contested primaries to worry about. It’s even rarer that there’s a fight featuring two veteran Austin Democrats. The race so far has seen many of the old-guard Democrats rally around Spears, including former state party chair Charles Soechting, former Comptroller John Sharp, and others. They argue that Spears has done a good job, and Soechting in particular notes that Maxey could have a tougher time in a general election against a Republican.

Well, Rudy Giuliani is officially a candidate for president on the Texas ballot — or at least he should be — after Gov. Rick Perry turned in Giuliani’s filing paperwork this afternoon at a staged media event.

There wasn’t much suspense. Perry had already endorsed the former New York City mayor in October. Much of the Austin press corps squished into a small room at the Texas Republican Party headquarters to watch Perry hand over a stack of papers to party officials and listen to the governor’s explanations of why Giuliani should be president.

They do make an odd couple: the twanging Texas governor, a self-described social conservative who once used a suburban Fort Worth mega-church as a backdrop to sign the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage — even though it didn’t require his signature. Then there’s the quick-talking, crazed-giggling, New Yorker, who’s pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, and occasionally chooses politically curious ways to, um, dress himself.

But on a deeper level, Perry’s support of Giuliani makes sense. Perry this afternoon listed three reasons he’s backing Giuliani. The first two, while questionable, aren’t surprising: “experienced leadership” (read: 9-11) and his electability. Lastly, Perry said, “He’s a genuine fiscal conservative. He cut taxes 23 times….He understands you can’t tax yourself to prosperity.”

In New York, Giuliani was also a furious privatizer of every government service that wasn’t nailed down, which has made him a favorite among the right wing, small-government think-tank set. Giuliani personifies three of the main characteristics of Republican rule in Texas during Perry’s governorship: an authoritarian view of government power, a love of tax cuts for the wealthy, and an insistence on privatizing services. This is a man with whom they can do business.

That may explain why Perry didn’t support a social conservative such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “I think the world of Mike Huckabee,” Perry said today when asked about the fast-rising GOP contender. “He’s a great friend.” But he added that Giuliani was the most qualified to be president, and the most likely to win.

Some in the chattering class have speculated Perry is simply fishing for the vice presidential nomination. Asked about that today, Perry again said he’s not interested. “This is the best job.”

Given the recent polling that shows Giuliani’s support is dropping, the issue may turn out to be moot.