It started off as a such a good week — both for science and for the American students who must understand it to compete with their peers abroad. The Kansas Board of Education finally joined most of the United States in accepting the teaching of evolution in public schools.
Then Texas' own state Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had to mail colleagues a freakish memo denouncing evolution as a religious plot disseminated by one "Pharisee Religion."
The mix of nonsense, free-floating anti-Semitism, misuse of power and seeming obliviousness to all of the above were like a dip into the Dark Ages.
Evolutionary science, Chisum's memorandum told lawmakers, was the creation of "Rabbinic writings" in the "mystic holy book Kabbala." As such, the memo went on in a medley of type fonts, underlined sentences and misplaced capitals, teaching evolution in public school violates the Constitution.
The document linked to Web sites including "fixedearth.com," which asserts that Earth is the center of the universe. Chillingly, the links also offer overtly anti-Semitic rants, contending that evolutionary science supports a "centuries-old" Jewish conspiracy against Christian teachings.
Circulated under Chisum's letterhead as Appropriations Committee chairman, the memo actually was penned by Rep. Ben Bridges of the Georgia Legislature. "I ... greatly appreciate his information on this important topic," Chisum assured his Texas colleagues.
BurntOrangeReport has the pdf.
Update: Daily Kos:
Warren Chisum doesn't just believe this crap, but is evangelizing it. He may very well be the craziest winger in all of elected politics. I bet even Roy Moore believes that the earth revolves around the sun.
And this guy chairs one of the most powerful committees in the Texas legislature.
4 comments:
The web site Bridges pulled the info from says the earth isn't rotating and it doesn't orbit the sun.
sounds great!
Well, really! If we were spinning around we'd fly right off!
I never think of Warren Chisum that I don't think of the tale told of him, by the late Molly Ivins no less, in this excerpt from The Dildo Diaries. Most of Chisum's appearances are after the halfway mark in this video. Warning: not safe for work. Warning: put down your coffee before you view the very last line Molly delivers about Chisum and Talmadge Heflin.
Ha! What a woman we have lost.
"She had just finished telling one of her favorite stories (which we published in August 1993) about the Texas state legislator who introduced a bill banning sodomy, both homosexual and heterosexual, in the Great State, as she always called Texas. When this legislator succeeded in passing the bill with the help of an ally, the two men shook hands in celebration. “Whereupon, the Speaker had to send the sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both,” Molly said, “because under the new law, ‘it’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in the state.’"
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