A Creationist enters the presidential race; and she's no friend to the Polar Bears

Hear the 1 minute show:

John McCain’s decision to choose an anti-abortion, pro-creationism, death penalty diva as his vice-presidential running mate has stunned the nation. Some creationists are asking why McCain chose unknown Alaska governor Sarah Palin instead of the immensely popular national figure and avowed creationist Mike Huckabee. Besides wanting to drill for oil everywhere, Palin is also not a friend of the Polar Bear.

Sounds too strange to be true? Read on:

Palin is pro-life and a prominent member of Feminists for Life. When she was pregnant with her fifth child, Palin was told the baby had genetic abnormalities consistent with Downs Syndrome, but still chose to go through with the pregnancy. In 2006, while running for governor, Palin was asked what she would do if her own daughter were raped and became pregnant; she responded that she would "choose life" and refuse an abortion. She and her husband stated that they had "faith that every baby is created for a good purpose."

As for that man who hypothetically raped her daughter, Palin would "choose death." She is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. In 2006 she said "If the legislature passed a death penalty law, I would sign it. We have a right to know that someone who rapes and murders a child or kills an innocent person in a drive by shooting will never be able to do that again."

While running for Governor of Alaska and asked about the teaching of creationism in public school science classes, Palin answered: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Since being announced as McCain's running mate, she has shamelessly voiced her belief that global warming is man-made. As Governor, in May 2008, she had threatened to sue the federal government over the decision to list polar bears as a threatened species due to effects of climate change. She questioned the scientific basis for the listing, and warned that it would adversely affect energy development in Alaska. Governor Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

More on Sarah Palin next week as she becomes the first female Republican candidate for the vice-presidency.

What does a creationist, FedEx, and McCain’s search for a vice president have in common?

Transcript of today's show:

A secret list of 20 potential running mates was revealed by presidential hopeful John McCain today. Mike Huckabee, who wants to revise the U. S. Constitution to reflect more Biblical values, could help increase McCain's appeal among cultural conservatives. But McCain has repeatedly praised Frederick Smith, CEO of Federal Express, as an excellent VP choice from the business sector.

[source: Associated Press]

Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.

Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.

Mike Huckabee, on the campaign trail in January:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."


Video clip of CNN report on Huckabee's above comment

comment posted at One News Now:

McCain should remember that a Christian serves God first - and that alone accounts for McCain's perception that he's "his own man." In other words, he won't bow to popular opinion but will stand by the commands of Jesus. [see complete story]

Will John McCain choose a Creationist as his running mate?

Transcript of today's show:

With McCain the Republican 2008 presidential candidate, the “Dream Team” may include Mike Huckabee as the vice-presidential nominee. Huckabee proved the strength of the evangelical vote by winning the first republican Iowa caucus & then stayed in the race long after big spender Mitt Romney bowed out. McCain-Huckabee vs. Clinton-Obama would be a presidential contest of Biblical proportions.


Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.

Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.

from The News & Observer:

Who will be Arizona Sen. John McCain's running mate? Party activists are more interested than usual in his pick for three reasons:

* He needs to shore up support from conservatives, and the running mate is his best chance to do that;

* The vice presidential nominee could be first in line to win the presidential nomination the next time it's open;

* Given McCain's age -- he'd be 72 on Inauguration Day -- the presidency could come open sooner than eight years .

The most-discussed name right now is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Here are the pros and cons of Mr. Huckabee, according to conventional wisdom among the Republican party:

Pro: He's shown his ability to win in the South and has support among evangelical Christians. A solid social conservative.

Con: He raised taxes as governor and supported equal benefits for the Arkansas children of illegal immigrants. Picking him might not excite conservatives.

[read full story]

from the blog A Lanson Boy:

Huckabee is becoming just too powerful a figure to ignore. Consider McCain's position. He is unpopular with the God brigade because he is perceived as weak on abortion and gay marriage. He doesn't play well in the South and he is viewed as weak on immigration. So the whole spectrum of the right are arrayed against him. As I said before, if Obama is the Democratic candidate then the GOP could face problems in traditional red states. McCain needs a good solid bible belt southerner to shore up his position. The trouble is that there just aren't that many credible candidates around. What Huckabee has going for him is that he hs proven he can win in these states and that he was brave enough to put his head above the parapet and compete. On Super Tuesday, Huckabee won 5 states and was second in a further 3. He is a force to be reckoned with even if he cannot win.
[read full blog post]

from a commentary by Abe Greenwald, published at Commentary Magazine.com:

Since Mike Huckabee’s surprise showing on Tuesday, talk about a McCain - Huckabee ticket has neared the level of legitimate speculation. The thinking is that Huckabee victories in southern states like Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia, demonstrate the value of an Evangelical-friendly name on a GOP ticket.

When this idea was floated on Fox News Tuesday night, Karl Rove, in his new talking head role, dismissed it immediately—with good reason. Christianity Today reports that evangelical voters are now more concerned with national security than with social issues such as abortion. (Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani made that clear.) John McCain’s vision of the enemy as a threat to the American way of life is comfortably close to the Evangelical vision of jihad as a threat to Christianity. Somewhat shockingly, unlike some of the conservative media, Evangelicals can prioritize. John McCain has said many times (including, once, to me) that he’s looking for a strong national security vice president. He’d have an impossible time defending his choice of the man who didn’t know of the existence of the NIE on Iran. The compulsion to over-strategize in speculating about the McCain campaign has grown directly out of the Limbaugh-right’s insistence that McCain is embattled within the party. And in a national election, few evangelicals are going to pull the lever for Hillary or Obama over him. But if, after running almost entirely on national security, he hitched himself to a foreign policy ignoramus like Huckabee, he may first face detractors en masse.
[read complete article]

Mike Huckabee rouses evangelicals in Texas

Transcript of today's show:

Mike Huckabee has focused his Texas primary campaign on his core constituency in the Texas Bible Belt. Huckabee may bring enough conservative fundamentalist voters to the polls on March 4 to swing the balance of power on the Texas school board to supporters of creationism. One school board seat may go to Republican Barney Maddox who calls Darwin's theories "pre-Civil War fairy tales."

[source: Time]

Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.

Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.

from Greg Laden's Blog:

On one hand, we have the Huckabee factor ... Huckabee's draw on hard right voters in tomorrows primary may lead anti-evolutionists to victory. On the other hand, we have the Obama factor ... Obama's draw on moderate republicans may lead to a cleansing of pernicious liberal elements from the Republican party.

Hilary Hylton has an interesting and informative piece in, of all places, Time, about tomorrow's events in Texas. You need to know this.

Texas has a state-wide school board. This means that when it comes to textbook adoption, Texas is the largest single customer, and thus, traditionally, Texas has determined the fundamental nature of textbook production in the United States for years.

Fortunately, children nation wide are protected by the constitution even from Texans, and strong political efforts in Texas and elsewhere, including pressure on publishers, has meant that social studies and science textbooks available for adoption across the country for grade school and high school have not been as bad as they might have been had Texas conservatives succeeded in their plan to take over education nationally. [read full blog post]

from a comment posted on the Bad Astronomy Blog:

Some info for district 2 voters (which includes Corpus Christi) can be found in this article:

http://www.caller.com/news/2008/feb/26/teaching-of-evolution-may-be-affected/

The vote will be on electing a member to the State Board of Education, which determines text books used in TX schools.

Bad:

Lupe A. Gonzales wants to stop teachers from teaching science by insisting that the sound scientific theories of evolution be taught alongside creationism.

Good:

Mary Helen Berlanga wants to ‘leave God out of science’. Not because it promotes atheism, but because religion has no place in the science class.

[read full blog post]

Kathy Miller, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, quoted in an article in the Dallas Morning News:

When you think about the fact that the State Board of Education in Texas determines what every child in Texas public schools will be taught in K through 12, the impact that those members have is extraordinary on the future of Texas. These races are absolutely critical. ... Membership of the State Board of Education is clearly, very evenly divided between the far right faction of the board and everyone else. [read complete article]

It’s Darwin’s Birthday and a creationist candidate declares he will fight on for his party’s nomination

Transcript of today's show:

Last year at this time, we reported on Evolution Sunday -- an annual event that coincides with Darwin’s birthday that celebrates the compatibility of Evolution with Christianity. This year on Darwin‘s Birthday the presidential primaries are in full swing, and despite John McCain’s impressive delegate lead, Mike Huckabee is not giving up his fight to become the first confirmed Christian Creationist President.

Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.


MSNBC.com reporting on the McCain - Huckabee race:

Huckabee told reporters in Little Rock, Ark., that his close showing in Virginia proved that “there’s still a real sense in the Republican Party of a desire to have a choice.”

“We feel like if we’d had a few more days, maybe we could have closed the gap all the way,” he said.

Huckabee said he was the only “solid conservative, absolutely pro-life candidate” still in the race, and exit interviews in Virginia suggested that his message resonated. Huckabee got strong support from self-described conservatives, who made up nearly 7 in 10 voters in the Republican primary. Huckabee won half their votes.

In a surprising showing of weakness for McCain, independents, a group he has dominated, were about evenly divided. People calling themselves loyal Republicans, who have previously given McCain a slight edge, were also split down the middle.

White born-again and evangelical Christians, the keystone of Huckabee’s support all year, were favoring him by more than a 2-to-1 ration. McCain led heavily among the 6 in 10 Virginia voters who were not white born-again and evangelicals. Polls taken last week showed McCain with a double-digit lead over Huckabee, a Baptist minister, but Huckabee drew strong support in rural western Virginia, the state’s Bible belt. He appealed to Christian conservatives in Virginia, where he had the endorsement of Jerry Falwell Jr., the namesake son of the late television evangelist.
[read full story]

Republicans endorse evolution

Transcript of today's show:

In stark contrast to Iowa Republican caucus winner Mike Huckabee, prominent republican Rudy Giuliani and independent Michael Bloomberg have publicly strongly affirmed their belief in evolutionary theory. Both agree that creationism devalues science and cheapens theology, while at the same time condemning students to an inferior education with less professional opportunities. Republican New Hampshire primary winner John McCain still seems to be playing to both sides of the controversy.

Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.

Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.

from the article, Evolutionary Politics, by Ronald Bailey

A larger question is whether a candidate's belief about the validity of evolutionary biology has anything to say about his or her ability to evaluate evidence. ….

Since science and technology policy issues are only going to become more important as the 21st century unfolds, we should all care how scientific knowledge informs a president's leadership. [read full story]

from a comment posted at the blog Gene Expression:

It doesn't matter what the candidates believe. What matters is whether the American people desire someone to parrot their beliefs back to them, and what those beliefs are.

Electing a Creationist won't cause people to become Creationists. It's a question of which groups will wield social and political dominance.



from a comment posted at the blog Capitol Hill Blue:

Why is evolution important to America? It is the future of repairing our medical problems and using every source of scientific research to find out why our American culture has turned into a violent culture. My own opinion is that forcing religion on a small child removes their critical thinking process. Instead of working themselves out of trouble they simply pray and hand their problems to the sky daddy. [read full blog post]



from a comment posted at the New York Times blog City Room:

I’m tired of all the praises on so-called “middle of the road” politicians or voters. You’re for the Iraq War or you’re not. You balance budgets or you don’t. You try to catch up in education to other countries, or fight to include creationism in school. You try to slow climate change (stopping seems out of the option already) or you try to make money before Earth melts. This is perhaps our last chance to restore American competitiveness - and global survival. Take a stance. It was all those “moderates” who put Bush in the office, voted us into Iraq, wrecked federal budget surpluses with billions of tax cuts to the super-rich, etc. etc. What have they wrought. [read full article and comments]

A creationist Candidate wins the first US presidential primary

Transcript of today's show:

In a stunning victory for creationists, Mike Huckabee easily wins the Iowa Republican Caucus. Running on a platform of faith, family and freedom, the evangelical preacher turned presidential candidate confronts secular voters with the question, "is the US ready for a president who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old?"


Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]

Comment on this story.

Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.

from comments made by University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn:

The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming. I would worry that a president who didn't believe in the evolution arguments wouldn't believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin.... Scientific inquiry is not about accepting on faith a statement or scriptural passage. It's about exploring nature, so there really is not any place in the science classroom for creationism or intelligent design creationism. Holding deep religious beliefs is not incompatible with believing in evolution. But that's different to saying the two can be taught together in science class, because religion and science are two different ways of knowing about the world. They might not be incompatible but they don't overlap each other's spheres. Science class should not contain religious attitudes. [read more]

from Pride of America blog:

Since when has a President’s beliefs about the process of creation affected the world’s climate or oil supply? Maybe you can explain the parallels of that to me. It just seems random and off the wall. It seems to me that now that Governor Huckabee is in the media and news more often, attacks on him are becoming more frequent and quite frankly, more bizarre.

Why don’t we stop attacking someone’s beliefs or personal life and focus on their character or policies? I think George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan, to name a few, were some of our finest Presidents and they believed in creationism. I don’t remember hearing how their beliefs negatively affected our planet or the sea life. If anything, they helped build America up and make her what she is today. [read full blog post]

from the blog Stumbling and Mumbling:

Mike Huckabee's victory in the Iowa caucus raises the possibility that the next US President won't believe in the theory of evolution. Is this worrying? I'm not sure. There are two possible reasons why it might be, and neither are convincing.

First, what worries liberals is not so much creationism itself, which has no obvious policy implications, but rather that belief in creationism is correlated with views they find unpleasant. People who believe the bible is the word of God are disproportionately likely to oppose homosexuality and inter-racial marriage and favor tougher penalties for criminals; data are here. But insofar as Huckabee shares these attitudes - and on crime he seems not to - he can be judged on them separately.

The second problem is stated by Danny:

Who wants a President of the United States who doesn't accept the basic principles of science, taking refuge instead in a load of mumbo jumbo?

But this raises a false dichotomy. An acceptance of the theory of evolution is no evidence that one is rational. And there's no reason to suppose that a Darwinist president would make policy according to perfectly rational Bayesian principles. We are all prone to cognitive biases that make it impossible for us to hold scientific political beliefs; even Richard Dawkins falls way short of following the "basic principles of science" when he thinks about politics. Why pick on creationism when it's just one of countless irrationalities?

Indeed, there might even be a case for favoring a creationist candidate. A man who enters the White House with a reputation for being unreasonably irrational might make more effort to dispel this reputation, and so be unusually reasonable in office - in a similar way that Richard Nixon's reputation as a fierce anti-communist enabled him to pursue a policy of detente.

There may be good reasons not to want Huckabee in the White House. But his creationism isn't obviously one of them. [read full blog post]