Legislators tried to get a similar bill, SB 142, passed last year - I wrote about that one here and here.

The summary of this year's bill follows:

AN ACT relating to Bible literacy courses in the public schools.
Create a new section of KRS Chapter 156 to require the Kentucky Board of Education to promulgate administrative regulations to establish an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible; require that the course provide students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy; permit students to use various translations of the Bible for the course; amend KRS 158.197 to permit a school council to offer an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible.

Compare this to the summary description of SB 142 from 2010:

AN ACT relating to Bible literacy courses in the public schools.
Create a new section of KRS Chapter 156 to require the Kentucky Board of Education to promulgate administrative regulations to establish an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible; require that the course provide students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy; permit students to use various translations of the Bible for the course; amend KRS 158.197 to permit a school council to offer an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible.

Jenkies!  It's exactly the same!

Jenkies!

What happens when we get into the bills themselves?  (SB 56, 2011 is here, SB 142, 2010 is here.)

If you compare them side by side, they're identical, apart from the date, bill number, and sponsors.

Consequently, the concerns I had last year about this time still stand.  I'll include them here, and elaborate on some of them (elaborations denoted by bracketed italics).

1. Right out of the gate, there's a problem with defining what we're talking about when we say "The Bible".  Not only are there many different translations (e.g. NRSV, KJV, NIV, The Message), but there are multiple canons - Catholic Bibles have books that Protestant Bibles don't, Eastern Orthodox Bibles have yet a different canon, and the Tanakh has a different structure than the Christian Old Testament.  Additionally, English translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts necessarily introduce subtle changes in meaning which can affect interpretation.  And then there are the issues with textual transmission in general.  [Discussions of the Bible need to acknowledge that there has been a considerable amount of tinkering with the text down through the centuries.  Some of this tinkering was likely by well-meaning individuals who sought to clarify points in the transmitted text.  On the other hand, some of this tinkering was very likely with the intent to advance agendas or favor one orthodoxy over another.  A truly objective course on the Bible would need to acknowledge these issues and not ignore them or gloss over them.]
2. Students of different backgrounds would necessarily bring different assumptions, presuppositions, and theologies to the class.  Teaching around those differences would be difficult, particularly if the teacher isn't knowledgeable about them and skilled at recognizing his or her own biases.   [ A teacher who cannot disengage from his or her own biases and preconceptions will have a very difficult time engaging with opinions and scholarship that disagree with their beliefs.  Do the sponsors of the bill really expect the people teaching these classes to compare the Genesis creation myths with the other creation myths, or to compare the stories of Noah's flood with the Epic of Gilgamesh?]
3. While the bill states that courses must maintain religious neutrality, it's difficult to understand how a course on the Bible can be religiously neutral.  Will there be a section on the Qu'ran?  The Book of Mormon?  The Śruti?  Dianetics? [It also occurs to me that in order to truly maintain religious neutrality, we have to revisit point 1, above.  Because the proposed legislation does not require a specific version of the Bible to be used in class, there will be different versions in play.  The Biblical influence on some issues is different depending on which translation one uses.  For example, translating a word as "kill" vice "murder" is significant.]
4. Specifically, what "knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives"  are prerequisites "to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy"?  This looks suspiciously like code for a broad conservative Christian agenda, and not a non-sectarian discussion of the Bible's influence on modern society.  There are other, arguably more fundamental, "prerequisites" to understanding modern arts, culture, and policy besides the Bible, including ancient Greek literature, politics and mythology, the works of Shakespeare, and human sexuality.  [Further, the Bible (particularly - but not exclusively - the Old Testament) is rife with stories of genocide, incest, sexual manipulation, revenge, and feeding children to bears, all done by, directly or indirectly at the command of, or in the name of God.  Somehow I don't see this course covering material like the story in Genesis where Lot's daughters get him drunk, sleep with him, and become pregnant by him...]
   
5. Biblical "literacy" and "history" imply more than simply knowledge of the content of the Bible, which is what is called out in the summary.  While the text of the law itself specifies that students shall be familiarized with "(t)he history of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament" and "(t)he literary style and structure of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament", I seriously doubt that these concepts can be properly addressed within the context of a one or two semester elective. [I cynically wonder if the "history of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament" actually means "history as viewed through the lens of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament" rather than the history of how and why the material came to be written...]
6. Conspicuously absent from the bill are any specific references to the socio-political context during the periods of authorship of the various Biblical books, which have tremendous bearing on their content.  I do not think it is possible to adequately discuss the influence of the Bible on modern socio-political topics without discussing the contexts in which the Biblical books were written. [Consider, for example, the Book of Revelation.  It was written to and for people in a very specific set of circumstances, but it's significance has been horribly overemphasized by modern interpretations.  While it's true that Revelation has influenced the modern world, much of that influence has more to do with what more modern readers assume it means than what the original author intended his contemporaries to learn from it.]

In the end, I suspect what would likely happen is that courses offered under this law would end up being taught by and filled by people jumping at the chance to turn them into state-sanctioned Bible "study" sessions which are long on Bible and short on anything resembling actual study, and that would probably be more about the people in the class affirming their own beliefs rather than trying to learn anything new.

I've said before that I'm completely in favor of people learning about the Bible and its history and background, but if all you do in a Bible study is look at the material in terms of what the leader thinks God was trying to say and ignore what the humans who actually wrote it were trying to say to their contemporaries, you've missed the point.

-Jay

Unless you live in a cave, you're aware of the TSA's new airport security screening procedures.

In a nutshell, depending on what airport you're going through, you might be subjected to a full-body scan and/o an "enhanced" pat-down.

The scans are of two types - Backscatter X-ray and Millimeter Wave scans.  Both of these techniques work because the energy in the scan passes through fabric and reflects off of skin.  The resulting images are rather like this:

y

TSA-Released Sample of a Backscatter X-Ray Image

Images from millimeter-wave scans are somewhat less distinct, but even so, I can understand why folks are upset about this.  (Personally, while I'm not thrilled about the scans, if the image above is as detailed as it gets, and if there are reasonable controls on the images, and if they weren't being used as a first layer of security on adults only, then I could probably live with them.)

Refusing the scan triggers the enhanced pat-down, which is gut-wrenchingly described here (women, when you read this, put yourself in the author's position.  Men, imagine this being told to you by a woman you're close to, and remember that you, too, will likely have to go through a similar experience.):

Erin's Story.  (Link via Amy)

One of the aspects to this that doesn't seem to get enough attention is that kids will be put through this as well.  Consider that we've spent decades telling our children not to let strangers touch them, but now they may not be able to avoid that:

Advice from Sarina Behar Natkin about how to prepare your kids for a possible security pat-down.  (Also via Amy)

And for survivors of rape or other sexual abuse, the experience may simply be unendurable:

Bug_girl at Skepchick has some thoughts, and Jezebel's Irin Carmon has some additional words on the matter.

Finally, MSNBC reports that a U.S. Airways flight attendant and cancer survivor was forced to show her breast prosthesis to a TSA agent during a security screening.

Incredibly, a number of news outlets are reporting the results of a CBS survey as showing that 81% of survey respondents support the enhanced security measures.

Only, they don't.

The 81% number from CBS Survey is in response to the following question: "Should Airports Use Full-Body X-Ray Machines?"

I suspect the survey numbers would have reflected a much lower level of approval to the following proposition:  "Should TSA Agents Touch Travelers' (Including Minors) Genitalia As Part Of Security Pat-Downs?"

A big problem is that TSA appears to function primarily in a reactive mode - Richard Reid tries to light his shoes so everyone has to send their shoes through the scanner.  Someone loads their underwear up with explosives, so TSA has to perform panty-checks.  I'd wager that nobody will be carrying toner cartridges onto planes for a while.  I shudder to think about what happens when someone gets taken off a plane with explosives hidden internally, since at that point you're basically up to full body-cavity searches.

The fact of the matter is that there are only a limited number of things you can do with a plane.  The most relevant are:

1. You can try to hijack it and crash it into something, but after 9/11, I think that's fairly unlikely to happen.  I believe that locked cockpits and a generation of passengers who watched the Towers fall have cut that option out.
2. You can blow it up.  Preventing this is, at the heart, an explosives detection problem and not an identify-the-bad-guys problem.  Better cargo screening (including carry-on cargo) is a huge part of the solution.  Better techniques to detect explosive signatures on clothing and hands is another.

Pawing up under the skirts of female travelers and groping their breasts isn't going to improve security.  Nor is juggling the testicles of male travelers.  Nor will traumatizing children, cancer survivors, and rape victims.  Those will, however, push the Bad Guys to figure out better ways to hide things.

Brilliant.

-Jay

Yes, none other than Sarah Palin.

Two years after she first achieved national recognition as John McCain's perplexing choice of running-mate, Palin still manages to keep her name in the news.

I remain puzzled.

PalinWorld is just weird.

On one hand, there is the whole circus side-show vibe that follows Sarah's ex-future(x2) son-in-law, Levi Johnston.

What a Tool...

It's not enough that he did the whole Playgirl thing, but now he's running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.  Wasilla, of course, is where Sarah started out her illustrious political career.  Yeah, OK, Levi.  Hope that works out for ya.

On the other hand, you've got daughter Bristol landing a spot on Dancing With the Stars, which I guess is OK, but it's kind of surreal.  I have a hard time deciding what I think of Bristol.  At one point, I thought she might be the only person in the whole Palin-palooza circus that had any sense about her, but her brief re-engagement to Johnston, discussions of a reality TV show, and apparent desire to remain in the public eye have me questioning that.

And finally, on the other other hand, you've got Sarah, the matriarch of the clan, and the subject of the article I linked to above.

The Vanity Fair piece is sourced from a lot of people who didn't want to be identified for fear of reprisal, and it's got something of a hit-piece feel to it, but nevertheless it has an internal consistency that lends it some credibility.

The thrust of the article is that the well-maintained public image of Palin that we saw in the '08 campaign and that we see now is little more than a distorted reflection of the reality.  According to the sources of the article, most of what we think we know about Sarah Palin, from her family relationships to her public piety is fabricated.

I wasn't particularly surprised to read that she's got a vindictive streak to her, or that she and her husband fight a lot, but I was surprised to read that she may have accepted the VP nomination without much (if any) discussion with her family.

There's also some discussion that suggests that she may not be as religiously conservative as she seems, although I'm not really convinced of that - she speaks the language of ultra-conservative Christianity far too fluently to be putting on a facade.

Anyway, it's an article worth reading whether you think that Sarah Palin is a genius or a vapid twit.  Check it out.

-Jay

That this actually surprises anyone is interesting - drug traffickers have been using variations on the theme for quite a while - but what really piques my curiosity is how anyone would even begin to develop a workable policy to counter threats like this that doesn't involve groping every female passenger that goes through a security line.  (And make no mistake - it would be the women getting groped, and it would somehow be justified that the amount of explosives that could get implanted undetectably in a man's buttocks wouldn't be enough to take down a plane, but imagine the carnage if the Pussycat Dolls all blew up on a flight...) 
   

The Pussycat Dolls: Musical Act or Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Perhaps some new X-ray scanner can determine the difference between normal implants and explosive ones without requiring the groping step, or perhaps the way to screen for this sort of thing is to look for detonation devices and not the explosives themselves. 

The bigger problem here, I think, is that if the terrorists are determined enough, they'll find ways to blow things up regardless of how many additional steps get added to passenger screening processes.  An associated issue is that (at least publicly) we seem to be constantly reacting to threats - Richard Reid tried to light explosives in his shoes, so now we have our shoes screened at the airport - rather than anticipating new threats or addressing broader categories (such as better detection of explosives in general rather than explosives hidden in specific ways.)¹

It's a tough problem to tackle. 

-Jay
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¹This is, in some ways, an artifact of the way news gets reported. There is work being done to improve explosive detection, but it doesn't seem to get as much press as the latest restrictions that travellers see in security lines.

The Mayor

The local political scene isn't normally very exciting to me. Louisville has had the same mayor since 1986 (with the exception of a stretch from 1999-2003 during which the local government reorganized), and he's been popular enough that he's been effectively unchallenged whenever he's come up for reelection.  

Last year he decided not to run for what would be his sixth term overall (his third under the reorganized government), and instead take a shot at the Lieutenant Governor's office.  

This has thrown the field wide open, and as of this writing, there are approximately eleventy thousand people considering running for the soon-to-be-available Mayor's office.  

Including Connie Marshall.  

An article appeared this morning in the Louisville Courier-Journal describing Marshall's...unusual...history and political platform.  I'll need to start with an excerpt from the article because there's no way I could do this justice on my own (emphasis mine):  

Before she began her bid to become Louisville's next mayor, Connie Marshall's public life could be traced through more than a dozen lawsuits she has filed in U.S. District Court against corporations and federal, state and local government officials.  

Marshall said in an interview that she is the victim of discrimination, abuse, government surveillance and electromagnetic attacks, which she describes as piercing and humming electronic sounds that come into her home through telephones or other electronic devices.  

She said the assaults come from satellites or drones that often hover above her western Louisville home, causing her pain and sometimes paralyzing her for minutes. She's not sure who is behind the attacks, other than “corrupt officials on the state and federal level.”  

Satellites?  Drones?  Seriously?   

Marshall's reasons for running for mayor have something to do with wanting to rescue her grandchildren from foster care, which they apparently were placed in after Marshall was attacked at work and after she was involved in a class-action suit against federal judges.  It's not clear from the article  whether those events are in any way connected.   

Ms. Marshall, a former Tina Turner impersonator (!), claims she wants to eliminate the corruption in the Metro government that she believes has victimized her and others through the years.  

Among her claims:  

1. Her telephone is often rerouted.
2. Her email is blocked.
3. Her postal mail is intercepted.
4. She is being watched through her television ("You can tell when it's happening because the TV (screen) gets real bright.")
5. The fact that she has never won a lawsuit is evidence of government corruption.

I wonder if somewhere these guys fit in:   

Marshall has attracted the support of Derrick Robinson, founder of an organization called  Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance, a group dedicated to, well, being free from covert harassment and surveillance, including the electronic attacks and mind control that the U.S. Government has been researching for decades.¹  

One problem with claims like Ms. Marshall's is that they're difficult to falsify²  - if she wins a lawsuit (for example), it's proof that she's been victimized, but if she loses all of her lawsuits, it also proves that she's being victimized.  If nobody else can see the drones over her house, it's not because there are no drones - it's because they're hovering above the clouds, or because they're cloaked, or because they moved. 

Over and above the rather unusual nature of her claims, though, is the fact that she seems to be basing her candidacy on a set of personal grudges rather than on any particular set of goals that one would normally associate with the office of mayor.   She's also shown nothing in the way of apparent qualifications to hold the office, apart from the trivially obvious ones like being alive and breathing.  It's not clear how being a former Tina Turner impersonator would prepare one for public office.  Perhaps she can seek some advice from Sarah Palin...  

I'm not sure why the C-J felt the need to put Ms. Marshall's issues on the front page of the paper today with almost nothing in the way of criticism or evaluation.  They seem, at best, fringe, and by featuring them so prominently, the C-J may be lending them more credibility than they deserve. 

-Jay  

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¹To be as fair as I can, I will point out that the CIA has conducted research into various behavioral/mind control techniques, and much of what is known about these programs is quite bizarre.  I'm reasonably certain, though, that none of it involved covertly observing people through their TVs.  

²Joshua Zelinsky had a good post discussing falsifiability at Religion, Sets, and Politics.  Falsifiability is a very useful criterion for assessing many claims, but it isn't the only one or even necessarily the best one.

The lone nay vote came from Kathy Stein (D-Lexington), who was quoted as saying “public schools in Kentucky can and already do teach comparative religion.”

She also astutely pointed out the absurdity of the claims of religious neutrality in the bill.

Quite honestly, the neutrality claims are absolutely,  stunningly ridiculous.  It's amazing to me that anyone actually has the gumption to claim that a course teaching the Bible doesn't stake out a position of favor for Christianity.  (Depending on how the Hebrew Scriptures are taught, they might be able to squeeze in Judaism, too, barely.)

Do the Kentucky elected officials not realize that there are many different religions out there besides the various flavors of Christianity and Judaism?

-Jay

SB 142 would require the Kentucky Board of Education to set up regulations to establish an elective course on Biblical literacy.  The full text of the bill may be found here, but most¹ of it is summarized thus (from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission):

Create a new section of KRS Chapter 156 to require the Kentucky Board of Education to promulgate administrative regulations to establish an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible; require that the course provide students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy; permit students to use various translations of the Bible for the course; amend KRS 158.197 to permit a school council to offer an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible.

In principle, a non-sectarian Biblical Literacy/Biblical History class might not be a bad idea as a high school elective.²

As a practical matter, though, I think it would prove very challenging to do this well, for a number of reasons, including:

1. Right out of the gate, there's a problem with defining what we're talking about when we say "The Bible".  Not only are there many different translations (e.g. NRSV, KJV, NIV, The Message), but there are multiple canons - Catholic Bibles have books that Protestant Bibles don't, Eastern Orthodox Bibles have yet a different canon, and the Tanakh has a different structure than the Christian Old Testament.  Additionally, English translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts necessarily introduce subtle changes in meaning which can affect interpretation.  And then there are the issues with textual transmission in general...
2. Students of different backgrounds would necessarily bring different assumptions, presuppositions, and theologies to the class.  Teaching around those differences would be difficult, particularly if the teacher isn't knowledgable about them and skilled at recognizing his or her own biases.
3. While the bill states that courses must maintain religious neutrality, it's difficult to understand how a course on the Bible can be religiously neutral.  Will there be a section on the Qu'ran?  The Book of Mormon?  The Śruti?  Dianetics?
4. Specifically, what "knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives"  are prerequisites "to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy"?  This looks suspiciously like code for a broad conservative Christian agenda, and not a non-sectarian discussion of the Bible's influence on modern society.  There are other, arguably more fundamental, "prerequisites" to understanding modern arts, culture, and policy besides the Bible, including ancient Greek literature, politics and mythology, the works of Shakespeare, and human sexuality.³
5. Biblical "literacy" and "history" imply more than simply knowledge of the content of the Bible, which is what is called out in the summary.  While the text of the law itself specifies that students shall be familiarized with "(t)he history of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament" and "(t)he literary style and structure of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament", I seriously doubt that these concepts can be properly addressed within the context of a one or two semester elective.
6. Conspicuously absent from the bill are any specific references to the socio-political context during the periods of authorship of the various Biblical books, which have tremendous bearing on their content.  I do not think it is possible to adequately discuss the influence of the Bible on modern socio-political topics without discussing the contexts in which the Biblical books were written. 

The bottom line is that I'm not at all certain that a proper, non-sectarian curriculum could be put together for a class like this, and even if one could be, I'm not sure that's even the real intent.

To see why, we need to look at some of the comments of Senators quoted in the Courier-Journal article:

“The Bible is the most widely read book, and it’s also the most best-selling book of all time,”  (bill sponsor Sen. David) Boswell (D- Owensboro) said. “There are so many aspects of the Scriptures relevant to the subjects we are already teaching.”

He said the course would be constitutional “as long as we teach it and not preach it.”

Or:

Sen. Elizabeth Tori, R-Radcliff, told co-sponsors Boswell and Sen. Julian Carroll, D-Frankfort, that “an angel was sent down on your shoulders” prompting “you to put this bill together.”

“I‘ve said for many years that until we put God back into our households, things in society will not change for the better,” Tori said. “Your bill is the first step to that change.”

Or:

Carroll said that as long as the course is taught pursuant to the law as a “historical document” and not a “faith-based document,” the bill would be legal. But he then spoke about “taking the Bible out of the school” and “putting nothing back in.”

“When we took the Bible out the school, we also unfortunately took out that portion of Bible which relates to life skills and value systems,” Carroll said. “Our students these days do not have the full opportunity, in my judgment, to be taught those life skills that keep them out of our penitentiaries and make them a productive citizen.”

We should consider comments like these along with the part of the bill that the C-J didn't report on (and that isn't listed in the LRC summary):

(5) Any school council organized pursuant to KRS 160.345 or, if none exists, the principal, may authorize the display of historic artifacts, monuments, symbols, and texts, including but not limited to religious materials, in conjunction with a course of study that includes an elective course in history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, literature, or other subject area that uses such artifacts, monuments, symbols, and texts as instructional material if the display is:

(a)    Appropriate to the overall educational purpose of the course; and

(b)    Consistent with the requirements of KRS 42.705.⁴

All in all, this leads me to suspect that the whole enterprise is a not-very-well-disguised ploy to make an end-run around the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  It doesn't take much to envision a course being put in place in a school and then being used as an umbrella to justify a display of the Ten Commandments. 

Now, I'm all for people learning more about the history and content of the Bible.  Far too many people who claim to hold it in high regard have a very poor understanding of what it contains and how it came to be what it is.⁵ 

I just don't think this bill is going to get us there.

-Jay

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¹The part that isn't in the summary is interesting. I'll get to that later.

²Personally, I'd make some sort of world history/civilization class a prerequisite to it.

³The word "prerequisite" implies a necessary dependency.  The fact that there are contemporary societies and cultures that are not Christian or Jewish that produce literature, art, music, oratory, and public policy and have their own social mores strongly argues against the proposition that knowledge of biblical content is a prerequisite to understanding these topics in general.  Further, one could argue that trying to interpret such cultures through a Biblical lens actually distorts the understanding of them. 

⁴The relevant sections KRS 42.705 are sections (12) and (13):

(12) Historic artifacts, monuments, symbols, and texts, including but not limited to religious materials, may be displayed in Kentucky's public schools, within the framework of applicable legal precedents, if they are displayed in connection with a course of study that is academic, balanced, objective, and not devotional in nature, and that neither favors nor disfavors religion generally or any particular religious belief; and
(13) Historic artifacts, monuments, symbols, and texts, including but not limited to religious materials, may be displayed in Kentucky's public buildings and on Kentucky's public properties if they are displayed in a:
(a) Balanced, objective, and not solely religious manner;
(b) Manner that neither favors nor disfavors religion generally;
(c) Manner that neither favors nor disfavors any religious belief; and
(d) Manner which promotes the display of Kentucky's historic, cultural, political, and general heritage and achievements.

⁵My Sunday School class was very surprised when I mentioned the story of Elisha and the bears (2 Kings 2:23).  They didn't expect a story about bears mauling kids to be in the Bible.

Obama spoke about hard work, taking responsibility for one's actions, and the importance of education.  The last time I checked, all of these were things that are generally considered good, indeed noble.

Why, then, do we have opinion letters like this coming into the newspapers?

Giving a public figure exclusive access to every school child in America lends credence to that person's entire point of view. Whether stated in Obama's speech or not, my concern is that this world view is being indirectly propagated to American schoolchildren, serving no “educational purpose.”  Why else would proposed lesson plans put out by the White House include “writing letters on how you can help the President” or “list three of the most important words in the speech”? (From The Courier-Journal, 8 September 2009)

One could go on at length about the access public figures get to school-age children.  Try walking through a big-box department store like Walmart or Target without seeing Miley Cyrus' immaculately veneered teeth smiling back at you. 

One could go on at length about how one of the many responsibilities parents have is to discuss different points of view with their children.¹ 

One could go on at length about how writing letters to the President is pretty much a standard assignment for elementary school students, or that picking out key ideas from a speech (or an article, or a book) is an essential skill for anyone who expects to read anything more complicated than Green Eggs and Ham.  (UPDATE:  I've been provided with a link to the White House Lesson Plan.  Thanks, Amy!)

It's interesting how much of the hue and cry surrounding the broadcast of Obama's speech centers on the desire by some parents to shelter their children from other viewpoints, to the extent that many are apparently ignoring what the speechactually says.  Sorry.  If you think that "be responsible, work hard, and stay in school" is a viewpoint that children need to be shetered from, you're an idiot.

Where the whole thing takes a turn for the bizarre is when you get into the fringe groups - the birthers, for example, who will probably maintain well after Obama has left office that he wasn't qualified to be elected in the first place.   Parse this out and you'll see what makes this funny.  You have people out there who are, in effect, saying "We don't want hisviewpoints given wide publicity, but we want you to give our crackpot conspiracy fantasy equal media time because we have opinions and our opinions are as valid as anyone else's."

Wait, what?  This seems like a good opportunity to state a few points:

1. It is true that everyone is entitled to hold their own opinions on things.
2. Opinions work best when they're based on facts.
3. One set of facts may support multiple opinions.
4. Different opinions based on the same set of facts can make for interesting and productive discussion.
5. Opinions that deliberately ignore or misrepresent facts, or that assume facts not in evidence, don't share the same status with fact-supported opinions.

In other words, everyone has their own opinions, but some of those opinions just crap.

Probably the best commentary I've seen on this comes from Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy:

If I sound angry, then, yeah, I am. I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

It’s killing any real debate in this country, where the system of government depends utterly on a well-informed public. When rampant idiocy is presented as reasonable discourse without any rebuttal, then we all suffer.

Beautiful. 

Jay
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¹This is one of the key reasons my kids are in public schools - the social, cultural, and ideological diversity that they experience will serve them very well in the long run.

The court decision, in a nutshell, flagged the wording as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The September 5, 2009 Louisville Courier-Journal reports that Kentucky AG Jack Conway has formally filed an appeal against the court's ruling:

Attorney General Jack Conway, who represents the state, decided to appeal the ruling because the law in question “merely acknowledges religion” and does not try to establish it, said Shelly Catharine Johnson, deputy communications director for Conway's office. (Courier-Journal, Sept 5, 2009)

The judge in the case, Thomas Wingate, commented that the wording in question "likely would have been permissible had it allowed officials to merely request God's help in protecting Kentucky." (Courier-Journal, Sept 5, 2009)

I disagree with both Conway and Wingate, most strongly with the position of Conway's office.

The word "dependence" obviates Conway's contention.  Dependence implies a necessity, not a simple acknowledgment, and the use of the term "Almighty God" heavily constrains the religions that could possibly be referenced here.  (Particularly in the context of a Homeland Security office, which is inextricably linked with terrorism, which in turn is so closely associated with Islamic fundamentalism as to be synonymous with it.)  Indeed, the selection of words in question can hardly be seen as anything other than a direct endorsement of Christianity, which is precisely the sort of endorsement that is prohibited under the Establishment Clause.

Wingate is apparently trying to suggest some wording that might stand up to an Establishment Clause challenge, but such wording isn't needed - nothing prevents officials from requesting God's help in protecting Kentucky (or anything else), and it also falls into the same bin as Conway's argument.  (It would be interesting to see if anyone suggests replacing "God" with "God/Allah" or something along that line, since the claim is sometimes made that the Abrahamic religions all worship the same god using different names.)

In any case, regardless of how you unpack the language, there's simply no reason to include any sort of sectarian reference into the law, let alone one so vague and unbounded as this one.  Mr. Conway has put himself into a battle that he will almost certainly lose, and has unwisely risked the credibility of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the process.  The only positive I can see coming from this is that if he appeals the matter high enough, it could make it much easier to get language like this removed in the future.¹

CB
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¹Church/State Separation (CSS) is a concept that protects everyone, regardless of the specifics of their particular faith.  Despite what some conservative Christian groups try to argue, CSS does not result in "oppression" of Christians, or anyone else.  People in the United States have unprecedented freedom to believe and worship, which is obvious if you open the phone book and look up "Churches" or "Houses of Worship".  What CSS prevents is the government favoring one faith over another.  Since the U.S. is predominantly Christian, a lot of folks don't understand why Christian references are a problem.  Leaving aside for the moment that not everyone is a Christian, it's worth pointing out that even among the nominally Christian denominations, there is a huge spectrum of beliefs, not all of which play well in the same sandbox (for example, some Protestant groups are venemously anti-Catholic, and would likely oppose legislation that specifically favored Catholicism).  The only way to be equitable to everyone is to keep religion out of government entirely.

Levi, in case you've been living in a cave for the last year, came to be famous during the McCain/Palin Presidential run when it came to light that he was the father of then-pregnant Bristol Palin's child.¹

Despite a lot of talk of marriage, Bristol and Levi broke up around the time the baby was born. Bristol seems to have largely stepped out of the spotlight. Levi, on the other hand, appears to be determined to hop to whatever part of the stage the spotlight happens to be shining on.

This time he's in an upcoming Vanity Fair revealing fairly intimate details about the Palin family's private life. 

Now, as much as I don't like Sarah Palin qua a public figure, and regardless of the fact that since she is a public figure, much (but not all) of her life is open to media scrutiny, I find Johnston's actions to be reprehensible - he's basically making money off of airing other people's dirty laundry. 

That's just sleazy.

CB

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¹In fairness, thrusting an expectant teen couple onto the national stage at all, let alone in the context of a Presidential campaign, was just insane. To her credit, Bristol appears to be handling herself in her role as a young mother with a considerable amount of maturity.