It was both scary and pathetic at the Discovery Channel in Maryland today when an environmental terrorist took hostages in an attempt to force the television network to show more programs on Malthus and Darwin and to rail against over-population and global warming.

Oddly missing from initial news accounts was any mention of Darwin. But, in James J. Lee's manifesto, emerges this clear demand: "Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!"

Another odd thing is that the Discovery Channel probably runs more programs about Darwinian evolution than any other network, even PBS. Indeed, if I close my eyes and try to visualize "Discovery Channel" the image that forms is of a cartoon amphibian crawling out of the primordial pond, growing simian legs, making fire and developing into a TV news anchor.

In the news stories of the Columbine massacre several years ago the Darwin angle also was missed, though it had been explicit in the rants of the young killer/suicides. Now it's Mr. Lee's turn to have his message revised.

Enacting speech codes on college campuses is one of those causes that leftists pursue to win arguments on which they cannot prevail democratically. It all sounds so reasonable and humane, avoiding "hurtful words", based on race, gender, etc., etc. But, in the end, the codes are really about stifling dissent. They almost always are applied against conservatives. If, indeed, a conservative tries to use a speech code against an "offensive" liberal, the judges (all liberals) will likely throw the case out, or maybe even reverse the case to target the party complaining.

From the beginning it should have been obvious that speech codes are inherently opposed to the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The courts are now weighing in, and not a moment too soon. The Alliance Defense Fund deserves special congratulations for its leadership on these matters. A victory in the Third District court can now be applied elsewhere in the country.

By George Gilder

A bottom-up regime of Darwinian materialism has turned science on its head. Yet is presented as the sole tenable explanation for human life and natural diversity. The new regime essentially flattens the Universe. Replacing the story of creation--the rumored God and hierarchical cosmos--is an ebullition of accidental and purely physical fact. All reality is said to be derivable from such physically ascertainable and testable facts. 

"Just the facts, Mam!" So can be summed up the new flat cosmos. I remember that canonical phrase from my childhood. I heard it as I clutched my new transistor radio--the dazzling new technology of my youth--to hear tales of tough interrogation by a no-nonsense detective named Jack Webb on a program called Dragnet. Or was it Joseph Welch at the Army McCarthy hearings before the US Senate? Through the fogs of time, the voices all converge but the message remains: "Just the facts." 

In my memory, the program on the radio segued into black and white television stories of Earle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason, the sage and upright defense lawyer, also insisting on the primacy of facts. Finally came Sergeant Colombo (or was it Walter Cronkite?) upholding the same moral universe of physical factuality, with all other hierarchical forms of power or claims of authority banished to the lapsarian fringes. 

When intelligent design theory first erupted into widespread attention about 15 years ago we were told by Darwinians and their media Greek Chorus that ID was an inadmissible topic because it was really "religion," not "science," or, alternately, it was "philosophy and not science." (I well recall the long ABC TV interview of Steve Meyer, demanding repeatedly, "Who do you think the designer is?!") To their shame, some theistic evolutionists (like embryonic stem cell research promoter, Francis Collins) have given their backing to that prejudice.

In reality, ID theorists always made clear that the theory is part of historical science, exactly like Darwin's theory. There are religious implications from ID, just as there are from Darwin's theory, but we have always agreed that the scientific evidence should be allowed to stand on its own.

But, never mind. What we have seen in the past few years is a complete destruction of any supposed wall between science and religion, and the destruction has not been wrought by supporters of ID, but by hard core Darwinists and other scientific materialists. Whether it is biologist Richard Dawkins and his Internet Sancho Panza, P.Z. Myers, or, in physics, Stephen Hawking, the wraps are off. For them, not only is science about religion, religion is the main purpose of science--attacking religion, that is.

It was instructive that when Dawkins left his chair at Oxford and started a charity, he didn't direct the proceeds to science teaching or research, but to promotion of atheism. "Where your treasure is, there also is your heart."

It's a refreshing contrast to see the distinguished John Lennox of Oxford taking Hawking on directly on topic, not pulling back at all.

By the way, the increasingly open presentation of science-as-applied-atheism completely bankrupts the strategy of groups like the National Committee for Science Education that pretend that their business is about science and not religion. Their real business is about assuring a monopoly of public education for scientific materialism, period. You can be sure that neither the NCSE nor the equally misnamed Americans United for the Separation of Church and State--nor the ACLU--mind at all if Stephen Hawkings' opinions and those of Richard Dawkins attacking God are taught in school rooms. When those groups sue schools for bringing anti-religious messages into schools will, indeed, be the day Hell freezes over.

When the Berlin War was brought down (thank you Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II) a naive person might have expected the peace marchers who banged and clanged their way across the world stage for three decades to return to the streets and dance for joy. Peace had arrived. No more threat of a nuclear war with the Soviets.

Or maybe they would start marching in support of efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation in rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

Fat chance. The peaceniks' reply to the collapse of the Soviet system was a terse "No comment"--as they revised their signs to protest use of oil and gas, save the whales, etc.

So do great enthusiasms of the left and its media voices terminate once history overtakes them.

These days we see it in the dawning acknowledgement that the 2.7 billion dollar Human Genome Project was over-sold. Remember how it was going to cure everything from cancer to corns? President Clinton said it was not only the most important thing in science, it was the biggest thing of any kind, ever, or something like that. Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last we've found you!

Now, however, we have stories like this one in the Chronicle of Higher Education that simply shrug: well, yes, the Human Genome project "failed to deliver what it promised--a code book in which we could identify the genes responsible for many diseases", but--hey!--there are lots of other cool ideas we can get grants for!

All the media, including the supposedly conservative media, have buried or simply ignored the part of James J. Lee's manifesto that dealt with Darwinian evolution. How come?

I wrote about the connection the day that Lee held hostages at Discovery Channel and was killed. But now David Klinghoffer has done the service of exploring the full background of Lee's mania. The heart of it is his obsession with the environmental consequences of over-population. And yes, it is directly connected with Darwin---except that all the reporters I have followed chose not to notice.

Economic news in Europe is beginning to reflect the continuing prospect of a debt default by Greece, regardless of current austerity measures. Leaving the Eurozone is one option for Greece, regarded by some as the "least terrible" and others as the most terrible. Riots, even "civil war", are predicted.

Regardless, a Greek default could lead to other disruptions in Eurozone and, initially, to a general weakening of the Euro. It is hard to believe that strengthening the EU was considered inevitable only three years ago. Not any more.

Germans in particular do not want to pay Greece's bills. Some Germans think that in the long run the Eurozone would be stronger with much more fiscal stringency.

All of this forms another potential pothole in the path of economic recovery in North America and Europe. In the long run, however, it is important for real costs to be borne opening in any society. A confederation like the EU is especially vulnerable when real costs are hidden.

Maybe if a dozen or so ships attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, that would work. At least, so thinks a coalition of anti-Israeli groups, including the well-financed Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) and something called the Free Gaza Movement.

The Israelis believe that they can deal with this threat, even if they have to intercept the ships well out to sea.

In any case, it is hard to make a souffle rise twice, and the public relations tricks of the first flotilla last May 31 probably will be met by more adroit Israeli prevention techniques. It bears repeating to anyone who will listen, that Gaza is not destitute, nor deprived of medical care and foodstuffs. Any of these, once inspected by Israeli officials on land, can enter Gaza. The problem is military equipment.

Stratfor is reporting that Iran is busy funding still more rockets and other weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. You have to deny this reality to persist in demanding that Israel drop its blockade.

Fortunately, like previous efforts to launch a new flotilla, this new one is more in the constant planning stage than in imminent likelihood of watery launch. Since some of the organizers are anti-Israeli Jews, and much of the support is from anti-Israeli Islamists, the situation should make for interesting late night scheming.

Pardon my cynicism, but I suspect that on such evenings various sets of spies mainly will wind up talking to one another. Who would you trust in such an operation?

The Tea Party movement is a protest against big government spending, high taxation and over-regulation. You might say that the Internet is a protest against dominance of news and commentary by Big Media.

But there are other oppressive monopolies that are being challenged. And still other challenges are coming.

For example, there is rumbling against the largely unchecked power of large government unions that manage to grow and prosper as the private sector shrinks--and also escape much of the scrutiny that accompanies individuals' and businesses' forays into politics.

There is the growing frustration with a higher education monopoly. As the public finds out about sweetheart deals for tenured faculty and bureaucracy, and costs for students (and parents) rocket upwards, a higher education bubble is developing.

A man who reports he is dying of throat cancer, yet persists in arguing his claims for atheism, was perhaps the real fascination of Tuesday night's debate in Birmingham, Alabama between Chris Hitchens and David Berlinski. Both men are recent and frequent authors and were presented at a pre-debate book signing by the debate sponsor, Fixed Point Foundation. An audience of 1,200 attended the subsequent debate.

CBS's Sixty Minutes (doing a program on Hitchens) covered the occasion, as did C-Span. Hitchens' illness, following on publication of his memoirs this summer, provided more than usual interest in what had to be viewed as a very relevant topic. Is it religion that "poisons everything," as Hitchens says, or is it atheism, as Berlinski states?

Here is the Birmingham News story.

Does anyone surpass the Brits for staging ceremonial occasions? This short You Tube video shows the BBC Proms audience joining in the Benjamin Britten arrangement of the National Anthem, "God Save the Queen." The performance is poignant, gentle, yet strong. Note the regional flags along with the Union Jack.

It is, shall we say, like watching a train wreck. In various places, such as Wisconsin, the federal passenger rail program has become a symbol for the wastefulness of the Obama Administration. Republican and Democratic candidates for US Senate and Governorare at sword points over the issue.

In Wisconsin and elsewhere Democrats apparently want high speed inter-city passenger rail even under the present arrangements and Republicans primarily want to stop wasteful spending. Losing out in this Hobson's choice (no new passenger rail service or government bloat) is an objective analysis that might show how passenger rail responsibly can and should have a comeback for inter-city service, especially over intermediate distances (over 75 miles, under 500). It's the option that has been ignored by the Democrats and all but ignored by Republicans-- reform.

Reform in this context starts with two principles: 1) public works, including rail projects, should be managed as DBOMs--projects where the same winning bidders design, build, operate and even maintain the infrastructure. This lowers costs and usually maximizes private sector investment. 2) Encourage private contractors to bid for service on existing routes as well as new ones. If the private sector can figure out how to make money on a route, why should taxpayers continue to fund Amtrak to run it?

Recently, a French company won a Virginia contest to take over rail traffic from Amtrak. That is nearly unprecedented. Meanwhile, Amtrak has made the remarkable decision to fire its government Inspector General. Clearly, organizational reform is needed, too.

If the Republicans win either house of Congress, they should finally push for passenger rail reform. But first they have to decide whether any infrastructure will have their support, especially any future for passenger rail.

A YouGov poll in Britain shows a plurality of voters (47 percent to 33 percent) would vote to extricate their country from the European Union.

A YouGov press release notes, "The older generation appear particularly keen for Britain to leave its EU days behind. A substantial 57% of those over 60 say they would vote to leave the EU, compared to 31% of the younger 18-24 age group."

"This comes," the YouGov report continues, "as Conservative European MP Daniel Hannan launches a cross-party campaign to demand a referendum on Britain's EU membership, the promise of which has made and broken by multiple prime ministers during election campaigns."

Trouble is, none of the major parties supports reducing the UK's role in the European Union. But poll results like these certainly will retard any efforts to expand that role.

Tonight's victories by Tea Party candidates in Delaware, New York and New Hampshire will be all over the news in the morning, and happily commenting on them will be Scott Rassmussen (of the Rassmussen Poll) and Doug Schoen. They are authors of Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System.

Their book's pub date is today. How is that for timing?

"So-called professionals in politics, business, and media have completely failed to comprehend the grassroots challenge to the status quo and have dismissed it as marginal and extreme," says the promo literature. "The authors explore the broad-based nature of the Tea Party movement and explain how it is reshaping American politics--whether politicians and elite journalists like it or not."

American media have tended to uncritical worship before Stephen Hawking and his new tome, a rebuke of The Grand Design. The Wall Street Journal has had three articles on it, one by Hawking.

On CNN, Larry King was like a flustered peasant bowing before an oracle: he reads a question, the oracle speaks, he reads the next question...

The English themselves are not in such awe. There has been a small parade of dismissive reviews, including some by bored scientists who found nothing new in Hawking's argument that natural laws are sufficient to explain the universe. In The Daily Mail, Oxford mathematician John Lennox writes, "(T)he beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication and integrity of his creation.

"The very reason science flourished so vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries was precisely because of the belief that the laws of nature which were then being discovered and defined reflected the influence of a divine law-giver."

Among the eyes-open reviews is that of The Economist.

"Despite much talk of the universe appearing to be 'fine-tuned' for human existence, the authors do not in fact think that it was in any sense designed. And once more we are told that we are on the brink of understanding everything.

"The authors may be in this enviable state of enlightenment, but most readers will not have a clue what they are on about."

Their claims, says The Economist, are only "another tease".

On the Larry King show last week--stuck between the host's overly deferential treatment of Stephen J. Hawking, the windy interjections of Hawking co-author Leonard Mlodinow and the smiling ruminations of Deepak Chopra--Fr. Robert Spitzer barely had a chance to clear his throat. Always introduced as a Jesuit, never as the physicist and former college president (Gonzaga) that he also is, Fr. Spitzer was lucky to get in a few comments about the way the Church thinks about the origins of the universe.

No mention was made by Larry King of Fr. Spitzer's new book, Evidence for God, that addresses cosmology directly. (See also a recent article on the program Fr. Spitzer, with Dr. Bruce Gordon, held at Discovery Institute.)

It is interesting that many media outlets and scientists that claim to have understood intelligent design and support it in cosmology, but not in biology, have not bothered to take Hawking on or to notice Spitzer's work. How serious, therefore, are their professions of support for ID even in cosmology?

Fr. Spitzer has a good YouTube commentary up on Hawking's The Grand Design. The Magis Center he heads is a great place to learn more of his views, and i also would send you to our own privilegedplanet.com for the views of Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards.

Our senior fellow Michael Medved, who on the air brings the erudite down to earth, has an amusing column in USA Today comparing the sorry record of this year's Seattle Mariners and the current condition of America.

The fans are still around and good natured. The hot dogs and beer--and, in Seattle, the suchi--remain excellent. "It's still a joy and a privilege to watch the game," David reminds us.

Earlier this week New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter was embroiled in a minor controversy when he pretended to be hit by a pitch and so got a free ticket to first base. Replays, and an after-game admission by Jeter, proved that he hadn't been hit by the pitch at all, but simply pretended to have been. Even as he was pretending the home plate umpire was telling him to take his base. Whether he was granted the base because of his dramatic antics is unclear, as the umpire seemed to already have been persuaded that he'd been hit by the pitch. You can watch MLB's coverage which shows you specifically what happened. And then the fallout.

Needless to say. there are a lot of views within the sports world about what transpired that are all over the board. While this is a rather minor instance to be sure, it still involves a major player. And I think it strikes a chord in Americans for a reason they may not realize. Because they're Americans! And by that I mean, capitalists. Entrepreneurs. People who like innovation and who like to succeed.

Fifty three years ago a former Vice President of Communist Yugoslavia, Milovan Djilas, published a book that landed him in jail. It was called The New Class and it has changed the way we understand the people at the top of societies that employ propaganda and coercion to replace a reviled former set of rulers with a new set--one just as privileged, if not more so, and one more autocratic than the class it removed.

Later, in the Soviet Union, the term "Nomenklatura" was used for those party leaders, generals and top bureaucrats who were entitled to the best apartments and "dachas", access to foreign luxury goods, travel and resort vacations and top educational opportunities for one's children.

Robert J. Samuelson is one of the more adroit and useful economists writing for the media, and almost opposite from the ranting Paul Krugman, who finds a propaganda angle and then tries to support it. If anything, Samuelson of The Washington Post and Newsweek tries too much to coat his bitter pill of reality with sugary moral equivalence, as in Monday's column on whether tax hikes on "the rich" will help the economy.

You have to get well down in the article before you realize that the real point of the piece is the folly of raising taxes on investors and small businessmen in a recession.

Quoting Moody's, Samuelson cites predictions of 770,000 more jobs lost if the Obama tax increase goes through. Elsewhere Moody's has predicted a net loss of .4 percent of GDP with the tax increase. In other words, in the end, soaking the rich right now is a money loser for the federal government, as well as an economy poisoner.

Nobody anywhere wants to take on the public employee unions. First of all, while the problem with the unions is not the members, but the leadership, it is hard to make that clear if the latter are running an "independent" ad campaign tearing you apart. Second, while businesses can take advantage of "soft money" provisions in elections, they so far have been shy about doing so; they have mixed constituencies, after all, and they are afraid of retribution. But labor unions toil under no such inhibitions. Third, unlike the business sector or manufacturing unions, public sector unions are not being hurt much by the recession. But they are very alarmed that future cutbacks may reach them. That means they currently have money to spend on political campaigns, along with ample motivation to spend it.

The role of the unions in politics is back in the news in England, where some old timers recall that resistance to union abuse in the 70s is what propelled Margaret Thatcher to power and maintained her there.

Those who cherish our representative form of government should fight back hard against the trends that militate against anyone running for office who isn't rich or financially subsidized. True friends of popular democracy especially should be on guard against bogus "reformers" like the so-called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government that file "process" lawsuits in the midst of political campaigns to damage financially strapped candidates.

In an assault this week, the self-appointed "Citizens" organization--described by the AP as a "government watchdog"--attacks Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell in Delaware for using campaign funds to pay her rent and other personal expenses. The complaint is as unjust as it is petty.

Did you know that a fondness for chile peppers was a reason our ancestors reproduced, while those bland-tasteed Neanderthals died off? Yes, according to that endlessly productive Darwin propaganda machine, The New York Times, a taste for hot sauce is a trait of evolution.

If we could afford it, we'd hire someone just to compile a list of all the fascinating aspects of life that are the result of some reproductive advantage. We can't afford it, however, because the list would go on and on and on.... On the good side, such a list would be really funny.

Of course, other than the plain-as-mud evolutionary explanation, there is reason to think chiles initially became popular especially in the tropics and sub-tropics because they provided a way in hot, humid climates to disguise the taste of meat on the cusp of decay.

Discovery Institute senior fellow Wesley Smith, who co-directs our Center on Human Exceptionalism, is on top of the continuing effort to obscure just what is at stake in human embryo research. Since they are not getting very far in arguing that only human embryos can yield productive stem cell medical advances (because experience doesn't back up that claim), the proponents are reduced to misrepresenting the biology.

Photo Source: Amtrak Cascades

This article is reposted from Cascadia Prospectus

There has been a setback to the prospects of a permanent second daily Amtrak Cascades service to Vancouver, B.C. The Canadian federal government has made the decision not to waive permanently a border fee for the second train, requiring the Washington State Department of Transportation to pay almost $550,000 annually for border clearance services.

A Wall Street Journal review of a book on the works of economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) describes the Paul Krugman of his day, a highly politicized economist on the left. Galbraith scornfully coined the term, "the conventional wisdom", but in truth he exemplified it.

James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer demonstrates that the highly decorated Galbraith--he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice--was an uncommonly charming and witty writer. It's just too bad that his economic recommendations were almost always wrong. In the mid-50's he predicted another Great Depression and kept predicting it as markets soared to new heights. An adviser to presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson in '52 and '56, he certainly knew young Sen. John F. Kennedy, but it was not Galbraith whose advice President Kennedy took when marginal tax rates were cut in the 60s and another boom ensued.

Mars Attacks!

Please be clear. In contemporary science you supposedly cannot posit the existence of intelligence in the universe. It doesn't matter if your reasoning follows the same pattern of historical science used by Darwin, as, for example, in Meyer's Signature in the Cell. "No intelligence allowed," as the film Expelled made clear.

There is one exception. Just as he explained in the film Expelled, Richard Dawkins is prepared to believe in space aliens, the U.N. now wants to establish a liaison with these unknown creatures, even if there is no evidence for their existence at all--just speculation. A Malaysian astrophysicist is to be the first ambassador of the world to little green men on Mars, or wherever they turn out to be.

It is all put forth in complete seriousness.

The left is having a fit of neurotic indecision. On one hand they have former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich reporting in the Christian Science Monitor that the House Republicans' "Pledge to America" agenda is a scheme to promote "Social Darwinism", "survival of the fittest." He states as a fact that Republicans have always wanted to destroy Social Security, even though the system--another supposed fact--is absolutely solid. Take his word on both scores. Or throw Gramma into the street. It's your choice.

Social Darwinism doesn't sound so good, does it?

But wait. Almost simultaneously, University of New York (Binghamton) biologist and anthropologist David Sloan Wilson is down in Australia delivering a Templeton Foundation lecture on how Social Darwinism can solve poverty, build trusting community, cure ingrown toenails, alleviate the heartbreak of psoriasis and improve your love life. Step right up. Dr. Wilson's Darwinian Elixir is good for what ails ya.

Okay, which Social Darwinism is it? Or is there, like the witches in the Wizard of Oz, a "good Social Darwinism" and a "bad Social Darwinism"?

Mssrs. Reich and Wilson are both political progressives and probably would get along very well. They both have a theory that can support or undermine any agenda they like. Unfortunately, they made opposite claims for it on the same day.