Why I Hate Texas

Oy.

I've been so busy that I didn't realize that our goofy governor, good-hair Perry, put this asshat, Don McLeroy on the State Board of Education. You people who live in more civilized parts of the world won't recognize the name, but he's a well know religious nutjob who thinks evolution is a myth, and that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun.

I'm not making that up. Here's what the National Center for Science Education had to say about his appointment:

The state's newspapers also expressed concern about McLeroy. Referring to previous ideological struggles in which the board was involved, the Dallas Morning News (July 19, 2007) worried, "The elevation of veteran board member Don McLeroy to the chairman's post raises concerns that the board is headed back in that direction," and urged McLeroy to steer clear of "the bitterness of past culture wars." Similarly, the Austin American-Statesman (July 22, 2007) commented, "McLeroy's elevation to chairman comes as the board begins a revision of science standards for public schools. That could prove embarrassing for Texas if McLeroy pushes for standards that push theology over science."

A document on McLeroy's personal website entitled "Historical Reality" and dated September 8, 2003, offers a glimpse of McLeroy's understanding of evolutionary science. Relying on discredited sources as Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution and Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon's Of Pandas and People as well as on tendentious misreadings of legitimate science and on long-ago-debunked creationist claims, McLeroy argued that common descent is "only a hypothesis, and a shaky one at that." He then urged his colleagues on the board to reject the books then under consideration -- a plea that was ignored.

I'm told, on good authority, that he also subscribes to this nonsense: Fixed Earth.

I wish I could say this is a satirical post. It's not. Oh, and remember that Texas is the biggest purchaser of text books in the nation. This fucking nutter will have direct influence on the content of science textbooks purchased for Texas schools. And how Texas goes, often so goes the rest of the nation.

Feh.