Darwinist reporter makes mountain out of molehill

NY Times reporter Cornelia "Corny" Dean, who has a bad reputation for flagrant pro-Darwinist bias in her news articles, said in a recent news article,
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The officers of the National Association of State Boards of Education are reviewing their election procedures, after a nominee’s withdrawal left them with only one candidate for the office of president-elect: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution.

The candidate did not support "efforts against the teaching of evolution" -- the candidate supported efforts to teach both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

The review will not be completed before balloting ends next month. In a letter to board members, the officers said they had established a group to recommend changes for their consideration at their annual meeting in October.

How can new rules be retroactively applied to an election?

The Kansas candidate is Kenneth Willard, a Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.

Those science standards did not expressly call for inclusion of intelligent design in the science curriculum.

Voters replaced that majority, but Mr. Willard, an insurance executive from Hutchinson, retained his seat. If he becomes president-elect of the national group, he will take office as its president in January 2009.

When they learned Mr. Willard would be unopposed, some scientists and others urged state boards, each of which has one vote, to write in other candidates. But the association’s bylaws make no provision for write-in votes.

I was told that the proposed write-in candidate, an Ohio Board of Education member, is not eligible to be elected NASBE president because he has no experience serving on NASBE committees.

In a telephone interview, W. Bradley Bryant, the president of the association and parliamentarian of the Georgia state board, said he believed that Robert’s Rules of Order would advise treating a write-in “as a vote that was never cast.”

Sounds good to me.

Mr. Bryant, however, said the board had not made a decision.

In their letter to board members, the officers said they espoused diversity of views and tolerance as core values for their organization and for education. But Mr. Bryant said it would be a mistake to assume that meant that the group took a position on the teaching of creationism or related ideas in science classes.

Mr. Bryant, who would not say where he stood on the issue, said it had never arisen in his years on the national board.

If the NASBE has never or not lately taken a position on the teaching of creationism or related ideas in science classes, why should the NASBE start doing so just because of the election of Willard?

This whole thing would probably not even be in the news if it were not for the fanatic pro-Darwinism of Corny Dean. For the following reasons, I would not be alarmed even if I were a Darwinist:

(1) The NASBE does not have that much power or influence -- the state boards are independent of the NASBE;

(2) The NASBE president probably does not have that much power in the organization;

(3) It's a short-term position, and

(4) As I noted above, the NASBE has never or not lately taken a position on creationism or related ideas and I see no reason why the NASBE should take such a position just because of the election of Willard.
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