← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 16294 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-01-13
2005-01-13 20:02 | User Profile
This plays into what John Attarian wrote about useless pursuits. Evolution is a fact, although the origin of species and how they develop is far from decided. But a sticker in a textbook...?
The real problem is that a Federal judge gets to decide. Especially this judge. He cites crook Vernon Jordan and local gangster/local good-ol'-playa Marvin Arrington as his influences, and all of his listed accolades include the term "first African-American". He owes his position at least in large part to racial politics- a fact that is celebrated in his bio- and was educated at the South's Jewish educational center, Emory U. And then he accomodates Selman, Silver et al with this strangely written decision.
Amazing.
[IMG]http://www.jtbf.org/article_iii_judges/cooper_c.jpg[/IMG]
[url]http://www.jtbf.org/article_iii_judges/cooper_c.htm[/url]
Clarence Cooper United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta, Georgia
Born: Decatur, Georgia-May 5, 1942 Education: Clark College (B.A. 1964); Emory University (J.D. 1967); Harvard University (M.A. 1978). Judge Cooper was appointed a United States District Court Judge for the Northern District of Georgia by President Clinton on May 9, 1994.
Judge Cooper's parents were and have always been very supportive of his career. He also was influenced by and received support from numerous people, particularly Attorney Vernon Jordan, Fulton District Attorney Lewis R. Slayton, Atlanta City Council President Marvin Arrington, and his brother, Maurice Cooper.
Judge Cooper is the first and only lawyer and judge in his family. His decision to become a lawyer was based upon his "desire to participate in the legal struggle to eliminate the shackles of segregation (Jim Crow)." Judge Cooper's decision was also prompted by his awareness of "the role that certain lawyers, like Thurgood Marshall and Constance Motley, had played in bringing about the demise of segregation."
Prior to assuming the federal bench, Cooper was a practicing attorney for the Legal Aid Society and later the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. However, he did not actually envision a judicial career until he was chosen by the Mayor of Atlanta to fill a vacancy on the City of Atlanta Municipal Court. His experience on the municipal court led him to continue on to the state bench, were he served on the Fulton County Superior Court (1980-1990) and the Georgia Court of Appeals (1990-1993). Judge Cooper was appointed to the federal bench in 1994.
Judge Cooper has received numerous accolades throughout his legal career. Among them, he was the first African-American hired as an attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society (1967), the first African-American hired as an Assistant D.A. in Fulton County (1968), the first African-American appointed to a full-time judgeship on the Atlanta Municipal Court (1975), and the first African-American ever elected to a county-wide judgeship on the Fulton Superior Court (1980).
Judge Cooper advises:
I would tell those who aspire to be lawyers and judges is to view the profession as one which exists to SERVE the public, and not as a glamorous profession from which they should expect to make a fortune. There are certain professional qualities that we look for in successful lawyers and judges. Above all, lawyers and judges should be intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, practical, resolute, reasonable, honest, understanding and compassionate.
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050113/ap_on_re_us/evolution_stickers&printer=1[/url] Ga. Evolution Stickers Ordered Removed
27 minutes ago
By DOUG GROSS, Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA - A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
AP Photo
Judge Rejects Evolution Stickers in School Books (AP Video)
"By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories," U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.
The stickers were put inside the books' front covers by public school officials in Cobb County in 2002. They read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
"This is a great day for Cobb County students," said Michael Manely, an attorney for the parents who sued over the stickers. "They're going to be permitted to learn science unadulterated by religious dogma."
Doug Goodwin, a spokesman for Cobb County schools, had no immediate comment.
The stickers were added after more than 2,000 parents complained that the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life, such as the biblical story of creation.
Six parents and the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) then sued, contending the disclaimers violated the separation of church and state and unfairly singled out evolution from thousands of other scientific theories as suspect.
At a trial in federal court in November, the school system defended the stickers as a show of tolerance, not religious activism.
"Science and religion are related and they're not mutually exclusive," school district attorney Linwood Gunn said. "This sticker was an effort to get past that conflict and to teach good science."
But the judge disagreed: "While evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community."
The case is one of several battles waged around the country in recent years over what role evolution should play in the teaching of science.
Last year, Georgia's education chief proposed a science curriculum that dropped the word "evolution" in favor of "changes over time." The idea was dropped amid protests from teachers.
A school district in Dover, Pa., has been locked in a dispute over a requirement that science students be told about "intelligent design" ââ¬â the concept that the universe is so complex it must have been created by some higher power.
2005-01-13 20:14 | User Profile
[quote=weisbrot]The stickers were put inside the books' front covers by public school officials in Cobb County in 2002. They read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." Macroevolution is a theory, and these warnings don't say anything at all about religion, creation, or Creationism. Is any doubting of any aspect of evolution now considered de facto religious?
2005-01-14 05:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]ATLANTA - A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
When the Constitution and the First Amendment were written, you had to be a Congressman wanting to make the Episcopal Church the official national church to run afoul of the First Amendment.
Eventually, any mention of God by a public employee became a violation of "Separation of Church and State" (even if the courts are afraid to ban Bush from mentioning God, talk about cowardly hypocrites).
Now, even non-religious statements are illegal if they might happen to alleviate some state hostility to religion. (religion=christianity)
I pray a higher court overturns this absurd ruling. This is more extreme than banning "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I long ago recognized that the militant advocates of Evolution are not motivated by science, but motivated by hatred of God and hatred of the freedom to worship God.