There are a couple neat events coming up next week:

On Wednesday, April 5…

5:00 PM, OH 165
Lecture by Cornelius Hunter, biophysics professor at Biola University and author of Darwin’s God: Evolution and the problem of evil and Darwin’s Proof: The triumph of religion over science.

7:00PM, OH 155
Panel Discussion
Come hear both sides of the story!

Panelists:
Representing Evolution:
Richard Harrison, EEB, Cornell University
Kern Reeve, NBB, Cornell University

Representing Intelligent Design:
Cornelius Hunter, Biophysics, Biola University
______________________________

Sponsored by the Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club and the Bioethics Society of Cornell

It seems our server had a little bit of trouble today, as you probably noticed if you tried to access the comments or permalinks. JD has kindly and quickly fixed the problem, so hopefully everything will continue to work.

Update: For those of you who’ve been using the “subscribe to comments” feature, we’ve disabled it while we work to see what’s causing us trouble. If everything goes well, we should have it up and running in a few days.

Update: ‘Subscribe to comments’ should work now.

Liam, a resident of Luton writes in the comments with some insights on Thursday’s story about religious freedom and school uniforms:

I come from Luton, the town in question, in Bedfordshire. I went to a neighbouring school. There are some points of fact that need to be stated first.

Luton is a town of just under 200,000 people, about 45,000 of whom are Muslim, mostly from Bangladesh, Kashmir and Pakistan. There are several other immigrant groups in the town, Irish, West Indian, African, Eastern European etc, (I count myself amongst them). It is therefore a very diverse community.

The school in question, Denbigh High School, has a school roll that is 80% Muslim. The headmaster of that school at the time this issue came up in 2002, is himself a Muslim. Most of the Board of Governers of the school, and the Parent/Teachers Organisation are Muslim, as are a large amount of the teachers.

95% of the children come from minority ethnic backgrounds and fully 75% have a first language that is not English. 85% percent of pupils come from poor families.

Given the above, the superb results achieved by the school, as highlighted by their last full inspection by H.M. Inspector of Schools in 2004, are a testament to the hard work and dedication of the staff and of both the head teachers during this period.
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Many members of the conservative blogosphere have followed the debacle at the Washington Post’s new conservative blog, Red America; and yesterday’s resignation amid charges of plagarism. Ben has an apology at Red State today.

I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this - nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.

I hope that nothing I’ve done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.

I’m deeply grateful for the love and encouragment of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I’m a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me.

Regards,

Ben

There’s a fun bunch of tests over at Harvard, called Project Implicit trying to discover hidden bias, or what they call in our politically correct world, automatic preference. This project has been around for a while, but I finally at the request of a friend I took a couple. You can either do the demonstration tests where you can find out your automatic preferences between Judaism and other religions, between Arab Muslims and other people, or between George W. Bush and a random president. You can also register and do test they give you at random — where they’ll test you on anything from political attitudes to your preference between meat and vegetables.

All the tests I’ve done involve some sort of sorting that has to be done quickly. For example they’ll have you sort meat and vegetables. Then you have to sort adjectives into good and bad and then adjectives and food into the categories meat and good or vegetables and bad. Finally they’ll switch the categories around so you’ll to sort the food into meat and bad or vegetables and good.

After they’ve switched the categories, you’re thoroughly confused. But you also have given the algorithm and the psychologists behind the algorithm the crucial information needed to determine your automatic preferences.

Curious? Try it out. Each test only takes ten minutes or so.

Confirm Them is reporting that Judge Saad has withdrawn his name from consideration for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. By doing so he has joined the ranks of other excellent judges such as Estrada and Bork who have been kept off the bench by spineless Republicans and shameless Democrats. Detroit News writes:

Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, both Michigan Democrats, had blocked Saad’s confirmation, angry that a Republican-controlled Senate failed to confirm Michigan judicial nominees during the Clinton Administration. Last year, Senate Democrats agreed to step aside and allow confirmation of several judicial nominees, but Saad wasn’t one of them.

Saad, 56, was nominated to the federal appeals court in 2001 and 2005. He received the highest marks in the American Bar Association’s rating system for judicial nominees.

Marshall over at Confirm Them says:

His withdrawal tonight ends a shameful saga of character assasination perpetrated by obstructionist Democrats. But perhaps the most shameful part of the tale is that complicit Republicans allowed it to succeed. When Henry Saad was under attack � when Minority Leader Harry Reid violated Senate rules by referencing confidential information about Judge Saad on the floor of the Senate � too many Republicans sat by and let Reid and his Senate cronies get away with it.

So tonight, I hope every Republican Senator feels ashamed.

My sentiments exactly, except I’m concerned the ’shameful saga of character assasination’ will continue, only against other well qualified nominees.

The Law Lords in Britain’s highest court decided yesterday that schools in England could enforce their dress policy, if they had consulted with the local community before instituting the policy.

One such school uniform was challenged by seventeen year old Shabina Begum, who wanted to wear a jilbab instead of a hijab and a shalwar kameez, which the school allowed. She argued that according to her religion she must dress modestly.
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I’ve came across a pretty cool site in the last couple weeks — an open source intelligent design research database — or ResearchID.org wiki for short. It’s goal is to make ID research easy to access and provide a host of information to researchers here in America and internationally. As the manager Joseph Campana describes the project:

Imagine a website where…

* … any student or professional, in any field of study, could gain instant access to Intelligent Design research associated with their discipline.

* … every research project related to Intelligent Design is summarized and arranged into highly usable research articles that can be taken straight to the lab or library for research application.

* … all the research resources are set up in a wiki, where anyone interested could collaborate and contribute.

That is exactly what we are doing at ResearchID.org. ResearchID.org is a wiki knowledgebase compiling information and knowledge related to Intelligent Design, written by you!

The wiki is still in the beginning stages, as the official opening day is June 22, 2006. However, if you are at all interested in intelligent design do sign up to contribute.

The last several days there have been a couple straw polls going around on the GOP presidential nomination for 2008. Although it’s still very early in that election season, candidates have been testing the waters for months.

The first poll was in Memphis, during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Frist won only 36% of the vote that vote, even though he was in his home state. However the more curious thing was that Mitt Romney, the governor from Massachusetts who has been making some conservative overtures, came in second at 14%.

Two more straw polls, this time on the internet, strengthened Romney’s place in the field. As of now in the GOP Blogger poll, George Allen is in the lead with 34% net votes, with Rudy at 22% and Mitt Romney in third place with 11.6%. Because the poll is set up to receive negative as well as positive votes Frist and McCain each have the honor of having a net percentage of negative votes.

Town Hall is hosting the third straw poll, and again Allen and Romney are in good places. Allen has 57% and Romney has 38%. Giuliani and McCain are at 1% (Frist has at 0%).

It’s never good to read too much in a couple of straw polls, especially so early in the race. Still, they present a small snapshot of what Republicans (mostly activist Republicans) are thinking, and as such they give us a glimpse into which candidates have inspired the love or hate of the men and women who will be manning the campaigns come election 2008.

Watching Terri’s tribute video brought it back in vivid detail. Strong memories, memories of darkness and horror.

Last March. It was a long time coming, and several times it seemed her life was spared; all that was needed was for the somewhere, someone in charge of something to come to thier senses. They would come to their senses; they just needed to be told it mattered. Tell them, help them to realize this is more than a theoretical situation– this is a woman’s life is being talked about. We thought it couldn’t happen, not in America. Starving dogs is illegal here. Starving people?

It was the eighteenth, while we were all on spring break. We could scarcely believe they had done it, and then we thought it would be for a few hours; a judge would give an emergency injunction, it would be replaced. We don’t starve people in America. I remember refreshing the page, refreshing, waiting for a change, waiting for good news….how long would it be?

And as the hours turned into days, and the days melted into each other, and our hopes rose with one hour and fell with the next. Our hearts were there in Florida with her, in the hospice that had become a torture chamber, a prison of death. Her mouth was parched, her lips bled. How angry I was when they made those stupid arguments for “mercy-killing”. Come, shoot her then! That would be far more merciful. Starving is not a humane way to kill anyone–ask any of those who took part in the hunger strike, drinking only water.

Classes began again, and we were back in our dorms. Nobody cared. Oh, something on the news, we saw at home, maybe. Well, govenment shouldn’t get involved in family issues. People, do you know what is happening in Florida right now?

Yes, after three days without food you don’t feel hungry– but far worse. It was so, so easy to get dehydrated, but we made ourselves drink water; it was the only thing keeping us alive. If we forgot for a few hours the poisins built up. But she didn’t have water. They refused to give her the ice chip that might have soothed the pain in her mouth. The brave children who tried to bring in a small cup were stopped by the police.

The rest is a haze; weakness from lack of food, helplessness in the face of the awful injustice. She is keeping on; oh people, she is fighting so hard, can’t you give her a chance at life? Look, no-one can live without food and water, not even you! This is not “letting her die”. This is killing.

That every one of those who made that decision could have taken its consequences onto themselves, keeping away from food and water! They would have realized quickly what it was that they were doing. But no, they sat down to full tables.

We hoped on till the end. 12 days, 12 days of horror. Every door was turned to, but everyone we might have trusted failed us. When it ended it was, in spite of everything, a release; the awful suffering over. Why did God allow it? But now he was comforting her.

The stain is still on us now; the stain of murder. An innocent woman was murdered in a nursing home, in America. But it was not one of those murders that happened because no one knew, because no one was there to defend. We were there; we stood and watched, and allowed it to happen.

We lost our naivite, the bright ideal of America we had lived with till that time. These things do happen, and they will happen, unless someone stands in the gap. And standing in the gap is more than saying it’s bad, saying it shouldn’t happen.

We gained an awful, terrible determination; her death was a wake up call; and cemented in us now is the pain of those days– when she waited, and no-one came.

It happened. In America. Will it happen again?

Haleigh Poutre. Charlotte Wyatt. Baby MB.

We won’t fail them, too?

Blogs for Terri has a short tribute video online here.

When will we ever learn? How many baby Doe cases, how many Terri cases till we realize every life, no matter how fragile or sickly, is precious?

Courtesy of Birth Story.

Ben Domenech, co-founder of Redstate, has started a new blog — Red America, hosted by the Washington Post.

In his second post, Ben gives a clear trumpet call to the media and to Republican leaders who have forgotten conservative Americans:

The reason there are political openings for these neo-triangulation strategies [of the smart Democrats], however, is almost entirely the fault of Republican leadership. On issue after issue, Republicans have given in to the wisdom of the MSM and the beltway talking heads instead of listening to their constituents and the conservative political base. On the size of government, on immigration and on issues of federal power, Republicans have adopted the same Washington strategies that doomed the Democrats in the 1994 cycle, as this article yesterday illustrates. They’ve grown fat and happy on pork contracts, and forgotten why they were sent to this town in the first place.

Even President Bush is guilty of this - would a White House that put principle before patronization, listened to its base, and remained focused on election season ever make the gargantuan mistake of nominating Harriet Miers? Of course not . . .

Already there is a storm of protest from the liberals.

Hat tip: Suitably Flip and Michelle Malkin.

A Scottish mother, Stacy Dow, is suing her doctor because he failed to abort both of her twins when he tried to five years ago. The live twin Jayde is now four years old, and although her mother “loves her to bits”, it’s been some what of a financial struggle and the mother feels the hospital should cover some of the bill to her raise her — £250,000 (or $436,600.99 USD) to be exact.

I feel bad for Jayde. How would I feel if my mother sued the doctor for letting me be born? Perhaps a little unwanted. Jayde obviously has a price, and it’s less than £250,000. I guess she can be grateful she’s wasn’t terminated like her sister or brother, but perhaps she wishes she was priceless?

The Telegraph has more of the story, including an article from a year ago when Mrs. Dow started her lawsuit.

Lifenews.com writes:

She discussed with a newspaper how she would tell her daughter about the abortion she hoped to have.

“I still don’t know if, or what, I’m going to tell Jayde when the time comes. I just hope she understands what happened and why I did it,” Dow said.

Hmm, yes I can see how that would be a little awkward. Unfortunately, young children are usually very good at picking up what their parents think they have kept a secret.

At Redstate.com,  Blanton points to a gloating remark from Arlen Specter in CongressDailyAM:

“The Republican Party is now principally moderate, if not liberal!” exulted Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), after the Senate — including a majority of Republicans — approved his budget-busting amendment to spend an extra $7 billion on domestic programs.

An unpleasant thought–is he, for once, right?

With our new home we also have a new Sounding the Trumpet feed. And although our old url forwards here our old feeds will not work. So if you’re one of our subscribers, you’ll need to update your feed.

However, we’ve made it very easy to add the feed to your favorite rss reader, as a Firefox live bookmark or to your Google home page. Just click on RSS or Atom on the bottom of the left column.

As you can see, we also have a comments feed for the whole blog (as well as comments feeds for each post).

Welcome all to the new home of Sounding the Trumpet! Although, we have all really enjoyed using Blogger, we felt the time was ready to leave. I’m still getting my bearings using Wordpress, but it’s been fun learning. Wordpress is an extremely powerful open source blogging platform can be extended or modified pretty much any which way.

There’s also a ton of new features included in the native software that either are non existent or don’t work well with Blogger, such as categories, commenting and trackback. Although for a long time you had to buy a domain name and space to use Wordpress, now there are several free bloghosts that are quick and easy to set up.

The blog is in working condition, but I’m sure you’ll see some tweakings in the next couple weeks.

I’ve also set our former Blogger address to forward to this address.

The Harvard Right to Life club has had it’s posters vandalized recently by pro-choice activists. Lifenews has written about this recent attack:

Abortion advocates at Harvard University are coming under fire for infringing on the free speech rights of the campus pro-life group by tearing down and defacing pro-life posters depicting an unborn child and describing facts about a developing baby before birth.

Only at a university is defacing posters an exercise in defence of free speech.

The posters feature an unborn baby girl that Harvard Right to Life has nicknamed Elena. The current set of posters displayed on campus is the second in a series the pro-life student group is using to increase respect for the unborn.

“The posters from this semester are getting torn down left and right,” HRL President Meghan Grizzle, told the Harvard Crimson student newspaper. “Apparently people find the picture of a fetus gruesome and I don’t understand why, because we’re not showing pictures of an aborted fetus or a dead baby,” Grizzle said. She indicated the student group is having to replace posters at numerous displays around campus where they have been subject to vandalism or destroyed entirely.

Here is one of the posters that caused the consternation. Two others are under the fold.

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Charlotte is doing much better. Hannah over at Charlotte’s blog has several new pictures taken today, including this cute one:

There’s a new blog here at Cornell put out by our local IDEA club. The authors write:

This blog is not a battle ground– come to our meetings for that! and not political in any way, shape or form. Though at times we may discuss court cases or school board decisions related to the current controversies, the focus here is the science of intelligent design and evolution, and new research and insights into both.

Should be fun. Check it out.

Amid the port uproar, the excitement or distress surrounding South Dakota’s abortion law, and the frequent political scandals, the House of Representatives has managed to quietly approve a food labeling bill.

Food labeling bill, you say. What’s so exciting about that? This is not just any food labeling bill, this is the National Uniform Food Safety Labeling Act — a bill that will end the different standards states have set up regarding food labeling. Although this bill may be constitutional it goes completely against the idea that the local government closest to the people knows what is best. If Californians want stricter labels than Texans, Californians should be able to get their way, especially when they’ve enacted label laws by popular referendum, such as California’s Proposition 65.

Unfortunately, there has been little upcry from conservatives. Professor Brainbridge writes:

It strikes me as a perfectly plausible exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. The Clause’s basic function, after all, is to prevent the economic balkanization that arises when states subject interstate commerce to disparate regulation.

Maybe, but I’m not convinced.

Governor Mike Rounds from South Dakota has signed a new law today forbidding all abortions except those done to save the life of the mother. Although it will certainly be challenged, hopefully Bush can appoint some more conservative justices before it reaches the Supreme Court.

The South Dakota Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act, as it is called is here.