Faster, higher, dimmer. Just in case you want to link to the official Athens Olympic Games site, be sure to comply with their hyperlink policy, which includes a requirement that you first mail their Internet Department the following information:
Short description of siteType of link button downloaded and used
Reason for linking
Unique URL containing the link (if no unique URL than just the main URL)
Publishing period
Contact point (e-mail address)
Just FYI.
(Via Eamonn Fitzgerald)
Re earlier post: Judge Jelderks rules in favor of scientists. See attorneys' statement and explanatory commentary.
From an AP report (registration):
A federal judge has decided to bar Northwest Indian tribes from further participation in the Kennewick Man lawsuit by ordering the case limited to government defendants and the scientists who went the court to study the ancient skeleton, attorneys said Wednesday.[...]
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks, who has heard the case since it was filed, ruled Tuesday that any remaining legal action be limited to the anthropologists seeking to study the bones and government agencies involved in the case.
Alan Schneider, attorney for the anthropologists, said the only decision left is what kind of studies of the skeleton will be allowed, if no other challenges are filed.
But Rob Roy Smith, an attorney for the Nez Perce and other tribes, said additional legal action is being considered.
"We're obviously disappointed by Judge Jelderks' decision," Smith said. "He continues to alter cultural resource protection law."
Smith said the tribes believe they have standing to participate in any new phase of the trial to determine how the bones are studied.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the AP story that doesn't require registration.
Are you not men? I dunno, maybe American men just have better aim, but I haven't noticed this being a problem in my housekeeping. At any rate, aside from the crudity of the product, I'd like to think American men wouldn't, er, sit for this.
(Via Brothers Judd.)
UPDATE: My Blacklist filter didn't seem to like Jonathan Gewirtz's comment, so I'll just put it here:
Silly. If the women behind this idea had any balls they'd tell their men to clean up after themselves and be done with it. Instead we get a passive-aggressive campaign to force men to perform pointless rituals of symbolic submission. What kind of woman gets her kicks forcing men to act like girls, and what kind of man puts up with it? I piss on them (from standing).
Amen, brother.
Reply memorandum on motion to dismiss and clarify. Here is the scientists' lawyers' response to the tribes' attempt to re-litigate the Kennewick Man case after the case and appeals have been decided in the scientists' favor.
NAGPRA and its discontents. Good article from the July Reason concerning problems with and legal abuses arising from NAGPRA. If you're unfamiliar with the act, author Steven Vincent provides a useful overview of its history and application.
Party on! I've now read the items noted in the previous post. In summary: the tribal claimants, having failed to persuade the courts by arguing under NAGPRA, are claiming rights to control the study of Kennewick Man under ARPA (the Archeological Resources Protection Act and NHPA (the National Historic Preservation Act).
The tribes claim "significant spiritual and cultural interest" in the remains under ARPA, using essentially the same arguments that failed for NAGPRA. Since they could not demonstrate affiliation they are now pushing the argument that their religious beliefs about Kennewick Man entitle them to interfere in studies (and ultimately to rebury the bones). For the courts to disallow this, they argue, would be a violation of their religious freedom under AIRFA (the American Indian Religious Freedom Act). Apparently this law provides an implicit Establishment Clause waver to tribal claimants in legal disputes. (The arguments are similar to those advanced for sacred lands legislation - the scope of "spiritual" or "cultural" claims is pretty much without limit.)
UPDATE: News article.
Latest K-man. I won't have time to read these 'til tomorrow, but here's the latest on the never-ending legal saga of K-man:
The scientists' attorneys' press release concerning the tribes continued claims on the skeleton, despite the courts' repeated rulings against them; and the tribes' response in opposition to requests to dismiss intervenors.
UPDATE: Short AP report.
Pulling teeth. After an eight-year battle, and although the courts have ruled in favor of the scientist plaintiffs in the Kennewick man case , the fun has just begun. No surprise (subscription)*:
But soon after the scientists' apparent victory, a new legal obstacle emerged late last week, this time from the federal government.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has custody of the skeleton and which sided early on with the tribes, has objected to so many aspects of the scientists' study plan that a new round of litigation is probable, according to a lawyer for the scientists.
The previous court battles focused on whether Kennewick Man should be subjected to scientific study. The new legal fight could center on how the bones will be studied.
"This case is long from over," said Alan Schneider, a Portland, Ore., lawyer representing the anthropologists.
Schneider said the government was using the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, which empowers owners of archeological finds, to hinder the scientists' plans.
Schneider predicted that he would go to court "to compel the government" to hand over the skeleton. "That seems to be the direction we're heading," he said.
Jennifer Richman, a lawyer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Portland, said that the scientists' plan was "subject to reasonable terms and conditions."
"We are trying to work it out," she said.
Uh huh.
The tribes also want a say in how the bones are studied and hope to minimize the "destruction of tissue" and the "desecration of the remains," said Debra Croswell, a spokeswoman for the 2,500-member Umatilla Tribe in northeastern Oregon.
Yes, the Corps has demonstrated such exemplary care regarding the preservation of these remains.
Didn't we just have an eight-year-long court process that determined that the tribes did not demonstrate a relation to the individual who left these bones? The tribes have as much right to a say in the study of these remains as I do.
*Update: Here are some links to the same story, which do not require registration:
Ack-cent. I dunno - I fail to see what's so bad about Mrs. Vilsack's comments. If we can't make fun of one another for our accents, what can we mock one another for? I'm sorry, but all you people out there do talk funny.
My primordial accent is the mellifluous Tampa Twang. (The spouse never considered it part of love, honor, and cherish to refrain from mercilessly abusing, for example, my way with dipthongs.) Years of residence in a Mountain state, the Northwest, and parts much farther west have sanded down my native drawl into something currently resembling the standard American monotone. My voice is now being ineluctably commandeered by the spirit of the Midwest, and soon, very soon, it will be indistinguishable from that of that secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I'm beginning to "grind my vowels" and find, alas, that these sounds escape my throat before I have a chance to order them to stand still while I fluff and decompress them. I've never heard Iowan Mrs. Vilsack speak, but I have a dark suspicion we sound alike nowadays. Maybe she's just operating on the "the best defense is a good offense" principle. But still, we don't talk as funny as the rest of you. Especially you Northeasterners.
Damn, damn, damn. One of the world's finest bloggers has written on the subject of K-man before, but I didn't see his recent National Post article before it went behind the subscription wall. Unfortunately there aren't any dead tree copies of said newspaper in these parts. Are there perhaps any kind Canuckistanis out there who might send me a copy? (From 23 July, I believe.)
UPDATE: Ah, here it is. (Scroll down.) Cosh rules.
On a related note... Apropos of issues discussed in the previous two posts: Timothy Sandefur, who has contributed amicus briefs for the scientists in the Kennewick case, and who has blogged on the case and related matters over at the Panda's Thumb, has a chewy good new post there concerning creationism and the First Amendment. Drop on by.
K-man today. Some updates on the preceding post:
Today's Seattle Times has an editorial deploring the Corps of Engineers continuing interference in the study of the skeleton. In a nutshell:
"In response to the scientists' earlier study-plan proposal, Corps officials seem intent on applying new restrictions even though two federal courts have ordered that the scientists can study them under existing laws."
On another front, I received an alert concerning the 14 July Oversight Hearing Before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. The hearing included discussions on the emendation of NAGPRA, but as a glance at the linked list will show, no scientists or museum representatives were solicited to testify. Senator Inouye's opening statement asks...
"I think the question I would pose to each of the witnesses today is whether this framework of laws is sufficient, or whether we need to consider amendments to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, for instance, to assure that Native people have a cause of action that they can bring when the spirit and intent of the law are not being honored."
...and good parts of the witnesses' responses include discussions not only of AIRFA but of NAGPRA in general and of Bonnichsen vs. United States (the Kennewick Man case) in particular. But no scientists were solicited to testify. All witnesses who refer to Bonnichsen (see Panel 2) argue for amending NAGPRA in order prevent any future "unfavorable" Kennewick-like rulings, and all call for amending NAGPRA such that it reflects a particular religious belief about the peopling of the New World. If that sounds like an exaggerated interpretation to you, please read the statements in question and consider the logical implications. ...More later...
The circus is going on, the show's just moved to another ring. This week the Department of Justice and the four tribes involved in the Kennewick Man case declined to appeal the issue to the Supreme Court. Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat remarked:
"An epic struggle between science and religion ended quietly this week.I'm happy to report that science won."
Would that it were really so. As pointed out by Westneat and elsewhere, the Army Corps of Engineers (which still "owns" the skeleton) is balking:
"Attorney for the scientists Alan L Schneider told BBC News Online: 'We feel that they are improperly interjecting themselves into the purpose for which we can study the skeleton and the types of studies that would be appropriate to achieve the objectives.'The government has said that it would not permit any chemical or invasive testing on the bones. This would scupper any further attempts to obtain DNA samples from Kennewick Man.
The discussions are also likely to cover the question of how access to the remains is controlled.
'They're saying you have to restrict your studies and only a couple of people can go in and look at it and that sort of thing,' Professor Robson Bonnichsen, one of the lead scientists, told BBC News Online.
The plaintiffs are also concerned by suggestions the bones may have deteriorated in the eight years since they was pulled from the sediment.
'The government has now come up with all kinds of concerns - that the skeleton is in such poor condition. The condition's changed under their watch because everyone said it was in great condition when it came in,' explained Professor Bonnichsen.
'We know that the number of pieces of skeleton have grown since they've been there lying in the cabinet,' he added.
And there's an ongoing effort to amend NAGPRA to, essentially, incorporate religious beliefs into laws concerned with the study of the past. Westneat's editorial does a good job of clarifying this point, so often obscured in reporting on Kennewick and related cases.
"The battle over the bones was often described as a collision between scientific inquiry and tribal rights. At its core, though, it was a new front in the ongoing war over the origin of the human species.The tribes took a faith-based view in arguing the skeleton was ancestral to today's Indians and should be reburied.
As Armand Minthorn of Oregon's Umatilla Tribe said: 'We already know what happened 10,000 years ago. We know we have always been there. The scientists cannot accept that.'
It is radical that two federal agencies agreed, twice deeding the skeleton to the tribes on the basis of Indian oral histories and spiritual allegories.
This was done out of sensitivity to the tribes. But scientifically it is akin to citing a literal reading of the Bible to block the study of evolution."
Exactly. Now, I don't believe for a minute that this accurate appraisal of this particular case makes the resolution of all such science/private belief disputes nice and simple. The question of how much say science and "expert opinion" should have over policy is thornier than the simpler cases suggest. The point is not that "faith-based" beliefs cannot be brought into the public square, there to be evaluated for their possible merit by others who do not share the faith in question. The point is that no particular faith should be granted higher legal standing in the public square than other faiths. In the same way that, say, a Christian could persuade an atheist to support a pro-life position and attendant legislation, it is possible that believers in the "Ancient One" could persuade a broader public to abjure the study of bones. But just as the Christian will not persuade the atheist by appeal to the Bible - nor may he offer his bible as a legal argument - the tribal claimants cannot demand that reasoning internal to their own religion be used to resolve disputes with other citizens who do not share that religion. (We do, rightfully, privilege science in certain disputes, because science is neutral and "equal opportunity". The tribal claimants tacitly acknowledge this by accepting the scientifically-determined antiquity of the Kennewick bones.)
Normally, this kind of "internal reference" is recognized immediately for what it is, and rejected; not so in these cases. In the literature, it is advanced with rather more euphemistic language, but it's remarkable that it has been blithely and baldly advanced in courts of law:
"At trial, the government even argued that if someone found 150,000-year-old skeletons from the dawn of Homo sapiens - an 'Adam and Eve,' one attorney said - the remains would automatically be deemed ancestral to today's tribes and reburied.Scientists were flabbergasted that 'ownership of all human history had been granted to one group,' said Cleone Hawkinson, a Portland anthropologist."
NAGPRA mandates the return of remains and artifacts to groups that can demonstrate a cultural or genetic affiliation. The claimants to the bones of Kennewick Man failed to satisfy the law's criteria for affiliation. Despite the decision not to appeal,
"[...]the Umatilla's board of trustees would begin working with other Native American tribes on a strategy to amend the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Nagpra), the law enacted in 1990 to protect tribal burials.'Nagpra needs to be strengthened so that it fulfils Congress' original intent, which was to protect tribal burials and return sacred items to the tribes,' said Armand Minthorn, Umatilla board of trustees member."
Since Congress's original intent was satisfied in the Kennewick case, one can only interpret this as meaning that Congress should amend NAGPRA to grant one group's religious beliefs a legally privileged status.
Addendum: I recently came across an illustrative example of the question-begging reasoning that pervades this debate, from the 1999 NAGPRA hearings in the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs:
"3. Recommendation: Congress should adopt a policy to ensure the prompt reburial of culturally unidentifiable human remains.I am under the assumption that the evidence that will be required to substantiate claims for culturally-unidentifiable human remains will be onerous, costly and time consuming. It is my recommendation that Congress should adopt a policy that would automatically return and rebury culturally-unidentifiable remians to the site from which the remains were taken. The same sacred and spiritual beliefs surrounding culturally-unidentifiable remain [sic] apply as they do to culturally-identifiable remains. This country has honored all unidentifiable remains of military personnel symbolized by the 'Unknown Soldier' and buried them. I believe Unknown Native American human remains deserve the same treatment and respect."
Leave aside the false analogy (unknown soldiers are not "unidentifiable" as K-man is "unidentifiable" under NAGPRA definitions of cultural and genetic affiliation; furthermore, we do study the unindentifiable recently dead.) The crucial point is the very typical rhetorical move of trying to pass off the contested point as if it were the agreed upon premise of the debate: viz., that the "Unknown" can be assumed to be "Native American". Unfortunately, this sleight-of-hand is often uncritically accepted by reporters responsible for informing the public on these issues. For example, journalists covering court decisions in favor of the scientist plaintiffs often, and erroneously, report that the Kennewick bones will be returned to the tribal claimants for burial after completion of permitted studies. Not only is this untrue, it makes no sense in light of the substance of the legal decision that the journalist accurately reports. As anthropologist Cleone Hawkinson remarks re a recent report, the press needs to "'get it' and stop letting the tribes frame this issue. The reporter didn't even press Rob Roy Smith [a claimants' attorney implying a legal claim to the bones] on 'who' the bones should be returned to for reburial after study, and the basis for such action."
(If you are interested in the related topic of "sacred lands" legislation, peruse Recommendation 2 in the above document. Rather...expansive, no?)
[entry edited to add additional material - mb]
The company loves misery. Jim Miller laments the lack of an official designation for a certain fallacy that is annoyingly common in argumentation, but which does not appear to have its own pithy Latin descriptor. You are no doubt familiar with what he describes as the "appeal to the underdog" or "appeal to the weaker" - the richer, more powerful, better-armed, or all-around more fortunate party must always have the wrong of it.
I'd tend to classify this as a type of argument ad misericordiam, but others may see a distinction here. Any Latinists who can provide Jim's requested translations?
Tribes decline SCOTUS appeal. According to a somewhat confused AP report here (registration required), the four tribes that have been disputing the disposition of the remains of Kennewick Man have decided not to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. (I say somewhat confused, because later in the article it is reported that one of the four tribes, the Umatilla, will not be voting until Monday, although a spokeswoman reports that it is "'highly likely that they are not going to pursue it'." This is the only report available as I type; I'll try to link to more easily accessible ones when they become available.)
In February, the Ninth Circuit decided in favor of the scientist plaintiffs, and in April declined an en banc review. Also, "[t]he U.S. Justice Department, which earlier had sided with the tribes, declined Thursday to say whether it would file its own appeal to the nation's highest court by a Monday deadline. Seattle attorney Rob Roy Smith, who represents the Colville Tribes, said he assumes the federal agency will not continue with the case."
Smith still argues for ultimate tribal control over the remains:
"Despite the rulings, the tribes still believe that these remains are of an ancestor and they want to make sure the remains are treated in the most respectable manner possible," Smith said. "And if and when these studies do take place, they want the remains to be returned for reburial."
And the scientists cannot begin studies just yet:
Alan L. Schneider, a Portland attorney representing the scientists, said his clients - eight prominent U.S. anthropologists - would not immediately be able to study the remains even if the tribes and the Justice Department do not appeal the case.A study plan will need to be negotiated with the federal agencies overseeing the remains, he said.
UPDATES: More links:
"Tribes quit their long fight over Kennewick Man remains"
"Tribes quit long fight over Kennewick Man's remains"
"Kennewick Man appeal unlikely"
Yo, mama. Eventually I will get around to setting up a link category for the Children of the Corn. You've likely made the acquaintance of Iowahawk, Cornfield Commentary, and The Yin Blog. I've only just discovered Random Mentality, though according to her archives she's been blogging since January of this year. She has a fine fisking concerning, among other things, the fallacy of the "true" American, and why motherhood doesn't mean never having to make a coherent argument.
What's wronged in Kansas. A while ago, upon my migration to the Midwest, Jonathan Gewirtz, the original Chicago Boy, was remarking his appreciation of laconic Midwestern humor to me. Did I enjoy it? Indeed I did and indeed I do. (Its subtle delights available even from the guy who does the weather extension service broadcasts, as the Fleckster discerned and passed on.) Last year, well before the eastward move Midwest, I had speculated that a certain wayfarer of the public intellectual persuasion was perhaps a tad slow on the uptake when it came to that sort of thing. Not that he should have been otherwise; we're all parochial, and the prairie wit is not for all sensibilities. But due to my laxity in closing comments, I discover by a belated comment to that post that Mr. Garton Ash apparently sinned beyond a forgivable thick-headedness. See the last comment from the "backwoods hillbilly" re peculiar strangers who wander onto your property babbling absurd apropos-of-nothing questions. Enjoy.
Dusty corners. I would like to have a brain analogous in disposition to that of my ideal house - it may be nondescript, even a little seedy viewed from the outside, but is serene, light-filled, orderly, and well-furnished beyond the front door. What I do have is the opposite - a brain like one of those houses with a decent façade and a reasonably kempt front yard, whose interior is disorganized, with lumber piled up in the corner and books strewn about the surfaces of what should be a living room, unspeakable forgotten storage containers idling in the fridge, baskets of laundry on the dining room table, and thick layers of undisturbed dust. Occassionally a space is cleared, dusted, organized, and things accomplished. The room in which that space is made changes randomly.
A shade may be drawn in this process, allowing in a shaft of sunlight that illuminates something misperceived before, for in that untidy place the bulbs that burn out tend not to get replaced. Thus in one spot underneath a blown bulb was the memory of a bit of a radio show I'd listened to a few weeks ago. A young woman was admanantly insisting that it would be incorrect to label her as a liberal, for the reason that she was capable of understanding both sides of an issue. I scowled at the radio, indulged myself in a few "kids these days" eye rolls - exasperated that someone who came across as normally intelligent, engaged and curious was so careless and muddled in her thinking that she simply couldn't recognize that the statements "my considered opinions put me on this or that side of the political spectrum" and "I can understand and appreciate opposing views" have no necessary logical connection.
The host persisted, totting up her position on a defining roster of issues; all her answers put her firmly to the left. The caller persisted, refusing to take a label, for the reason explained above. I scowled some more as I pulled into the driveway, carped about it to the spouse while unloading groceries, then forgot about it.
But recently, as I was taking a general tour of the blogosphere and outlying punditry, ruminating on the theme of what stupid partisan hacks so many people seem to have proved ('twas a day for a grousy mood), it occurred to me that I had misjudged or misunderstood that young woman on the radio. Her refusal to accept an accurate label was not, as I had thought, a failure of logic, but rather the product of accurately observed empirical relations of facts in her surrounding political culture. Every person she knows who self-labels politically, I speculated, may indeed be a person who is incapable of understanding opposing points of view - never having been trained how to go about doing that, but to the contrary long encouraged in the habit of emotive responses restricted to the analysis of psychological motivations. Such people are an obvious feature of life, and I missed it; my apologies to the young lady.
Mr. Reagan, tear down that wall. Enjoy:
[...] It was Mikhail Gorbachev, who with a sweeping democratic revolution at home and one peace initiative after another abroad, backed the Gipper into a corner, leaving him little choice -- actors don't like to be upstaged -- but to concede there was a whole new world opening up over there.[...]
...the U.S. administration was reeling. Polls were beginning to show that, of all things unimaginable, a Soviet leader was the greatest force for world peace. An embarrassed Mr. Reagan finally responded in kind.
UPDATE: The above terse presentation not being as obvious in tone as I assumed, I note that the above is not offered in the spirit of sober approbation.
(Or, to be perfectly clear, like he said: "Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Ha! Hahaha!")
Be prepared. Via a comment I discovered nosuchblog. (Which is invisible in Konqueror, but that's OK, I can see it in Mozilla or Opera.) Here you will find much interesting and useful information, including survival tips. The butane blowtorch and EMT shears are definitely on my "must get" list now.
You should definitely file away the info for recognizing and getting through a Younger-Dryas climate event. (Hey, you never know.) Nice pics, too.
An admirably pithy formulation. "Perspicuity is not perspicacity." - from Keith Burgess-Jackson, lamenting the tendency to take verbal mastery in itself as evidence for high intelligence. At first glance I thought the apothegm clever and probably right; after some thought I believe it is true. However, it is probably not in my interest for it to be widely known and its truth acknowledged. As someone who has generally received good marks from my fellows for verbal fluency and clarity, it is greatly to my advantage for perspicuity to continue to be lazily accepted as evidence of perspicacity, in lieu of any more solid indicators of intelligence.
And don't forget the gator gun. Still lying low in Florida. Dedicating much time to bumming around the haunts of youth, overconsuming all those delicious, long pined-after classics of Cuban comfort food, and engaging in the time-honored activity of lamenting the loss of Old Florida with the other middle-aged siblings still residing in the tribal home territory. Maintaining apparitionally pasty complexion, natch. Sunburns are for tourists. Now for a fresh iced-tea and a stroll through some preserved scrub down to the banks of the Alafia, before dusk arrives with its armies of mosquitos. Return to real life next week.
(New project: figuring out how to cultivate a magnificent spreading live oak in my front yard in Iowa. Sigh. You can take the girl out of Florida but not...etc., etc. Genetic engineering likely to be required. For the oak, not the girl.)
And the wise shaman cured all the parasitical infections... Hey you. Yeah, you. Are you one of those tight-asses who prefers indoor, hygienic plumbing and shit-free floors? Yeah, me too. Wanna join my club for the promotion of the Evil Empire of Western Parenting?
OK, I'm slow; the diaperless baby story has been all over the place, but I just saw it at Iain Murray's. As one of his commenters remarked: "Some people's ability to sanitize their images of nature are truly amazing". True, but there's something pathological in a willed ignorance of the real purpose behind sequestering human waste. It occurs to me that these people have a psychological disorder comparable to religious ascetics and penitents who've gone off the deep end in their compulsive quest to be worthier than the rest of us fallen mortals, and to make sure we know all about their sanctity. "What can I do next to mortify myself and display my purity and holiness? Live on rice and soybeans? Eat scabs? Refrain from diapering my babies?"
Ninth declines en banc review. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against reviewing February's decision in favor of the scientist plaintiffs in the Kennewick Man case.
I assume that the tribes will now appeal to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: The Court opinion can be found here and the plaintiffs' attorneys' statement here.
One soporific Saturday afternoon... "'It took me a long time to beat the fishmonger down to twenty drachmae'".
For explanation go to Andrea's (who has it via Emily via Norm via Anne via via via...) Yeah, I know, I'm not following the rules.
Latest. Appellants' petition to the 9th Circuit for a rehearing of the K-man case is now available online. More later.
Balancing the unbalanced. Is there a market for commercial "liberal radio"? Probably not. Is there a market for commerical liberal rant radio? From the sound of it, there just might be - not just for the insane True Believers at the far left end of the spectrum, but for people like me, who, unhappy with the available selection of music, have been known to seek out and set our car radio buttons for the most wacko stations, for the entertainment value. (And I don't mean Limbaugh, whom I don't get on any level - the few times I've listened he was rambling, disorganized and boring.)
At present these stations pile up on the right end of the spectrum. But if what Jane and Cadeusus are reporting is representative, Air America has potential, baby. If that potential is fulfilled, I can set it up to toggle with my preffered righto station, for maximum comic effect. (I toggle with NPR right now, but that doesn't quite deliver the symmetrical, harmonious effect I'm looking for.)
I knew I was going to like this blog. They've only been up for four days, but already have a Kennewick Man post up, from a "Kennewick-enabled" contributor. (Contributor Timothy Sandefur had filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the scientists in the Kennewick case, on behalf of the Pacific Legal Foundation.)
(More K-Man.)
Addendum: The same contributor, along with commenter "Nick" (fourth comment down) have some interesting and useful ruminations on the First Amendment, science, and freedom of religion. I found it helpful for clarifying and extending my own recent fuzzy ramblings on the issue.
And speaking of new blogs - Another of the Children of the Corn emerges.
