A nail in the coffin of intelligent design?

Those of us who worship reason and science have reason to celebrate today. Judge John Jones has ruled the crazy idea of intelligent design has no place in the science classroom.
Yet, one must take pause to assess the reality of things. Even though this particular battle against superstition has been won, the war may be lost.
The vast majority of Americans polled do not believe in evolution as a stand alone theory to answer the question of how we came to exist. Furthermore, 2/3 (67%) would support teaching intelligent design with evolution in our science classrooms. Prominent leaders such as our president, and senators Frist and McCain have stated their support for intelligent design being taught to our children in science class.
What Americans need to understand is that science plays by certain rules. We call this the scientific method. This glorious method gives us the tools for figuring out everything from how a cell divides to how to make a plane fly. If an idea can't play by the rules of the scientific method, then it's not science.
Perhaps rather than fight and argue over what our children must learn in science class, we should be educating the adults in our country about the scientific method and critical thinking.
Until then, we'll probably see more lawsuits and fights over non-scientific opinions versus scientific theories that refute religious doctrine.

The spying president

So the beans have finally been spilt by the NY Times. GW Bush authorized the NSA to spy on terrorist suspects in this country without court warrants.
We are told such actions are necessary in the war on terror, and that revealing such techniques jeopardizes our anti-terrorist efforts.
Does anyone still believe these lies?
9/11 was an opportunity on the part of the wolves in this administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) to seize power above and beyond legislated limits, all in the name of "protecting" us.
If GW Bush really wanted to protect us from terrorists, he would have paid attention to the daily intelligence briefing on August 6,2001 titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US."
My mind is left boggling over those otherwise intelligent people I encounter who relate that they have no qualms about ceding absolute authority to this administration, in the name of preventing any future 9/11 attacks on our nation.
Such attitude makes me think of a precient lyric by Rage Against the Machine, from Vietnow, recorded in 1996 - "sheep tremble an here come tha votes."

The American Automobile - Le Morte Auto?

Amid the slow demise of American automakers General Motors and Ford Motor Company, Americans should take a moment to analyze what the automobile does for them today. Today, I would argue, cars in America have outlasted their usefulness. As American cities become more and more congested with automobile traffic, we are poised to spend more of our time idling our cars than running them at 60mph or faster. Is the automobile in America actually slowing us down?
By facilitating the birth of urban sprawl, and the push for wider and wider highways, the automobile has fueled the blight of our cities more than the beauty of our country.
What solution should our country look to, with congested roads and greater traffic on our highways? As regressive as it sounds, we should look to the bicycle or walking or public transportation and rational city design. We have the technology today to create bicycles that can go 50mph or faster. Imagine highways with not a single car, but thousands of zooming recumbant bicycles going along at 50mph or faster. Think of how many more bikes could fit on a highway than huge gas guzzling SUVs. Think how much slimmer and healthier Americans would be if we were asked to bike to work every day.
Americans should wake up to the ills that automobiles bring us, especially in congested city traffic. What good is a zero to 60mph in 5 seconds car if it can only inch along in stop and go traffic for 2 hours every day? What good is a transportation machine that is slower than bicycling when traffic builds up? What good is pouring billions of dollars into our public infrastructure if we could use what we already have and adapt it to manual powered transportation?