Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here we have John H. Sununu, who must pose a dilemma for the Control-Left: he’s a conservative who was George W. Bush’s chief of staff (remember?), a Republican who’s taken some dreadful stands on stuff like the environment, and yet he’s also a Palestinian-Lebanese-American who was born in Cuba. I would guess that his ideology trumps his background, and it clearly does for CNN reporter Alisyn Camerota, who anchors their “New Day” program (she used to be on the Fox News network).
Here she’s soliciting Sununu’s opinion about the late John McCain, and then tries to get him to pronounce (and probably criticize) Trump’s mealymouthed reaction to McCain’s death. (The White House flag incident was an embarrassment for “President” Trump.) But Sununu refuses to be drawn into Camerota’s game—and it is a game, despite her denial—and wants to stick solely to memorializing his friend McCain. That sounds pretty decent to me. And it’s absolutely clear that Camerota is trying hard to get Sununu to say something bad about Trump.
What I like about this clip is how smug and self-righteous Camerota is, and how cooly Sununu takes her apart. He’s unflappable, and makes her just look stupid. I don’t know Camerota’s politics, but here she comes out on the losing end of the confrontation. (I wish I were as cool under fire as Sununu is!)
God help me, but I get some pleasure out of watching smug Lefties get their pretensions pricked. Does that make me an alt-righter? No fricking way! You don’t have to like Trump or Sununu—or even John McCain—to appreciate this moment.
This just in from Reuters (click on screenshot to read it):
The official U.S. motto, “In God We Trust”, became official only in 1956, with “E Pluribus Unum” (“out of many, one”) having been the unofficial motto—and appearing on the United States Seal—since 1782. The new motto, which privileges religion over non-religion, is clearly unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment of the Constitution. And, in fact, I am one of many American who doesn’t trust in God, as I don’t think there are any gods. I much prefer E Pluribus Unum, which makes no faith claims. As Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-President of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) said, ““To be accurate it would have to read ‘In God Some of us Trust,’ and wouldn’t that be silly?”
Those cases are yet to be decided, but yesterday a big appeals court rejected atheists’ challenge that “In God We Trust” appearing on all U.S. currency is a constitutional violation. As Reuters reports:
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota rejected claims by 29 atheists, children of atheists and atheist groups that inscribing the national motto on bills and coins violated their First Amendment free speech and religious rights.
While other courts have allowed the motto’s use on currency, Circuit Judge Raymond Gruender said it also did not constitute an establishment of religion under a 2014 Supreme Court decision requiring a review of “historical practices.”
Gruender said the Constitution lets the government celebrate “our tradition of religious freedom,” and that putting the motto on currency “comports with early understandings of the Establishment Clause” without compelling religious observance.
“In God We Trust” began appearing on U.S. coins in 1864 during the Civil War, a period of increased religious sentiment, and was added to paper currencies by the mid-1960s. (here)
President Dwight Eisenhower signed a law making the phrase the national motto in 1956.
Tuesday’s 3-0 decision upheld a Dec. 2016 lower court ruling, though one judge refused to join part of its analysis.
Michael Newdow, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, in an email called it “utterly revolting” that “the history of governmental denigration of a suspect class should trump [the] principle” that neutrality be the “touchstone” for analyzing claims under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Newdow is also known for unsuccessful litigation challenging the inclusion of “under God” in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.
You can find the full court decision here. A snippet:
Instead, as with other parts of the Bill of Rights, the Court has increasingly returned to a focus on the historical meaning of the Establishment Clause. An early example of this approach is Marsh v. Chambers, where the Court upheld the practice of legislative prayer because it was “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.” 463 U.S. 783, 786 (1983). The history, the Court said, “sheds light not only on what the draftsmen intended the Establishment Clause to mean, but also on how they thought that Clause applied to the practice authorized by the First Congress.” Id. at 790.
This historical approach is now the norm. In Van Orden v. Perry, a plurality of the Court upheld a Ten Commandments display by applying an analysis “driven both by the nature of the monument and by our Nation’s history.” 545 U.S. 677, 686 (2005) (plurality opinion); see also id. at 699-700 (Breyer, J., concurring) (looking to “national traditions” and the monument’s historical context). Similarly, in Hosanna-Tabor—the Court’s first decision addressing the ministerial exception, which is rooted in the Establishment Clause—the Court examined the history of colonial “[c]ontroversies over the selection of ministers,” as well as “two events involving James Madison,” to determine that “[t]he Establishment Clause prevents the Government from appointing ministers.” 565 U.S. at 183-84. And in Town of Greece—the Court’s most recent Establishment Clause decision—the Court held that “the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practices and understandings.” Town of Greece, 134 S. Ct. at 1819 (emphasis added). Thus, the Court’s current jurisprudence clearly gives preference to historical analysis over the discredited Lemon test.
This is the same reason the courts have used to keep religious symbols in the public sphere for decades: they’re seen as no longer promulgating religion, but simply a “cultural” motto that reflects American history. But that’s clearly not the case, for why would Republicans and religions be pushing to have the motto installed in the public schools? As a symbol of “national tradition”? Don’t make me laugh!
The FFRF wasn’t part of this case, but I asked Andrew Seidel, one of their attorneys, if he or the FFRF had a comment. Here’s what he said, giving me permission to quote:
Of course, we think the decision is wrong and think “In God We Trust” is undeniably unconstitutional, but getting a court to agree in this climate is unlikely to happen. Right now, public education about the motto — its religious purpose, theocratic inception, and continued religious use — and building public sentiment against the exclusionary sentiment are more likely to succeed than a court challenge.
He added:
As always, I maintain that the legal fiction courts have adopted to permit “In God We Trust” to remain the motto is hypocrisy of the worst kind. You can quote me on that.
And I’ll direct you to Andrew’s Patheos article that I’ve mentioned before, in which Andrew explains this legal fiction and the attendant hypocrisy. Read this as part of your “public education about the motto”:
An excerpt:
In a government where state and church are walled off from one another, federal courts have basically declared that entrusting this world to god is not religious. Imagine for a moment if the courts had declared that John 3:16 or praying the rosary had “no theological or ritualistic” importance because it had been so often repeated. The Religious Right would have had a collective stroke, and rightfully so.
. . . And therein lies the hypocrisy. Christianity benefits when the federal courts declare that “In God We Trust” is not religious, since this allows godly office-holders to use their public office to promote their personal religious agenda. Religious Right groups and activists are perfectly willing to let the government desecrate their religion so long as it also allows them to promote their religion.
I’ll add that the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals is regarded by liberals as one of the most conservative appeals courts in the U.S. It has 17 judges, but only one was not appointed by a Republican President. (And even judge, Jane Kelly, an Obama appointee, ruled in favor of the motto in this case!) Further, three of those who sit on the court were appointed by Trump.
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called 10cs2, is 12 years old; the author says that new strips will resume next week. Note, however, that even after 12 years the strip is timely.
Reader Liz Strahle sent us some lovely bird photos. Her notes and IDs are indented.
Here are some wildlife pictures. The house sparrow, cedar waxwing, and double-crested cormorant are new birds for me. There are a couple of turkey vultures eating dead animals. I believe the first one is an opossum. The second dead animal might be a beaver or a groundhog.
The double-crested cormorant’s eyes appeared to be turquoise. I believe this one is a juvenile.
Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos). When I mentioned that I loved this photo because I’m a mallard-phile, Liz responded:
I think I mentioned that picture in one of the duck posts in a comment a little while back. When I took the picture, I really had no idea why they were standing on one foot. It looked like they might be dancing even though that was probably not what they were doing. When I saw your post about Honey standing on one foot, I thought of those ducks. Someone in the comments suggested that it might have something to do with thermal regulation or something similar. That seems to make sense but I don’t know.
Observing the turkey vultures gliding so beautifully is one of the reasons I became interested in birds a few years ago. They are just so beautiful. When I captured the shot of the first turkey vulture with the opossum, I was thinking, “Um….they are still…um…really beautiful.” Ha. When they glide together like pairs of figure skaters, they are mesmerizing.
News of the day via a cartoon from reader pyers that appeared in the Torygraph. As pyers said about Trump, “Even the Tories ( well most of them anyway) detest that man.”
And a related cartoon, this time from The New Yorker (h/t: Gregory):
On this day in 1831, Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction: that the movement of a magnet through an electromagnetic field could produce electricity. On August 29, 1885, Gottlieb Daimler patented the first motorcycle, the Reitwagen, with an internal combustion engine. Here’s a replica:
On this day in 1911, Ishi, often considered the last Native American to make contact with descendants of Europeans, emerged from the forest in northeast California. He died five years later.
And this is a story not known to me. As Wikipedia notes, on this day in 1930, “The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland. As the entry notes, they drowned all the working dogs on purpose before the evacuation, which pisses me off. Why did they have to kill the dogs? Read about why St. Kilda was evacuated here.
On this day in 1949, only a few months before I was born, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb (“First Lightning”) in Kazakhstan. On August 29, 1966, the Beatles performed a concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which turned out to be their last concert before paying fans. (There was of course the later one atop the Apple Studio.) On that same day, the Egyptian activist and writer Sayyid Qutb was executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Nasser. Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book The Looming Tower traces much Middle Eastern terrorism, including that of ISIS and the Muslim brotherhood, back to Qutb’s writings. On this day in 1997, Netflix was launched as a rental DVD service. And on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina did a number on the U.S. Gulf Coast, ultimately killing about 1800 people and causing $125 billion in damage.
Notables born on this day include John Locke (1632), Ingrid Bergman (1915), Charlie Parker (1920, died at 35), Richard Attenborough (1923), Dinah Washington (1924, died in 1963), John McCain (1936), James Brady (1940), Temple Grandin (1947), Michael Jackson (1958), Chris Hadfield (1959), Neil Gorsuch (1967) and Lea Michele (1986).
Here’s Dinah Washington singing her most popular song, “What a difference a day makes.” I remember when this Grammy-winning version was on the charts in 1959. It was originally a Spanish song; does that make this version cultural appropriation. similar to chop suey?
Notables who died on August 29 include Brigham Young (1877), Sayyid Qutb (1966, see above), Éamon de Valera (1975), Lee Marvin (1987), Honeyboy Edwards (2011) and Gene Wilder (2016).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili comments on the madness.
Hili: Do you think rationalism has a chance?
A: Of course, nobody can be irrational all the time.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy sądzisz, że racjonalizm ma szansę?
Ja: Oczywiście, nikt nie potrafi być irracjonalnym przez cały czas.
A tweet found by me: Sarah Jeong, hired as the New York Times‘s chief tech editor despite her history of racist comments on social media, is now trying to keep a low profile, posting totally innocuous stuff. But if you look at the comments following this tweet, her strategy hasn’t worked that well. Those people who would want somebody fired for racist comments against Asians hypocritically want us to forget Jeong’s history.
A tweet from reader Gethyn: the CPS is the British Crown Prosecution Service and they mistook a dog for a person. This story is said to be fake, but see here for some evidence that it’s authentic.
My question is this: why would Brian Cox want to squash a mosquito?
Having drunk quite a lot of wine, I spent some time staring at an insect on the wall trying to work out whether or not it was a mosquito. I decided it wasn’t and so I didn’t squash it. I don’t know what the moral of the story is. Any ideas?
A friend put this up on Facebook, and I am not at all sure it’s for real, but it could be from a police department with a sense of humor. Todd Baxter is indeed listed as the Sheriff of Monroe County, New York.
