Tag Archives: Bill

News

State legislatures aim to pass bills to guarantee academic freedom

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Story here from Evolution News.

Excerpt:

The recent front page New York Times article on academic freedom legislation offers a stark reminder that the intelligentsia is very worried about the prospect of teachers gaining academic freedom, as a bill presently in the Kentucky legislature would allow, “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

From 2008-2009, 12 academic freedom bills were submitted into state legislatures, including Florida, Alabama (2), South Carolina (2), Missouri (2), Michigan, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Iowa, and New Mexico. Now in 2010, there are 3 bills already, including bills in Kentucky, Missouri, and Mississippi.

Here are a couple of examples:

The Kentucky bill encourages teachers to “promote critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories being studied.”

The Missouri bill allows teachers “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution.”

Details on the language used in each bill is provided in the post.

News

Nebraska legislature introduces bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks

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Article from the American Thinker. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Nebraska has a nonpartisan, unicameral legislature, so many of the shenanigans which can cause legislative bills to fall into a maelstrom of confusion are absent there. This is not a “partisan” issue, and no conference committee reports can swallow the bill and then regurgitate it as unrecognizable vomit.

Moreover, Legislative Bill 1103 will get a hearing: Its sponsor is Mike Flood, Speaker of Nebraska’s legislature.

Note that Mike Flood is a Republican. Republicans are pro-life.

More:

The Nebraska bill carefully accounts for those sorts of concerns that all decent people have always had about abortion: Might the mother die if the child is born? Could a live birth cause permanent damage to the mother’s health? (Legislative Bill 1103, though, makes a point of requiring physical and not “psychic” harm to the mother.) Amendments may include those other tricky areas — children born of rape or incest.

[…]The Nebraska bill will put fans of unrestricted abortion right where they belong — supporting all sorts of evil, as long as it is committed out of sight.

It’s a brilliant move. It’s a wonder that the pro-life movement hasn’t adopted a more incremental approach before, because it works. Make the Democrats publicly defend infanticide as a woman’s right to choose.

I hope you’ve all practiced your pro-life arguments. If not, then just read this, and you’re good to go.

If you know about pro-life arguments already, then why not try guessing who is more pro-life: men or women? Those links go to charts from the latest Gallup poll. Isn’t it surprising? I’m surprised.

News

Washington Post: Democrat health care reform bill would reduce senior care

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Story here from the left-wing WaPo.

Excerpt:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

[…]…the report questions whether the country’s network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, “exacerbating existing access problems” in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

[…]The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation’s largest public health programs.

Seniors voted 53 to 45 in favor of McCain over Obama.