Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

The horrors of December in a one-party state.

I used to harbor the quiet but fierce ambition to write just one definitive, annihilating anti-Christmas column and then find an editor sufficiently indulgent to run it every December. My model was the Thanksgiving pastiche knocked off by Art Buchwald several decades ago and recycled annually in a serious ongoing test of reader tolerance. But I have slowly come to appreciate that this hope was in vain. The thing must be done annually and afresh. Partly this is because the whole business becomes more vile and insufferable—and in new and worse ways—every 12 months. It also starts to kick in earlier each year: It was at Thanksgiving this year that, making my way through an airport, I was confronted by the leering and antlered visage of what to my disordered senses appeared to be a bloody great moose. Only as reason regained her throne did I realize that the reindeer—that plague species—were back.

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The opinion written by Judge John E. Jones III in the Dover evolution trial is a two-in-one document that offers both philosophical and practical arguments against “intelligent design” likely to be useful to far more than a school board in a small Pennsylvania town.

Jones gives a clear definition of science, and recounts how this vaunted mode of inquiry has evolved over the centuries. He describes how scientists go about the task of supporting or challenging ideas about the world of the senses — all that can be observed and measured. And he reaches the unwavering conclusion that intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one.

His opinion is a passionate paean to science. But it is also a strategic defense of Darwinian theory.

When evolution’s defenders find themselves tongue-tied and seemingly bested by neo-creationists — when they believe they have the facts on their side but do not know where to find them — this 139-page document may be the thing they turn to.

Click here for link.
Here’s another article about the decision….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122000532.html?nav=most_emailed
…And here’s an article which details the defiance of the so-called “Intelligent Deseign” backers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101959.html

Here the Columnist Harold Myerson takes Bill O’Reilly and Fox News to task; AMEN, BROTHER!!!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001011.html?nav=most_emailed

First, a Federal Judge demands a briefing in which — presumably — the Administration will have to defend its’ program….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122102326.html
Second, a panel of judges from the 4th circuit — the Nation’s most reliably consesrvative circuit — has declined to sanction a change of the charges against Jose Padilla. Will Bush II defy the Judiciary?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101524.html

Seven Northeastern states signed onto the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to limit emmissions of greenhouse gases.

The Ehrlich administration declined to participate claiming that the agreement would cause rolling brownouts or blackouts.

However, Maryland Public Interest Research Group director, Brad Heavner, pointed out that half of Ehrlich’s appointees to the Maryland Department of Environment formerly worked for Constellation Energy, the largest owner of power plants in Maryland. According to Heavner;

We’ve heard the exact same things from the power companies, the same mistruths, the same rubbish. Yes, these limits would cost the power companies money, so you would expect them to oppose it. But would you expect our environmental agency to oppose it? No, because it’s a clear winner for the environment and economy.

Charles Parents Find Few Openings as Providers Grow Reluctant to Accept Medicaid

When Shenna Foster called the 800 number to find a dentist for her teenage son, Maryland’s health care program for the poor offered three options: Greenbelt, New Carrollton and Fort Washington. Foster lives in Waldorf, 15 miles from the nearest location.

She does not drive, and public transportation is spotty for the journey. Six months later, her son’s teeth remain a problem, with on-again, off-again pain.

There is only one general dental practice within Charles County that routinely accepts patients covered by the state, and that office won’t accept new patients until summer.

“I called and asked for the dentist closest to me, and I’m still trying to find one,” said Foster, a mother of four. “I’ve been calling for over a year.”

Foster’s struggle to find a local dentist is a dramatic example of the statewide and national shortage of dentists who treat patients covered by government-run Medicaid. The 8,000 children who qualify in Charles have the lowest rate of access to dental care in Maryland, according to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The shortage is particularly trying in this emerging Washington suburb, because of the relatively small pool of private dentists — 63 for 137,000 people — and the limited public transportation to reach offices beyond the county’s borders.

The two community clinics in Charles each have one dentist available one day a week for both adults and children.

“It’s especially brutal here,” said Cheryl DeAtley, the coordinator of an early childhood program that pays for dental care for about 75 of the county’s youngest children from low-income families. “If they are on medical assistance, chances are they don’t have the transportation, either. It’s a domino effect.”

Click here for link.

Huzzah!

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, issuing his decision in a case that was heard in the fall, ruled that the school board in Dover, Pa., violated the Constitution when it ordered high school biology teachers to read to students a short statement that cast doubt on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and offered intelligent design as an alternative theory on the origin and development of life. Jones ruled that the requirement unlawfully promoted a religious purpose in a public school.

Click here for link.

Each morning, Sara Barker wakes before dawn, covers herself with camouflage and makes sure she has her compass before heading into the eastern Arkansas swamps. Her quest: the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Dozens of birders have flocked to the wildlife refuges of the Arkansas Delta to follow up on a kayaker’s 2004 sighting of a bird so rare it was thought to have become extinct. They hope to obtain a clear video or picture of the bird and then study its behavior.

click here for link.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121801270.html

But how much oil is there in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Nobody really knows for certain.

As a Christmas week fight rages in Congress over whether to allow drilling along the narrow coastal strip of tundra 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, both sides are trying to use the refuge’s oil estimates _ as vague as they may be _ to their advantage. Some of the rhetoric has little bearing on reality.
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A 1998 U.S. Geological Survey assessment still used today concluded it’s almost certain there are at least 5.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and possibly as much as 16 billion barrels (a 5 percent likelihood) beneath the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain.

The number most frequently cited is 10.4 billion barrels, the amount the report says is the “mean” _ a statistical tool that simply says there’s as good a chance to find less than that as there is to find more.

“There’s no question there’s a range of uncertainty involved that is quite large,” says David Houseknecht, a government geologist involved in the 1998 study. Still, he calls it an “educated assessment” based on seismic studies conducted in the mid-1980s and an examination of adjacent geology where oil has been discovered.

The massive Prudhoe Bay oil field, which has produced 13 billion barrels since 1977 and has 3 billion left, sits 65 miles to the west and there are oil fields in Canada to the east.

“In many cases the oil is dripping out of those rocks,” says Houseknecht.

But there has never been a well dug in the federal part of the refuge’s coastal plain and only one well drilled in a smaller area within the refuge controlled by Alaska natives.

If that well, dug 22 years ago, indicates an oil bonanza, few know it. The results have been kept a closely held secret by the Alaska native corporation and a handful of people at two oil companies that did the drilling.

The oil numbers are “a ballpark, seat-of-the-pants estimate,” concedes Roger Herrera of Arctic Power, the lobbying group that for years has tried to persuade Congress to approve oil development in the refuge. But given the adjacent geology, Herrera says, “you can logically expect” a lot of oil to be there.

Click here for link.