From: Sarah Berel-Harrop (sec@hal-pc.org)
Date: Wed Sep 10 2003 - 21:42:41 EDT
List,
I just arrived back from Austin. That is 6 hour roundtrip
drive for me so I am pretty tired. There well over 100
people signed up to speak, and they were at ~ 40th
scheduled speaker when I left at quarter to five.
Burgy,
yes it is a DI commissioned poll. It is on their website
with the cover page, which has the language, that it
was commissioned by them. here is the link,
http://www.discovery.org/csc/texas/docs/TexasPollFinal.doc
Keith,
Tx Cit for Science were there and no I have not hooked up
with them. I prepared my testimony independently of them
I was #93 so I gave the copies to the secretary. As I read
the rules that gets entered into the record. This probably
is an important thing to get involved with. Also when
the transcripts are ready read them & write letters to
the SBOE members. There are 2 or three board members
that appear to be convinced that the Icons of Evolution
analysis is correct and want it to be incorporated into
the textbooks.
They got through 26 speakers, not including Dr. Wells,
who was asked to stay after because he was not
a texas resident in the ~ 3 1/2 hours I was there.
Of the 26 speakers, about 7 were from "a group" like DI
or "texans for better science education"; however, for some
reason only one DI person, Ray Bohlin, signed up as a
DI person, and they did not identify themselves as
associated with DI. The TBSE people I think did identify
themselves once they spoke. I think there were more
TBSE people than that, but I haven't been to the website
to check.
I approached a board member about this because it
seemed unfair to me that they had signed up without
disclosing their group. You are supposed to disclose
your group and what it means is that they could
have tried to provide some balance in the scheduling
of the speakers. As it was, the overwhelming majority
of the speakers who spoke while I was there were antievolutionists.
This was somewhat frustrating in the sense that one
board member fairly consistently asked questions
unrelated to their testimony, basically trying to get
them to testify on additional "weaknesses" & effectively extending their time. This strikes me as an abuse of
her position, and cheating really. Reading the transcript, she did a similar thing last time.
Dr. Dembski's remarks, a letter from Bruce Chapman,
and some other folks' material is on discovery's website.
None of them in fact mentioned the poll during their
testimony but it is in Chapman's letter regarding
the Santorum Amendment. This was an interesting
sideline. One speaker mentioned it, and a member
asked that the TEA or SBOE attorney I am not sure
which, provide a legal opinion about the Santorum
Amendment. Then another member produced the
letter. She said, notwithstanding the letter, she still
wanted a legal opinion. Then Terry Leos spent about
five minutes clarifying the Santorum Amendment. To
which the original member said, thank you very much,
but I want a *legal opinion* from *our attorney*. What
nonsense. It was a reasonable request. Terry Leos
isn't the one who has to write the TEA rules, the
attorneys do, and a lay opinion is not a legal opinion.
These are some preliminary impressions. Probably
this weekend I will look again at my notes, and
add more.
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