(Cross posted at E Pluribus Unum)

Jim Brown posted a diary over at Daily Kingfish wherein he lays out the case that Bobby Jindal's chances for the VP spot are alive and well.

That might be, but I think that's bad news for the Republicans. Here's why:

Quite a few articles were written last week about speculative McCain VP pick, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, many focusing on Jindal's signing into law a bill that will allow the teaching of creationism, through "supplemental materials," in Louisiana's public schools. Some of last week's articles mentioned Jindal's association with former Texas Republican Party co-chair and pseudo-historian David Barton, a name all too familiar to those of us who closely follow the religious right, but largely unrecognized by just about everyone else on the left, in spite of the impact he managed to have on evangelical voters in the last two presidential elections.

Yeah, I'm always a day late on these things, and god knows I'm no Granny Doc, but here goes.

From the front page to the lowliest diary comments, it is impossible not to encounter somebody's grave, disheartened disappointment at something the Democratic nominee did or didn't do in his quest to gain office.

You're shocked.  You're hurt.  You're going to take your $25 and go home.  You're going to give up on the big ticket and concentrate on state races.

Enjoy.  I don't have the option.  My state sucks.

This still needs work... a lot of work. I'm sure you recall the mock schedule that was being circulated in 2004. I made a few edits, omissions, updates... but I'm sure it can be improved.
Any contributions would be appreciated.

Hello, and welcome to today's edition of All Things Bobby Jindal.

The breakingest of breaking news is that the guv's legislative aide  Tommy Williams has resigned.

With a 1994 article by McCain V.P. candidate Bobby Jindal gaining fresh attention, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday overturned a judgment against the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church on Friday in a civil case surrounding exorcism. The justices ruled 6-3 decision that the jury's decision infringed on First Amendment rights.

A county jury had awarded Laura Schubert $300,000 in damages for injuries, both physical and psychological, during a 1996 exorcism performed by the church when she was 17. Schubert said she had been, essentially, kidnapped and suffered injures and psychological trauma, leading to self-mutilation and a suicide attempt.

Justice David Medina wrote in the new opinion that awarding a judgment against the church would "would have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect' by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs."

After diarying the rapid decline of Gov. Bobby Jindal's popularity over his refusal to veto a legislative pay raise and calling attention to the recall petition circulating against the Boy Governor, I'd have thought there was no more to say on the subject.

But the sun has risen on another bright, blessed, schadenfreudelicious day in Louisiana, the Times-Picayune has hit New Orleans porches, chock full of fresh dissing for John McCain's second-or-third-favorite running mate.

In December, 2005, proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism were dealt a crushing blow. A Republican judge appointed by none other than George W. Bush found that ID was creationism, that the tactic of teaching it even as a 'controversy' was disingenuous, and concluded in part that "citizens of the Dover area were poorly served ... that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks ..." In an utterly reprehensible act, sadly all too representative of creationist hucksters, the well-heeled Discovery Institute that helped create the whole shitty mess walked the check, leaving jilted local taxpayers to pay off a one-million dollar legal bill. They would not stay in hiding for long.

What soon emerged from a hasty PR makeover was no longer ostensibly interested in teaching creationism per se, but rather as fierce fighters for (Socially conservative) justice, a sort of brave-hearted, academic William Wallace replete with a new antiscience & martyr dog whistle cast as a proud, resounding battle-cry: "They may take our elected office, but they'll never take our Freedom!" By that odd definition, freedom is definitely on the march for residents of the Pelican State thanks to a former exorcist and faith healer turned politician:

Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law, 27 years after the state passed its Balance Treatment for Evolution-Science and Creation-Science Act ... Jindal's approval of the bill was buried in a press release issued on June 25, 2008 ...Houma Today reports (June 27, 2008) that the bill "will empower educators to pull religious beliefs into topics like evolution, cloning and global warming by introducing supplemental materials."

The Louisiana legislature should be more wary than most of the Dover trap: It was there, way back in 1987, that the Supreme Court decided an earlier version of creationism was indeed a sham. But that didn’t keep Governor Bobby Jindal from signing SB 733, the mis-named Louisiana Science Education Act, last week. While the bill purports to encourage critical thinking and open discussion of various scientific topics, it perpetuates the same sham by singling out evolution (along with global warming and cloning) as topics deserving special criticism.

This, in and of itself, undermines the claim to secular purpose. Evolution is no more scientifically controversial than gravity, and Governor Jindal surely knows that -- he graduated from Brown University with honors in biology. His own biology professor reminded him recently that "Without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn't make sense. In order for today's students in Louisiana to succeed in college and beyond, ... they need a solid grounding in genetics and evolution."

Another sham is the claim of bill supporters that this bill isn't about creationism was put to the lie early on, when supporter David Tate, a member of the Livingston Parish school board, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune "I believe that both sides -- the creationism side and the evolution side -- should be presented and let students decide what they believe." He added that the bill was necessary because "teachers are scared to talk about" creationism, but didn't mention whether they were similarly scared about discussing astrology or the belief that babies come from storks, not sex. An anti-abortion news site crowed that, thanks to Jindal's signature "Louisiana public school teachers can now educate their students about the theory of intelligent design," a practice ruled unconstitutional in both 1987 and again in 2005.

But it isn't a partisan issue. Conservative blogger AllahPundit was unsurprised by Jindal's decision to sign the bill, declaring it "depressing yet predictable." Prominent right-wing blogger Charles Johnson declared that, with Jindal's signature on the bill, "American educational standards take a huge step backward... The creationist front group called the Discovery Institute is quietly crowing, and maintaining the fiction that the bill is not religiously-based." That many prominent conservatives would agree with progressives -- not to mention, heaven forbid, a New York Times editorial -- shows just how far into the fringes Jindal's decision was.

In Dover, a school board overrode the advice of parents, teachers, and scientists, forcing intelligent design into biology classes. Parents and teachers sued, and in the federal trial that followed, Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and co-author with Paul R. Gross of Creationism's Trojan Horse, showed that the concept of "intelligent design" entered drafts of the textbook at issue in 1987, just after the Supreme Court ruled that claims that "creation-science" has any secular basis were just a sham. The judge in Dover also saw through that sham, but Louisiana is on the verge of being drawn back into that legal maelstrom.

What can you do? Interested Louisiana teachers, parents and students should follow the excellent advice of the Louisiana Coalition for Science.  Those of us not blessed to live in the Pelican State can join the National Center for Science Education. Bills like the one Jindal signed were proposed in 6 states this year, and while most were mercifully put out of their misery, they’ll rise again quicker than a B movie zombie. NCSE and local Citizens for Science groups would be happy to give you advice about how to defend and improve science education near you.  

Remember, these bills have nothing to do with academic freedom or furthering science education – Imagine for example if health instructors tried to use them to ‘teach the weaknesses’ in abstinence only sex-ed! The goal is to manufacture doubt at the wholesale level on carefully selected subjects to serve a small segment of lobbyists and activists, while weakening the public school system in hope of, some might speculate, eventually drowning both it and the taxes that support it in a bathtub. Antiscience forces are well funded – in some cases by full blown Reconstruction Dominionist zillionaires -- and relentless in moving forward with their stated theocratic goals to preserve and expand their twisted version[s] of freedom, even, and perhaps especially, if it comes at the expense of your own.

Gosh, it seems only three days ago I was talking about how Bobby Jindal's perfect PR aura was starting to slip as constituent ire grows over his failure to oppose the legislature's big pay raise.

Things aren't looking any better at week's end for the Wunderkind Governor and Future of the Republican Party.  Wednesday, state House Speaker Jim Tucker and four other legislators were looking at recall petitions over the pay hike.

Today, it's Bobby's turn.

[ACTION ITEM: Help spread the alert by voting up this story on Digg]

While American progressives propose forward-looking plans for improving American public education, whole sectors of America stubbornly persist in a bold march backwards. It looks like a green light for a new, national "Stealth Creationism" initiative if now that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signs has signed the new "stealth" Creationism bill, SB 733, explains Barbara Forrest, author of [with Paul R. Gross] Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design reports in a new Talk To Action story:

UPDATE:  Jindal makes the national news.

Our "wonder boy" governor and potential McCain running mate, Bobby Jindal, is having a difficult time.  The Republicans trashed Kathleen Blanco after Katrina and Rita to the point where she couldn't regain her footing.

Now Bobby Jindal is finding out it feels to anger the electorate.

Well, that didn't take long.  Just a few months after taking office and being lauded as conservatism's new star, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is taking hits from every side, including the right.

His vaunted ethics reforms, which actually made ethics violations harder to prove and don't apply to many of his own appointees, were the first specks of tarnish on the Golden Boy.

Now, conservatives are up in arms over his caving to the legislature on their pay raises.

The LA legislature has passed an anti-evolution law that is poised to be signed into law by Gov. Jindal. Please read the email posted below the fold for what you can do to try to stop it.  It's a small chance, to be sure, but this law is a definite wedge that will resonate nationally (or at least in places that would have us return to an 18th century understanding of the world).

Updated:  More info and links to bill text here http://www.ncseweb.org/...

I haven't seen this diaried yet so if I'm repeating.

In the latest Survey USA poll Obama is +15 over McCain in the great state of Washington.

Link

Every time someone lops off Creationism's head, it sprouts two more.  This time it's couched in terms of "critical thinking" and supported by that dark horse in the Republican VEEPstakes, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (details below the fold).

Hercules defeated the Hydra by cauterizing the necks each time he lopped off a head.  I wonder what the present-day analogue is that applies in this situation:  never letting another state legislature have a Republican majority again?

You see, it's this way.

No one told us anyone needed anything and we didn't ask.

That's about how it boils down in FEMA latest buterfingers handling of the much-dropped Katrina football.

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The Catholic Right, Part Fifty-nine

As several of us here at Talk to Action have discussed, reports of the Religious Right's demise are greatly exaggerated. For the moment their movement is stalled.  But stalled is not the same as finished.  But it might mean -- in transition, And as we've seen in the recent past it is a movement that is both resilient and well-funded.

With that thought in mind, it is time to take another look at one of the up-and-coming faces of the Religious Right, Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal -- who may be viewed as the poster-child for Religious Right's new brand of ecumenical politics.

Veepstakes 2008! It's the parlour game all political junkies are playing at this time - trying to guess who the Democratic and Republican nominees will be. For the most part, those high paid pundits on TV and radio are hedging their bet - giving only a short list - at best. Since I doubt either candidate will make their final decision for many weeks, it takes a brave person to jump ahead of the candidates and boldly predict exactly what they will do before they even know it themselves. I am that brave person.