By Steven Gan
I once had a very interesting science teacher in the seventh grade who taught our class about evolution. He told us something very simple: that our bodies can evolve right before our very eyes. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How can that be? Doesn’t evolution of any living organism take a gazillion years?
My science teacher explained the evolutionary process like this: If starting tomorrow we lived barefoot in the trees, in order to keep ourselves balanced, humans with toes that were spread out and elongated could better grasp the branches. In the beginning we would be extremely clumsy in trying to do this and those of us who were not able to do it might end up on the ground. But those of us who managed would survive and pass this trait on to the next generation.
See? That wasn’t so complicated.
I’m sure you can even rationally take it to the next level and foresee that if we stayed living in the trees for the next million years, we would end up looking a lot different than we do now. We might have a tail protruding from our posterior (for better balance), and maybe we’d be holding marathons, swinging in great leaps from tree to tree. Although we wouldn’t recognize ourselves, that’s the way the evolutionary process works over time.
Evolution is a scientific theory with 150 years of accumulated evidence to support it. It can be criticized and refined by scientific methods. But it is not a matter of belief. Religious thought cannot be applied to disprove a scientific proposition any more than grammar can be used to build a skyscraper.
Yet according to Ben Carson, a proclaimed 2016 Republican candidate for President who is a highly accomplished neurosurgeon and, thus, an esteemed man of science, evolution is a matter of belief—something that just doesn’t fit into his view of the cosmos.
Carson’s view of evolution first became widely known back in 2006. In a 2006 debate with Richard Dawkins (British evolutionary biologist), Francis Collins (American physician and geneticist), and Daniel Dennett (American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist), Carson stated: “I don’t believe in evolution…I simply don’t have enough faith to believe that something as complex as our ability to rationalize, think, and plan, and have a moral sense of what’s right and wrong, just appeared.” In 2012, nearly 500 professors, students, and alumni of Emory University wrote a letter expressing concern about his views in advance of his commencement speech (there was no request to rescind the invitation). They cited a quote in a Carson interview with the Adventist Review: “By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior.” More recently, Carson again reiterated his beliefs that the theory of evolution is just not possible. He stated that as a neurosurgeon who has spent most of his life studying the human brain, he believes the brain is too complex to have “simply evolved.”
“Simply evolved?” Carson apparently forgets that evolution just doesn’t happen overnight, but over millennia.
My hope is that Carson continues to insist that the theory of evolution is for the birds. He has his conservative religious following, and to those who cheer him on, he’s talking their language. To the rest of America, he’s on the fringes.
I’m thankful that Carson never sat in on my seventh grade science class.
By Eleonora di Liscia
Illinois State Senator Julie Morrison (D-Deerfield) is working to bring sanity back into Illinois gun laws. Sen. Morrison is sponsoring a bill that would enable municipalities to once again regulate assault weapons.
In 2013, Illinois became the last state to enact a concealed carry law after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a ban was unconstitutional. The resulting Concealed Carry Act then barred a municipality from regulating assault weapons unless the regulation was in place within 10 days after the Act’s July 9, 2013 effective date.
The City of Highland Park acted quickly, passing its assault weapons ban on June 24, 2013, just prior to the cut off. (For a statement by Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, see sidebar.) But for some gun owners any regulation is just too much. A Highland Park resident, along with the Illinois State Rifle Association, challenged the Highland Park law, arguing among other things that the law limited their options for armed self-defense. On April 27, 2015, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their arguments and upheld Highland Park’s law.
The Seventh Circuit found that the gun owners had undermined their own argument that a ban on assault weapons wouldn’t prevent criminals from finding substitute weapons. “If criminals can find substitutes for banned assault weapons, then so can law-abiding home owners,” Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote. The court also said that data established that laws like the Highland Park ban reduced gun crimes involving assault weapons and that some evidence linked the availability of assault weapons to gun-related homicides.
Prompted by the April 27 ruling, Sen. Morrison’s SB 2130 would strike the language in the Concealed Carry Act prohibiting municipalities from regulating assault weapons.
“This is about local control,” Morrison said in a statement. “Highland Park decided to protect its citizens by banning assault weapons. Every other city and village in Illinois should have that same right.”
The Illinois State Rifle Association has naturally said it will oppose the bill. At least one gun- nut site labelled Sen. Morrison an “anti-gun extremist” who has introduced a “dangerous gun control bill” that “would ban most of the possession of most of the guns you own now.”
But both the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and the Gun Violence Prevention PAC have praised the bill.
“Now that we have a court decision that affirms communities can ban assault weapons, I’m sure more of Illinois’ cities and towns will want to pass ordinances to keep their residents safe,” said Colleen Daley of the Illinois Council against Handgun Violence. “Senator Morrison’s legislation would help restore local control on this important public safety issue.”
This is a sidebar to the article about Julie Morrison’s proposed legislation.
Statement by Nancy Rotering, Mayor of Highland Park, Following Decision Upholding Her City’s Assault Weapons Ban
In 2013, when the State of Illinois passed legislation that offered the City of Highland Park a brief opportunity to regulate assault weapons, we made sure that the chance to protect our community wasn’t lost. Despite threats from special interest groups, we took decisive action to ban assault weapons in an effort to reduce the risk of a mass shooting.
As a mayor and the mom of four sons, the memories of Sandy Hook ran through my mind as we took the vote. Banning assault weapons is a commonsense step to reducing gun violence and protecting our children, our law enforcement officials, and our community from potential mass violence and grief.
While special interest groups challenged our decision, first the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and then the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Highland Park’s assault weapons ban ordinance is lawful under the U.S. Constitution.
While the court’s ruling allows all Illinois municipalities the opportunity to safeguard their residents, current Illinois state law limits their ability to enact their own firearm restrictions. Municipalities wishing to take the same or similar steps as Highland Park needed to do so within a 10-day window in 2013. That time has come and gone. Highland Park was among a handful of municipalities to pass an assault weapons ban back then.
Upon receipt of the news of the court’s ruling, I contacted State Senator Julie Morrison and urged her to draft legislation to amend state law to allow all municipalities the opportunity to take action at any time to ban assault weapons. Senator Morrison agreed that all Illinois municipalities should have the opportunity to protect their communities, and she introduced SB 2130 to the Illinois General Assembly on May 1.
We know that we cannot stop every violent crime, but we can and will continue to take sensible action and do our part to protect our children and families.
By Laurence D. Schiller
Congressman Bob Dold and his mentor, Senator Mark Kirk, are fond of portraying themselves as moderate independents—as they must, if they want to win election in Blue Illinois. This is why it is so important to separate what these Republican legislators actually do from the press releases emanating from their offices.
In the recent past, both Kirk and Dold’s electoral victories have been assisted by the lack of attention and appallingly low voter turnout that has become typical of non-presidential election years. Kirk, who is perhaps the most vulnerable GOP senator in 2016, achieved election to the Senate in 2010, the year, as President Obama put it, Democrats received a “shellacking” in the mid-term elections. Dold, too, was first elected as part of that 2010 Republican juggernaut. And after losing to Brad Schneider in 2012, the year President Obama was reelected, Dold was able to regain the seat in the Democratic-leaning 10th in 2014 by sounding just enough like a moderate to squeak through. He exploited voters’ unhappiness with Congress, even though it was the Republican majority’s House leadership, abetted by an aggressively obstructionist Republican minority in the Senate, that paralyzed the government.
It is important to note that Dold, the self-styled moderate, made Congressman Paul Ryan’s list of most reliable conservatives, a list that includes the worst of climate deniers, fundamentalist evangelicals, xenophobes, and war hawks, all supporters of our modern day Robber Barons. Not a list that should help him in the 2016 election, but remember, this is the same Bob Dold who was endorsed by Phyllis Schlafly in 2010 and begged to keep that quiet.
Clearly, what Dold does in Congress makes the Radical Right happy, no matter what he says to his moderate constituents. Here is an example: In a speech in Chicago on April 27, Dold said that the nation is in desperate need of plans to stimulate economic growth, upgrade infrastructure, whittle its national debt, and help the growing number of Americans in poverty. Can’t disagree, although on President Obama’s watch, the debt has been significantly reduced and the stock markets are at all-time highs.
But what did Dold do? He voted for the Republican budget, which decimates social services, including cutting food stamps, Head Start programs, and aid to education; takes health insurance away from 16 million Americans; and reduces Medicare and Medicaid from essential government programs to tax credits or block grants designed to benefit the insurance companies. (For a more detailed discussion of this budget, see “Congress Watch: Dold and Kirk Vote To Gut Medicare and Other Health and Social Programs, Increase Defense Spending, and Lower Taxes on the Wealthiest Americans,” Tenth News, May 2015, https://tenthdems.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tenth-Dems-newsletter-May-2015-v4.pdf#page=2.) Far from redressing the growing poverty in America, this Republican budget cuts essential services and would cause misery, sickness, and literal hunger to millions who should point their gaunt fingers at millionaire Bob Dold.
Further, this Republican budget fails to provide sufficient funds to address infrastructure problems, while cutting aid to mass transit and Amtrak, again services utilized by the working and middle classes.
Finally, this Republican budget provides yet another tax cut to the top one percent of Americans, which will reduce income to the Federal Treasury and increase the national debt, not reduce it. Dold’s insistence that tax cuts for the wealthy and reduced environmental controls on business create jobs flies in the face of the reality of what George H. W. Bush called Reagan’s voodoo economics. Trickle down economics don’t work and never will.
So there is a basic disconnect between Dold’s words that he wants to help people, and his actions, whereby he votes for the economics of the Robber Barons, regardless of the damage it does to average Americans. Dold has yet to understand the basic economic premise that it isn’t the rich who create jobs, it is consumer demand, and that demand is disappearing as the economic policies that Dold supports shift the wealth of America from the middle class to the very rich.
The other recent big news out of the House was the passage of the $89.2 billion National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA), which vastly expanded spending on defense, even as Republicans in the House, Dold included, failed to take responsibility for authorizing the war against ISIS. While Republicans in both houses of Congress have made sanctimonious noises about the need to meddle with and control nuclear talks with Iran, the House GOP leadership allowed a bill to pass that sets no limits on spending, number of troops sent to Iraq, or endgame for this conflict. Of course this is all politics. Constitutionally, Congress has no right to interfere in diplomatic negotiations, whereas it is supposed to be responsible for authorizing wars. The NDAA passed, supported by Dold, with 135 amendments, among which was stripping the ability of Dreamers to join the military and a scientifically fallacious “Pain Capable Children” provision designed to further limit women’s abortion rights. While Dold voted against these amendments initially, preserving a basis for him to claim that he is moderate on immigration and choice, when it mattered he voted for the NDAA with these provisions intact. This is a time-honored tactic. If Dold were truly pro-choice or supported immigration reform, he would have voted against the NDAA as a matter of principle. He did not.
Mark Kirk, who, by the way, has the lowest rating in the Senate for writing bipartisan bills and zero points from GovTrack.us for failing to support eight government transparency bills, also voted for the GOP budget, contradicting his stated desire to help the average Illinoisan. But I think his actions, or, more accurately, non-actions, on the Loretta Lynch nomination for Attorney General and the Human Trafficking bill are most indicative of how Kirk operates. Lynch’s nomination, held up for five months, longer than any cabinet nomination of the past three administrations, was hostage to Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desire to hurt the President in any way possible. Although the majority of Senators supported the nomination, McConnell refused to bring it to the floor for a vote.
While Democrats pressured McConnell, Mark Kirk said and did nothing. With public opinion roundly condemning the Senate leadership, McConnell decided to tie the nomination to a widely supported bill on human trafficking, saying he would bring it up as soon as that bill was passed. But, of course, there was a hitch. When Democrats weren’t looking, the Republicans slid in a provision that would have curtailed the ability of victims of trafficking to terminate pregnancies, and Democrats objected. (For a detailed discussion of this bill, see “Congress Watch: Kirk Signs Open Letter to Iran; Goes Along with Republican Leadership on Abortion Restrictions and Anti-Immigrant Homeland Security Funding Bills,” Tenth News, April 2015, at p. 11, https://tenthdems.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Tenth-Dems-newsletter-Apr.-2015-v5-1.pdf#page=10.)
Eventually, the anti-choice language was removed, the bill passed, and Lynch was confirmed. And Kirk? He had nothing to say about the human trafficking bill controversy. Yet immediately after Lynch’s confirmation, he trumpeted how he was involved in the bipartisan effort to get her in. Really? When it mattered, when McConnell was playing his political games, there wasn’t a peep out of Kirk or his office. For five months he did nothing but toe the party line, showing what an ineffective voice he is for those for whom he says he advocates. His lack of action speaks far louder than his statements after the fact.
Dold and Kirk? Be very skeptical of what they say. Watch what they do.
When: Thursday, June 25, 2015 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Where: Bake’s Sports Theme Restaurant, 33251 N. US Highway 45, Wildwood, IL
What: Meet and greet with Brad Schneider. He will speak on major issues in the 10th Congressional District.
RSVP to Jim Neel, e-mail jcnbbn@gmail.com.
