February 13, 2007

Chisum Helps Spread the Word on Crusade
to Take Evolution Out of Schools with Memo

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Some Texas House members on both sides of the aisle were scratching their heads in disbelief Tuesday after the new chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee distributed a memo calling for legislation designed to prevent educators from teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.

State Rep. Warren Chisum, a Pampa Republican who was chosen last month to be the lower chamber's chief budget writer, did not write the anti-evolution memo that House members discovered in their mail boxes at the Capitol. Chisum explained in an accompanying memo on his official state letterhead that he was distributing the communiqué on behalf of Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges and greatly appreciated the information contained in it. Chisum said he'd met Bridges during his tenure as the chairman of a National Conference of State Legislatures committee that studied agricultural, environmental and energy issues.

The note from Bridges, a five-term Republican legislator, contends that incontrovertible evidence has been discovered proving that the teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional because it's fueled by a religious agenda.

"Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone - demonstrates conclusively that so-called `secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate `creation scenario' of the Parisee religion," Bridges asserts. "This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic `holy book' Kabbala dating back at least two millennia."

Bridges, who tried and failed to prohibit Georgia schools from teaching evolution in legislation that he sponsored two years ago, provides links to a web site that features a "three-part legal model for removing evolutionism" from public schools across the nation. The web site, which is published by the Fair Education Foundation Inc., argues that the "evolutionary paradigm" is based on "the counterfeit Copernican Model of a rotating and orbiting Earth."

The group says that the information it has complied exposes an astonishing "level of demonstrable hi-tech fraud, baseless assumptions, occult mathematics, etc.,--all part of a religious conspiracy!--that has been at work over many centuries implanting the incredible evolution myth about the origin of the Universe, the Earth, and Mankind."

The foundation declares that the Earth does not rotate around the sun and that the universe is not "one ten trillionth" as big as people have been led to believe. "The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s "knowledge" about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself," according to the web site.

Bridges insists that states can now prevail in the courts if they pass legislation to stop the teaching of evolution in schools funded by taxpayers. Attempts to ban schools from teaching the theory of evolution have been consistently thwarted since the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1925 set aside the conviction of a school teacher who'd been arrested for using a textbook that included theories espoused in a book by Charles Darwin. The legal proceedings came to be known as the Scopes Monkey Trial on which the book and subsequent movie "Inherit the Wind" was based.

Conservatives who oppose the teaching of evolution have attempted to offset it by requiring schools to teach creationism as well. But courts have refused to allow creationism or intelligent design because it's motivated by religion.

Chisum - a former Democrat - is one of the Legislature's most conservative members. Two years ago he sponsored a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Texas - and voters across the state approved it overwhelmingly.

Republican Speaker Tom Craddick tapped Chisum to lead the Appropriations committee after the panel's previous chairman, State Rep. Jim Pitts, tried without success to oust him from the House's top leadership post at the start of the regular session last month. Pitts, a Waxahachie Republican, chaired the budget-writing committee for two years before Chisum took over last month.

Chisum served eight years in the House as a Democrat before switching parties in 1996 and winning re-election as a Republican. He emerged as a key player on the Republican leadership team two years ago and had a pivotal role in the floor fights on the state budget, school finance and other major issues.