Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann says schools should teach children about evolution and intelligent design because "the best thing to do is to allow all scientific facts on the table."

During a question-and-answer session at the University of Northern Iowa Wednesday, Bachmann was asked if intelligent design should be taught as science in public schools.

"I think that all science should be on the table," the candidate explained. "I think the one thing we do not want to have is censorship by government."

"I do believe that God created the Earth," she continued. "And I believe there are issues that need to be addressed -- the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the issue of irreducible complexity, the dearth of fossil record."

According to many scientists, all three issues Bachmann mentioned do not discount the theory of evolution.

Scientific American's Steve Mirsky wrote in 2005 that arguing irreducible complexity as evidence against evolution was a "full-blown intellectual surrender strategy."

While Charles Darwin cited a lack of fossil records as "the most obvious and serious objection that can be urged against the theory," University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne believes the objection is no longer valid.

"Since 1859, paleontologists have turned up Darwin's missing evidence: fossils in profusion, with many sequences showing evolutionary change," Coyne explained in a 2005 article.

And University of Minnesota, Morris associate professor PZ Myers says the claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes evolution false is "one of the oldest canards in the creationists' book."

A student from Bancroft, Iowa, who identified himself as a Catholic, explained to Bachmann that there was big difference between a "theory" like intelligence design and a "scientific theory" like evolution.

"The idea of creationism by an intelligent designer is not scientific," he said. "It is pseudo-science. There is no hard evidence that says that God created Earth. There is nothing like that. Whereas, we have physicists, chemists, biologists, many other people in the science field that say this is how the Earth was created, this is how the universe was created. ... How can you say that creationism can be taught in a public school where this would actually increase the combining of church and state?"

"I think what you are advocating for is censorship on the part of government," Bachmann replied. "I want all facts on the table. ... Why would we forestall any particular theory? Because I don't think that evolutionists, by and large, say that evolution is a proven fact. They say that this is a theory as well as intelligent design."

"So I think intellectually, the best thing to do is to allow all scientific facts on the table and let students decide."

I'm pretty excited about the Black Keys new release, El Camino, which comes out next Tuesday. Here's the video for the first single. Man, this dude's got some moves.

And our sister site Newstalgia has some Baby Lemonade for ya. What are you listening to tonight?

Since this November marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iran-Contra Scandal, I ran across this special produced by NPR on the occasion of the opening days testimony of Col. Oliver North, the man alleged to have been at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal from July 1987.

Hosted by Cokie Roberts and featuring veteran newsman Daniel Schorr, they outline the circumstances and events that led up to this moment in the hearings.

Since time and facts get fuzzy, I thought it would be a good idea to run this piece as a sort of refresher course in the scandal and the players involved.

At the end of the NPR piece is an interview conducted by KCRW's Ruth Seymour with none other than Newt Gingrich, himself an outspoken supporter of covert operations and doing-what-needs-to-be-done.

Considering he is the man who would like to be President next year, a glimpse of him twenty-five years ago might not be such a bad thing. Not that he's changed so dramatically over the years. But you get the idea of where he would like our current state of government headed, even in 1986.

History.

Several protesters were arrested after being pepper sprayed by police while protesting the ALEC meeting in Arizona.

Via KTAR:

One person with the movement doesn't believe the use of pepper spray was needed.

"A member of the Tohono O'odham Indian Tribe who was pepper sprayed was denied medical treatment," Diane D'Angelo, a media volunteer with Occupy Phoenix, said. "There is no reason to be pepper spraying American citizens who are trying to exercise their first amendment right.

"I think it is pretty typical of what happens to people who don't have money, or access to power in this country at present. You get turned away, arrested or pepper sprayed. Of course it was excessive."

Various organizations ranging from labor to civil rights groups were there to protest against the American Legislative Exchange Council's States and Nation Summit.

The protesters accuse ALEC of being a massive nonprofit body that brings corporations and legislators together to draft ``model'' legislation like Arizona's SB 1070.

That last line is a little bit vague. ALEC IS a massive nonprofit body funded by corporations that exists for one sole purpose: to draft right-wing legislation and push it forward via state legislatures. For sample legislation they've drafted, please visit ALECexposed.org.

In Arizona alone, there are at least 20 pieces of draft legislation which began with ALEC.

PRWatch.org:

The best-known Arizona ALEC bill, SB1070, is almost a carbon-copy version of the ALEC "No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act," and was approved by an ALEC task force whose members included theCorrections Corporation of America and American Bail Coalition, both of which stood to benefit from immigrant detention. The role of the private prison industry in the bill (which became law in 2010) was documented by Beau Hodai at In These Times and Laura Sullivan at NPR. Not previously reported is that one year earlier, in 2009, a similar anti-immigrant bill approved by the same ALEC task force was introduced in the Arizona legislature, but failed to pass. SB1159 is a verbatim copy of ALEC's "Immigration Law Enforcement Act," and like SB1070 was sponsored by recently-recalled Arizona Senator Russell Pearce. Pearce also sponsored ALEC bills in the Arizona legislature that would circumvent the Naturalization Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and mandate the use of the E-Verify system for Arizona employers.

Other ALEC legislators introduced ALEC-inspired bills to privatize the state prison system, oppose public financing for political campaigns, create new barriers to voting, and thwart federal efforts to implement environmental regulations that might exceed weak state environmental laws, according to the report(pdf).

I was at the Occupy LA raid last night until 2am. I talked to Sam Seder this morning about the night.

A small church in Pike County, Kentucky has voted to ban interracial couples from most church activities "to promote greater unity among the church body."

Melvin Thompson, former pastor of Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, proposed the ban after Stella Harville brought her fiance, Ticha Chikuni, to services in June. Harville, who goes by the name Suzie, played the piano while Chikuni sang.

Before stepping down as pastor in August, Thompson told Harville that her fiance could not sing at the church again. Harville is white and Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe, is black.

Last Sunday, church members voted 9-6 in favor of Thompson's proposed ban. Others attending the church business meeting declined to take a stand on the issue.

"That the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church does not condone interracial marriage," the resolution states, according to WKYT.

"Parties of such marriages will not be received as members, nor will they be used in worship services and other church functions, with the exception being funerals. All are welcome to our public worship services. This recommendation is not intended to judge the salvation of anyone, but is intended to promote greater unity among the church body and the community we serve."

Harville told The Kentucky Herald-Leader that the decision is an embarrassment to God, the church and the whole community.

"It sure ain't Christian," she explained. "It ain't nothing but the old devil working."

Harville and Chikuni plan to marry in July, but they won't be tying the knot in Pike County.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional in a 1967 decision. By 2005, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld determined that 7 percent of all marriages in the U.S. were interracial.

It's not unheard of that people facing incarceration sometimes kill themselves. But there's no question that Tracy Lawrence was a huge threat to some powerful interests:

A notary public who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive foreclosure scam before blowing the whistle on the scandal has been found dead in her Las Vegas home.

NBC station KSNV of Las Vegas reported that the woman, Tracy Lawrence, 43, was scheduled to be sentenced Monday morning after she pleaded guilty this month to notarizing the signature of an individual not in her presence. She failed to show up for her hearing, and police found her body at her home later in the day.

It could not immediately be determined whether Lawrence, who faced up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000, died of suicide or of natural causes, KSNV reported. Detectives said they had ruled out homicide.

Lawrence came forward earlier this month and blew the whistle on the operation, in which title officers Gary Trafford, 49, of Irvine, Calif., and Geraldine Sheppard, 62, of Santa Ana, Calif. — who worked for a Florida processing company used by most major banks to process repossessions — allegedly forged signatures on tens of thousands of default notices from 2005 to 2008.

Trafford and Sheppard were charged two weeks ago with 606 counts of offering false instruments for recording, false certification on certain instruments and notarization of the signature of a person not in the presence of a notary public. You can read a .pdf version of their indictment here.

Police said at the time that the alleged scam had thrown into question the legality of most Las Vegas home foreclosures in the past few years, leaving many people living in foreclosed-upon homes that they unknowingly don't actually own.

I was reminded that November 30th 1986 was a significant day for American history. At the time we weren't sure. As allegations and discoveries of covert activity in the area of Arms-for-Hostages emerged, the scramble for denial was on. But people still felt betrayed. Buried somewhere, but certainly not lost was the realization this was the "October Surprise" that carried Reagan to victory in the 1980 election. That this clandestine operation was a political ploy in order to win an election.

Certainly not going to be the first time. But it's no wonder that, with Watergate, the stain of scandal on the highest office in the land was going to become more the norm than the exception in the future. We were now about to embark on another public display of the worst traits capable of human beings, cloaked in the banner of patriotism but mired in the mud of hypocrisy and seething with the sneer of arrogance.

And what progress? None.

So a reminder of this watershed and pivotal day via ABC World News This Week.

(h/t birthday girl Heather of VideoCafe)

Maybe after five years of campaigning, Mitt Romney feels a bit punchy.

Maybe he realizes that the Fox News, official propaganda arm of the RNC--who will work with Cain, with Gingrich, with Palin, with Huckabee--is pretty firmly in the "Anybody But Romney" camp.

Maybe his trust fund self was feeling a bit anxious for the oddly blue collar setting for the interview.

Whatever the reason, Mitt Romney had a difficult time suppressing his peevishness with the direction Bret Baier's questions were taking him.

Mitt Romney gave a rare interview to Fox News today, and struggled to contain his displeasure with Bret Baier, who probed his record of flip-flopping on issues from immigration to health care.[..]

Baier and Romney [..] sparred on his Massachusetts health care reform law. Asked whether the individual mandate was right for the Bay State, Romney fidgeted uncomfortably and said: "I don't know how many hundred times I've said this too. This is an unusual interview. Alright, let's do it again. Absolutely — what was right for Massachusetts, was right for Massachusetts."

"When you write a book, you have the ability to put down your entire view," Romney added. He didn't mention the fact that he amended the section of his book dealing with health care between editions.

In a later part of the interview, Romney tried to land a couple of hits on current front-runner GOP flavor of the month Newt Gingrich, calling him a career politician, and slamming him for disavowing previous positions. Somehow I didn't think my irony meter could redline any further, but Romney really likes to gun that motor, doesn't he?

Republican presidential candidates lying about New Hampshire's right-to-work law and similar laws elsewhere in the country.

The New Hampshire state House of Representatives failed Wednesday to override Gov. John Lynch's veto of legislation that would've made the state a so-called "right-to-work" state. The assault on workers' rights was vetoed by the governor in May after it passed the Republican-led legislature, but House Speaker William O'Brien led efforts to override the veto. The vote was 240-139, short of the two-thirds needed for the override to be successful.

O'Brien engaged in a campaign to override the veto that used numerous dirty tricks to try to push forward the anti-worker agenda:

Since May, O’Brien has scheduled then delayed votes multiple times and tried to hold surprise legislative sessions, all in an effort to catch Democrats and Republicans who supported the veto off guard and unable to attend and cast their votes.

New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie sent out the following comment via a press release from the national AFL-CIO:

Today, 130 elected representatives in the House stood with ironworkers, teachers, nurses and firefighters to sustain Governor Lynch’s veto of the so-called right-to-work law. Their vote is a clear signal to all of our elected leaders, in New Hampshire and elsewhere, that attacking the rights of everyday Americans isn’t the key to economic prosperity.

The working family champions in the House proved today that the will of the people takes precedent over political game playing with the livelihoods of their constituents. Rather than bowing to months of public and private pressure from Speaker O’Brien, Republican members of the House sided with all House Democrats against a law pushed by the Tea Party and out-of-state groups such as Americans for Prosperity. And they rebuffed the Speaker’s blatant political ploy to drag the Republican presidential primary candidates into the debate over right-to-work.

The working men and women urge Speaker O’Brien to take the will of the people into account and focus on jobs, not political attacks, in the next legislative session.

Big victory for New Hampshire, now if we can repeal these laws in other states...