Robin Hood was a Thief – And a Democrat

I don’t understand why people continue to tell me that the wealthy should be taxed more than anyone else.  I got into a discussion the other day with a guy who thought I was literally crazy for suggesting that a baseball superstar making tens of millions a year should be taxed the same percentage as – yes, I know it’s practically blasphemy – a schoolteacher making under forty thousand a year.

In Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, he echoes Michael Moore and bewails the fact that CEOs of corporations make over two hundred times the salary of their employees.  Yeah, so what?  Why should you care?

In his book, Obama also points out dryly that the “wealthy in America have little to complain about” and goes on to give a laundry list of excessive luxury items on which they should not spend their money.  Maybe.  But Americans have a right to be as superficial and covetous as they want, Senator.  You don’t have to like people who buy gold-plated toilets, but that doesn’t give you – or Warren Buffet – the right to say that the government should require them to be any different.

How about this for a shocker:  The poor in America have little to complain about.  As we all know, “poor” in America means something quite different from “poor” in say, Ethiopia or Bangladesh.  In America, most people living below the poverty line still have homes to live in, cars to drive, and cable TV to watch.  The number-one health problem for poor Americans is obesity.  Obesity.  Think about that for a moment.

So many people have an emotional knee-jerk response to this issue.  “No fair!” they shriek.  “The average American works hard and tries to raise his or her family and they get shafted.”  Yes well, “average” Americans have the same opportunities as the richest men in America have.  Plenty of “average” Americans have made decisions that have led them to be highly successful.  Plenty of “average” Americans have become wealthy because of determination, innovation, entrepreneurship, and smart business and investing skills.  Maybe part of the problem is that so many people seem perfectly fine with labeling themselves “average.”

I’m not saying there aren’t problems in America, and I’m not saying that we should be heartless and unresponsive to these problems.  But why should the answer be to penalize people who are doing well?  Big corporations are making lots of money because they’re efficiently providing a good or service for people.  The CEOs of monster corporations are Americans, too; they have a right to run their business the way they want.  Why should they be forced to pay more of their money than anyone else?  Because they’re rich and therefore have an “obligation”?

Why?  They don’t owe you anything.  They didn’t wrong you or steal from you.  They had to make their money following the same rules that you follow.  The rich are getting richer?  So what?  Why do you care what other people do?  Stop whining.  Earn your own money instead of demanding that others give you theirs.

A big corporation just ran you out of business?  Tough.  Stop whining.  What, are you saying that big corporation didn’t have the right to try to do better than its competitors?  Isn’t that exactly what your business was trying to do?  This is what happens in competition.  You don’t have to be happy about it.  The world is a tough place.  But you didn’t get shafted; you simply lost.  Get over it and do better next time.

Kirsten Powers a Conservative Shill?

Recently I posted a blog lauding Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers for being a voice of reason to oppose Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly (Why Fox News Needs a Hannity & Powers Show).  In response, I was told that Ms. Powers is a “conservative shill” who “kisses the asses of Michelle Malkin and her ilk on a daily basis.”  And since I spoke positively of Ms. Powers, I was labeled a conservative myself – one who wants Ms. Powers to take Alan Colmes’s place on Hannity & Colmes so the show will be “all conservative” and I’d never have to see my point of view challenged.

After I finished laughing, I realized that this is a perfect example of how hyper-partisanship can destroy rational discourse.  Regardless of the finer points of Ms. Powers’s views, she is manifestly a Democrat who spends a great deal of time arguing with conservatives like O’Reilly and Hannity – and she holds her own with reasonable points and worth acumen (something that cannot always be said of Alan Colmes).  Perhaps some liberals don’t agree with Ms. Powers, but to call her a conservative shill is simply absurd.

For the record, I’m a fiscal conservative and also a conservative on national defesne.  I don’t want nationalize health care.  I want free trade, a flat tax, and vouchers in public schools.

But behold:  I’m also pro-choice, pro-environment, and pro-gay marriage.  I don’t think people should be turned into criminals and tossed in jail for prostitution, personal drug-use, polygamy, or gambling.  Is that socially liberal enough?

And yet, I watch Fox News.  I never miss an episode of O’Reilly or Hannity & Colmes.  Hmm, this must be so that I’ll “never have to see my point of view challenged,” right?

I don’t know where Ms. Powers stands on some of the issues, but then, my previous post didn’t say anything about her views other than that she’s a Democrat.  In fact, the emphasis of that post was that her political views aren’t as important as her skill at presenting a rational argument.  Like other Fox News contributors such as Bernie Goldberg and Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers seems to defend reason first and political views second.  That’s a trait worthy of praise.

I don’t have any problem with opposing views.  I generally enjoy arguing with them.  I refuse to be pigeonholed by a political label or which cable news channel I watch.  I definitely don’t suffer from the extremist fallacy that everyone who disagrees with me is either a shill or an immoral human being.  Self-righteous partisan certitude hurts America.  Let’s all stop sacrificing rationality on the alter of ideology.

Where’s the Evidence for Evolution?

With all the hoopla over evolution in America today, I think many people have lost sight of the foundation.  Evolution is a powerful theory because it has powerful evidence to support it.  Let’s go down a laundry list.

1. Natural selection.  We know it works.  We’ve watched it happen.  Even the creationists admit that it works (they just don’t think it can make big changes like transform one species into another).  Genetic variation exists among offspring, and since only some of those offspring can survive, certain genetic traits will be favored over others.
2. Speciation.  We’ve watched the goatsbeardplant evolve into two separate species.  We can see the different species along with their intermediates in a “ring species” like the herring gull and black-billed gull.  We’ve watched reproduction isolation arrive in fruit flies.  We see reproductive isolation in donkeys and horses and lions and tigers.
3. Transitional fossils.  The fossil record is chock full of them.  Ambulocetus natans, Archaeopteryx, Tiktaalik, Acanthostega and Pikaia are a few.  The earliest land creatures in the fossil record still had tail fins like fish.  The earliest limbs look like modified fins.  The earliest amphibians look much more like fish than later amphibians.  Take your pick, go down the line; the evidence is everywhere.
4. Appropriate fossil distribution.  No anachronistic fossil has yet been found.  No horses in the time of the trilobites or humans in the time of dinosaurs.  The fossil record is laid out in order, detailing a history of evolution.
5. Vestigial evidence.  Humans have an appendix and wisdom teeth.  Human embryos have an empty and useless yolk sac.  Human infants have the grasp reflex (that chimpanzee babies have to hold onto their mothers’ fur).  Some whales have tiny femurs and hipbones.  Snakes have nonfunctional limbs with hip girdles.  DNA is full of useless junk, enzymes that don’t code for any protein.
6. Genetic similarities.  Chimpanzees have twenty-four chromosomes.  Humans have twenty-three, and one of them happens to be a “folded” version of two chromosomes (meaning we once had twenty-four like our closest relatives).  The hemoglobin gene-split that occurred about half a billion years ago in jawless fish means that every descendant of that line (including nearly all modern animals) should have that same gene split.  Those that are not the descendants (like modern hagfish and lampreys) should not have it.  This is precisely what has been found so far.
7. Enough time.  If you have doubts about carbon dating, forget it.  It only measures a few thousand years anyways.  The rubidium-strontium, uranium-lead, and potassium-argon methods of radiometric dating all measure millions or billions of years.  Considering the geological record, plate tectonics, erosion, the age of the universe, the age of the solar system, the distance of stars from us, the fact that all the shorter-lived radioactive elements are missing from our solar system – the earth is not ten thousand years old.  Natural selection had about four and a half billion years to play with.
8. Last but not least:  promising beginnings.  Organic compounds form with ease out of inorganic materials.  Even protein molecules can perform rudimentary “trial and error” processes.  Even the inorganic things like clay crystals can manage a primitive form of “heredity.”

How Women are Violating Themselves

Women getting cosmetic surgery is so ubiquitous today that it seems to have become a competition.  It’s like the answer to the question of why every single pro bodybuilder uses steroids.  Because they have to.  Because as soon as one bodybuilder does it, he or she is going to look better (in the eyes of the judges, at least) than everyone else, so if they want to stay competitive, they have to follow suit.  It doesn’t matter if the thought of steroids disgusts them, it doesn’t matter if they swore they’d never use them – since their physique is being rated by others, they have little choice.

We live in a free society, so women can shove bags of saline into their bodies to make their breasts look bigger if that’s their wish.  They can carve up their faces, stuff adipose tissue in their lips, an inject poison to erase wrinkles.  They can even burn their labia with a laser to make their vagina look “pretty.”  And of course there are perfectly legitimate reasons for getting cosmetic surgery that don’t include turning what is already beautiful into an artificial caricature of beauty.

But why does the focus have to be on physical appearance?  Why must people incest so much time, effort, money, and pain into fitting a social stereotype?  They’re not in pursuit of beauty; they’re in pursuit of people to look at them and think they’re beautiful.  There’s a distinction.  It’s like the difference between feeling good about yourself because you’ve studied hard, or feeling good about yourself because someone tells you that you’re smart.  The former is indicative of self-value; the latter is indicative of nothing.

But I think this is about more than the pathetic (and doomed) tactic of trying to find self-worth solely in one’s sexuality.  It’s the fact that beauty has become sexuality.  “Sexy” has come to mean promiscuous.  A young woman is defined as “hot” only if she’s willing to lift her shirt for a camera and make out with another young woman.  Modern culture has become the two teenage boys in the movie Weird Science, creating the “perfect” woman by totaling up the components they like.  We’ve turned female beauty into a rating scale: the number of drunken frat boys who get an erection from looking at the woman.  And how does she score high on this scale?  By investing thousands of dollars into her body.

To continue the bodybuilder analogy, suppose every bodybuilder made a pact that none of them would use steroids.  Suppose it was collaborative effort with the judges, photographers, and fans.  Suppose all the muscle magazines would only print photos of natural bodybuilders.  Suppose a natural physique was celebrated and admired rather than being relegated to a second-tier “also-ran” with potential.  Suppose a steroid-built physique was viewed as too extreme and thus consigned to the fringe.  Suppose it was even viewed as grotesque, a distorted parody of what is aesthetic about a figure.

I’m not saying that all cosmetic surgery is bad, or that every woman who gets it is misguided or harming herself.  It just sickens me that we should emphasize such a need for it.  It sickens me that mothers are taking their daughters in for breast augmentation as a high school graduation present (what a welcome into the adult world!).  It sickens me that so many women seem to think that they need inflated breasts to be attractive.  Honestly, would they even want a partner whose deal-breaker for a girlfriend is cup size?  That’s what it comes down to, the tragedy behind it, at least in my opinion: Cosmetic surgery demotes a woman to the mere concept of a woman, a collection of extraneous components, rather than a person in their entirety.

Prison Story II

I remember getting an eighteen-year-old cellie once.  I came home from work and the first thing he did was break out some pictures to show me.  Each one was a photo of one of his “homies” or “homegirls,” all of whom were clean-cut kids posing with basketball jerseys, cigarettes behind their ears, and throwing up gang signs.  This was the most important thing to this kid, that he establish to me – his new cellie – that he was cool and had many homies.

In fact, that was the most important thing in his life period.  There was nothing else but hanging out and looking cool.  He didn’t care about education, he didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do with his life; he didn’t think one bit about the future at all.  He definitely couldn’t admit to any responsibility for why he was in prison.  Ask him to explain who he is, what type of person he is, and he couldn’t reply.

His type is ubiquitous in prison.  They either brag about or pretend to have had a rough time growing up, regardless if they’re from a small logging town or the streets of Seattle.  They talk about “love for their homies” when invariably these people either get them arrested or leave them high and dry.  Their biggest aspiration in life is to stand on a street corner wearing dope gear, a pistol, and a gangsta glare.

As Cora Daniels says in her excellent book Ghetto Nation, they seem to revel in lowering their expectations.  They’re proud of thinking that they’re next to worthless.  They’re resigned to losing at life because they’ve convinced themselves there’s something worthwhile in being a loser.  Some of them even see a sort of fatalistic romanticism in the whole thing.

I’m reminded of one of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics in the Nirvana song You Know You’re Right:  “Things have never been so swell/I have never failed to fail.”

Even as much as I’ve been exposed to them in this place, I don’t know much about gangs.  But I always wonder what exactly is the point?  What does a gangbanger get out of being in a gang?  How does it benefit them?  To me, the only thing it seems to result in is violence, prison, a loss of education opportunities, and drug abuse.  They hurt their families, they disappoint themselves, they leave their kids and wives alone.  And for what?  I don’t see any venerable gangbangers talking about the good old days.  I don’t see any rich gangbangers who retire with nest eggs, either.

Everyone was young and foolish (to some degree) at one point, of course.  The biggest problem is that some of these kids don’t grow out of it.  Prison is like a time warp.  Prisoners have no impetus to change, and no contrast.  The “kids” I’m talking about don’t have to be eighteen to twenty; plenty of guys in their thirties and even forties act like this as well.

Again I’ll quote Ms. Daniels from Ghetto Nation:  “Young adulthood is no longer a phase of development but instead where development ends.”  I’ve never heard anyone express the gravity of the situation so succinctly.  Prison and society at large is full of grown men and women – parents even – who prove Ms. Daniels is correct.

But I don’t want to look at this problem in the sense of “everyone has to grow out of that phase one day and become responsible.”  That’s like saying everyone has to smoke cigarettes for a few years before they get conscious about their health.  Why must the young-adulthood phase include this nonsense at all?  Parents can teach responsibility to a five-year-old, and every kid can learn that the contradictory notion of lowering oneself to find self-worth is simply that: a contradiction.

How Bill O’Reilly “Proves” that God Exists

There are many absurd affronts against reason, science, and evolution tossed about nowadays, particularly by conservative Christians.  On the Fox News Channel, Bill O’Reilly comes to mind.  I have no intention of questioning his morality or attacking his religious beliefs.  My purpose is to challenge some of the opinions about atheism and science that he states with such certitude, as well as his intellectual commitment to these subjects.  I think this is important because O’Reilly speaks to an audience of millions, and because his opinions are mirrors of very common misconceptions and missteps in reasoning.

The main argument utilized by O’Reilly when confronted with skepticism in a deity is the following: “Atheism doesn’t make any sense because an atheist must ultimately believe that something came from nothing.”

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that creationists think that they’re exempt from this?  In other words, don’t they have to believe that God came from nothing?  In fact, since God must inevitably be more complex than the universe He created, don’t creationists have to believe that an even greater level of information came from nothing?

I doubt there is anyone alive who cannot guess what those such as O’Reilly – and every other Christian – says to that.  “We don’t have to believe God came from nothing,” they assert, “because God has always been there.”

This argument is intellectually torpid and completely moot:  One can just as easily say the matter and energy of the universe has always been there.  For some reason, theists believe a designer explains everything – though in reality adding a supreme being just piles on more of that complexity they enjoy pointing out.  O’Reilly is using a plebian version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God; he undoubtedly assumes that there must be a God because it “makes sense” to him that there’s a god.

I remember when Richard Dawkins was promoting his book The God Delusion and appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, the host greeted him with this stock theist argument: “By not believing in God, you’re making just as big a leap of faith as I am by believing.”

I’m not sure how I can avoid calling this pure ignorance.  Did Mr. O’Reilly ever stop to consider exactly what he was saying?  It was this:  “You’re just as irrational as I am, Sir!”

O’Reilly also used this other common theist argument:  “I may not be able to prove God exists, but you can’t prove that He doesn’t.”  When Dawkins pointed out that error of this reasoning by reminding O’Reilly that one could also not prove that Apollo (or any other mythological figure) doesn’t exist, O’Reilly made a joke and changed the subject.  But I’m sure he wasn’t intentionally “dodging the question,” because he despises that sort of evasion when his guests attempt it.

As Dawkins pointed out, the burden of proof is not on a skeptic to prove that God doesn’t exist.  O’Reilly and his ilk are the ones asserting something supernatural.  Skeptics like Dawkins are simply applying the method of reason as equally as they would to claims of ghosts, goblins, and magic.  Theists can never accept that their particular belief has yet to reveal something to set it apart from that category.

Why People Should Stop Cheering for Jeremiah Wright

Where do you begin with Barack Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright?  It’s impossibleto resist commenting on this guy, while he soaks up his fifteen minutes.  He’s appeared at an NAACP event, at a press interview, and on PBS with Bill Moyers.

How about we start withhis statements that white kids and black kids learn with “different sides of their brains,” and hear music in “different beats” in their heads.  Yes, apparently whether your ancestry is African or European determines which side of your brain you use to learn, and whether you count the second and fourth beat in 4/4 timing or the first and third.  Apparently we should have separate teachers and classes depending on the amount of melanin in a student’s skin.

Since I’m absolutely positive that “Reverend” Wright is interested in scientific study into this matter, perhaps he should be made aware that there are several very distinct groups of people with African ancestry, including Bantu, the Khoisan, the Pygmies, the “whites” in Northern Africa, and those of Madagascar with an Indonesian background.  Africa has by far the largest genetic diversity of people on the planet.  You can’t simply group all Africans together, and you fall headlong into absurdity when you claim that all of these people share a trait like “left or right brain learning.”

Similarly, stating that all white European Americans share the trait of learning with a particular side of their brain is just as foolish.  “Reverend” Wright is making the puerile error of assuming that skin color constitutes what it means to be a “people.”  He seems to have forgotten the fact that more genetic diversity exist within the groups he’s talking about than between them.  Perhaps the “side” of the brain he uses is prone to ignorant stereotyping.

“Reverend” Wright should also be told that he sounds exactly like every white supremacist that I’ve heard, sitting here in prison.  They all say the same things, that blacks learn differently, hear music differently, and that somehow these traits are dependent upon their ancestry.  Instead of “Reverend” Wright’s words, however, they say something like “Blacks don’t do well in schools made for whites, and blacks like jungle music.”  Perhaps someone could explain to me the finer points – how exactly is this different from what “Reverend” Wright said?

Regardless, is this how he proposes to address the issue of race in this country?  By making sweeping racial stereotypes and mocking the way people talk?  Does he honestly think that such idiotic blanket statements can be applied to people like that?

He made sure to repeatedly point out that “we’re different, not deficient.”  The way I see it, we’re only “different” because of cheap demagogues like “Reverend” Wright who use victim-politics and race-baiting to get people to clap for him.  Rather than try to divide people, why can’t this guy use his status and fifteen minutes to talk aboutt how we’re all human beings with the same rights, the same mental capacity, the same abilities, and the same opportunities?  Why can’t he say that what continent is in front of “American” when someone describes you is completely immaterial to the kind of person you are?

Why Fox News Needs a Hannity & Powers Show

So the Fox News Channel leans to the right.  So what?  That doesn’t make it unfair, and every other news channel leans to (or topples over to) the left.  I don’t understand why people constantly equate Fox News with conservative bias and unequal coverage.  Why do they care anyway?  Do they not have brains to decide for themselves what may have a right of left slant?  Are they not capable of listening to opposing views?  Can they not distinguish between fact and opinion?

Besides, the left-wing whiners can rest easy:  Just wait for Kirsten Powers, a Fox News contributor, to show up.  I don’t mean because she’s a Democrat; I mean because she’s a rational human being who states her arguments calmly, with aplomb rather than emotional knee-jerking.  Whether she’s on Hannity & Colmes or The O’Reilly Factor, she always stands her ground against the conservative hosts – an often makes them appear silly simply by presenting her argument.  Even when I disagree with Ms. Powers, I find her staid handling of Bill O’Reilly’s fervent stances or Sean Hannity’s blanket criticisms to be refreshing.

I remember when Mr. Hannity once attempted a sort of “gotcha” moment on Ms. Powers by pointing out that she was being unfair and biased by saying that she would never vote for any of the REpublican presidential nominees.  Her jocular reply: “I’m a Democrat.  Is that suspicious behavior?”

Ms. Powers accomplishes what the Fox News-haters don’t have the professionalism or guts to do:  Rather than whining about those who disagree with her, she argues head-on with opposing positions.  That’s America.  It’s kind of the whole point of that little free speech thing.  I don’t really care whether Ms. Powers is a liberal, a moderate, or whatever; the pertinent issue is that she seems to rely on reason rather than pure ideology.  That’s what we should see more of on all news channels, irregardless of political predisposition.

Someone at Fox News needs to offer Ms. Powers a permanent position, perhaps as the foil to Sean Hannity.  With all due respect to Alan Colmes, I’d have to say that on the occasions when Ms. Powers sits in for him, the program is more interesting – and generally the Democratic viewpoint is presented more effectively.

Laura Ingraham and Transgenders

I saw an episode of The O’Reilly Factor a while back where conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was filling in for O’Reilly.  During one of the segments, Ms. Ingraham stated to the guest that transgenders are ruining the culture.

I wonder if Ms. Ingraham could clarify such a statement.  How are transgenders ruining the culture?  What exactly is being ruined?  Is there data to support this claim?  Are there numbers in a national database to indicate that transgenders are contributing to poverty, drug use, criminal behavior, irresponsibility, or any other societal ill?  Are transgenders, as a population, more likely to be felons, alcoholics, spousal abusers, or anarchists?

I highly doubt that Ms. Ingraham could cite a credible study to suggest this.  The very idea is ludicrous.  There is nothing inherent about being transgender that increases one’s proclivity to commit crimes or harm the social fabric of the country.  I think the issue here is about Christian traditionalism and nothing more.  I could be wrong, but since Ms. Ingraham wears her Christian faith on her sleeve, I will assume that she believes that a society with only traditional Christian sexual behavior and ideas about family would be best for America.  I think what she was really saying was: ”Transgenders are ruining the way I want the culture.”

Transgenders are just as much Americans as Christians are.  This is not a country where only Christian conservatives get to make the rules.  If Ms. Ingraham wants a focus on responsibility, altruistic behavior, and raising children in a moral manner, that’s good.  We should all focus on such goals.  But her religion isn’t required for it, and more to the point, being transgender doesn’t automatically negate any of those values.

Does Ms. Ingraham mean that transgenders are a bad influence on kids?  Is she saying that kids will see transgenders and decide to become so themselves?  Are conservative parents in this country honestly concerned about their kids might decide to become transgender, that it’s simply a decision they might hit upon one day?  Is it inconceivable to Ms. Ingraham that there aer people born with different views about gender and sexuality than their genitalia might suggest to others?

If transgenders are “ruining the culture,” that’s a pretty serious situation that inevitably demands a serious solution, right?  What exactly would Ms. Ingraham propose we do about transgenders in America?  Disallow them from going out in public?  Ship them all off to Europe?  Make it against the law for them to flaunt their sexuality or talk about it in the company of others?  Require all of them to attend rehabilitation?  Enforce gender-specific dress codes?

If Ms. Ingraham and other conservatives want to solve a social problem, how about the bigotry and intolerance directed against people with alternative lifestyles?  Obliterating that is a decent, moral thing to do.  Stating that an alternate lifestyle is “ruining the culture” simply because you don’t like it is not.  Indeed, the only thing that I see transgenders ruining is the moral credibility of those who continue to tell them they’re doing something immoral.

Laura Ingraham is no doubt a decent, moral person; I don’t say this to be flip.  She shouldn’t have to be reminded that transgenders have exactly the same right to live how they desire as she does.  I’m sure she’ll go on believing that her way is “better for America,” but I’m under the impression that the best people to make that decision are the Americans themselves.

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False II

“If evolution were true, there should be humans with eyes on their feet and fish that mutated fur in the fossil record.”

Ann Coulter has garnered fame and wealth using the gimmick of controversial statements.  I will take the above claim, paraphrased from her best-selling book Godless, in a general sense.  What she seems to be saying is that since natural selection is unguided and operates upon random genetic changes, there should be fish with fur, humans with eyes on their feet, and all sorts of aberrations and missteps in that vein.  I can assume that Ms. Coulter believes that evolution progresses that way: by throwing out a wide variety of large mutations and keeping certain ones.

At least she has the right idea.  It is the scale that she’s misinterpreting.  The idea that huge leaps of that sort (called saltations) contribute appreciably to evolution has never been taken very seriously.  Darwinism operates with small, insensible changes – each one somehow advantageous to the organism – that are passed down to descendants because those particular organisms survive where others do not.  No evolutionary biologist subscribes to the notion that complex biological parts like eyes or fur were evolved in single leaps as Ms. Coulter is suggesting.  This is one of the great and extremely common fallacies creationists use to try to make natural selection appear silly.

Perhaps it is possible for a control gene to mutate and produce an entire eye on a human’s foot, some facsimile of fur on a fish, or any other freakish anomaly we can imagine.  We all know mutations of that degree, while rare, do occur, but that doesn’t mean thy have any measurable effect on evolution.  More specifically, that doesn’t mean they would lead to a species of monsters that might leave examples behind in the fossil record.

The rarity of such saltations is reason enough, but something Ms. Coulter seems to be forgetting is that natural selection only operates if the genetic alteration is somehow beneficial to the organism.  The majority of mutations are deleterious to an organism’s survivability; this is far more pronounced for large mutations.  Her mutant genes for fish fur and podiatric eyes would have to be inherited from parents who manage to survive and mate with other such genetic monsters.  If Ms. Coulter can make a valid argument for how fur on fish or eyes on human feet will help the organism pass on its genes (and not hinder it), I’m sure the scientific community would like to hear it.

Ms. Coulter’s tactic is to make people chuckle with incredulity.  Her criticism of evolution can be summated to: “You’d have to be a godless, immoral idiot to believe the wacky things these evolutionists claim.”  She then proceeds to name absurdities that have nothing to do with Darwinism and are instead characteristic of juvenile misconceptions.  There are honest arguments to be made against evolution and good questions to be asked, but in her book Godless, Ms. Coulter is so hampered by faith-based certitude and illiteracy in the subject that she fails to reach any level of intellectual seriousness.

No, Ms. Coulter, there most definitely should notbe fish with fur, humans with eyes on their feet, or any similar foolishness from your imagination in the fossil record.  In which study or book did you read the evidence for that – or is it merely based on your personal opinion of evolution?  You repeatedly referred to the biologist Michael Behe as a source – I would enjoy hearing him publicly admit that this point of yours is valid.  Can you produce one serious scientist who agrees with your argument?  Better yet: Can you produce one serious scientist who would not be moved to pity if they heard such blatant ignorance from a person trying to argue against evolution?

I would refer Ms. Coulter to Mark Twain: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”