8 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 27, 2005
President Bush'
asks Americans
to conserve fuel
NEWS
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush urged
Americans yesterday to cut back on unnecessary
travel to make up for fuel shortages caused by Hur-
ricane Rita.
Bush said the government was ready to release
fuel from its emergency oil stockpile to alleviate
high prices. And he suggested he would name a
federal official to oversee the reconstruction of the
Gulf Coast - after local officials first produce a
vision for their rebuilt communities.
The president spoke after he attended a meeting
at the Energy Department in which officials told
him they still were trying to assess the damage to
oil production and refineries in Rita's path.
Bush said he would get a personal report from
local officials today when he visits the area
around the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port
Arthur, Texas.
Meanwhile, he encouraged motorists to con-
serve energy and said he has directed federal agen-
cies to do the same.
"If it makes sense for the citizen out there to cur-
tail nonessential travel, it darn sure makes sense for
federal employees," Bush said. "We can encourage
employees to.car pool or use mass transit, and we
can shift peak electricity use to off-peak hours.
There's ways for the federal government to lead
when it comes to conservation."
The White House also will be looking at ways
to conserve, press secretary Scott McClellan said,
although that doesn't include curtailing the presi-
dent's plans to return to the region this week.
Bush returned Sunday from a three-day trip in
which he stopped in four cities that have been a
base for government response to the storm. As he
has in most of his previous trips to the areas hit
by the hurricanes, Bush spent most of the time in
meetings with state and local officials - many of
them reporting by videoconference.
On Saturday, in a visit to the U.S. Northern
Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., some of
Bush's briefers were linked from the White House
situation room steps from the Oval Office.
Still, McClellan said it is important that the
president get a firsthand look at emergency opera-
tions and lift the spirits of workers there.
"I know the president's visit yesterday to the
joint field office in Baton Rouge was very much
During his visit to the Department of Energy yesterday, President Bush spoke about the
nation's energy crisis.
appreciated," McClellan said. "You saw the enthu-
siasm from all those who have been working 24/7
to help the people of the region rebuild their lives
and recover."
Sixteen Texas oil refineries remained shut down
after the storm, and crews found significant dam-
age to at least one in the Port Arthur area, said
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens.
Bush said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman,
who briefed him along with Interior Secretary
Gale Norton, is working with Houston officials to
help get trucks into that city to help refill sold-out
gas stations. He said he also instructed Bodman to
consider how the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can
be used to help lower gas prices, with about two-
thirds of Americans responding to recent polls
saying high gas prices are causing them financial
hardship.
r I
School
defends
teaching of
intel design
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP)
- A school district went to court yes-
terday to defend its policy of telling
students that a higher power may have
created life - an alternative to the evo-
lution theory they are already learnin.
Eight families are suing the Dover
Area School District where the teen stu-
dents are told about "intelligent design"
before their regular biology lessons on
evolution. The families allege the policy
violates the constitutional separation of
church and state.
The intelligent design concept holds
that Charles Darwin's theory of natural
selection cannot fully explain the ori-
gin of life or the emergence of highly
complex life forms. It implies that life
on Earth was the product of an uniden-
tified intelligent force.
Critics say intelligent design is
merely creationism - a literal read-
ing of the Bible's story of creation -
camouflaged in scientific language,
and it does not belong in a science
curriculum.
About 75 spectators crowded the
courtroom of U.S. District Judge John
E. Jones III for the start of the non-jury
trial. But the scene outside the court-
house was business as usual except for
a lone woman reading the Bible.
Eric Rothschild, an attorney rep-
resenting the students' families, said
at the start of the trial yesterday that
school authorities "did everything ... to
incorporate a religious point of view in
science class and cared nothing about
its scientific validity."
But in his opening statement, the
school district's attorney defended
Dover's policy of requiring the stu-
dents, who about 14 years old, to hear a
brief statement about intelligent design
before biology classes on evolution.
"This case is about free inquiry in
education, not about a religious agen-
da," argued Patrick Gillen of the Thom-
as More Law Center, which lobbies for
the religious freedom of Christians and
is defending the school district.
"Dover's modest curriculum change
embodies the essence of liberal educa-
tion," Gillen said.
The first witness called by the plain-
tiffs, Brown University professor Ken-
neth Miller, said pieces of the theory of
evolution are subject to debate, such as
where gender comes from, but told the
court: "There is no controversy within
science over the core proposition of
evolutionary theory."
On the other hand, he said, "Intelli-
gent design is not a testable theory in
any sense and as such it is not accepted
by the scientific community."
Miller also challenged the accuracy
of "Of Pandas and People" and said it
almost entirely omits any discussion
of what causes extinction. If nearly all
original species are extinct, he said,
the intelligent design creator was not
very intelligent.
The clash goes far beyond this rural
district. President George W. Bush has
weighed in, saying schools should pres-
ent both concepts when teaching about
the origins of life.
"The intelligent-design movement is
an effort to introduce creationism into
the schools under a different name,"
Rothschild has said.
Litigation on the matter has a long
history: in the famous 1925 Scopes
Monkey trial, Tennessee biology teach-
er John T. Scopes was fined $100 for
violating a state law that forbade teach-
ing evolution. The Tennessee Supreme
Court then reversed his conviction -
on the narrow ground that only a jury
trial could impose a fine exceeding
$50. The law was repealed in 1967.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned an Arkansas state law ban-
ning the teaching of evolution. And in
1987, it ruled against balancing evolu-
tion lessons by teaching creationism.
Richard Thompson, president and
chief counsel of the Thomas More Law
Center, said Dover's policy merely
requires teachers to read a statement
that says intelligent design differs from
Darwin's view and refers students to an
intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pan-
das and People," for more information.
"All the Dover school board did
was allow students to get a glimpse
of a controversy that is really boil-
ing over in the scientific community,"
Thompson said.
The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-
based think tank that represents schol-
ars who support intelligent design,
opposes mandating it in public schools.
Nevertheless, it considers the Dover
lawsuit an attempt to squelch voluntary
debates over evolution.
"It's Scopes in reverse. They're
going to get a gag order to be placed on
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