Not in Kansas anymore? Lucky you

Tuesday brought good news and bad from the front lines of the culture wars. In Pennsylvania, all eight seats up for grabs in the Dover school board election went to Democrats who opposed the previous board's efforts to sneak creationism back into science classes. (A ninth seat was not in contention.) The victors campaigned on a platform that included teaching intelligent design, but only in an elective comparative religion course, where it belongs.

That was the good news. The bad came in Kansas, where the state Board of Education gave final approval, by a vote of 6-4, to a new definition of science that would allow local school authorities to require the teaching of intelligent design. According to an Association Press report:

The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

All of which prompted dissenting one board member, Kansas City Democrat Janet Waugh, to lament: "This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that."

My sympathies, Janet. I'll try not to laugh too hard next time somebody asks, What's the matter with Kansas?"