Following up on an item from a few weeks ago, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), perhaps hoping to smooth over some of his troubles with conservatives after his recent sex scandal, threw some pork-barrel spending at a bizarre Louisiana creationist group. Yesterday, following some fairly intense lobbying, the earmark was pulled.
Vitter’s plan was pretty ridiculous. The senator, who was caught up in a prostitution scandal a few months ago, had earmarked $100,000 in federal tax dollars to a creationist group called the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF). The group, which did not even request the money, was supposed to use the earmark “to develop a plan to promote better science education.”
The spending didn’t make any sense. The LFF has a stated mission of trying to “persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence.” The group’s materials have also said it has a “battle plan to combat evolution,” which called modern biology a “dangerous” concept that “has no place in the classroom.”
Vitter, in other words, basically used his office to earmark a very generous donation to a right-wing group to promote creationism with our money.
More than 30 educational, scientific, and religious groups joined forces to lobby against the earmark, and yesterday, Vitter caved and withdrew his funding request.
“The project, which would develop a plan to promote better science-based education in Ouachita Parish by Louisiana Family Forum, has raised concerns among some that its intention was to mandate and push creationism within the public schools,” Vitter said. “That is clearly not and never was the intent of the project, nor would it have been its effect. However, to avoid more hysterics, I would like to move the $100,000 recommended for this project by the subcommittee when the bill goes to conference committee to another Louisiana priority project funded in this bill.”
Yes, of course. It was all a big misunderstanding. Right.
Why would anyone think Vitter was trying to use federal funds to push creationism? He simply wanted to direct a generous grant to a group that has a “battle plan to combat evolution,” in order to “promote better science.”
Obviously, any objection to this is little more than “hysterics,” right?
Please. It’s one thing for Vitter to endorse pseudo-science; it’s something else when he tries to subsidize it with federal tax dollars.
If the Louisiana Family Forum wants to encourage schools to teach nonsense, it can. If it wants to tell supporters that modern biology underpinned the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot — an actual claim from materials that were on the LFF website — there’s nothing stopping it.
But Vitter was crazy to offer these guys an earmark. It’s nice to see the good guys win one.