Texas Science Standards 2009 March 27 — McLeroy’s impassioned plea (links to audio & video)

When I first posted this at 1:30 Texas time, the post began: GOOD NEWS !! FOR REAL !! (at last)

SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy

Well, the news ended up not so good. Here’s what I wrote then:

The Board has finally voted to strike the first of McLeroy’s creationist amendments — one that was passed in the January meeting. The vote was 8-7, and it looks like that will be the lineup for removing other creationist amendments as well.

McLeroy gave two impassioned (and quite remarkable) speeches before the vote. It sounded like he knew when he started that his amendments were going to be taken out. If there was any doubt, however, I think his speeches made it clear to everybody what their votes really were about — so he didn’t fool anybody this time, like he did before.

When the dust settles, I will post audio files of those two speeches. They will be linked from here.

It seemed like the pro-science Board members had succeeded in removing the bad amendment; but no sooner had they done that (and I made my initial post), than they scrambled for political cover by replacing the bad amendment with one that was not quite so bad.

For more on this, see the live blogging by Dr. Steve Schafersman, President of Texas Citizens for Science (esp. the paragraphs entered at 12:35 & 1:30, and the last four paragraphs).

Audios of both speeches, in two formats — and a YouTube video of the first one — are now posted here.

And here’s Jonathan Saenz account: