USA Today published an absolutely appalling piece of dreck today, an exercise in Christian apologetics for Intelligent Design creationism by the odious Cal Thomas and some non-entity named Bob Beckel. Beckel is billed as a "liberal Democratic strategist", but his sole claim to fame seems to be this series of articles with Cal Thomas called "Common Ground", in which his job seems to be to make Thomas look rational, intelligent, and reasonable…a kind of Alan Colmes without the charisma and good looks. These dialogs look more like Thomas chatting with a limp wimp of a pseudo-liberal who sets up a few lines for the old crank conservative.

Here's Bob's opening paragraph, a collection of creationist nonsense that only demonstrates that a Democrat can be an idiot, too.

Bob: Cal, I'm going to stray from the consensus liberal line on the issue of intelligent design. The Dover, Pa., school board had a good reason to allow the teaching of intelligent design as a scientific alternative to Darwinism in the school system's science classes. Despite the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that evolution is the sole explanation for all living things, these scientists have yet to prove the theory conclusively. Not only are there still gaping holes in the evolutionary chain from single cells to man, the science crowd hasn't come close to explaining why only man among all living things has a conscience, a moral framework and a free will.

• This is not the "liberal line", as much as I wish it were so. This is the scientist's line, and scientists can be conservative.
• The Dover school board did not have "good reason". They were looking for equal time for creationism, a religious belief.
• ID is not a "scientific alternative". There is no science to it! In good science teaching, our goal is to explain how we've reached our conclusions; this can't be done for ID. There is no foundation of observation and experiment to support their claim of design.
• We don't teach "Darwinism"! It's a giveaway that you're dealing with a creationist when they start prattling away about "Darwinism".
• "overwhelming consensus of the scientific community"…doesn't that say something to you? Shouldn't you ask yourself, "Who am I, Bob Beckelis, liberal Democratic strategist of whom no one has ever heard, to argue about biology with professional biologists?"
• Grrrrr. Anyone who says "scientists have yet to prove the theory conclusively" as an argument against any theory has just demonstrated their stupidity conclusively. We ought to just smack 'em down hard and tell them to shut up until they learn some grade-school science. No theory is ever proven.
• Beckelis has bought into the no transitional fossils argument with his claim that "there still gaping holes in the evolutionary chain from single cells to man".
• He thinks science fails to explain "why only man among all living things has a conscience, a moral framework and a free will". I'd like to see his evidence that only man has these things, and his demonstration that he has free will. None of these are scientific issues in the first place, but I don't see that his premise is sound. I also don't think that incompleteness is a problem (his claim that science pretends to have the "sole explanation" is bogus), and I don't see that ID explains any of those things, either. "Nebulous undefined superpowerful designer did it" is not an explanation.

This is not an auspicious beginning. Practically every phrase is stock creationism 101; it's complete garbage from end to end, the tedious parroting of anti-scientific statements about science from someone who knows no science. I'm going to die of exhaustion if I have to plow through this entire inane back-and-forth between Bob and Cal, since almost every word is wrong. Just to be fair, though, here's Cal's first reply.

Cal: What I find curious about this debate, not only in Pennsylvania, but in Kansas and throughout the country, is that so many scientists and educators are behaving like fundamentalist secularists. Only they will define science. They alone will decide which scientific theories and information will be taught to students. That sounds like mind control to me, Bob. If their science is so strong on the issue of origins, why not let the arguments supporting intelligent design into the classroom where it can be debunked if it can't be defended? You liberals are always accusing us conservatives of censorship. It sounds like your side has picked up the disease on this one.

• We're not "fundamentalist secularists". There's something deeply wrong with someone who misapplies that term; they have to be completely unaware of what fundamentalism means. Strangely, though, they sling "fundamentalist" as an insult to everyone but fundamentalists, who they like.
• What a curious statement: "Only they will define science." Who is "they"? Why, they are scientists. This is somehow objectionable, that the people who do something professionally are in some way the least capable of explaining what they do; we're supposed to get that from political pundits and plumbers, apparently.
• So, "which scientific theories and information" should be taught to students? Any old thing that the local ragpicker or clergyman decides belongs there? Or should there be some process to determine what is best supported by the evidence, and prioritize that as the best concept that belongs in the curriculum? This isn't "mind control", and it's not as if creationism isn't widely available—it's simply deciding that our kids should be taught the best science, not the worst.
• "why not let the arguments supporting intelligent design into the classroom where it can be debunked"? Done. This is particularly disingenuous of Thomas, though: we all know that the ID crowd aren't clamoring for us to debunk their notions. They want their nonsense taught as valid, legitimate science. Does he seriously believe the Discovery Institute would be satisfied if we spent ten minutes every semester explaining irreducible complexity and why it is worthless and false? Of course not. And why should we have to waste time on it anyway? Are we also expected to lecture on why astrology doesn't work, why monkeys don't fall out of the sky when it rains, and blustafurp the bragnizzle of the sploidy-sploidy-ptang-freep? We don't teach any old babbling baloney that comes along, you know.

The column goes on and on in this way, and I'm not going to try to dissect the whole thing…but trust me, the rest is just as wrong-headed as the start. I've got to include the conclusion, though, for sheer amazing dumb-assery.

Bob: That's a start. The scientific community has gone out of its way to depict intelligent design as a religious view. Most people have no idea that serious scientists believe there is a strong case for intelligent design. These scientists have been denied a forum, and a series of public debates would be educational and give the intelligent design researchers a chance to tell their side.

Intelligent Design is a religious view. It sure doesn't have any scientific support, and there is no evidence to give people a reason to believe any of it. The claim that there are serious scientists believing in creationism is irrelevant; there are very few of them, they are rarely in a relevant field, and they do not have the evidence to convince other scientists. Nor are there any honest "intelligent design researchers" to debate—nobody is doing research on intelligent design!

I'd like to know why it is that conservative wingnuts seem to like to do these duets with ineffectual lightweights that they label "liberal". Their audiences would have to consist solely of clueless lackwits to fall for the claim that faint-hearted suckups like Beckelis are at all representative of liberal thought…oh. I guess maybe I do understand, after all.

If only their fans knew how profoundly they were being insulted by their heroes…

Name corrected; it seems to be a typo at USA Today that is propagated through every one of the Beckel/Thomas columns. Bob Beckel seems to be a Fox News drone of some sort.