Earlier this year, when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was in Florida, she kowtowed to the knuckle-draggers in her party's base, refusing to say that evolution should be part of the state's science standards.

With a green light from the Bush administration, this week's news should come as no surprise: the state senate has passed a bill that will bring pseudoscience to the classroom.  The Orlando Sentinel reports that the bill's sponsor, Ronda Storms,

"refused to answer 'yes' or 'no' to senators who asked her whether her bill would specifically allow religion-based teachings, including creationism and intelligent design, in public-school classrooms."

Madam Secretary, teaching creation science, even if it's taught alongside evolution, is ludicrous.  We might as well teach 2 + 2 = 5 alongside 2 + 2 = 4.

UPDATE:  The news is not all bad in the category of Preserving the Teaching of Real Science in States Formally Governed by Someone Named Bush. The Texas higher ed board refused a request from the Institute for Creation Science to "to offer an online master’s degree in science education." The Texas higher ed commissioner cited language in the institute’s materials stating "all theories of origin and development that involve evolution in any form are false.

Both articles, by the way, come via ECS's daily clips, a useful, free service.