Kevin Mooney's blog

American freedom is under assault within the scientific establishment and the academic community where the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) theory are being silenced and marginalized at the expense of research that could potentially expand human knowledge and boost medical research, according to a new documentary that raises questions about Darwinian assumptions.

A growing number of scientists with expertise in biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy have encountered a level of complexity in the observable universe that in their estimation cannot be sufficiently explained by a random, directionless process. For this reason, they are compelled to offer up alternative theories for biological and astronomical objects that appear to be carefully calibrated and finely tuned by way of an intelligent agent.

Unfortunately, scientists in the United States who offer up Intelligent Design as a possible alternative to Charles Darwin’s 150 year old theories about the origins of life and the evolutionary process often find they cannot speak out without jeopardizing their careers and professional reputations.

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” calls attention to the plight of highly credentialed researchers and scholars who have been forced out of prestigious positions. Instead of entertaining a free, unrestrained open debate on the merits of competing theories, the scientific establishment has instead moved to suppress the Intelligent Design movement in a “systematic and ruthless” fashion at odds with America’s founding principles, the film asserts.

Suppose for a moment that Al Qaeda operatives who used pharmaceutical factories in Sudan and Yemen for the purpose of manufacturing deadly chemicals decided to ply their trade in China, where lax standards and deleterious practices have already claimed lives?

This unsavory scenario has been missed in media reports and public policy discussions circulating around dangerous and unsafe Chinese imports that were discovered in American markets last year, and are most likely “lurking on shelves this holiday” season, Richard Miniter warns in a just released report entitled: “Buyers Remorse: How America Has Failed to See the Threat Posed by Dangerous Chinese Goods and the Case for `Safe Trade.’ ”  

Miniter is a best selling author and a fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Like many Reaganites, he was no media darling; at least not initially.

In fact, he was intensely ridiculed at home and abroad in newspapers and magazines that frequently called his credentials and his intelligence into question. The media onslaught directed against William P. Clark was replete with misrepresentations and inaccuracies that were nevertheless widely circulated in the 1980s a political science professor, and best-selling author maintains in a recently released biography entitled "The Judge."

Although he was responsible for crafting "highly respected opinions" for the appellate and supreme courts in California, Clark remained "The Forever Unqualified Man" in eyes of the news media, Paul Kengor explains his new book.

To be caged like an animal and deported to Siberia as a 14-year-old girl is to know a level of brutality that seemingly stands outside of reality, as one gulag survivor puts it in a new documentary on Estonia.

When the Soviet Union began its occupation of the country, prison quotas were set for Russian soldiers who grabbed any convenient person they could find, the narrator informs audience members during a film segment that reviews key historical moments.  

As it turns out, one-third of those deported to Siberia beginning in 1940 were children, according to the film.

"Thank God for CSPAN," Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declares in his recently released memoirs entitled: "My Grandfather's Son."

Without the "gavel to gavel" coverage made available through an alternative media source Thomas tells readers he may not have had the opportunity to present himself to the American people in a compelling and straightforward manner.

Press coverage of his highly charged confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate 16 years ago was very weighted in favor of his critics, especially Anita Hill, the Supreme Court Justice recalls in his book.

Thomas contends Hill was in fact a "left-winger" who was permitted to serve up a false image of herself in testimony, thanks in no small part to a compliant media.

Left-wing secularists who oppose religion in the public square may be dismayed to learn that their values apparently conflict with those of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), according to the author of a new book on the former first lady's religious beliefs.

Although many Democrats support a very strict separation of church and state, the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination does not, Paul Kengor, author of "God and Hillary Clinton," said in an interview. In fact, Clinton is not reticent about injecting her faith into policy discussions, said Kengor, who teaches political science at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

Where are the moderate Muslims who willingly speak out against the Islamist agenda, and why are their voices not heard in the mainstream media?

These questions are explored in a documentary that is receiving national exposure over the next several weeks via an Oregon affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Producers and advisors with WETA, the Washington D.C. affiliate of PBS, had previously denied airing the film as part of the "America at a Crossroads Series."