Kansas: supporting documents for Dumbth

It turns out that Ken Willard does indeed have supporters for his latest effort to slip pro-creationist language into the NGSS debate, but they consist of the usual predictable suspects:

The Associated Press (June 13, 2012) reports that Ken Willard, a member of the board, described the draft as "flawed" and "distributed a nine-page letter criticizing the draft multistate standards from the group Citizens for Objective Public Education Inc., which lists officers in Florida and Kansas. The letter suggested that the draft standards ignore evidence against evolution, don't respect religious diversity, and promote secular humanism, which precludes God or another supreme being in considering how the universe works." Willard said of the letter, "I hope that it will be taken seriously and not as just information from a bunch of crackpots."

But Citizens for Objective Public Education is not exactly a well-known or a well-established group; its vice president Anne Lassey told the Associated Press that it was founded only in March 2012. Lassey is the wife of Greg Lassey, who was one of the authors of the so-called minority report of the committee that revised Kansas's state science standards in 2005; the report systematically deprecated the scientific status of evolution. The group's president, Jorge Fernandez, is a self-proclaimed young-earth creationist, with publications to his credit in Journal of Creation and on the True.Origin Archive website. The letter claimed that Citizens for Objective Public Education represents "children, parents and taxpayers who share our views"; Lassey told the Associated Press that the group has members across the nation.

(Also on WTTFTG)