Response to Dan Montgomery

March 2, 2006

Response to Dan Montgomery's Deceptive Statements on Adam McManus' "Take-A-Stand" program March 1, 2006

In yesterday's program, (3/1/2006) it was clear that Montgomery was being deceptive to your listeners. In 2003 I founded Texans for Better Science Education. Our goals were to remove well-known scientific errors regarding Darwin's theory of evolution, and enforce clear Texas law requiring weaknesses of evolution to be taught. TBSE volunteers evaluated the textbooks, and took time off from work to personally attend the Austin SBOE meetings. Dozens of us testified before the Board. Montgomery voted against us every step of the way, and led efforts to leave unquestioned Darwinist dogma in the textbooks. Montgomery was openly hostile to our experts who testified, invoked arcane rules, and voted to silence SBOE conservatives. Montgomery led the charge of the Darwinists along with the ultra-liberal Texas Freedom Network and Austin atheists. Montgomery may be a Christian, but in that battle, he chose to align himself with those groups and did not have the courage or conviction to 'Take A Stand'. Had he supported clear Texas law on that issue, not only would I be supporting him, he would likely not even have a challenger! Instead, Montgomery richly deserves to be thrown out of office, and replaced by Ken Mercer. Many more details and a clear voters guide are online at www.strengthsandweaknesses.org.

Here are some specific rebuttals to what I heard yesterday:

1. There are CLEAR DISTINCTIONS between the five current conservatives and the five moderate GOP members of the SBOE. For Montgomery to claim otherwise is disingenuous at best. Montgomery is clearly aligned, and on some issues like evolution LEADING the more liberal of the two GOP groups. He knows this too, as he ACTIVELY CAMPAIGNED against every single conservative in contested races (Cargill, Leo, Lowe) in the election two years ago. Conservative LEADERS know this as well, which goes a long way toward explaining that over 100 well known conservative leaders of groups such as Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, Pro-Life groups, Pro-Voucher groups, Christian groups, Home schooling groups, Young Conservatives, the Central Texas Republican Assembly and others NEARLY UNANIMOUSLY endorse the TRUE CONSERVATIVE in this race, KEN MERCER.

2. Montgomery led the charge against putting weaknesses of evolution in textbooks, in clear violation of Texas requirements and in deference to the Austin Atheists and the book publishers. He invoked arcane procedural rules never before used by the SBOE to prevent out-of-state (and world-renown) scientists from testifying. He voted against temporarily setting aside those rules, (operating rules, not laws) as the Commissioner graciously offered to do and has the legal authority to do. These scientists flew in from all ends of the country after, at an earlier meeting, Montgomery publicly doubted whether any real scientists questioned evolution. When faced with a room full of them, he voted to keep them silent! Montgomery had never used this rule in the past and did not object to out-of-state testifiers as recently as the February 2006 SBOE meeting. With over 500 PhD scientists now formally and publicly questioning Darwinism, and though Intelligent Design (ID) theory is spreading like wildfire across the country, Montgomery couldn't even support putting well-known scientific weaknesses of evolution into the textbooks in accordance with existing Texas law and supported by 83% of his fellow Texans! Bottom line: Montgomery voted against you and I.

3. Plagiarism -- from www.dictionary.com --

plagiarism n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work

While under withering criticism Montgomery finally removed his byline from the copied articles, it was not as simple as that. If you go to the first article where Peggy Venable raised the issue, while the byline has now been removed online, the first paragraph reads this morning (3/2/06):

Montgomery's First Paragraph: "Since becoming a member of the State Board of Education in 2001, it has become obvious to me that very few of my constituents know much about the Board and what it really does. So I will attempt to explain, in this short column, our powers and responsibilities." [bold on last sentence added for emphasis]

http://www.danmontgomery.org/commentary5.html

Even merely putting his byline on an article constitutes plagiarism, but he did much more than that. He wrote an introductory paragraph making it look like he wrote the whole article. Students who did something similar at a University would be kicked out, or at least given a zero for the assignment, (much as we did in giving his voting record a zero). If Montgomery can't see this was (and is) wrong, can he be trusted with the $20 Billion dollar Permanent School Fund or Texas children?

These are just the more blatant of Montgomery's deceptions, heard in the few minutes I caught your program. Other well documented examples and a voters' guide are online at www.strengthsandweaknesses.org, including the details of what true conservative Ken Mercer correctly reports as eight votes against conservatives.

Thank you.

Mark Ramsey, P.E.

Texans for Better Science Education
www.strengthsandweaknesses.org