For today's NYT, the editors were compelled to dwell at great length on the insidious behavior of school boards and administrators in Cobb County and in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Whereas earlier coverage simply tended toward comic uncordiality, the tone now has shifted from a mocking of harmless idiocy to a biting castigation of the curricular debasements in Cobb and Dover.

May the strongest survive? One can never be certain. But in this round of Alien versus Predator, it's clear enough that America's children are the defenseless prey.

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

The first sentence sounds like a warning to parents that the film they are about to watch with their children contains pornography.

The third sentence, urging that evolution be studied carefully and critically, seems like a fine idea. The only problem is, it singles out evolution as the only subject so shaky it needs critical judgment. Every subject in the curriculum should be studied carefully and critically.

A leading expositor of intelligent design told a Christian magazine last year that the field had no theory of biological design to guide research, just "a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions." If evolution is derided as "only a theory," intelligent design needs to be recognized as "not even a theory" or "not yet a theory." It should not be taught or even described as a scientific alternative to one of the crowning theories of modern science.

The Crafty Attacks on Evolution