Chronicle live-blog update:

The five amendments are now being voted upon. The first four are minor changes, but the last is of major importance since what Cargill got passed is very unscientific. The first one failed 6-8 with Agosto voting with the right wing YEC Republicans. The second one failed 7-7. Mavis Knight is having trouble getting the amendments since she is in Dallas. She needs to have them faxed to her. Cargill wants the standards to suggest humility in what scientists know. She says her wording is better and suggests humility better. The third one failed 7-7. Now Terri Leo is moving an amendment to change “sources of heat” to “thermal energy sources” that passed without objection. The fourth amendment passed without objection

Now we come to standard 8A, which is grossly unscientific since it suggests that there is fossil evidence against universal common descent. This is doubly wrong, since fossils do not provide evidence for or against common descent and there is no other evidence against common descent. The amendment failed 6-8, with Agosto voting NO with the seven YEC religious right Republicans.

Barbara Cargill now has some more nasty amendments to ESS. She will need a majority vote to get these passed. Will Agosto give the Republicans the vote they need to futher damage ESS? I can’t get a copy of these amendments right now. However, the first one she wants is to strike the current standard for the Big Bang and remove the 14 billion year old age from it. She is promoting a Young Earth Creationist view, of course. Many times in the past the SBOE has changed standards that mention millions and billions of years to simple “a long time ago.” She wants to substitute a standard from Astronomy that simply says, “research and describe current theories of the formation [Astronomy uses the word “evolution”] of the universe, including estimates for the age of the universe.”

Sal: Texas is soooo getting self-screwed!