While everyone’s attention was focused on Washington DC last week, Republicans in Tennessee’s House of Representatives passed a bill that will shield science teachers from being disciplined if they’re creationists or global warming deniers.

The Republican Party: protecting ignorance and destroying America’s scientific future.

Some quotes from the Neanderthals who pushed this bill:

Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the bill’s intent is to promote “critical thinking” in science classrooms.

Critics contend it’s a shield to allow the teaching of evolution alternatives such as intelligent design and creationism.

Bill supporter Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, said that “since the late ‘50s, early ‘60s when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we’ve been on a slippery slope.”

“This is a common-sense bill,” Floyd said. “Thank you for bringing this bill to protect our teachers from the other intellectual bullies.”

Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, said when she was in high school, “we gave up Aqua Net hair spray” because of fears “it was causing global warming.”

“Since then scientists have said that maybe we shouldn’t have given up that aerosol can because that aerosol can was actually absorbing the Earth’s rays and keeping us from global warming.”

Good grief.