INDReporter

Being John Milkovich

by Walter Pierce

Or, the Internet says Noah’s Ark was found and heliocentric circles. Or something. And guns.

Partying hard in the ark

The Shreveport-Bossier metroplex is churning out the backwards. Unfortunately, they’re sending it to Baton Rouge.

Last year Bossier gave us freshman state Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pray Away the Gay, sponsor of that “religious freedom (to discriminate against LGBTs)” bill that failed in the Legislature but which Gov. Robert McJindalpants enacted via executive order anyway (and which Gov. John Bel Edwards today vowed to rescind).

This year Shreveport has bestowed upon us freshman state Sen. John Milkovich, D-Two of Each Kind, one of four members of the Senate Education Committee who voted against repealing an unenforceable Louisiana creationism-in-the-classroom law — the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act — that was ruled unconstitutional nearly 30 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. (The case, by the way, was Edwards versus Aguillard; Edwards was Edwin Edwards, governor of Louisiana when the lawsuit was filed, and Aguillard was Donald Aguillard, then a science teacher at Carencro High School who is now Lafayette’s superintendent of schools; Aguillard balked at observing the Balanced Treatment act and sued the state to overturn the law. Go, Superintendent Aguillard!)

Although Milcovich was just one of four in a winning majority who shuttered the bill by Republican Sen. Dan Claitor to repeal the Balanced Treatment act — a quick kudo here to state Sen. Gerald Boudreaux, a Lafayette Democrat and one of only two senators to vote in favor of repeal — he offered the only vigorous, lawyerly and bizarre defense of doing nothing with regard to the act.

Armed with a raft of Intelligent Design talking points about sciencey stuff, Milcovich reasoned that maybe some day everyone will realize like he has that Darwin was wrong and so we shouldn’t repeal the Balanced Treatment act because some day we’ll need it. And they probably found Noah’s Ark in Turkey, which proves there was a worldwide flood accounting for the fossil record. Bible.

Lamar White Jr. finished law school. We’ll let him take it from here.