The ten Republican Presidential candidates met last night for their first debate. While most of the effort seemed dedicated toward pinning the Iraq debacle on Donald Rumsfeld, the “WTF” moment of the night for me came when the candidates were asked which of them did not believe in evolution.

Three candidates raised their hands. They were Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo. Huckabee later clarified that while he doesn’t believe in evolution, he does support it being taught in schools. (Mighty intellectually progressive of you there, Mike.)

Now arguably, none of these guys is in any danger of getting to the White House. But that hardly abates the reality that they all hold, or recently held, significant positions within government. This level of intellectual disingenuousness should not be tolerated in our leaders. But that’s a separate rant.

What really got me was the very formation of the question. The implicit assertion that evolution was a function of “belief”. Evolution is a fundamental scientific principle. It is a model built on observed data, not a belief. Would anyone have been able to suppress a giggle if the question had been, “By a show of hands, which of you does not believe in gravity?” Further, would anyone who raised their hand have a campaign life expectancy that went into the following morning?

I have no expectation that politicians lack ignorance on every topic, especially ones outside their area of expertise. I expect that when confronted with issues on which they are ignorant, they will seek out appropriate counsel and alleviate that ignorance. That is the hallmark of any educated person. But to assert that evolution is a subject of belief, and then to proclaim your disbelief is an unequivocal admission of stupidity.

There is a distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance can be cured.

Those darned pesky terrorists… just when you think you have them on ropes, it becomes politically beneficial for them to be a viable threat again. Wednesday, in a speech about Iraq at the Willard Hotel, the president made a speech to a group of construction contractors. In it, he mentioned al Qaeda 27 times.

“For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11.”

Ummm… then why are we building a concrete wall between Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods? Why is Condi Rice in Egypt trying to get local support to quell the Sunni uprising against the Shiite-led government of Iraq? Did Bush miss the Pentagon inspector general report last month that stated, al-Qaeda had no ties to Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003? Sure, al Qaeda is active in Iraq now, but they are just being opportunistic. No one credible seriously believes they are the major source of violence in an otherwise peaceful community.

Hell, even Fox News called the White House on this when Bret Baier noted:

“This morning the president said that al-Qaeda seems to be a bigger problem than sectarian violence. That seems to fly in the face of what we’ve heard in recent weeks and months on the ground in Iraq.”

Tony Snow replied

“Well, you’ve got a shifting series of circumstances.”

Yes you do Tony. But the change of circumstance isn’t on the ground in Iraq, it’s here in the Congress and in the failing support for the war among the American populace. I’m sure you figure it’s time to drag out the tried and true 9/11 terrorist threat, and see if you can get the public into a frothy panic. It’s worked for you before. But I suspect that maybe the people are getting wise to that game. I hope so.

As an additional insult to the American public, in that same speech Bush referred to the First Amendment’s clause about freedom of the press as:

“…just something that we’ve all got to live with.”

So apparently he’s a little worried that we’re wise to the game as well…