As Flori­da gears up to revise state sci­ence stan­dards, they seem insis­tent on top­ping the anti-sci­ence non­sense which earned Kansas such mock­ery. The St. Peters­burg Times edu­ca­tion blog reports:

Anoth­er key law­mak­er says it’s like­ly the Leg­is­la­ture will weigh in on the evo­lu­tion con­tro­ver­sy. And in this case, the law­mak­er, Rep. Joe Pick­ens, R‑Palatka, says he has con­cerns about the pro­posed state stan­dards himself. 

“If it becomes a mat­ter for leg­isla­tive dis­cus­sion, then I would have opin­ions that if it’s going to be pre­sent­ed, it’s pre­sent­ed … in a man­ner that is not poten­tial­ly exclu­sive of any oth­er the­o­ry,” includ­ing cre­ation­ism, said Pick­ens, the pow­er­ful chair of the House Schools and Learn­ing Council. 

Reporter Ron Matus adds:

Among sci­en­tists, there is vir­tu­al­ly no debate about the fun­da­men­tal sound­ness of Dar­win’s the­o­ry. “But far and away,” Pick­ens said, “most of the peo­ple who are our con­stituents, and who vote for us, are not scientists.”

So, you know, screw the experts, we’ll decide what is and isn’t sci­ence the same way we pick the next Amer­i­can Idol.

Next, Flori­da makes a bid for those space tourism dol­lars by selec­tive­ly repeal­ing gravity.