Bush (Flat Earth Society) 

FACT: Bush scraps the X-33 space plane after five years of research and scales back the International Space Station to pay for his tax cut. NASA now has no replacement for the aging space shuttle fleet and will have to rely on the planes until at least 2012. We have only four space shuttles, and the oldest dates back to 1981. 

Republicans (Flat Earth Society, Stupidity) 

FACT: The Alabama's State Board of Education recently decided to continue their policy of placing disclaimers on biology textbooks, voting unanimously last week to put stickers stating that evolution is a "controversial theory" on 40,000 new textbooks.

Republicans (Flat Earth Society, Bigotry) 

FACT: Compassionate-conservative bigotry got a boost last week, when the Virginia State Assembly passed a bill to force Virginia school boards to "develop policies prohibiting presentations, classroom discussions, school-sponsored assemblies and student meetings" that deal with sodomy and other "crimes against nature." 

Michael Franks (Flat-Earth Society, Censorship, Conservative Thinking) 

FACT: Michael Franks (a member of the Texas Republican Executive Committee. The conservative group "Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy" have got a problem with the Texas State Board of Education over some ideas about global warming and acid rain which have appeared in new middle-school science textbooks. The teacher's guide even suggests that students write to their congressional representatives about environmental issues. At a hearing, one of the speakers offered his insight, "These kids are not qualified to advise on national energy policy or to write their congressman, for God's sake." And the open-minded Michael Franks offers this solution, "I think we've found the alternative fuel source that everyone is looking for and that is burning these." 

Kay O'Connor (Flatworlder, Stupidity, Women's Rights) 

FACT: Kansas state senator Kay O'Connor recently took the unusual step of denouncing the 19th Amendment when she was asked to appear at the Johnson County League of Women Voters' ''Celebrate the Right to Vote'' luncheon. She declined, telling organizer Delores Furtado that ''You probably wouldn't want me there because of what I would have to say.''  According to O'Connor, ''Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women (today) we wouldn't have to vote.'' Apparently O'Connor doesn't care much what her constituents think of this view. ''If I don't get re-elected, my only punishment is to go home to my husband and my roses and my children and my grandchildren.''