THE TENNESSEE EVOLUTION BILL IS DUMB, but Doug Mataconis is wrong to blame Republicans for anti-evolution sentiment — Tennessee passed plenty of anti-evolution bills under Democratic legislatures too. Remember the Scopes Trial? It would be fairer to say that the new GOP legislature, the first since Reconstruction, is carrying on a Democratic tradition. . . .

Speaking of Scopes, that’s a good excuse to plug Ed Larson’s excellent A Summer For The Gods. Also, here’s a documentary on the Scopes trial that I did with Ed Larson and John Seigenthaler, originally on Court TV.