"how can we expect science to trump opinion when the highest court in the land has become a mouthpiece for fanaticism?"

We can push tirelessly to impeach Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas for their "bad behavior".

"Unfortunately, there is nothing inaccurate in stating that if you do not have sex, then you will not get STD's."

Of course that's inaccurate! How many people died from that STD AIDS from blood transfusions? AIDS and Hapatitus from unclean needles? Genital warts from non-intercourse interplay?

You are protected from STDs if you do not exchange contaminated body fluids with an infected individual, or come in contact with contaminated equipment and objects.

That's all very nice and of course it'd be great to "vote Bush out of office" (last I heard he's not running again - I'd point out that such would be illegal but he really doesn't seem to give a damn about that sort of detail), but I still don't see why an association of lawyers who's existence largely revolves around bringing court cases against the government when the political branches break the law, shouldn't bring a court case against the government when it's breaking the law.

If that basic standard can't be met, nothing else really matters very much. Short of a miracle, we've got another year-and-a-half or so of the Bush presidency, and I really do think that the very largest problem of the Bush presidency is the fact that they're a bunch of criminals who break the law constantly. Frankly, even the legislature's most important role right now is its oversight responsibility - in essence, its actions as a judiciary!

This is not some sort of one-track situation where "we" can only press one issue from one direction. I'm all for reforming the executive and generally most of what you wrote, but I don't see any of that as invalidating the ACLU's action in this case.

The problem lies mostly with the vagueness of our administrative system as a whole. Technically Congress passes laws that create programs and entrusts the Executive to execute those laws. Those programs, however, entrust the executive with a very wide degree of latitude. Ideally, the executive branch, as it did under Clinton, would utilize that latitude to find creative solutions to solve the problems that those statutes intended to resolve. The problem with the Bush administration however, is that, in an unprecedented fashion, it has illustrated nothing but utter contempt for for the administrative state as a whole. I believe we are in agreement with everything I have just noted. Our disagreement lies in the solution. The courts, i believe, are not adept in ensuring that the administrative state is acting as it should. The best that it can do is to put a wrench in the system by invalidating rules for procedural deficiencies. But in this case at point, the Department of Education could just respond with a program that teaches abstinence but does not discuss condoms. Then there is nothing that the court could do. The administrative state just has too much latitude in its decision making process. Recently, the Supreme Court has tried to play its hand to by telling the EPA to create a rule to solve Global Warming. I applaud their efforts, but how would they enforce this? Since the EPA doesnt want to regulate Global Warming in the first place, they could easily bypass this holding by the SC by putting this on the back burner or by making a completely bogus rule.

The proper solution does not lie solely with Congress, but with the political process as a whole. The only real way to solve this mess is to vote Bush out of office (or impeach him, but that is unlikely). Congress is playing a very important role right now in checking the executive branch's dominance over issues. The war in iraq is finally being challenged, Gonzalez and his ilk are being subpoenad to appear before Congress, the FEMA disaster illustrated pure ineptitude, and Henry Waxman has a whole slue of new issues that he wants to battle. This keeps the Bush admin on the defensive and exposes his lousy operation of the admin state to the public. I disagree with using courts not because I dont agree with the issues, but because I believe that we should focus our efforts to results with the best yield. We will see Courts play their role, especially with Bush challenging the subpoenas with executive privilege or when Waxman discovers some real violations of criminal law. But for now, we should focus on political movement.

How can you possibly argue that the legislature is responsible for the problem of Bush ignoring the legislature? How is making new laws which also get ignored going to solve that problem?

While you're absolutely correct that compliance with existing law would not, in itself, fix the many problems of abstinence-only education, I do not agree that overlooking and thereby absolving the executive of ignoring the law is in any way a good policy.

According to this article, the ACLU's strategy is based upon information that abstinence only programs 1) disseminate untrue information regarding condoms and HIV and 2) are ineffective. If federal law, created by Congress, makes it illegal for inaccurate medical information to be disseminated in our nations schools, than the best that the ACLU can hope for is that the abstinence programs that are in place cease to disseminate the incorrect information regarding condoms and HIV. It cannot then create the positive obligation upon our schools to teach more effective sexual education programs. Unfortunately, there is nothing inaccurate in stating that if you do not have sex, then you will not get STD's.

The problem with a court telling a school to create a more effective sexual education program is that then the court is making a positive requirement on the agency. There is nothing that the court can base its decision upon and no real way that it can enforce its decision short of holding the Secretary of Education in contempt. A court can approve or disapprove legislation, it cannot create legislation. The proper thing to do is to lobby Congress to create positive requirements to change abstinence only programs. It is true that Bush has evaded his responsibilities in the execution of our nation's laws (his article II responsibility) but as our new Democratic Congress shows us, it is the legislature that is the better check on his authority in that regard.