My representative in the U.S. Congress is Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). He's best known locally for a minor fiasco involving the renaming of a post office after Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Alfred Rascon. Mr. Rascon is certainly worthy of such an honor, but the community association objected to H.R. 4430 on the grounds that no one asked them whether they wanted it.

Local officials tried to distance themselves from claims made by Rep. Bartlett's office that they were consulted for "permission" to introduce the bill, saying either that they were never contacted or that they expressed no opinion on the renaming of the building. Meanwhile, some Bartlett supporters and veterans floated the charge that opponents of the bill were motivated by racism.

As it happens, just 24 hours before he introduced the post office bill, Rep. Bartlett was getting into a different kind of political mischief.

According to a report by David Applegate of the American Geological Institute, half a dozen Congressmen, including mine, met for several hours on May 10th to discuss Intelligent Design (ID), a new name for creationism. The meeting was conducted by the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) and took place in the Rayburn building, in a House Judiciary Committee hearing room provided by Rep. Charles Canady (R-FL.).

Rep. Canady had originally wanted to hold full-blown congressional hearings on what Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) called "the bias and viewpoint discrimination in science and science education."  Apparently, public school biology teachers insist on teaching evolution, and virtually all scientists support them. But he was persuaded by CRSC that a lower-profile meeting might be a better idea. Rep. Souder explained this on the floor of the House in later remarks about the meeting.

Now here's the odd thing. I don't think it surprises anyone that at least a handful of Republican Congressmen are strongly sympathetic to creationism. And Rep. Bartlett, the Congressman that supposedly represents me, describes himself as a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. But according to his biography, Rep. Bartlett also has genuine life science credentials. So what does he really think, and why was he listening to CRSC?

I decided to ask him, using the web-based e-mail mechanism provided by Congress. Stay tuned!