too close to the truth...

The Onion speaks: "As an ill-informed pseudo-intellectual with a particular interest in the unverifiable, I'm always on the lookout for some partially thought out misinformation."

an anniversary of sorts...

Today is the 30th anniversary of the loss of the Edumund Fitzgerald in a Lake Superior storm, losing 29 men...

The Lie in its own words.

The actual text of the lie in the Kansas BOE "Science" Standards (2005 standards, pp. 75-76):

f. The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recent years by:

i. Discrepancies in the molecular evidence (e.g., differences in relatedness inferred from sequence studies of different proteins) previously thought to support that view.
ii. A fossil record that shows sudden bursts of increased complexity (the Cambrian Explosion), long periods of stasis and the absence of abundant transitional forms rather than steady gradual increases in complexity, and
iii. Studies that show animals follow different rather than identical early stages of embryological development.

And the truth about the scientific support for common descent. "i." is an utter fabrication. The genetic evidence repeatedly supports common descent, and anybody who discovers otherwise would become the most famous biologist in history in a matter of minutes.

"ii." is absolutely irrelevant and a totally incorrect interpretation of how the fossil record works and its relationship to common descent. Nothing in common descent says anything about there being "steady gradual increases", and the entire emphasis on "complexity" comes strictly out of the Behe/Dembski/Johnson ID playbook. Nothing about common descent or the modern synthesis at all talks about the necessity or relevance of "complexity" as a core component or requirement of evolution.

Similarly, "iii." is irrelevant as the entire field of "evo-devo" has moved long past the original (long since discredited and never used in modern teachings of evolution) theory that humans "pass through other animal stages in our embrionic development" (the claim they put that line in to refute). The latest issue of Natural History Magazine has an article on the current state of evo-devo.