In the past couple months, it looks like Intelligent Design has gone mainstream.  The President likes it.  Dr. Frist, too.  And in the name of objectivity, from USA Today to the New York Times to elsewhere come the inevitable blurring of distinctions and the unfounded legitimacy of competing theories, nay, beliefs, which no ID proponent will ever have to seriously defend.  The game is to raise ID's profile enough so that the general impression is that within science there is an actual debate or competition that really doesn't exist.   After seeing Kenneth Chang's piece in the NYTimes today, Brad Delong probably best summarized the state of things when he wrote in response, "Darwinists have done a great deal to explain life's complexity. "Doubters" have done nothing at all to do so."    

When you get beyond all the gnashing of teeth, I have to say my favorite take on the ID mentality comes from the always humorous Jesse over at Pandagon: 

"I have a theory that microscopic gerbils under my bed have been making me appear older year after year. Don't believe me? Well, let's try it this way: empirically prove that they don't. You say it's a series of natural biological and environmental changes that affect how old I look? Prove the gerbils didn't cause them. You say it happens to everyone? Prove there aren't gerbils under everyone's bed. You can't find any? That's because they disappear when you look at them. What? Say something. You can't, can you? Because I'm right, that's why.

In public schools next fall: gerbilation. Soon, our entire national educational curriculum will be based on nothing but poorly applied fifth-grade logic, and then those fucking Japanese kids had better watch out - they'll only know "old" education, while Americans will lead the world in the educational revolution of the 21st century: complete bullshit."

UPDATE:  Okay, I almost forgot the ONION's take which is even funnier.