Texas Education Agency and Chris Comer, Part 32

The Austin Chronicle's Naked City blog comments on the recent announcement of Kenneth Heydrick as the science director for the Texas Education Agency:

The Texas Education Agency has offered the job of science coordinator to Kenn Heydrick. That should quash the conspiracy theorists who speculated that the agency removed former coordinator Chris Comer last year to replace her with someone who supports intelligent design.

Emphasis added.

It's a little premature to conclude that, "Evolution could not have been the reason for someone's dismissal, because the position was filled by someone supportive of teaching evolution." Let's not forget that Chris Comer's forced resignation attracted national news attention negative to the state of Texas, almost all of which was extremely negative. There was some in very strong advocacy from university professors on the part of teaching evolution. It is at least conceivable that some people in hiring positions noted this, and realized that hiring anyone with weak credentials or wishy-washy views on the subject of evolution would make a lot of people look very, very bad.

This may well have been a case where vigilance worked.