If I understand the logic of Mitchell’s comment, it is a defense of the Ed. Department employee’s attempt to stop need-based financial aid from going to students majoring in Evolutionary Biology, because that employee “maybe read a quote” attributed to a physicist concerning his overall impression of the effect that “Darwinian theory” has, on balance, on scientific progress.

No need to implement the program established by Congress, or the policies devoloped by the Department itself for implementation of that policy. It’s OK for individual employees, apparently, to substitute their own decisions, based on “quotes” that serve their purposes, to overturn the law and replace it with their own preferred regime.

Gee, is that OK for ANY AND ALL public employees, or only those with whom D. Mitchell agrees, I wonder.

The work for which Laughlin was awarded the Nobel prize in physics is described at http://www.llnl.gov/str/Laughlin.html . As a physicist, it’s not clear whether Laughlin knows any more about biology than does D. Mitchell–so maybe DoE department employees should just implement Mitchell’s wishes directly: why depend upon convenient “quotes” from any other non-biologists.

To quote one reviewer:
“When Laughlin does talk about the physics, it is fascinating. But he has the unfortunate habit of talking about everything but the physics.”
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/bib/nf/l/rbrtblgh.htm#10952 .

Laughlin’s quote on “Darwinian Theory” was pumped into the Discovery Institute’s torrent of polemics in an article by George Gilder, which can be read at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3631 .

If Laughlin’s quote originates within the context of an argument that makes it meaningful, then the quote itself might have some meaning. As used by Gilder and by Mitchell, however, it is just a piece of mortar in their polemical barrage — or, at the very best — an invocation of the brute authority of a non-biologist pronouncing on biology.

In any case, it’s amazing that anybody could think that having read this quote would justify a bureaucrat’s attempt to override an Act of Congress. I don’t know how anyone could justify this violation of the Rule of Law — unless they think it’s OK for some public officials to act on their own in carrying out what they see as the dictates of a Higher Law. The Rule of Law itslef requires that anybody willing to act on that basis is thereby disqualified from public employment under any lawful government.