As David Barton helps guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools, it’s important to keep his agenda in mind. In fact, that agenda will be the focus of a conference for right-wing legislators Barton’s organization, WallBuilders, is hosting Nov. 5-8 in Dallas.
WallBuilders hopes to draw lawmakers from states around the country to its ProFamily Legislators Conference. The event’s speakers and session topics are all geared toward promoting Barton’s agenda: basing our nation’s laws and society on a fundamentalist Protestant interpretation of the Bible. The WallBuilders Web site promises that lawmakers will get ”a fresh perspective on the historical application of Scripture to public policy-making with a deeper look into what the Bible says about current issues.”
Does Texas politics drive you bananas? Then come monkey around with us at Texas Freedom Network’s 14th Annual Celebration on Thursday, Oct. 22, in Austin.
This is TFN’s biggest party and fundraiser of the year. The event includes great food, cash bar and a silent auction. And this year the National Comedy Theatre will provide the laughs while Rolling Stones cover band Sticks & Stones supplies the tunes.
The event is 7-10 p.m. at the Austin Music Hall, 208 Nueces, in downtown Austin
Sometimes politicians find it easier to point fingers at everybody else for the problems they helped create themselves. That certainly seems true for Gail Lowe, the Republican from Lampasas who chairs the Texas State Board of Education.
The state board has been bombarded with thousands of e-mails and letters from people concerned about the ongoing revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. We obtained through a Texas Public Information Act request copies of those e-mails as well as replies from board members. In her replies Ms. Lowe tries to shift blame for problems to teachers and the news media, and her words are as insulting as they are disingenuous.
The president of the Texas Freedom Network today called on state lawmakers to investigate ethics concerns swirling around the Texas State Board of Education’s management of the Permanent School Fund and to reconsider their failure this spring to let voters decide whether the board should continue to manage the fund.
The Dallas Morning News last weekend reported that Rick Agosto, D-San Antonio, and Rene Nuñez, D-El Paso, accepted 53 gifts worth more than $5,000 over a three-year period from AEW Capital Management of Boston. AEW reported the gifts in documents it submitted in its bid for a contract managing real estate investments for the board. The two board members, however, had not reported the gifts on financial disclosure forms.
This requires close watching. Faced with growing a growing list of ethics concerns regarding the Texas State Board of Education‘s management of the Permanent School Fund, the board’s Finance Committee is meeting on Friday to review ethics rules. The Austin American-Statesman has the story here. What isn’t clear, however, is whether some board members are more interested in weakening ethics rules than in cleaning up the problems.
When it comes to right-wing extremism, sadly, Texas seems to provide an abundance — especially with political attacks on gay people.
Case in point: Congressman Louis Gohmert, an East Texas Republican. Last week during debate over hate crimes legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Gohmert launched into a diatribe comparing homosexuality to bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia.
Yes, that’s right: Rep. Gohmert equates gay folks with people who have sex with animals, corpses and children.
“There are all kinds of perversions, what most of us would call perversions, some would say it sounds like fun, but most of us would say were perversions and there have been laws against them,” said Gohmert.
There are plenty of other examples. Shamefully, in 2009 we still see Texas politicians describing fellow human beings in the most vile and venomous ways. And then they cast votes against legislation intended to protect those people from acts of violence based on hatred for who they are.
The Dallas Morning News just dropped another ethics bomb on the Texas State Board of Education. The newspaper reports that two board members “have received thousands of dollars in gifts from a company seeking a lucrative contract with the board, records show, and those members have not reported the gifts on financial disclosure forms.”
Today’s story follows on others recently that have detailed ethics concerns regarding the board’s management of the Permanent School Fund. (See here, here and here.)
The news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today has generated a variety of reactions, with great surprise being perhaps the most common. Reasonable people can disagree about who should have received the award, and TFN takes no position on that question. But we think most Americans — except perhaps those at the extremes, like certain members of our State Board of Education — might take some pride in seeing the leader of our nation recognized by the Nobel Committee.
So an e-mail sent out late this afternoon by the campaign of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst disappointed us:
This morning, after just eight months in office, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The President now joins a list of distinguished winners including Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.
But did the President deserve this honor that was not even bestowed upon President Ronald Reagan, a President who ended the Cold War and whose efforts led to the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Please take a minute to let me know your opinion.
Thanks for your patriotism,
Sincerely,
David Dewhurst
Lieutenant Governor
“Thanks for your patriotism?” With all due restpect, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, a “p” word did occur to us when we read your e-mail. But “patriotism” wasn’t the one.
They call these guys social studies “experts”? Please. If the Texas State Board of Education were to fine David Barton and Peter Marshall for each of the factual errors in their reviews of proposed (first drafts) social studies curriculum standards — as the board fines publishers for errors in textbooks — it would add up to a big chunk 0′ change. In fact, a partial analysis of the curriculum reviews from these two supposed social studies “experts” reveals a number of problems with basic historical facts, including distortions and misstatements as well as the simple misspelling of names.
We are not historians either, of course, but we haven’t been appointed to an “expert” panel helping guide what a generation of Texas students will learn in their social studies classrooms. In any case, for every correction noted below, we have linked to our sources – which include primary source documents — and welcome any corrections to the information we provide. Read on.
That’s what happened earlier this spring at the Texas State Board of Education during the vote on new science curriculum standards for public schools, according to Kelly Shackelford of Texas’ Focus on the Family affiliate, Free Market Foundation. When it looked like the board was about to pass science standards that did not include creationist-inspired criticisms of evolution, his group raised the alarm and:
“…basically what happened is, God unleashed his people.”
“It was clear that out of nowhere everything changed on a dime. And when we thought it was over — I mean, it was shocking. But it was God. And we just kind of stood their with our mouth open and said, ‘Praise the Lord.’”
That’s pretty much what religious-right pooh-bah Richard Land said last month at a Christian Coalition gathering in Florida. Reform efforts promoted by President Obama and congressional Democrats will lead to rationed care, which is based on Nazi ideology, Land said:
“I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
This can’t possibly be a surprise to anyone, right? The far right has spent decades using religion as a political weapon to divide Americans. But now the folks behind the Conservative Bible Project want to censor and rewrite the Bible to align scripture more closely with their fringe ideology.
We’re not making this up.
“Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations,” says Conservapedia, which is hosting the project. (The folks at Conservapedia call their Web site “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” Orwellian, yes?)
(C) analyze reasons for and the impact of selected examples of civil disobedience in U.S. history such as the Boston Tea Party, Shay’s Rebellion, Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay a tax, the Underground Railroad, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Rosa Parks at the lunch counter. (Emphasis added.)
Ah, yes. Every child should hear the archetypal story of American civil disobedience — an exhausted Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat and move the back of the bus lunch counter.
A major story and two scathing editorials in the last few days show that concerns over possible financial shenanigans and vote-trading on the Texas State Board of Education are growing.
We told you last week about ethics concerns (see here and here) surrounding the state board’s management of the Permanent School Fund. Today the San Antonio Express-News looks closer at concerns over the involvement of San Antonio board member Rick Agosto. And on Friday the Express-News and Dallas Morning News published strong editorials about the issue. Read on.
