Perhaps Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy is finally getting close to the truth.
“There is nothing conservative about what we did in English. Nothing conservative about what we did in science,” McLeroy said of the board’s record.
Archive for February, 2010
Have Truer Words Been Spoken?
February 28, 2010TFN Youth Leaders Speak Up for Sex Ed
February 26, 2010A Texas Freedom Network Education Fund report last year revealed the dismal state of sex education in Texas. Now TFN’s Youth Leadership Council has collected thousands of petition signatures from young people around the state who support responsible sex education in our public schools. Check out this video of a Youth Leadership Council event on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Click here if you want to sign the petition.
Talking Points
February 25, 2010From today’s TFN News Clips:
“Rosa Parks did not move to the front of the bus to support sodomy.”
– Barb Davis White, a Tea Party activist and Republican candidate for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, testifying before a legislative committee contemplating the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state
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SBOE Campaign Finance Data Updated
February 25, 2010The Religious Right’s Secret Candidate ‘Forum’
February 25, 2010If anyone needs more evidence that the religious right’s ringleaders see voters as sheep, we present a new exhibit: Rev. Rick Scarborough’s secret candidate-screening in East Texas.
Scarborough, head of the Lufkin (Texas)-based group Vision America, orbits the fringes of the far right. For example, he’s a “birther” who doubts President Obama was truly born in the United States and, thus, isn’t eligible to occupy the White House (and here). He also argues that proposed health insurance reforms will lead to “death panels” and rationing care for handicapped children.
Scarborough also works to mobilize conservative evangelical clergy to support the religious right’s political agenda. To that end, this week he put together a closed-door “candidate forum” at a Nacogdoches (Texas) church, the city’s Daily Sentinel newspaper reports.
Standing Tall for Science in Texas
February 24, 2010The National Center for Science Education has named three distinguished university scholars in Texas as the recipients of the organization’s 2010 Friend of Darwin award for their efforts last year to promote sound science education in public schools.
Prof. Gerald Skoog of Texas Tech, Prof. David Hillis of the University of Texas at Austin and Prof. Ron Wetherington of Southern Methodist University (standing left to right in the photo) served as expert reviewers during the State Board of Education‘s debate over proposed new science curriculum standards in 2009. All three were powerful and tireless advocates — both before the board and in the news media — in urging state board members not to dumb down the education of Texas schoolchildren with creationist-based junk science attacking evolution.
They came from Texas. Big, brawny men, with big, brawny brains. They had a mission: To make evolution education safe for kids throughout the Republic of Texas.
These three men–David Hillis, Gerald Skoog and Ron Wetherington—stood tall for evolution!
Friends of Darwin: Professors Skoog, Hillis, Wetherington
Talking Points
February 24, 2010From today’s TFN News Clips:
“A movement seeking limited government will never succeed if it continually limits the importance of self-government and moral values.”
– Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, joining a chorus of complaints from the religious right that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has become too “libertarian” and not sufficiently focused on a socially conservative agenda
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Talking Points
February 23, 2010From today’s TFN News Clips:
“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children. In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”
– Virginia state Delegate Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, suggesting that disabled children are punishment for women who have aborted their first pregnancy.
Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.
Money Flows to Far-Right SBOE Candidates
February 22, 2010FEB. 25 UPDATE: Campaign finance reports for Democrats seeking the District 5 seat on the Texas State Board of Education are now available. See below for the new numbers. Rebecca Bell-Metereau continues to build a large fundraising lead over her opponents for the Democratic nomination. We have also updated finance numbers from a corrected finance report from Bob Craig.
UPDATE: New numbers are available below as of noon today (Feb. 23) for Districts 5, 10 and 12 Republicans. District 5 Democratic reports are not available. (Most have been filed but are not publicly available until all have been filed.)
The flow of money to the campaigns of far-right candidates and incumbents in Texas State Board of Education races increased substantially over the past month. New campaign finance reports — which were due to the Texas Ethics Commission today, eight days before the March 2 primary — show that a handful of big donors are largely driving the spike in fundraising. And the biggest winner in the fundraising sweepstakes this month is West Texas candidate Randy Rives, who appears to be the far right’s best hope to pick up a seat on the state board.
Republican SBOE Candidates Duke It Out
February 22, 2010Republican candidates for Cynthia Dunbar’s District 10 Texas State Board of Education seat met over the weekend at a public forum in Georgetown. It appears that evolution and sex education were among the hottest topics of discussion, according to the online Williamson County Conservative Examiner. (Hat tip to TFN Insider reader abb3w for calling this to our attention.)
Listen to TFN Interviews about Texas SBOE
February 20, 2010Texas Freedom Network and the fight against far-right efforts to rewrite history in Texas public school classrooms were featured on three national radio programs the last few days. First, TFN President Kathy Miller was a guest on the Rev. Welton Gaddy’s State of Belief radio program. Check out the full interview here.
Kathy was also a guest on “To the Point,” a nationally broadcast program of NPR radio station KCRW in Los Angeles. The program features Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar getting schooled by Kathy and the program’s other guests, Susan Jacoby of the Center for Inquiry-New York City and Randall Balmer, professor of American religious history at Columbia’s Barnard College. Listen to the archived broadcast here.
Ryan Valentine, TFN’s deputy director, was a guest Friday night on Alan Colmes’ national radio program. State Board of Education member Don McLeroy apparently backed out of joining the program after finding out a TFN representative would participate. A podcast of Colmes’ show is available here.
Staying Classy (Not)
February 20, 2010The fringe right-wingers who descended on the big Conservative Political Action Committee confab in Washington, D.C., this week seem to think Thursday’s suicide-attack on an IRS building in Austin is good for a laugh.
Talking Points Memo quotes one CPAC speaker joking that he was worried notorious anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist might have flown that plane into the building. Yeah, so funny. The attack appears to have killed at least two people and severely burned another.
How the Far Right ‘Guides’ Voters with Lies
February 17, 2010When it comes to lies at election time, many voters point at mistruths they hear from candidates. But voter guides put out by far-right pressure groups in Texas are hardly good examples of honesty themselves.
Consider, for example, this question for Texas State Board of Education candidates from the current voter guide put out by Liberty Institute, the renamed Free Market Foundation (the Texas affiliate of the far-right Focus on the Family):
Do you support the current law which says the Board may reject a textbook if it believes the book is unsuitable?
Actually, the law doesn’t say that at all.
