- Texas Ed Board Candidate Doubles Down on 'Pilgrims Were Communists' Claim
- More From Ed Board Candidate Spurlock: No Sex Ed, Kids 'Are Gonna Figure It Out on Their Own' Anyway
- Former Texas Ed Board Creationist Don McLeroy on Colbert Report Tonight
- Former Texas SBOE Member: Opposition to Teaching Creationism in Science Classrooms Is Like 'Pre-Holocaust Germany'
- Early Voting Begins in Texas: Vote in State Board of Education Races
- Texas Ed Board Candidate Advocates Teaching Creationism in Science Classrooms
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Will Students Be Required to Learn This, Too?
One of the many controversial changes the Texas State Board of Education made to proposed social studies curriculum standards this year was requiring that students learn about Phyllis Schlafly’s role in a “conservative resurgence” in the 1980s and 1990s. Schlafly, the head of the far-right group Eagle Forum, rose to political prominence by attacking the [...]
Posted in Phyllis Schlafly, social studies
17 Comments
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(Don’t) Focus on the Family
In case you missed it, over the weekend the Dallas Morning News ran a profile on Liberty Institute, the Dallas-based religious-right outfit that has grown its national profile in recent years by suing schools for alleged First Amendment violations and trying (unsuccessfully) to keep Sarah Palin’s ethics problems from seeing the light of day. The [...]
Posted in Liberty Institute
5 Comments
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How the Right Wields Faith as a Weapon
Religious-right leaders often use faith as a weapon to divide people for political gain. An essay from Dave Welch, head of the far-right groups U.S. Pastor Council and Houston Area Pastor Council, offers another stark example. In his July 17 essay for World Net Daily, a website that wallows in the dirty waters of the [...]
Posted in Dave Welch, religious right
8 Comments
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Talking Points
From today’s TFN News Clips: “The big message is that when it comes to children’s health, Texas kids are showing many signs that things are getting worse, not better.” – Dr. Frances Deviney, Texas Kids Count director, discussing a new report that shows Texas has the nation’s third-highest teen birthrate, is experiencing a rise in the [...]
Posted in sex education
12 Comments
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Kissing Abstinence-Only Goodbye
It looks like Texas schools are growing tired of waiting around for state law-makers to reverse the state’s addiction to failed abstinence-only programs. They are taking matters into their own hands. Earlier this week San Marcos CISD became the latest in a rapidly expanding list of Texas districts — including schools in the Dallas-area , [...]
Posted in contraception, sex education
12 Comments
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New SBOE Campaign Finance Reports
July campaign finance reports show that Democratic challengers in two Central Texas State Board of Education races currently have sizable funding advantages over their Republican opponents — at least on paper. But it’s still very early in the general election campaign, and one of those Republican candidates dipped deep into her own bank account to [...]
Posted in elections, State Board of Education
5 Comments
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Who Are the Real ‘Judicial Activists’ Here?
Critics of so-called “judicial activism” — examples of which are often court decisions they simply don’t like — loudly argue for a strict interpretation of the Constitution when judges interpret laws. So we find it hypocritical, to say the least, when those same critics later decide that the Constitution isn’t a sufficient basis for interpreting [...]
Posted in Rick Scarborough, Supreme Court
11 Comments
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Common Sense on Sex Education
Texans have plenty of it. Common sense, that is. Not, unfortunately, sex education. The results of the TFN Education Fund’s statewide survey we released yesterday showed that 80 percent of likely voters in Texas agree that high school classes on sex education should teach “about contraception, such as condoms and other birth control, along with [...]
Posted in sex education
5 Comments
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