Archive for October, 2010

« Older Entries

Comments

October 30, 2010

A note to TFN Insider readers:

We have noticed that some legitimate comments from readers get caught by a WordPress spam filter. It’s actually a pretty good filter — nearly all spam comments are caught before we ever see them (and we get hundreds of spam comments on unrelated topics ranging from Nigerian royalty who need a temporary bank account to websites that promise — guaranteed! — to improve certain physical attributes.) Unfortunately, the filter occasionally catches legitimate comments, too. That happens most often when a comment includes a link (and especially if it includes two or more links) or an image. But not always. We’ve seen some comments from regular posters caught by the spam filter even if they include nothing that might trigger such a filter (like links). We don’t monitor the spam folder because of the large volume of spam comments that get sent there, and we approve nearly all legitimate comments we see pending. So if you have posted a comment and can’t figure out why you haven’t seen it show up, it’s likely to be a case of the moderator being unable to get to it yet or that it has been caught by the spam filter in error. Apologies from us for that.

By the way, this is a good time also for us to remind readers about our comments policy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Church, State and Tea

October 30, 2010

Tea party activists across the country have been doing a lot of shouting about what they say is government getting involved in things it shouldn’t. But we’ve seen a number of tea party-backed candidates in this year’s elections, such as Senate candidates Christine O’Donnell of Delaware and Sharron Angle of Nevada, who don’t seem to have a problem with government getting involved in religious matters. In fact, they want to mix government and religion. Think Progress provides another example: Ken Buck, the Republican nominee for the Senate from Colorado. Here’s what Buck had to say at a candidate forum last year:

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution. While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that’s sanctioned by the government, it doesn’t mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion. And so that, that concerns me a great deal. So I think there are cultural differences, I think there, we are as strong as we, our culture, our culture gives us our strength, I guess is the best way to put that. And, and I am worried about the fact that we seem to be walking away from culture. And, and one thing that President Obama has done that I would certainly speak about is calling the Christmas tree, which has historically been called a Christmas tree in Washington DC, a holiday tree. It’s just flat wrong in my mind.

FactCheck.org debunked the claim about President Obama supposedly preferring a “holiday tree” instead of a “Christmas tree.” In any case, Buck’s argument against separation of church and state exposes the far right’s fraudulent rhetoric about “small government” and “religious liberty.” Mixing government and religion would threaten religious freedom in America, which is why the First Amendment — which the Texas Freedom Network strongly defends — forbids government promotion or interference in religion.

Posted in church and state, tea party | 14 Comments »

Don McLeroy’s Swan Song

October 29, 2010

Donna Garner, the serial e-mailer ideologically aligned with the Texas State Board of Education‘s faction of religious extremists, is distributing to her e-mail list an extended excerpt from what she reports is a speech by state board member Don McLeroy. McLeroy apparently made the speech on October 23 at a Bastrop County Tea Party event. (Editorial note: If TFN Insider receives any information indicating that her e-mail is inaccurate, we will certainly note that here.)

The speech reads as a pretty thorough summary of the philosophy of the state board’s extremist faction — a philosophy that is  historically and scientifically illiterate, self-contradictory and coldly arrogant. McLeroy praises the disestablishment of religion in America, yet in the same speech he declares that our society is (and should be) based on biblical authority. He once again derides expertise. And he criticizes the “left” for substituting “insults and personal attacks” for sound arguments, yet he portrays those he sees as on the left — anyone, apparently, who might disagree with him — as “godless.” It’s hard to imagine anything more insulting to people of faith who simply don’t share his political views.

(more…)

Posted in Don McLeroy, State Board of Education | 10 Comments »

SBOE Campaign Finance Reports – 8 Days Out

October 28, 2010

The final campaign finance reports before next Tuesday’s election were released earlier this week, detailing funds raised and expended over the period of September 24 – October 23. They suggest we might be in for an eventful closing week in some of the hotly contested SBOE races. Here are a few of the notable findings from these reports:

District 10

  • Democratic candidate Judy Jennings continued her strong fundraising performance, reporting another $32,000 raised during this period. She also reported expenditures in excess of $71,000, mostly on media purchases. The Jennings campaign reported just over $13,000 on hand heading into the final 8 days of the campaign.
  • Jennings’ Republican opponent Marsha Farney also reported more than $58,000 in media expenditures during the period. However, Farney reported minimal funds raised during the period, so she appears to be dipping into her own pockets for these purchases  — just as TFN Insider predicted last month.

District 5

  • Republican incumbent Ken Mercer enters the home stretch with just over $16,000 on hand. Mercer continues to spend comparatively small amounts on his campaign (though he did send a donation of $100 to the far-right group Texas Alliance for Life).
  • Democratic challenger Rebecca Bell-Metereau raised more than $32,000 during the reporting period, and spent almost $62,000 on television spots and other advertising.

Other interesting items

  • Houston homebuilder and major Republican donor Bob Perry took another step into the world of SBOE politics, contributing $5,000 each to the campaigns of Bob Craig (R, Lubbock) and George Clayton (R-Dallas). (Perry previously gave $5,000 each to the Garza and Mercer campaigns.)
  • Republican donor Michael Boylan of Houston jumped into two SBOE contests, giving $5,000 each to Carlos Garza (SBOE Dist. 1) and Ken Mercer.

Links to campaign finance reports for all of the SBOE candidates after the jump.

*Update: The original post stated that the last filing available for Thomas Ratliff, Republican candidate for SBOE 9, was from July. The Texas Ethics Commission has now updated the website, and Ratliff’s 8-day out report is now linked in the table below.

(more…)

Posted in elections, Rebecca Bell-Metereau, State Board of Education, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Living in the Past

October 26, 2010

Eagle Forum — whose founder, Phyllis Schlafly, the Texas State Board of Education added to curriculum standards for public school social studies classes this year — doesn’t orbit the fringes of the right just on issues like opposition to evolutionary science and gay rights. No, the group is also still fighting the Cold War, which ended nearly two decades ago. And Cathie Adams, the former Texas Republican Party chair and former Texas Eagle Forum president, is leading the group’s march back to the past.

(more…)

Posted in Cathie Adams, religious right, Texas Eagle Forum | 6 Comments »

Politics and the Pulpit

October 25, 2010

Some good news from a new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press: just 5 percent of people who attend religious services at least once or twice a month say that their clergy or other religious groups have urged them to vote in a particular way.

That survey makes it clear that most religious leaders don’t want their houses of worship dragged into partisan political campaigns. But their resistance helps explain, perhaps, why David Barton and other religious-right leaders are working so hard to persuade pastors to politicize their pulpits and their congregations.

Posted in church and state, David Barton, elections | 3 Comments »

Vote!

October 23, 2010

Early voting is already in progress in Texas. This year’s elections, especially for the State Board of Education, could be critical in deciding whether millions of Texas schoolchildren get an education based on facts and sound scholarship or the personal agendas of politicians. The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund’s 2010 Vote Guide is available here.

Posted in elections | 4 Comments »

How Gov. Perry Is Failing Texas Teens

October 22, 2010

Garrett Mize is the Youth Advocacy Coordinator at the Texas Freedom Network and heads up TFN’s Youth Leadership Council, the Texas portion of Advocates for Youth’s Cultural Advocacy and Mobilization Initiative. Garrett writes below about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s tortured defense of abstinence-only sex education programs.

“It worked for me,” is essentially all that our governor could half-jokingly mutter about the statewide failure of abstinence-only sex education when grilled by the editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune recently.

Gov. Rick Perry, widely suspected of having presidential aspirations, has been in office since George W. Bush left the Governor’s Mansion back in 2000 (after his own election to the presidency). Gov. Perry is currently the longest-serving governor in Texas history. Unfortunately, this also means his policies on sex education are also the longest-serving in Texas.

(more…)

Posted in Rick Perry, sex education | Leave a Comment »

Governor: Abstinence Worked for Me!

October 21, 2010

Pull up a seat and watch this two-minute clip of Texas Governor Rick Perry mounting the most tortured defense of abstinence-only education you’ll ever encounter.


Watch live video from Texas Tribune on Justin.tv

For those of you who lack the stomach to watch the clip for yourself, here’s the gist. When asked why he continues to support abstinence-only education in Texas schools, Perry gets personal:

“I’m going to tell you from my own personal life, abstinence works!”

First of all, TMI!

(more…)

Posted in Rick Perry, sex education | 16 Comments »

Beck: No ‘Half-Monkey, Half-Human’ Out There!

October 20, 2010

Glenn Beck on the radio today, rejecting evolutionary science (audio clip from Media Matters):

“I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen the  half-monkey, half-person yet. Did evolution just stop? … There’s no other species that is developing into half-human?”

That argument sound familiar? You might recall that Texas State Board of Education member Ken Mercer claimed during the debate over public school science curriculum standards that the lack of a “dog-cats” and “cat-rats” was proof against evolutionary science.

Posted in evolution, Glenn Beck, Ken Mercer | 14 Comments »

Mercer Backer Attacks Fulbright, Peace Corps

October 20, 2010

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a supporter of Texas State Board of Education incumbent Ken Mercer is attacking his election opponent for having been a Fulbright scholar and a Peace Corps volunteer. Writing on the Republican website Texas GOP Vote, Sonja Harris has this to say in criticizing Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos:

“Bell-Metereau is a former Fulbright scholar which is a government sponsored program that promotes multiculturalism diluting American exceptionalism. She also taught English and American studies in the Peace Corp. I do not condemn these programs but point to the Left leaning agendas they provide to the participants. Peace Corp volunteer Senator Chris Dodd is quoted as saying, ‘that a great nation should send its people abroad, not to extend its power, not to intimidate its enemies,’ and of course the Peace Corp was instrumental in his role in the Senate. This is the kind of company Bell-Metereau keeps.”

(more…)

Posted in Ken Mercer, State Board of Education | 5 Comments »

More Separation Denial

October 19, 2010

Christine O’Donnell might be running for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware, but she would probably feel at home sitting on the Texas State Board of Education. We told you last month that the Republican Senate nominee believes evolution is a “myth.” Now she’s denying — like a number of State Board of Education members in Texas — that the Constitution protects separation of church and state in America.

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell, who is popular among the religious right and tea party folks, asked her Democratic opponent in a debate Tuesday. Members of the audience at the Widener University Law School burst out in laughter. O’Donnell then seemed to express doubt that the First Amendment forbids government establishment of religion. Audio here.

More from the New York Times here.

The Texas State Board of Education last spring rejected a proposed requirement that social studies students learn about the constitutional protection of separation of church and state and the prohibition against government promoting one religion over all others.

Posted in church and state | 18 Comments »

Dave Welch Calls Judge a ‘Domestic Enemy’

October 19, 2010

Dave Welch, the extremist who runs an outfit called the Houston Area Pastor Council, is now claiming that a federal judge who recently ruled against the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay military servicemembers is a “domestic enemy” guilty of treason. From his screed at the right-wing, conspiracy-peddling website World Net Daily:

“U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips fired a judicial IED [improvised explosive device] directly into the effectiveness, readiness and moral of our military in a time of war makes this, in my non-legal opinion, an act of treason. . . . She has proven herself not only unfit for judgeship but is in fact a ‘domestic enemy’ of the very kind our military members take an oath to defend against.”

Portraying the ruling from Judge Phillips an example of “tyranny,” Welch claims her decision represents a “complete and utter rejection of the U.S. Constitution, the separation of powers and rule by the ‘consent of the governed.’” Of course, Judge Phillips sees the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as a violation of servicemembers’ constitutional rights to due process, freedom of speech and the right to petition the government. Yet Welch says the judge should be impeached — a direct political threat to the ability of the judiciary to independently decide whether our nation’s laws are valid under the Constitution.

But perhaps the most repulsive part of Welch’s extremist screed is toward the end, when he suggests God will punish America if the policy against gay military servicemembers is ultimately overturned. In other words, when all else fails, Welch once again uses faith as a political weapon to divide Americans. Is anyone surprised?

You might recall that Welch’s group hosted an event featuring Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott last year. The event came just days after Welch posted another Internet screed attacking the faith of Christians who don’t share his political beliefs, calling them “CINOs,” or “Christians in name only.” Welch has every right to publicize his odious opinions, of course. But it’s a tragedy when public officials not only fail to renounce that kind of religious bigotry, but also seek the approval of the person promoting it.

Posted in Dave Welch, LGBT issues | 3 Comments »

An Appeal for Hope

October 15, 2010

The research compiled by the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University in San Marcos is heartbreaking: since 2004, at least six Texas teens have been so tormented by bullying and  abuse at school that they have taken their own lives. Another attempted suicide by jumping from a  two-and-a-half-story balcony.

Some of the students were gay or lesbian (or perceived to be their tormentors). Others weren’t. One Rockdale student shot herself after constant bullying over her weight and physical appearance. A transgender teen from the same town hung herself just the next month. A high school student in Cleburne, harassed repeatedly because of facial scars and a hearing impairment, was reportedly told: “If I had a face like yours, I’d shoot myself.” He went home and did just that.

Today more and more adults are standing up to say, “Enough.” They are calling on lawmakers to pass anti-bullying legislation that helps protect all children from this abuse. And they are appealing to young people — gay and straight — to keep the hope that life gets better. We were especially moved by this video of an openly gay Fort Worth City Council member, Joel Burns, speaking at a council meeting earlier this week.

Religious-right groups continue to oppose legislation that would help protect young people from bullying and abuse. They claim such legislation “promotes homosexuality” to kids.

Some elected officials even encourage schools to stigmatize gay and lesbian children. In 2004, Texas State Board of Education member Terri Leo, R-Spring, insisted that middle school health textbooks portray gay people as “more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use, and suicide.” Fortunately, textbook publishers refused to obey her demand. This year, when state board members revised social studies curriculum standards, another board member — Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands — bizarrely interpreted a particular standard for the high school sociology course as somehow promoting homosexuality and transgenderism. She succeeded in removing the standard.

Texas children deserve far better than politicians promoting their own divisive personal agendas instead of ensuring that schools provide a sound education and protect their students from abuse.

Posted in Barbara Cargill, bullying, LGBT issues, State Board of Education, Terri Leo | 6 Comments »

David Barton Puts Churches at Risk

October 14, 2010

David Barton, head of the Texas-based organization WallBuilders, argues that the Constitution doesn’t protect separation of church and state. That constitutional principle is just a myth, Barton says. And now he’s suggesting that pastors can promote partisan candidates in their churches.

Quoted by OneNewNow, a website (“Your Latest News from a Christian perspective”) operated by the far-right American Family Association, Barton says the Internal Revenue Service apparently has decided not to take action in the cases of pastors who have taken the deliberate step of endorsing partisan candidates from the pulpit. From the OneNewsNow article (which describes Barton as a “constitutional expert” even though his only college degree is in religious education):

Current law prohibits pastors from speaking on politics or endorsing a political candidate, but David Barton of WallBuilders says the IRS’s intimidation of removing a church’s tax exemption status is unconstitutional. Even though some pastors have intentionally crossed the line, Barton does not think the IRS wants to take them to court because it may lose.

“The IRS doesn’t have any interest in doing this because if they do, I believe they know they are going to lose. And if they lose, you have 370,000 pastors in America who suddenly find out that there’s no restriction on them,” Barton suggests.

(more…)

Posted in David Barton, elections | 7 Comments »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 109 other followers