Archive for November, 2010

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Just Plain Embarrassing

November 30, 2010

The more he says, the worse he sounds.

Last spring at a Glenn Beck/Tea Party rally in his hometown, state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, called President Obama “God’s punishment on us.” Then recently Rep. Berman filed a bill in the Texas Legislature that would require a presidential candidate to submit an original birth certificate before qualifying for the ballot in the state. He justified the bill by calling into question whether President Obama is a native-born American citizen:

“This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place.”

Claims that President Obama isn’t — or hasn’t proven that he is — a natural-born citizen were debunked long, long ago. But the loony right won’t let it go. Monday night Rep. Berman further embarrassed himself on Anderson Cooper’s CNN news program, AC360, by repeating absurd claims about President Obama based essentially on deceitful rumors, Internet spam and ignorant blather from right-wing websites and crackpots. Talking Points Memo was watching:

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Posted in Leo Berman | 12 Comments »

Job Opening: Communications Deputy

November 29, 2010

Are you a skilled writer, savvy researcher and supporter of the Texas Freedom Network’s mission? TFN has an opening for deputy communications director on our growing staff. Check out the job posting here.

Posted in Texas Freedom Network | 4 Comments »

Elections Open Door to Radical Agendas

November 27, 2010

The Associated Press notes that the religious right is preparing to use the November elections to push a radical legislative agenda in states across the country starting in January. The religious right’s hit list includes women’s reproductive rights, embryonic stem cell research, divorce laws and equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. The Texas Freedom Network has already identified other likely battles coming when the legislative session opens in Austin in January, including reform of the State Board of Education and responsible sex education in public schools.

You can help stop the religious right’s radical agenda in Texas by signing up for a TFN Rapid Response Team. TFN will keep Rapid Response Team members updated on critical legislation as it moves through the state House and Senate. We will also provide the tools you need to take action to top attacks on religious freedom, equal rights and public education.

But how does the Associated Press see the religious right’s legislative agenda shaping up across the country? Read on.

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Posted in abortion, LGBT issues, marriage, religious right, stem cells, Texas Legislature | 5 Comments »

Tom DeLay: Guilty

November 24, 2010

From the Houston Chronicle: A Travis County jury today convicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, on two charges dealing with political money laundering. He faces the possibility of long prison sentences on both convictions.

DeLay helped orchestrate the Republican takeover of the Texas House of Representatives in the 2002 election. From the Houston Chronicle story:

“DeLay and two political aides were accused of arranging to trade $190,000 in corporate money with the Republican National Committee in 2002 in exchange for a like amount of money raised from individual donations that the RNC gave to seven specified Texas candidates. Texas law bars the use of corporate contributions in candidate elections.”

The next year the newly established Republican majority elected Tom Craddick, R-Midland, as Speaker. Then Republican lawmakers in Austin threw out a congressional redistricting map put in place just two years earlier and drew new district boundaries that were substantially more favorable to GOP candidates. The Craddick-run House spent the next six years pushing through as much of the religious right’s political agenda as it could.

Posted in Tom DeLay | 8 Comments »

Faith and Climate Change

November 24, 2010

We told you earlier this month that Texas Congressman Joe Barton, R-Ennis, could become chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in January. Such a possibility worries climate scientists because Barton is hostile to efforts to reduce carbon emissions as a way of slowing global warming. For example, Barton bizarrely opposes even replacing the “traditional, incandescent light bulb” with more environmentally friendly and efficient CFL bulbs — or, as Barton calls them, “the little, squiggly, pig-tailed ones.”

So would climate scientists be more comfortable with the other Republicans vying for same committee chairmanship? Not necessarily. The Toronto Star reports that one possible chairman of the committee, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, is an evangelical Christian unconcerned about dangers to the environment because of his religious beliefs. The Star reports that Shimkus dismissed the issue of climate change at a hearing in 2009. The congressman recited a Biblical passage (Genesis 8:21-22) about God’s promise to Noah (after the Great Flood) never to permit the destruction of life on Earth:

“I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation,” Shimkus said.

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Posted in climate change, Congress | 7 Comments »

Petty Politics at the SBOE

November 22, 2010

Just before each legislative session, the Texas State Board of Education votes on a list of education priorities they want state lawmakers to consider. With redistricting and closing a massive budget deficit likely to take up the bulk of the Legislature’s time, one would think that state board members would be careful in choosing their priorities. But as usual with this crew, they weren’t last week.

Board members approved these five priorities on Friday. Most deal with issues like textbook approval and funding. But here’s the fifth:

Amend Texas Education Code Chapter 7.103(c) to clarify eligibility of registered lobbyist doing business with a profession, business or association related to the operation of the Board.

Sounds like a “good government” measure, right? Don’t kid yourself. This is just another example of board members playing politics instead of doing what voters sent them to Austin to do.

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Posted in State Board of Education, Texas Legislature | 1 Comment »

They Really Must Think Christians Are Stupid

November 21, 2010

Or maybe the lawyers at Liberty Institute — the Plano-based Texas affiliate of Focus on the Family — think Christians are just remarkably gullible. During the revision of social studies standards this year, for example, the group portrayed Texas teachers on the curriculum teams as anti-Christmas zealots who want to erase the holiday from their classrooms. It didn’t matter that the teachers, themselves Christians, made clear that they had no such intention at all. Liberty Institute apparently figured enough Christians would believe such an absurd lie that it would help fundraising.

Now the group is outrageously charging that officials in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, are attacking God and a local Christian church. A Liberty Institute e-mail to activists Friday screams: “Don’t let them kick God out of Gettysburg!” Noting that Gettysburg was the scene of a pivotal Civil War battle and of one of President Lincoln’s most famous speeches, the e-mail absurdly claims that “the City of Gettysburg is trying to kick God out of Gettysburg by closing the only reconstructed Civil War chapel in America.” “We don’t know why the city of Gettysburg is discriminating against our client,” the group whines in its shamelessly manipulative e-mail. (Yes, Liberty Institute is now providing legal representation for the chapel. The group shops for clients all over the country. During 2008 its lawyers even traveled to Alaska to help Sarah Palin — the newly chosen Republican nominee for vice president — try to block a legislative investigation into whether she had abused her power as the state’s governor by pushing for the firing of a public employee who was once married to her sister. The group lost that fight.)

This newest e-mail is — as with so many others from Liberty Institute — promoting a lie calculated to anger Christians who happen not to be familiar with the facts. But the Gettysburg Times offers some facts.

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Posted in Liberty Institute, social studies | 23 Comments »

Cynthia Dunbar’s ‘Parting Gift’

November 19, 2010

On Thursday outgoing Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, offered what she called a “parting gift” to fellow board members. Her “gift”: a proposed board resolution attacking federal involvement in education as unconstitutional and calling for state “nullification” of “unconstitutional directives” from the federal government.

Not surprisingly, the resolution reads like a long anti-federal government screed. One section, for example, warns about “the establishment of tyranny” by the federal government. Other examples:

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Posted in Cynthia Dunbar, State Board of Education | 9 Comments »

Va. Baptists Defend Church-State Separation

November 18, 2010

We’re glad to see that many Virginia Baptists remain committed to their denomination’s traditional defense of separation of church and state. Associated Baptist Press reports that messengers to the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV) last week “adopted a resolution decrying versions of American history that minimize or deny the role of church-state separation.” From the ABP article:

Virginia Baptists should “regard it as a threat to the flourishing of religious liberty when any version of our nation’s history minimizes or denies the historical basis” of church-state separation, the resolution says. It also says Virginia Baptists should “be diligent in resisting and correcting any such mistaken version of our history.”

Supporters of the resolution expressed concerns about how Texas State Board of Education‘s religious-right bloc rewrote history and other social studies curriculum standards earlier this year. Rob James, a retired religion professor at the University of Richmond who chairs the BGAV’s religious-liberty committee, had this to say:

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Posted in church and state, religious freedom, religious right | 4 Comments »

Turn Texas Universities over to the SBOE?!?!

November 17, 2010

It’s bad enough that politicians on the Texas State Board of Education have decided that promoting their own personal agendas is more important than the education of millions of children in public schools. Now a member of the Texas House of Representatives wants to give oversight of the state’s college and universities to the SBOE!

State Rep. Fred Brown, R-College Station, wants to abolish the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. His plan would turn higher education over to the Texas Education Agency and the SBOE.

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Posted in education, evolution, Institute for Creation Research, State Board of Education, Texas Legislature | 18 Comments »

Talking Points

November 17, 2010

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“[Y]ou need to know that for our opponents, nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution. The great story coming out of Texas is that their spell has been broken. We have ended the dogmatic teaching of evolution, and we have restored the founders’ idea of a Creator.”

– Outgoing Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, offering his take on the state board’s work on public school curriculum standards over the past two years. McLeroy lost his bid for re-election this year.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

Posted in Talking Points | 8 Comments »

Bigotry and the Texas Speaker’s Race II

November 16, 2010

Has the religious right’s effort to topple Texas House Speaker Joe Straus become an anti-Semitic smear campaign? Quorum Report (subscription required) has now posted various e-mails from groups and individuals opposed to Straus, who is Jewish. Excerpts:

“Straus is going down in Jesus name.”

“[W]e finally found a Christian conservative who decided not to be pushed around by the Joe Straus thugs.”

Another e-mail calls for replacing Straus as House Speaker so

“…that our nation will again prosper and hold to values that the Christians and Republicans hold so dear in their souls.”

Peter Morrison, who writes a right-wing e-mail newsletter, has also joined the anti-Straus battalion in the increasingly vicious Republican civil war. As Kronberg reports, a Morrison e-mail last week said that Straus’ rabbi sits on a Planned Parenthood board and then pointed out that Straus’ opponents in the Speaker’s race “are Christians and true conservatives.”

Morrison’s e-mail didn’t surprise us. TFN Insider long ago reported about the race-baiting screeds found in “Morrison Report” e-mails. See here and here for samples. Kronberg reports that VDARE.com, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “white nationalist” website, regularly posts Morrison’s e-mails. In one post on VDARE, for example, Morrison suggests that affirmative action is all about “punishing white people” and turning them into “second class citizens.” Now Morrison seems to think that leadership of the state House of Representatives should be reserved for Christians. Big surprise.

Posted in Joe Straus, Peter Morrison, religious right, Texas Legislature | 13 Comments »

Religious Bigotry and the Texas Speaker’s Race

November 15, 2010

Harvey Kronberg of the Austin-based political news website Quorum Report says religious-right pressure groups are running a deceitful campaign in the contest among Republicans for Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Many religious-righters claim Speaker Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican, hasn’t been conservative enough for them (a bogus charge, other Republicans say). And Kronberg reports that religious-right groups are using an especially offensive line of attack:

“Now, the so-called grassroots effort has crossed over the line with coordinated email and robocall [recorded phone messages] programs calling for a true Christian speaker. Straus is Jewish.

Republicans won an enormous victory on Election Day. How they govern themselves will tell us a lot about how they intend to govern the rest of us.”

Listen to Kronberg’s full commentary for Austin’s News 8 cable channel here.

Religious-right pressure groups want a speaker like Warren Chisum of Pampa or Ken Paxton of McKinney. Those two rigid ideologues are more likely to promote the right’s divisive “culture war” agenda — even if it distracts from the Legislature’s key task of closing a massive budget deficit that threatens to further damage the state’s economy.

TFN Insider looked at the religious right’s campaign against Straus here.

Posted in Joe Straus, religious right, Texas Legislature | 2 Comments »

How Easily They Forget

November 15, 2010

Some Texas State Board of Education members aren’t content with just rewriting American history. Apparently, they would also like to write other board members out of the board’s history itself. Consider this passage in the latest edition of the Cargill Connection, an e-mail newsletter from board member Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands:

“The November meeting will be the last one for my fellow Board members, Don McLeroy and Cynthia Dunbar. It has been a privilege to serve with people of such integrity who worked tirelessly to improve education in our state. I am thankful for them and for their service on the Board.”

One wouldn’t know from reading Cargill’s e-mail that next week’s board meeting is also the last for three other members: Geraldine “Tincy” Miller, R-Dallas; Rick Agosto, D-San Antonio; and Rene Nuñez, D-El Paso. Of course, those three have often — especially this year — voted in opposition to Cargill and the rest of the board’s far-right faction. More fundamentally, far-right board members and their allies simply don’t see Miller, Agosto, Nuñez and other board members as Christian enough. Don’t agree? Read their own words for yourself here. And here. And here. And here.

As we’ve said before, if you oppose the religious right, they won’t just attack your politics. They will also question your faith. And as Cargill’s newsletter makes clear, they will ignore (or even attack) your integrity and your commitment to education, too, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. At least in this instance, the religious right’s intolerance is bipartisan.

Posted in Barbara Cargill, religious right, State Board of Education | 3 Comments »

Not Encouraging

November 13, 2010

We were worried that Carlos “Charlie” Garza, who defeated Democratic incumbent Rene Nuñez, would align with the Texas State Board of Education‘s far-right faction. A newspaper interview with the El Paso Republican isn’t encouraging.

According to the El Paso Times interview, which was published November 7, Garza thinks public schools should teach “multiple views” about evolution — regardless, apparently, of the mainstream scientific consensus — and supports efforts by anti-science board members to water down instruction on this foundational scientific concept:

“Creationism I believe is true. I believe there should be a good mix. I think what the board did was bring in a mix.”

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Posted in Charlie Garza, evolution, Rick Perry, sex education, State Board of Education, Thomas Jefferson | 13 Comments »

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