The Texas Eagle Forum strolled into the wrong committee hearing last month (video below). It was on Feb. 17 when the Texas House Committee on Public Education met in Austin to take up interim charges at a hearing on charter schools. Speaking at the hearing, TEF Vice President MerryLynn Gerstenschlager asked lawmakers to pass legislation [...]
The anti-Muslim rhetoric grew even more vicious in 2011. Today we look at the Islamophobia and other stunning ignorance demonstrated in quotes from the far right over the past year. Read other quotes from the far right in 2011 here. [It is] the most likely and perhaps only community in America who will stand up [...]
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s refreshing to see a person in a high position of power stand up to the hysterics, even if some of those hysterics are the same people who voted for him. “And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.” So are we. The above is how New [...]
Kate Alexander of the Austin American-Statesman has a story about how anti-Muslim bigotry almost derailed a major public school budget bill last week, nearly forcing the Texas Legislature into another special session. Prodded by anti-Muslim hysteria from right-wing activists (like the folks at Texas Eagle Forum), a number of House members voted against the budget [...]
When the Texas Legislature finally ended the session on Wednesday, a little bit of sanity won out and a Texas-size rebuke was handed to far-right lawmaker state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler. Berman, perhaps the Legislature’s top inciter of anti-Muslim hysteria, attempted during the regular and special legislative sessions to pass a measure banning Sharia law [...]
Well, I feel safer. Do you feel safer? We should all feel safer given the latest valiant effort by state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, to keep us all safe from the phantom menace of Sharia law and its impending attack on the Texas court system. Rep. Berman took to the Texas House floor Wednesday afternoon [...]
I’ll say this for Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler — the man is persistent. Like a weed is persistent. His one-man crusade to pass a law “protecting” Texas from Sharia law — a threat that apparently exists only in his mind, and possibly on talk radio — has officially become a zombie tale. This is the [...]
After languishing in the House Calendars committee for several weeks — and looking as if the clock might run out on this ill-considered bill — Rep. Leo Berman’s anti-Sharia law measure (HB 911) made a surprise appearance on the House floor on Monday.
