August, 2006

For the Right, always the low road. Always.

“Religious freedom” to deny gays state-funded services cited.

“Patriot Pastor” warns of two pro-gay bills.

The Arlington Group focuses on marriage. Jackson also spoke at “Justice Sunday.”

Will evangelicals turn out? And are they even listening to pressure groups?

To take place in town. Santorum staff helped spread his anti-immigrant ordinance.

“United Citizens of America” wants “illegal aliens or terrorists” out of Council Bluffs.

Maybe he just wants all of us to be tax-exempt.

Chuck Norris, star of TV’s “Walker, Texas Ranger” as well as films including “Missing in Action” and “Delta Force 2,” and his wife Gena have joined the board of directors of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS):

“We receive a lot of requests to get behind a lot of things, but it took us only a few minutes to know that we were to stand behind this important work,” the Norrises said.  Mr. and Mrs. Norris are featured in a popular television public service announcement that encourages citizens to bring the Bible back to America’s public schools as an available elective course of study.  The announcements are aired on several national networks.

The Norris announcements inform viewers that they can call the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) to receive information on how any citizen can help their local school board implement the NCBCPS curriculum. 

As People For the American Way Foundation’s research has revealed, the goal of NCBCPS is not to improve students’ understanding of history and literature, but to promote Christian doctrine in public schools – unlike other Bible curricula such as the Bible Literacy Project. In fact, a Florida court found that NCBCPS taught religious matters – such as miracles and Jesus’ resurrection – as historical fact, and held its New Testament section in violation of the separation of church and state.

However, fans of the First Amendment should be advised that Norris has not lost a fight since 1968.

Mathew Staver of the Liberty Counsel, an organization that is directly tied to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, used his weekly television broadcast to urge public school teachers to serve as “domestic missionaries” and promote Christianity in class under the guise of instruction. [Watch the Video: Broadband or Dial-Up]

The best way to accomplish this, Staver said, was for teachers to frame classroom discussions in a manner that allow them to examine the “Judeo-Christian influences on the subject matter” – whatever the subject may be

“[I]n literature class, art class, music class, whatever course it is, in my opinion, that course cannot be adequately taught or overviewed without talking about religion, in particular Judeo-Christian influences on the subject matter … Whether its in math class, science class, music class, in fact you can’t even study music without studying Christian music … so whatever topic it is, you can talk about this. Give the students a good, grounded education and get them interested in religious aspects, whether it’s intelligent design or whether its literature.”

Staver also noted that, once the class day is over, teachers have the opportunity to take their guerilla proselytizing to the next level because they can “put away all of the secular textbooks and they are totally unshackled at this point and now they can not just talk about religion but they can evangelize as well.” 

It is a lucky coincidence that Liberty Counsel’s primary mission is filing lawsuits in defense of students and teachers who claim to have had their religious liberties violated, because any teacher who follows his recommendations could very well end up needing his legal assistance.

Read more on Staver’s outrageous suggestions.   

After the Governor of California recently signed into law two bills aiming to protect and support LGBT students, the president of a right-wing anti-public education organization urged ‘Christian’ parents to remove their children from public schools:

"'Heck no, our kids won't go!' should be the rallying cry of Christian parents this week as school starts, instead of following the broad road of perversion and destruction that California schools are offering," said Charles B. Lowers, Executive Director of Considering Homeschooling.

"Worldview surveys show that the majority of kids from Christian homes are humanists by graduation. School-based "clinics" are expanding (AB 2560) to ensure that your daughters get birth control and abortions without you knowing. Now that the homosexuals are dictating curriculum, 80-90% of Christians should be homeschooling, not the other way around!"

With a reference to the recent suspect in the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey, Lowers warns parents:

“Public school is no place for innocent little kids. If they don't get molested by the John Karr's who are in the system, their minds and hearts will be molested by the curriculum."

Including immigration, ANWR, judges, and estate tax repeal.

Over law against anti-gay bias. Court challenge predicted.

Did Bush approve approval?

According to a State Department report about Ken Tomlinson.

Featuring James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and Richard Land.

At a Heritage Foundation event.

“We need to encourage them to leave Clarksville.” Also: Newton, New Jersey and Culpeper, Virginia.

Group advocates mass deportation.

A group calling itself Mothers Against Illegal Aliens is targeting another mother – the undocumented mother of a 7-year-old U.S. citizen.

“Our beautiful Nation has been turned into a jungle by the mass invasion of illegal aliens,” reads the mission statement of the group, whose founder has said that “their children's job is to dumb down the American children and overpopulate our schools.” Now, MAIA is filing an abuse report against a woman who is staying with her U.S.-born son in a Chicago church, seeking to avoid deportation. The group is urging police to break up the mother and son, saying he should be “taken into protective custody or foster care until such time as [the mother]’s apprehension is executed.”

In his “Falwell Confidential” newsletter, right-wing stalwart Jerry Falwell attempts to describe the kind of candidate he believes “could win the energetic support of the evangelical vote” in the 2008 presidential election. In addition to conforming to the Religious Right’s positions on abortion and gay marriage, it’s “a given” that a candidate must be a “fiscal conservative” in order to appeal to evangelical Christians, according to Falwell. Also, Falwell claims that evangelicals can only support a candidate who will “utilize our God-given resources” in the form of off-shore oil drilling, and who will crack down on immigrants and their “contagious diseases.” Immigrants are simultaneously a “flood” and a “bleeding,” writes Falwell:

We must get tough on illegal immigration and begin enforcing present laws throughout our nation. … The construction of a 2000-mile fence (which some estimate will cost $10 billion), across our southwest border, from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, guarded by enough of America's finest to stop the endless flow of scores of thousands of illegal aliens into this nation, must be the absolute commitment of our next champion. The bleeding must be stopped immediately. …

Returning to adherence to our long-standing immigration laws is not an unreasonable demand. I realize I will be criticized by many for making this statement, but I am convinced we must halt the daily torrent of illegal immigrants who almost effortlessly enter our nation.  I know that many of these people are simply seeking a better life, but countless numbers of criminals are entering our nation.  Plus, contagious diseases that were virtually wiped out in America are resurfacing, primarily because of the flood of illegal immigration.  It must stop.

Media Matters caught Rush Limbaugh saying something characteristically idiotic

Rush Limbaugh blamed "the left" and the United Nations' Children Fund (UNICEF) for "the latest crisis" of "obesity among those who are impoverished," adding that Americans "[d]idn't teach them how to ... slaughter a cow to get the butter; we gave them the butter." Limbaugh also called the "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" campaign "[o]ne of the biggest scams on the face of the earth" because its goal was to "get everybody thinking the United Nations is feeding poor people."

According to the transcript provided by Media Matters, Limbaugh claimed

I think you might then say that the obesity crisis could be the fault of government, liberal government. Food stamps, all those -- you know, I'm gonna tell you people a story. I -- just, well, the government, you could say, is killing these people because we know obesity kills, and the government's killing the poor. The Bush administration is killing the poor with too much food.

Yeah, this cannot be attributed to the simple fact that healthy foods are generally