Education

Following the election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our ninth candidate profile is on Tom Marino of Pennsylvania:

In 2007, Tom Marino resigned from his position as US Attorney in Pennsylvania after a corruption scandal clouded his career and raised questions about his honesty. Marino had used his official title as US Attorney to provide a reference in 2005 to his “close friend,” convicted felon Louis DeNaples, who was trying to win the state gaming commission’s approval to open slot machines at a resort he owned. When his office began an investigation into DeNaples for lying about his ties to organized crime, Marino's assistants uncovered his reference and notified the Justice Department, which transferred the investigation out of Marino’s office. But questions about Marino’s ties to DeNaples remained.

Defending his actions, Marino said on a local radio show that the Department of Justice gave him permission to be a reference for DeNaples. But the Justice Department says there is “no record of Marino having received the permission” to serve as a reference for DeNaples and that Marino never informed the General Counsel office. Although Marino stands by his claim that he received written permission, he failed to produce any letter from the Department.

When the Justice Department launched an investigation into Marino’s actions, he resigned and promptly took a $250,000-a-year job as “DeNaples’ in-house lawyer.” Marino later under-reported his income on his financial disclosure forms, reporting that he only received $25,000 from DeNaples. Even Zack Oldham of the conservative blog RedState said of Marino’s actions: “The reality is just as bad as–if not worse than–the optics of this scandal.”

The DeNaples affair wasn’t even the first time Marino had run into corruption accusations. When Marino was District Attorney in Lycoming County, he tried to get a friend out of a drug charge by going behind the back of the county judge who had refused to toss out his friend’s conviction. According to the Luzeme County Citizens Voice, Marino “approached another judge and won the expungement, but the plan backfired when the second judge learned of the first judge's involvement in the case.”

Marino continued to struggle with the truth in his campaign for Congress. He criticized his opponent, Rep. Chris Carney, for leaving Washington as an anti-abortion rights bill was being circulated during the health care reform debate. Carney was not in Washington at the time because his wife was undergoing surgery for breast cancer.

He later alleged that Carney “has no problem spending taxpayers’ money for abortions” and that Pennsylvania women were receiving taxpayer-subsidized abortions under the new health care law, even though nonpartisan fact-checkers have confirmed, repeatedly, that the law prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion.

Marino also berated his opponent for refusing to take questions from the press on political matters after Carney, a Navy Reservist, was called for active duty and was barred by law from making “statements to or answer questions from the news media regarding political issues or regarding government policies.”

But his ethical challenges have not kept the far-right from embracing him. In fact, his rightwing politics have earned him the endorsement of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, Rick Santorum’s America’s Foundation, Mike Huckabee’s HuckPAC, the Family Research Council, and the Government Is Not God PAC.

On the issue of immigration, Marino opposes a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants, and touts his endorsement from Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, which has been called a “nativist extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In his Americans for Legal Immigration PAC survey, Marino says he strongly favors Arizona’s severe SB 1070 law, would refuse to support comprehensive immigration reform, and that he would consider impeaching the President over immigration policy.

Marino said he would vote against extending unemployment benefits, maintaining that some of the people on unemployment simply don’t “want to go get work because they are being paid to stay home.” He said that non-senior citizens should face cuts in Social Security benefits if not the elimination of the program altogether, saying: “my generation and probably the generation that follows me, we are going to have to step up to the plate and say, ‘We are not going to get Social Security.’” The 60 Plus Association, a front group for the health care and pharmaceutical industries which supports privatizing Social Security, aired TV ads on Marino’s behalf.

In a radio interview in August, Marino reportedly suggested eliminating the IRS and the Departments of Education and Energy and replacing them with new agencies, saying, “There’s got to be a total revolution there.”

Despite the ethical cloud surrounding Marino, his hard-line conservative views and support from the Radical Right helped him win election to Congress. Watch this segment from an NBC affiliate revealing Marino’s ethical troubles:

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our seventh candidate profile is on Missouri's Vicky Hartzler:

Although Ike Skelton, the long-time representative in Missouri’s fourth congressional district, was far from a supporter of LGBT equality, Vicky Hartzler, who defeated him in this year’s election, has based her political career on supporting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

A former state legislator, she was the spokeswoman and public face of the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, which successfully amended the state constitution to include a ban same-sex marriage (which was already banned by statute) in 2004. The New York Times writes that her group used “church functions, yard signs and a ‘marriage chain’ of rallies across the state,” and Hartzler “said she hoped that the outcome would send a loud message to the rest of the country: ‘Here in the heartland we have a heart for families, and this is how deeply we feel about marriage.’”

Her work helped her receive praise from Religious Right leaders like Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Penny Nance of Concerned Women PAC.

Mother Jones asked if Hartzler was the “most anti-gay candidate in America” since she believes that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will “put us at risk,” maintains that sexual orientation is a choice and therefore gay people aren’t entitled to civil rights, and dubbed hate crimes legislation one of the “the extreme agenda items of the gay movement.”

Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign told Mother Jones that while “Ike Skelton has not been a friend of the LGBT community,” unlike Hartzler, “he does not wake up in the morning thinking about what he can do to harm the LGBT community.”

A staunch anti-choice activist, Hartzler supported legislation which “would have allowed for prosecutors to charge women who obtained late-term abortions with murder” and “also have permitted second-degree murder charges to be filed against doctors who performed such procedures.” She was also the chief sponsor of a bill that would pressure women seeking an abortion to view their sonograms. Throughout her career in the State House, she consistently received perfect ratings from the right-wing Missouri Family Network.

Hartzler wrote a book for Christian activists running for office called “Running God’s Way: Step by Step to a Successful Political Campaign,” which “discusses how to run a political campaign by using events and stories in the bible as a guide.” Phyllis Schlafly gave her a laudatory introduction at an Eagle Forum event, calling her book “a manual for action.”

In a profile by the American Family Association, Hartzler said that she found inspiration from God to run for public office at the age of nine, and her book maintains that “Christians must become more active in politics if they are to have the impact God calls them to have.” Hartzler said that her book provides Christian candidates with “the tools and inspiration they need to bring God’s light in a darkening world.”

According to one sympathetic review in a local newspaper, Hartzler’s book “praises Absalom — a rebellious son of King David, God’s anointed leader for Israel and according to Christian theology an early example of divinely ordained rule prefiguring that of Jesus Christ — as being the “first politician” and an example for modern political leaders. In Hartzler’s words, ‘Absalom won over the hearts of the people of Israel using time-tested campaign strategies. We, too, can campaign successfully following these same guidelines.’”

A climate change denier, Hartzler asserted that she does not believe in climate change since she read “some articles that [said] it’s actually decreasing, that we have climates getting colder…and certainly, I don’t believe that if there is a climate change that man has a very significant role in that.”

Hartzler ran an ugly anti-immigrant ad against Ike Skelton, where she claimed that by voting to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program he supports “welfare benefits” for “illegal immigrants”, and criticized him for opposing a measure that would prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public schools as “giving illegal immigrants free education.”

She appealed to Tea Partiers by slamming government spending, as she blasted Congress’s spending plans and said that “we just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.” However, according to the Kansas City Star, Hartzler’s “farm has received $774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.” She defended the government farm subsidies as a “national defense issue,” and claimed that she would not support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or defense.

In an editorial board interview she couldn’t name any programs she would cut funding to other than “the Lady Bird Highway Beautification projects. She indicated that garden clubs could do some of this work along the highways, saving public funds.”

However, Hartzler does appear to support spending money to expand the role of the Navy in Missouri, as she argued that under Skelton’s watch the landlocked state has “the smallest Navy here that we have had since the early 1960s.”

Hartzler blended her Tea Party lip service and Religious Right advocacy to topple one of the most powerful members of the House, and will now bring her years of anti-equality and anti-choice activism to become a prominent voice of the Far-Right in the GOP-led House.

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our fourth candidate profile is on Florida's Allen West:

In one of the Tea Party’s biggest victories, Florida’s Allen West defeated incumbent Democrat Ron Klein in a rematch of their 2008 race. West, an Army veteran, became a YouTube sensation by criticizing “this tyrannical government” and crying out: “if you’re here to stand up to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight.” He said that the country was engaging in “class warfare” between “a producing class and an entitlement class,” which is composed of Obama supporters.

While serving in Iraq, he was forced out of the Army for his violent handling of an investigation of a police officer. During the interrogation, West dragged “him outside, pushed his head into the sand, and fired a gun next to his face to get him to sing.” According to West: “It wasn’t torture. Seeing Rosie O'Donnell naked would be torture.”

West also has close ties to the Outlaws motorcycle gang, which an NBC News report found had criminal-ties and a website that features a page honoring members who are in prison, extolling “members convicted of violent crimes, including murder.” In a letter, West wrote: “Please, no more references to ‘criminal’ because I can tell you, they have the utmost respect for me and that which I seek to achieve. I was never more amazed at how members of the Outlaws guarded me during a one hour cell phone radio interview.”

Moreover, he addressed events sponsored by Outlaws-linked organizations, used Outlaws members to harass his rival’s campaign workers, and writes a column for their magazine. Their magazine, “Wheels on the Road,” has also used anti-Semitic, racist and sexist material, and once called women “oral relief stations.”

West encouraged his supporters to use violence in suppressing the votes of opponents, saying, “You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house.”

He maintains that it is “unfortunate” that gays and lesbians are serving in the military, and compares homosexuality to adultery. West is also radically anti-choice. On abortion rights, he has said “I believe all future discussion on this issue should move us toward the elimination of abortion except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” and accused pro-choice groups of “promot[ing] abortion as a means of birth control.”

West wants to eliminate the progressive tax system. He supports tax cuts for the rich, and calls Wall Street Reform a “sham.” He’s advocated for eliminating the Departments of Energy and Education.

On immigration, he claims that illegal immigrants should not have access to care in emergency rooms, and that Muslim terrorists are coming through the border with Mexico. West’s first decision as Representative-elect was to choose as his chief of staff right-wing radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman, who called for illegal immigrants to be “hung on the central square. ”

A Republican partisan, West said: “I hate big-tent. I hate inclusiveness. And I hate outreach.” West uses extreme rhetoric against Democrats and liberals. He said that liberals resented the fact that he saved the lives of American soldiers. On the anti-Islam blog Atlas Shrugs, he wrote that progressives “detest anyone who has the courage of conviction and love of America, something which they find unconscionable." In the same post, he wrote, “"Liberals seek to destroy any institution of intrinsic value: God, country, family, honor, valor, courage, VIRTUE... Why? Because if such things exist, then they must be defended, which brings them back to their fear of action." He also claims that Democratic combat veterans Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy “hate the military.”

West says that Obama does not “care for this country” and wants to “make it like some type of third world socialist cesspool,” and is not an American since he grew up in Indonesia and “never played little league baseball.” He compared Obama and his “tyrannical government” to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, and dubbed the Obama Administration a “thugocracy.”

Militantly anti-Muslim, he consistently criticizes Arabs and Muslims, and he told Atlas Shrugs’ Pamela Geller that the Bible is evidence the Arabs are a “wild” people: “the Angel of the Lord said to [Hagar]: Behold you are with child, and you shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against everyman, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.' Ishmael of course became the beginning of the Arab people....and God's word is immutable truth.”

He has suggested that there are “thirty-six training camps” run by terrorists inside the US, and that soldiers are becoming “brainwashed” by terrorists who “infiltrated the military.” According to West, Islam is “not a religion” but a “theo-political belief system and construct” that must be destroyed.

Watch:

Following Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress."  Our first candidate is Florida's version of Sharron Angle, Sandra "Sandy" Adams:

After serving four terms in the Florida State House, Sandy Adams ran for US Congress and handily defeated freshman Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas. She built-up a far-right voting record as a state representative, and she campaigned as the most conservative candidate in the competitive Republican primary.

As a legislator and candidate Sandy Adams has embraced the agenda of the Religious Right. Adams voted to enact burdensome waiting periods and tougher parental notice laws for young women seeking abortions, and voted in favor of forcing women to have ultrasound tests before terminating their pregnancy, which the Governor ultimately vetoed for placing “an inappropriate burden on women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.” During the GOP primary she was endorsed by militantly anti-choice groups such as the Republican National Coalition for Life and the American Conservative Union. Moreover, she is on-record opposing stem-cell research and boasts that she “fought against this type of research funding in the Florida House of Representatives.”

She is also an avowed opponent of teaching evolution, and voted in favor of a bill that calls on teachers to “teach theories that contradict the theory of evolution.” Adams herself does not believe evolution and says that Christians should reject evolution in favor of “the biblical terms of how we came about.” When asked “by a caller in a telephone town hall meeting whether she believed in evolution…Adams replied, ‘I’m Christian. What else do you want to know?’” Adams also supports Florida’s unsuccessful private school vouchers program and wants the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.

Like Sharron Angle, Sandy Adams floats the baseless conspiracy theory that Islamic, or Sharia, law is thriving in Muslim communities in Michigan and in danger of spreading throughout Michigan and the United States:

The Muslim extremist project is to create pockets and to grow their Muslim extreme philosophies, and if you look at some of our towns within our own borders, like Michigan, Michigan has cities that have a lot of Muslim influence and even so much as I would say some extremist Muslim influence because they are trying to operate under Sharia law, not American law. And I believe that we need to continue to operate under our Constitutional laws and the laws of our country and our state and we should not be under any other form of the law.

Sarah Palin endorsed Sandy Adams, and Adams claims that she “can’t wait to join the Tea Party Caucus” and said that “I believe what Michele Bachmann is doing is the right thing to do and I will be part of that Caucus, I can assure you of that.”

She has embraced anti-government extremism, and wants to radically alter the Constitution by repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments, which would eliminate the progressive income tax and the right of voters to elect their US Senators, respectively. Adams believes that instead of voters, state legislators like herself should pick the state’s Senators. Adams also wants to abolish the Department of Education, said that the Departments of Energy and Interior Departments should be “completely dismantled” because they are “not allowed by our Constitution,” and strongly opposes Wall Street Reform. She wouldn’t “vouch for the constitutionality of the federal Clean Water and Clean Air acts without reading them,” writes the Orlando Sentinel, “yet she’s all for big government when it comes to NASA.,” which is based in her district.

Furthermore, she backs Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America,” which calls for the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. According to Florida Today, Adams “wants to cut government spending, but couldn’t cite one area to cut; wants to repeal health care reform, but offered no alternative; and is willing to look at privatizing Medicare, something that should alarm seniors.” Adams was also the chief sponsor of a state constitutional amendment that would stop Florida from cooperating with the recently passed health care reform law by barring mandatory insurance coverage.

Adams is also ardently opposed to immigrant rights and touts the endorsement of Americans for Legal Immigration, which has been classified as a “nativist extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group is “allied with various Minuteman factions” and according to the SPLC, the group says that its “‘rallying cry is: Illegals Go Home!’” While serving in the State House, Adams was one of just fourteen members to vote against allowing undocumented children to receive healthcare through Florida KidCare.

On the environment, Adams supports offshore oil drilling off Florida’s coast and tried to censure the Governor for attempting to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit such drilling.

A steadfast and longtime advocate of the Religious Right and anti-government extremism, Sandy Adams plans to be a bridge between Christian conservatives and Tea Party reactionaries in addition to a stalwart ally of Michele Bachmann in the House.

The Religious Right groups that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in Iowa in an effort to remove three state Supreme Court justices because of the Court's ruling in favor of marriage equality are trying to claim that the effort isn't so much about homosexuality as it is about "judicial activism." 

But, of course, that's not true because everything they do is about homosexuality and the desire to use state power to eliminate it:

On a blustery basketball court at Southside Park, leaders in the push to oust three justices for their role in a decision that legalized gay marriage in Iowa — led by the Washington, D.C., based Family Research Council and the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage – departed a touring “Judge Bus” emblazoned with “vote no” slogans and spoke to a crowd of about 15 people.

Gay marriage is tearing society asunder, and the decision to allow it runs afoul of the Constitution, said Chuck Hurley, president of the highly influential Christian organization Iowa Family Policy Center, which is a local affiliate of the Family Research Council.

“It’s a degradation of God’s best design for the family,” said Hurley, who was on the tour representing the center’s political action arm.

Hurley said gay activity degrades and alters the family structure, concluding that the debate is about stable homes.

“An intact father-and- mother marriage is by far more important than a good education, by far more important than their physical health in the well-being of a child,” Hurley said.

Hurley goes further than opposition to gay marriage, though.

“For millennia every sane culture has had restraints on behavior,” Hurley said.

Stable societies have always had restraints on incest and pedophilia, he said, and that should extend to homosexual acts as well.

“Every culture should have safe and sane laws regarding sexuality,” Hurley said.

I generally don't write blog posts based on things printed in the Letters to the Editor section of newspapers, but I am making an exception in this case because this letter in the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports that James Dobson is making pre-election robocalls:

After a busy day of doing errands, including voting for the candidates I believe in, I came home to find what I consider an outrageous message on my answering machine. A man identifying himself as James Dobson asked me to talk to my pastor and congregation (I have none) regarding whom I should vote for, so they could instruct me on Judeo-Christian thoughts in a document called "Voters Guide on Values and Truth." These people appear to belong to a group called "Family Talk" and are funded by the National Congregation for Marriage Education Fund.

Presumably, the author meant the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund.

Rep. Louie Gohmert explains in Newmax how everything in America would be fine if only Christians would stand up and take control of the US government, just like God commands: 

YOU are the government! You are God’s minister to punish evil and reward good conduct. But, too many Christians have refused the figurative “sword” or the power that in this great country, this little experiment in democracy as a republic, is supposed to be held by YOU. You are the one God has ordained to run the country, but you haven’t even participated ... That is also why we have penalties for societal good things like marriage (the income tax “marriage penalty”) and for 45 years we have rewarded having children out of wedlock instead of helping incentivise such women to finish their education. It is why we have a death tax that says you were too successful so we must take 55% away and give to the government. It is why people have in the past been threatened with removal from low-rent government housing for saving too much money for a down payment on a home. We punish good behavior too often and reward potentially hurtful conduct. It is also why we passed a Wall Street bailout to reward uncontrolled and irresponsible greed. It is also why TARP has not already been repealed, since it would mean admitting that maybe those who voted for it, including Republican leaders, had made a mistake.

So, as unpleasant as it may be, far too many of the employers, We the PEOPLE, have been lazy and apathetic which has caused we the people to get what we deserve. But it is high time the people of this country started deserving better. It is time that the PEOPLE as rulers in this land started exercising the God-given power in this country by voting, by serving on jury duty, filling appointed positions when called upon, by supporting the best candidates, and even by running for office. It is high time that we gave God something to smile about again.

C. Peter Wagner is widely regarded as the man responsible for the New Apostolic Reformation which gave rise to the self-proclaimed prophets and apostles like Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, Jim Garlow, Lance Wallnau, Rick Joyner, Chuck Pierce, and the other Dominionist/7 Mountain advocates who are slowly working their way into the Religious Right mainstream.

For months, I have been trying to hammer home the point that when these activists refer to themselves as "prophets" and "apostles" on par with Jesus, they mean that literally.

And just to drive home that point, here is audio of Wagner speaking during the Generals International webcast earlier this month as he explains how, through the Holy Spirit, people like himself can perform miracles that outshine even Jesus Christ himself:

The Holy Spirit was the source of all of Jesus' power during his earthly ministry. Jesus exercised no power of or by himself. We can do the same or greater things than Jesus did because we have access to the same power source.

And so the whole ministry of Jesus from the beginning to the end was a ministry of the Holy Spirit through Jesus' human nature. And that is why, when you think about it now and think about what I've just said, we can believe that Jesus said "he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also, and even greater works than these will he do because I go to my Father, I go to my Father and send the Holy Spirit."

So we now have the Holy Spirit, we have the Holy Spirit and when we're filled with the Holy Spirit - which is absolutely essential, we've got to be filled with the Holy Spirit - but when we're filled with the Holy Spirit we can move into ministries such as the Reformation Prayer Network and we can pray for the transformation of our neighborhood, we can pray for the transformation of our city, of our state, of our nation, of our government mountain, the family mountain, the arts and entertainment mountain, the education mountain, the business mountain.

We can pray for all these mountains with power because we have that power that Jesus had and it's up to us to be in a place where we're open to release that power of the Holy Spirit so that His name will be know and that His kingdom will advance.

This is the theology at the heart of the New Apostolic Reformation which is slowly infiltrating the Religious Right with the rise of people like Lou Engle and behind the Dominionist/7 Mountains ideology that Christians must gain control of every aspect of cultural power.

Yesterday Bryan Fischer dedicated ten minutes of his radio program to expanding upon his column blaming gay groups for suicides among young people in which he said that "if we want to see fewer students commit suicide, we want fewer homosexual students."

I have edited the segment down and I think it provides a perfect example of the utter incoherence of Fischer's anti-gay agenda in that he starts off by saying that if schools just taught the Ten Commandments there would be no bullying problems, then declares that defending God's word about homosexuality is not bullying and points to Carl Paladino as proof of what happens to those who dare to speak the truth, and then concludes by attacking the "deviancy cabal" for "brainwashing" students into declaring a "disordered sexual preference" and holding them responsible for suicides just as anyone who pressured kids into drug use would be guilty of their deaths:

If we were still inculcating Judeo-Christian principles in our public education system, we would not be having nearly the problem that we currently have this because of the classic Judeo-Christian values of courtesy and kindness, civility, respect for human beings that are made in the image of God. It's time for us to go back to introducing our students in our public eduction system to the time-honored standards that are found in the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the New Testament.

We have got to understand that speaking the truth about homosexual behavior is not bullying and it's not harassment, as much as the deviancy cabal wants it to be. I mean seriously ladies and gentlemen, they want to punish speech, they want to punish, intimidate anybody who would dare open his mouth and express criticism of homosexuality. Think of what happened to Carl Paladino, the way he has been landed on like a falling safe by every homosexual activist group in the world for daring to speak the truth about homosexuality.

I want to suggest that homosexual activists are not wholly innocent in these tragedies, in these horrible suicides by these students. Now realize that homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they have to recruit; it's the only way to swell their numbers. We, the sexually normal, we can be fruitful, we can multiply, we can fill the earth. Homosexuals cannot do it, they're incapable of procreation which is one of the reasons we should never sanctify those relationships with the term marriage or even domestic partnerships or civil unions.

Now part of the agenda of groups like GLSEN ... is to urge students at younger and younger ages to come out of the closet and declare a disordered sexual preference for themselves. so you've got sexually confused young people - and again, they're trying to push this down into kindergarten, they're trying to get this brainwashing into students of all ages even starting in elementary school - and what they're urging them to do is self-declare as homosexuals before they are mature enough to make any sort of rational decision about sexual matters.

So I'm suggesting that adults that pressure these students to declare a disordered sexual preference when they're too young to know better, that they share some culpability for those that take their life, just like an adult encouraging a young student to experiment with injection drug abuse - we would say to that adult, you share some culpability for what happens in the life of that student.