Science

• Donald Trump assures us that he's "a very honorable guy."
• And apparently the RNC is actually taking his candidacy seriously.
• Maybe George Allen should just stop talking.
• This year's Life Fest Film Festival will include stars like "Ben Stein, Charlie Holliday, Jonathan Flora, Mell Flynn, and Clint Howard." Wow, quite the line-up.
• Quote of the day from Dr. James Tonkowich of the Cornwall Alliance: "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant - it's plant food. And higher carbon dioxide means, yes, plants are bigger, which incidentally makes the earth cooler. And it means that crop yields increase. I mean, in some ways, it's a good thing."  I would like to point out that Tonkowich holds a Doctor of Ministry and his doctoral work focused on "spiritual and cultural transformation" and not, you know, science.
• Finally, is the world ready for "John Hagee: A Lifetime of Music"? It drops April 12.

Today's broadcast of "Family Talk With Dr. James Dobson" featured an all-star Religious Right line-up of leaders in the fight against marriage equality, including Bishop Harry Jackson, Dr. Jim Garlow, Dr. Ken Hutcherson, Gary Bauer & Tony Perkins.

This was actually just part one of a two part series that will conclude tomorrow and I have edited down the program to its key soundbites.

As you would expect, each one was greatly alarmed by push for marriage equality and vowed to dedicate their lives to doing everything they can to fighting it, with Jackson, who has walking pneumonia warning, warning that that it is the nation that has walking pneumonia that will turn fatal if left untreated, while Garlow asserted that secularists hate democracy as Bauer attacked the elites for promoting the bizarre idea of men marrying men and Perkins warned that children will be "indoctrinated into the ways of homosexuality":

Jackson: I think the nation has walking pneumonia and if we don't stop it, this thing could become fatal.

Garlow: Well, for one, we're not going to give up; we're going to press forward. It is true that it seems the secularists do really hate democracy, they don't like it when the people speak out so they try to get a judge or judges to try to take away the consent of the governed.

It's shocking to me that anybody would be attacked for standing up the family or standing for marriage or that a child needs a mommy and a daddy. Who would think that we'd be in such a condition that somebody would be attacked for that? But we just do not believe that somehow the power of the enemy is going to breakthrough and totally destroy the definition of the family. We're going to stand firm. The social science is on our side, overwhelmingly so, the practical implications are on our side, and the Biblical data is on our side.

Bauer: And what are the liberal elites of our country doing, whether it's the media elites or even the president or our judicial elites, etc., the people in Hollywood? Instead of devoting their energy to trying to stop this destruction of the American family and do something to make sure our children have mothers and fathers, they're all spending their time promoting instead men marrying men and women marrying women, which will guarantee that more children will have either not fathers or mothers. It is just a bizarre concept.

Perkins: As soon as same-sex marriage is rolled-out, the curriculum is changed to aggressively promote homosexuality on par with heterosexuality. There is complete intolerance in those pushing this agenda in our schools. And so this goes back to the question "how will this affect my marriage"? It will affect your family because your children will be taught that this is normal and it will be aggressively taught to them and they'll be indoctrinated into the ways of homosexuality.

Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute is outraged that the government is studying sexual behavior and the rate of sexually transmitted infections. In fact, Crouse is upset that the government is using the term “sexually transmitted infection (STI),” which the health community believes is the most accurate term since sexually transmitted diseases are infections that show symptoms. She is also upset that the terms “straight,” “gay,” and “lesbian” were included in the study.

Crouse is even angered that the survey found that, indeed, straight people contract STI’s and HIV. According to Crouse, any study of STI’s is part of a twisted plan concocted by the Obama Administration and the “homosexual lobby” to promote the “homosexual agenda”:

Note that, under the Obama administration, statisticians have adopted the use of STIs instead of STDs (sexually transmitted infections rather than sexually transmitted diseases). Representatives of Planned Parenthood and SEICUS told me, when I asked at a meeting about the difference between the two terms, that “infections” carry less of a stigma than a “disease,” because “anybody can get an infection, but a disease is more serious and carries a connotation of blame.”

While the focus ostensibly is on STIs, there are 10 graphs of same-sex attraction, sexual identity, sexual behavior, and sexual activity. All this attention produced evidence, not surprisingly, that 86 percent of HIV cases are acquired through sexual behavior (others acquire HIV through transmission from an infected spouse or partner, or from a pregnant mother to her baby) and that the cost of the 50,000 new cases of HIV each year is approximately $20,000 per person. Amazingly, (is this really necessary?) the study noted that, in addition to terms such as “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” they used the terms, “straight,” “gay” and “lesbian” so that respondents could easily “recognize” the meaning.

…

Clearly, the intent of this report is to document same-sex attraction, identification, behavior, and activity, rather than to report on sexually-transmitted diseases. Is this a sign of the times, or a calculated effort of the Obama administration to continue pushing the homosexual agenda? Or both? Is it really the federal government’s responsibility, and a good use of taxpayer money, to mine survey data to try to support the homosexual lobby’s claim that “we are everywhere” and “anybody can get HIV?”

Apparently Crouse has a problem with science: as this study documents, straight people are able to contract HIV, along with all other STI’s. While she says that the government should instead “report on sexually-transmitted diseases” (which it does), one of the best ways to learn about the transmission of STI’s is to learn about sexual behavior. Crouse could have learned this by reading the second sentence of the first paragraph of the study: “These behaviors and characteristics are relevant to birth and pregnancy rates, as well as the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”

Moreover, she believes the Obama Administration is responsible for this outrageous research, but the National Survey of Family Growth conducted it from 2006-2008, under the Bush Administration.

This demonstrates another example of shoddy reporting from CWA’s “resident expert.”

Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern wants to make it clear that her new legislation protecting the rights of science teachers to "teach all science instead of just the Darwin model" is in no way an attempt to introduce creationism or Intelligent Design into the classroom.

It is, in fact, just an attempt to let teachers teach "pure science" about "all of evolution" ... and apparently Kern just wants the teaching of "all of evolution" to include the religious theories about how evolution is utterly false: 

"It stays 100 miles away from creationism and ID. It's not in any way trying to get those in there," said Rep. Sally Kern, (R) Oklahoma City.

Representative Sally Kern said her bill doesn't change any current science curriculum or textbook and doesn't alter Oklahoma's past standards for science education. The bill simply protects teachers who feel they don't have the freedom to fully explore controversial science topics.

"Some people say there's no problem. Yes, there is. I have some surveys that show that many teachers fear for their jobs. That they will be reprimanded or lose their jobs if they teach just pure science. If they teach all of science instead of just the Darwin model," said Rep. Kern.

...

"This bill is not anti-evolution. This bill is ‘Let's teach all of evolution.' Let's teach our children how to have inquiring minds. Let's teach them how to be critical thinkers, to look at both sides of an issue, scientific issue, and be able to examine what is the plausible thing there," said Kern.

After calling for conservative writer William Kristol to apologize for “demonizing Glenn Beck, who has done more to educate Americans about the unholy alliance between the secular left and the Islamic jihadists than anyone else,” David Horowitz is now railing against the purported “infiltration of Islamic Jihadist doctrines” in public schools. Horowitz was reacting to the latest right-wing outrage over a school district in Texas that “wanted students at selected schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant,” a program “similar to the Spanish curriculum already in place in the district.” Ultimately, the school district put the Arabic language classes, which were to be “funded by a five-year, $1.3 million Foreign Language Assistance Program federal grant,” on hold.

But that hasn’t stopped Horowitz from speaking out. Horowitz, who has a long history of vilifying both Muslims and the public education system, is railing against the school district and teachers' unions as terrorist sympathizers who want to “indoctrinate students,” and claims that the Arab world contributed nothing to culture “except terror.” Horowitz tells the AFA’s OneNewsNow:

The DOE program identifies Arabic as "a language of the future." But David Horowitz, founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, says Arabic is now a language of the past.

"What has the Arab world contributed except terror?" he exclaims. "The theocratic, repressive Arabic states do no significant science, no significant arts and culture."

The political activist admits he is skeptical about the district's claim that the courses will be about language and culture, and not about the Islamic religion.

"We already have a lot of infiltration of Islamic jihadist doctrines into our K-12 school systems," he argues. "The teachers unions have ruined our K-12 schools. These unions are very left-wing and they encourage Palestinian terrorists to come to the school and indoctrinate students. So I'm not too happy about this news item."

Horowitz says if the Mansfield ISD really wanted to look at a "language of the future," they would teach their children Chinese.

Michele Bachmann

SOTU: Plans to give her own State of the Union Response to a Tea Party Express rally, even though Wisconsin Rep. Jim Ryan is the official Republican speaker (Star Tribune, 1/24).

History: Maintains that skin color didn’t matter in early America at an Iowans for Tax Reform event (TPM, 1/24).

Religious Right: Addressed the “March for Life” Rose Dinner (Politico, 1/24).

Iowa: “Encouraged” by reception at Iowa events (Des Moines Register, 1/22).

Religious Right: Set to attend a meeting of Iowa’s The Family Leader, led by Bob Vander Plaats (RWW, 1/20).

Newt Gingrich

2012: Considering a presidential bid with a campaign based in Georgia (AJC, 1/21).

Religious Right: Set to attend a meeting of Iowa’s The Family Leader, led by Bob Vander Plaats (RWW, 1/20).

Rudy Giuliani

2012: Floats potential presidential bid despite 2008 defeat (TPM, 1/25).

Palin: Claims that a Palin candidacy would increase his chance of running (WSJ, 1/21).

Mike Huckabee

Debates: Won’t attend early debates in order to preserve his summer deadline (Politico, 1/24).

2012: Must decide whether to give up media “mini-empire” for a presidential run (LA Times, 1/21).

Sarah Palin

Texas: Spoke about how Alaska and Texas are both “good beacons of freedom” at a fundraiser for the Lubbock Christian School (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 1/25).

Media: Dana Milbank proposes a month-long media boycott of covering Palin (WaPo, 1/21).

Tim Pawlenty

Book: Releases video advertisement promoting new book, Courage to Stand (TPM, 1/24).

Religious Right: Set to attend a meeting of Iowa’s The Family Leader, led by Bob Vander Plaats (RWW, 1/18).

Mike Pence

Religious Right: Addressed the “March for Life” in Washington, DC (Politico, 1/24).

GOP: May be able to unite economic and social conservatives better than Mike Huckabee (Religion Dispatches, 1/21).

South Carolina: Group of South Carolina state legislators launches a “Draft Pence” effort (RWW, 1/20).

Mitt Romney

Poll: Leads all other rivals in national poll of Republican voters with 24% (Rasmussen Reports, 1/24).

New Hampshire: Wins New Hampshire GOP straw poll (Christian Science Monitor, 1/22).

Health Care: Rove says Romney must respond to criticisms about his health care reform law in Massachusetts (Political Wire, 1/20).

Rick Santorum

Reproductive Rights: Defends criticism of Obama’s views on choice in an Op-Ed for the National Review (NRO, 1/24).

Iowa: Set to attend a meeting of Iowa’s The Family Leader, led by Bob Vander Plaats (RWW, 1/20).

Religious Right: Uses Obama’s race to attack his stance on abortion-rights, slams gay adoption (RWW, 1/19).

John Thune

Tea Party: May have trouble with Tea Party voters over his support for ethanol industry subsidies (The Argus Leader, 1/23).

New Hampshire: Thune fundraisers “making calls in New Hampshire on Thune’s behalf” (The Argus Leader, 1/21).

Janet Porter got her start in Religious Right politics back in Ohio, serving as the Legislative Director of Ohio Right to Life.  Eventually, she was lured away to Florida by D. James Kennedy to serve as the National Director for his Center for Reclaiming America.  After a few years, Porter then struck out on her own, launching Faith 2 Action and hosting a daily radio program that went increasingly off the rails until her operation was shut down due to her increasing involvement with Dominion Theology and self-proclaimed "prophets" like Cindy Jacobs.

And now things have come full circle, as Porter has moved back to Ohio and is applying her patented "send X number of Ys in support of Z" brand of activism to a piece of anti-choice legislation called "the Heartbeat Bill": 

Representative Lynn Wachtmann, the new Chairman of the House Health Committee, has announced he will be introducing the "Heartbeat Bill" in the Ohio House which will protect unborn babies from abortion once their hearts have begun to beat.

"Science has already given us a yardstick to determine if someone is alive--a beating heart;" said Wachtmann, "We just want to see that measurement applied evenly. This bill calls for an end to discrimination and the protection of every human being with a beating heart--no matter their age!"

...

Janet (Folger) Porter, former Legislative Director of Ohio Right to Life, and President of Faith2Action, has moved back to Ohio to help lead the effort. "Ohio is going to make history again," said Porter, who helped to pass the nation’s first partial-birth abortion ban in 1995. "My last conversation with my dear friend Mark Lally, Ohio Right to Life's Legal Counsel, before he passed away, was about this very bill. We're going to pass it in his honor," added Porter.

Balloons ordered now will be delivered the week of Valentine's Day, when the bill is scheduled for introduction. Orders can be placed by going to http://www.HeartBeatBill.com before February 14th. Each balloon will come with a personalized card from the sender with the message: "Have a heart, Pass the Heartbeat Bill!"

The State Department has announced that, beginning in February, the spaces for "mother's name" and "father's name" on passport applications will be replaced with "parent one" and "parent two" ... and, of course, the Religious Right is outraged:

“Only in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness could it be considered an ‘improvement’ for a birth-related document to provide less information about the circumstances of that birth,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote in a statement to Fox News Radio. “This is clearly designed to advance the causes of same-sex ‘marriage’ and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act.”

Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, agreed. “It’s part of an overall attempt at political correctness to diminish the distinction between men and women and to somehow suggest you don’t need both a father and a mother to raise a child successfully,” said Jeffress. “(This decision) was made to make homosexual couples feel more comfortable in rearing children.”

UPDATE: Apparently FRC is so outraged by this that they had to release an statement:

"Only in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness could it be considered an 'improvement' for a birth-related document to provide less information about the circumstances of that birth. Yet that is the result of the State Department's decision to remove the words 'mother' and 'father' from Consular Reports of Birth Abroad.

"The dictionary defines 'birth' as 'the emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent' or 'the act or process of bringing forth young from the womb.' Since science has yet to create an artificial womb, in the human species that 'body' or 'womb' always belongs to a female parent, i.e., the mother. And since science has yet to master human cloning, the newborn human being has always received half of his or her genetic inheritance via the sperm of a male parent, i.e., the father. It would be helpful if a certificate related to 'birth' would identify which is which.

"This is clearly designed to advance the causes of same-sex 'marriage' and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But it does so at the expense of fundamental biological reality – and social reality as well. The State Department's abolition of motherhood and fatherhood would be almost comical, if it did not fly in the face of the mounting social science evidence that children are most likely to thrive when born into a family led by their own married biological mother and father.

"President Obama's Justice Department is purposefully failing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the courts, so it is little surprise that his State Department would show the same disrespect for U.S. law. The House of Representatives should take their oversight rule very seriously and intervene in both these circumstances."

When the Southern Poverty Law Center released its updated list of anti-gay hate groups, Liberty Counsel didn't achieve the designation, but that hasn't stopped Matt Barber from repeatedly attacking the SPLC in his columns and on his radio program ... and it was once again the topic of discussion this week as Barber and Shawn Akers accused the SPLC of attacking the Religious Right as a way to raise money and claimed that the group was now attacking the "very Christian leadership that led the Civil Rights movement":

Barber: The SPLC has grabbed the tiger by the tail and now they get the teeth. They are really marginalizing themselves outside of a very liberal echo chamber; the SPLC has really embarrassed itself and really marginalized itself in the mainstream.

Akers: You know, it's kind of funny Matt, this is one of those groups that has in recent times prided itself on being among the most open-minded in the nation, they would be leaders in being open-minded and they've sacrificed any shred of legitimacy that they could have held claim to in recent times by basically adopting this definition of a hate group - it's if you disagree with the Southern Poverty Law Center, you are a hate group. If you disagree with them on social matters - and chief among those would be sexuality and marriage - if you disagree with them on that, you are going to be listed, especially if you have voice in public circles, you're going to be listed as a hate-monger, and as a hate villain, and in their great hope a hate criminal at some time in the future if they can get legislation through that they would like. Now the problem with that for them is one that you pointed out: it smacks of desperation.

We had great success in remedying the evil of discrimination and you can see that that success probably caused a dip in the funds of somebody like the Southern Poverty Law Center and they have sold out and begun acting like a Washington bureaucracy that says we have to have a new windmill to tilt at and it's going to be everybody that disagrees with us.

Barber: And now they find themselves fighting against the very Christian leadership that led the Civil Rights movement, the very Christians that fought for abolition under the Republican Party, under Abraham Lincoln, now they have those very Christians in the cross-hairs.