Goodhair back in the clown car

... and Texas women better keep their powder dry. The first bill on Guv. Goodhair's list of "emergencies," with full support from the teabagger section, is another attempt to foist their personal religious beliefs onto the taxpayers. Never let it be said that a teabagger let a little thing like our U.S. Constitution (or ethics) stand in the way of dogma.

"While legislators begin to file legislation during this pre-filing period that began today, they, too, look forward to supporting the flagship Pro-Life bill for the next session: Texas Right to Life’s Pre-born Pain Bill."

I've got a feeling this state is boing to be turning blue a lot quicker even than we'd hoped.

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Gay marriage bans demolished

Object to gays? this won't be your cup of tea. Don't like Rachel Maddow? You won't want to watch this. It will just piss you off. It's 55 minutes long. Don't have the time or don't want to spend the time? Your loss. But if you give a shit about individual rights and are willing to open your mind, you should take the time. You may learn something new.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The day will come when humans accept that other humans are very likely different, and that being different isn't such a bad thing. In this 21'st century since the birth of some mythical "savior," we have had plenty of time to learn how not to hate, and how not to be afraid.

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The Second Circuit makes clear the obvious

From the New York Law Journal's online edition...

Pre-Meeting Prayers Found to Wrongly Favor Christians

the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case of first impression for it, created an extremely fact-dependent test for determining the constitutionality of opening meetings of legislative bodies with prayer. Here the court held that the prayer policy as implemented by Greece, New York, violates the Establishment Clause because "an objective, reasonable person would believe that the town’s prayer practice had the effect of affiliating the town with Christianity."

That which is so perfectly obvious to everyone, these days takes an appellate court to define. 

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H/T

Pushing back

Found this in the San Antonio Express News

Atheists' political activity is growing

Religion News Service

Published 05:41 p.m., Friday, May 11, 2012

WASHINGTON — One of the biggest growth areas in political activism around religion is coming from an unlikely source: the nonreligious. And it's happening far from the marbled corridors of power in the nation's capital.

The Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella organization that represents 11 nontheistic groups including American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, is looking to take its secular-based activism out of the nation's capital and into the states.

Beginning in June, the Washington-based SCA will install directors in 18 states including Hawaii, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Alabama. State directors will meet with local politicians and train and mobilize local nontheists to lobby on behalf of secular issues and causes.

Why? Activists say the most important policies that affect nonbelievers don't come from Washington.

“The majority of erosion to church-state separation is at the local level,” said Serah Blain, the SCA's first state director, appointed in Arizona in January. “It's in city councils and school boards and statehouses. And that's where these things really affect people's lives, with laws on bullying and abortion and access to health care. And they are passing without much opposition because it isn't seen as glamorous to lobby locally.”

The announcement comes on the heels of SCA's appointment of Edwina Rogers, a veteran Republican lobbyist, as its new executive director, a move the group has spun as a means to greater access on Capitol Hill. It is also the latest indication that nontheists — atheists, humanists, skeptics and others who hold no supernatural beliefs — are working to become a political force in their own right.

Amanda Knief, who recently joined American Atheists after working as the SCA's government relations manager, said nontheists must “show elected officials that we are a political movement that needs to be recognized. That kind of recognition has been lacking because it is not politically savvy. So we need to show them that we are there and that we count.”

This year already represents a high-water mark for political organization and activism among nontheists:

The Reason Rally drew more than 10,000 people to Washington in March, where speakers urged them to contact local and national representatives and ask them to support church-state separation, science education, marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and ending government support of faith-based organizations, among other causes.

The SCA's 2012 Lobby Day, an event that included training in lobbying techniques and meetings with congressional staff, attracted 280 people from almost all 50 states — up from 80 at the same event a year ago.

Cecil Bothwell, a Democratic candidate for North Carolina's 11th Congressional District is running as an atheist. If he wins, he will join Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., now the only openly atheist member of Congress.

Enlighten the Vote, a nonprofit that supports atheist candidates and issues, is actively seeking atheists to run for public office and trains atheists to lobby their politicians.

The National Atheist Party was established in March 2011 and now claims members in all 50 states.

Ryan Cragun, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tampa who studies American atheism, sees the growing political organization among nontheists as a sign of their maturation as a movement. Yet while Cragun says he personally supports the movement, he does not believe it will have a major impact this election year.

“They are reaching a level of maturity where organization is necessary to maintain structure and keep the movement going,” Cragun said. “But until you are talking about lots of money or lots of voters — and I don't think they have either of those at this point — I don't think they are going to be national players.”

That may be a long time coming, said Ellen Johnson, executive director of Enlighten the Vote and former president of American Atheists.

“It is hard to get atheists to agree on anything but their atheism,” she said. “We are mostly liberals, I will grant you that, but once you veer off into anything besides (church and state) separation issues, most atheists will argue.”

The hiring of Rogers to head the SCA is a case in point. Since the announcement of her appointment a week ago, reaction from members of the organizations it represents has been highly mixed.

P.Z. Myers, a University of Minnesota biologist and an influential atheist blogger, denounced her (Rogers) ties to President George W. Bush and former Sen. Trent Lott and her donations to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign.

Jacques Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University professor and expert on faith and voting, has taken a more wait-and-see attitude.

“Ms. Rogers is confronted with a daunting task,” he wrote on May 4 on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website. “For all of its chest-thumping and self-congratulatory praise, secularism's standing in the judicial, legislative and executive branches is arguably at its lowest ebb since the 1950s. And don't even get me started on its predicament in state houses across the country.”

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UPDATE: Embedded links were screwy. I think they are fixed now.

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This woman wants your kids

Barbara Cargill is running for State Board of Education place 8 seat. The Texas SBoE writes the curriculum that will be used for future textbook. She is Guv. Goodhair's hand picked successor to that whacky dentist, Don McLeroy.

Doesn't get out much, does she? Bless her pointed little head...

Dear Barbara and her cohorts are the product of decades of slow inflitration into the SBoE by dominionist xian zealots. For more information on the ongoing battle for the minds of Texas school children, read the TFN Timeline of textbook censorship.

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Religious wingnut supports rewriting history

This is what is running for the Texas State Board of Education.

 

The social studies curriculum this loon supports with her own alternate version of history was roundly criticized even by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The religious wingnuts are staging a hostile takeover of Texas public schools with the intent of indoctrinating the children with their false history and religious myths.

In a state where (1) a large percentage of rural, voting age citizens shun education in favor of just accepting what they are told, and (2) 51% identify themselves as "very conservative", and (3) straight party ticket voting is allowed, reason and intellectualism may well be driven somewhere north of the Red River.

I miss Ann Richards and Moly Ivins.

H/T

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Arizona legislature endorses controversial contraceptive bill

For my conservative friends saying that the government should stay out of the contraception issue, this story ought to make your day.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

So it is the Soviet Union that would impose upon a "mom and pop" if the government insists that insurance must cover all people equally, but it isn't when the government passes a law authorizing said "mom and pop" to pry into an employee's medical records? ...and Senator Lesco thinks the First Amendment allows this?

Really?

The Republicans keep on telling us they are the party of liberty, small governemnt and freedom. So why do they keep on trying to pass laws that allows the governemnt (and now my employer) to poke noses into my library and my bedroom?

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An unmarried woman is unqualified to speak on birth control

Or so says Washington state Sen. Michael Baumgartner.

Cantwell has been singed by the issue. An opponent, state Sen. Michael Baumgartner, denounced her for signing a Senate letter arguing that the so-called "morning after" birth control pill should be available over the counter at pharmacies. Baumgartner said that Cantwell was not qualified to talk on the issue because she isn't married.

If it walks like the 15th century, and it quacks like the 15th century... and this is Monday... it must be more Republican bullshit.

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Eye of the beholder

According to Conservapedia, Judicial activism is when

“…courts do not confine themselves to reasonable interpretations of laws, but instead create law. Alternatively, judicial activism is when courts do not limit their ruling to the dispute before them, but instead establish a new rule to apply broadly to issues not presented in the specific action. "Judicial activism" is when judges substitute their own political opinions for the applicable law, or when judges act like a legislature (legislating from the bench) rather than like a traditional court. In so doing, the court takes for itself the powers of Congress, rather than limiting itself to the powers traditionally given to the judiciary”

Black’s Dictionary of Law offers a somewhat simpler definition, describing judicial activism as a…

"…philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions"

The actual term is relatively new in the American Political lexicon, having first appeared in a January, 1947 Forbes Magazine piece penned by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.  Not unsurprisingly, Schlesinger was describing decisions by the Court of Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, and specifically those by Associate Justices Hugo Black, William Orville Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Wiley Blount Rutledge… all appointed to the Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Chief Justice Stone was himself rather moderate but sided with the liberal majority quite often.

The odd thing about the term is just how vagrant the definition has become over the ensuing years. Judicial appointees have always been chosen to reflect the politics of the current White House occupant, and the tilt of any decision would naturally lean with the majority. Depending upon that majority, the Court’s decisions over the three quarters of a century since Schlesinger coined that term have reflected left leaning philosophy alternately with right producing decisions to almost equivalent degrees.

Yet Conservapedia continues their very interesting definition from the above to say…

“…judicial activism is a way for liberals to avoid the regular legislative means of enacting laws in order to ignore public opinion and dodge public debate”

Since when does public opinion rise above the level of law? Is it not the role of the Court to make decisions based upon constitutional values rather than bow to majority rule and in spite of majority opinion? Our Constitution was written with the intent of protecting the rights of the minority from the will of the majority.

One of the decisions the right loves to defame as “activist” came not long after Schlesinger penned his Forbes piece. In Brown v. Board of Education the left-leaning Earl Warren Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which for 60 years had lent a judicial stamp of approval to racial segregation. This "activist" ruling started our country on a long road toward racial equality.

Some 20 years later the Burger Court applied 14^th amendment privacy protections to current state laws that criminalize abortions. Both the 1949 Brown decision and Roe v. Wade in 1973 are decried by conservatives and cited as evidence of an overreaching Court. The prohibitions and limitations voided by each of these cases find root not in fiscal conservatism, but in a conservative Christian mentality. Look around today and see who it is shouting "activism" the loudest.

Slowly, starting in the 60's, the liberal mood began to ebb. Prompted by the incessant fear mongering of the newly empowered "Christian Conservatives," the electorate began to swing to the right. In 1971 Richard Nixon appointed the very fiscally conservative William Rehnquist to replace the liberal Hugo Black, and then 1986 Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to replace moderate Warren Burger as Chief Justice. To fill the remaining vacancy, Reagan next tapped neoconservative Antonin Scalia.

Liberals could see what was happening and a year later, fed up with what they perceived as the appointment of too far right leaning activist judges, Democrats in the Senate staged an almost unprecedented revolt over the appointment of Robert Bork. Following a long and bloody battle Bork withdrew his name and a more moderate Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in his stead, but the religious right has never forgiven this action.

Conservatism has ceased to be about political considerations and instead has taken on the "social conservative" (read Christian) mantle. Where the court had previously been stacked to favor reasonable, moderate interpretations of the law with an emphasis on protecting the rights of the individual, we soon saw an abrupt turn to this rigid, authoritarian "new" right and an implementation of decisions favoring "family values."

George H.W. Bush appointed the inscrutable Clarence Thomas to replace the moderately progressive Thurgood Marshall, and although Democrats in the Senate worked hard to “Bork” him, Thomas was confirmed in 1991. 

Over his eight years in the White House Bill Clinton was able to hold the line with appointments of progressives Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to replace the equally liberal Byron White and Harry Blackmun. Yet in 2000 it was this somewhat moderate Court that gave us Bush V. Gore. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, reluctantly joined by moderates Kennedy and O’Connor effectively negated a popular vote and elected a President.

The real turn in the Court came in 2005 when George W. Bush nominated John Roberts first to replace the retiring associate Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, and then as Chief Justice replacing the retiring William Rehnquist. O'Connor was a somewhat left leaning moderate, and Roberts' political views made even Rehnquist look middle-of-the-road.

Bush immediately followed these actions with the nomination of Samuel Alito, Jr., arguably the most reactionary Justice ever to hold the position. The Court was now stacked with four hard right justices, four others to the left, and Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote.

In the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision Kennedy joined conservatives Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas to grant “personhood” to corporations. Both this decision and Bush v. Gore raised a hue and cry from the left, yet it remains common for the right to accuse the Court of left-leaning judicial activism.

This obviously is an unfair characterization. The term could more accurately be defined as any decision made by any judge that does not agree with the particular view of one of the parties in the case. It swings both ways.

It is politicians who speak in terms of majority. Constitutionalists couch arguments in terms of reason and fairness. Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder.

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What Did Jesus Do?

Answering Religious Conservatives Who Oppose Bullying Prevention Legislation

Daniel B. Weddle and student Kathryn E. New, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
 New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement, Vol. 37, p. 325, 2011

Abstract:

Conservative Christian organizations assert that anti-bullying programs are a stealth effort by gay activists to introduce into American schools an aggressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda. They contend that legislation and bullying prevention programs that mention gays are an attempt to indoctrinate children to embrace homosexual lifestyles; tolerate homosexual behavior; and celebrate homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity.

These voices are having an impact on state legislatures and the damage is immense. Educational research has made clear the devastating effects of bullying upon children, and LGBT students are among the most often targeted and least protected students. Given that schools are already failing to address bullying effectively, efforts to thwart protection of any group of students -- especially one that is routinely targeted -- is unconscionable.

Yet these devoted Christians zealously interfere with protection of LGBT students from abuse by their peers and believe wholeheartedly that they are doing children and Christ a great service.

We believe they fundamentally misunderstand three things: the dynamics of bullying, the law pertaining to student-on-student abuse, and the example and teachings of Christ. This Article addresses these misunderstandings. We propose a response to the distortions that are used to promote what is an anti-gay agenda that represents neither the teachings of the Bible nor the position of most Christians and evangelicals, whom these organizations purport to represent.

Our hope is that, once the distortions are debunked, thinking Christians will reject the misguided efforts of a relatively few but influential individuals and organizations. If new voices can confront the misleading claims of anti-gay zealots with informed educational, legal, and Biblical responses, perhaps the distortions will be seen for what they are by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Full article available at SSRN,

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Not an isolated problem

... the attempts by individuals within governments to institutionalize the locally popular mythology, that is. The  human animal's desperate need to find the answer to "life, the universe, and everything" interferes in so much of ordinary life. 

"Petitioner’s counsel Rajesh Chand said the petition did not restrict itself only to the epic but has argued that one religion was being given primacy over other religions in violation of the Constitution."

This case from India is yet another example, containing much of the same, trite rationalization employed by religionists everywhere.

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More evidence that the Right is wrong

The previous couple of blogs were intended to illustrate that the Religious Right of this country are hypocrites. This article from the Wall of Separation blog is just another log on the fire. The Religious Right Christian conservatives of this country would more appropriately be named… the Christian Taliban.

Those consistently sticking with the Republicans are simply enabling the Dominionists. You want fiscal conservatism, I understand. Perhaps to a degree we have common ground, but there is no way I can condone this kind of authoritarianism.

If you stomach such... then "drinking the Kool-Aid" is a term that applies and I defy you to justify such blindness. You claim to love our Constitution, yet you continually partner with a bastard cult that has vowed to destroy it.

The Christ of the Bible would not recognize these so-called christians.

Yielding To Censorship: Mo. School Board Bans Books that are ‘Contrary to the Bible’

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five is considered a modern classic. That doesn’t mean it’s a particularly easy read. Indeed, it deals with some fairly heady topics. When I first encountered it in high school, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But it sure made me think, which, in my view, is what a good novel should do.

Funny thing about that thinking – some people see it as dangerous. And a few of those people sit on the school board in Republic, Mo.

The board voted 4-0 recently to ban Slaughterhouse-Five and another book, Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer, after a local resident complained that the books teach ideas contrary to the Bible.

Wesley Scroggins had originally targeted three books, but the board voted to keep one, Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning Speak, on the shelves. According to the Springfield News-Leader, Scroggins “challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.”

After the vote, which removes the books from the curriculum and the school library, Scroggins said, “I congratulate them for doing what’s right and removing the two books. It’s unfortunate they chose to keep the other book.”

Actually, what’s unfortunate it that the school board didn’t stand up for church-state separation and the freedom to learn. And it’s unfortunate that the education of students at Republic High School is being held hostage by such narrow-minded people.

It might also be unconstitutional. In 1982, the Supreme Court struck down a book censorship plan at a New York school district. Members of the school board in Island Trees had banned eight books, including Slaughterhouse-Five, after a statewide right-wing pressure group started a campaign against them. Board members agreed, calling the books “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.

Justice William Brennan led a court plurality in striking down the censorship scheme.

Brennan wrote, “In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ Such purposes stand inescapably condemned by our precedents.”

In 1993, a school board in Olathe, Kan., ordered the removal of the book Annie on My Mind from a school library because it deals with homosexuality. Parents who supported the novel sued and won. A federal court ruled that public schools may not ban books “based on their personal social, political and moral views.”

It sounds like the school board in Republic did exactly that. One fundamentalist complained that the books offended his interpretation of the Bible – so out went the books.

If there’s any silver lining in this sorry incident, it’s this: Telling young people that they can’t or shouldn’t read a certain book or listen to a certain CD almost always causes a run on that book or CD. After all, it’s imperative to find out what it is that the adults don’t want you to see or hear.

So I say to the students of Republic High: Get your hands on a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s worth your time. And if you’re having trouble finding a copy around town, drop me a line. I know a source at a used-book store who can round up as many as you need.

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Maybe not so smart

Those religious right dominionists in the Republican party, including Rick Perry, Sarah Pain, Michelle Bachmann and even Mick Huckabee would do well to harken back to the experience of our second President. Advocating for a “Christian Nation” may provide short term popularity, but over the long run it is not real smart. 

“It was connected with the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which I had no concern in. That assembly has allarmed and alienated Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonists, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Methodists, Catholicks, protestant Episcopalians, Arians, Socinians, Armenians, &c, &c, &c, Atheists and Deists might be added. A general Suspicion prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment as a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The secret whispers ran through them [all the sects] “Let us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deists, or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.” This principle is at the bottom of the unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgiving. Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion. This wild Letter, I very much fear, contains seeds of an Ecclesiastical History of the U.S. for a Century to come.”

Read the full meal deal HERE

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Suit Claims Philosophy Course Was Unconstitutional Instruction In Christian Apologetics

In an unusual case, a student at Arizona's Paradise Valley Community College last week filed a lawsuit charging that the instructor in a Philosophy course (Introduction to Ethics) "failed to teach the Philosophy Class according to the Course Description and instead taught her own Christian worldview."  

The complaint (full text) in Smith v. State of Arizona, (D AZ, filed 7/20/2011), claims that the course instructor, Adjunct Professor Kelly Burton, assigned for the course a portion of a book written by another instructor at the community college: Surrendra Gangadean, Philosophical Foundation: A Critical Analysis of Basic Beliefs. It is alleged that the assigned chapters were theological and present the author's view of Moral Law rather than the theories of philosophers promised by the course description. 

The suit claims that the course is in fact  one in Christian Apologetics, and that  teaching it violates the Establishment Clause as well as Art. 2, Sec. 12 of the Arizona Constitution banning use of public funds for religious instruction. The complaint also alleges breach of an implied contract.

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H/T Howard Friedman

Where Good Hair gets his money

This is a clip of Lou Engle of the International House of Prayer. Engle likens the American secular form of government to nazism. This is run of the mill stuff for Engle, who previously advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality and showed solidarity with Uganda while it was considering a bill that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. It should be noted that IHOP is one of the premier supporters of Good Hair's Prayer Fair.

From this particular soundbite, I find it difficult to understand the nazism comments. If that specter should at all be raised, Engle sounds rather more nazilike than a secular U.S. government.

"Can a homosexual have civil rights in America? They might. But it is not their right given by God. Their right is to repent and stand until Jesus delivers, and then the Church must go into war for them and get them free. Brothers and sisters, we made it two spheres: government has a sphere and God has a sphere. That’s what they did in Hitler’s day, they voted for money in economic crisis and they sacrificed the sanctity of life of the Jews. We do the same thing in America."

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Everyboy has to hate somebody sometime...

Minnesota's teabaggin' Torgerson is back... this time running as a Republican... but still speading the same hate and discontent.

Torgerson says Rep. Ellison doesn’t see the U.S. Constitution as ‘supreme’

Incumbent Democrat Keith Ellison is one of two Muslims in the U.S. House. Torgerson accuses Ellison of being a “radical Islamist” who “fails to oppose banning Islamic Sharia law in the United States.” Responding to the hate mongering, Ellison eloquently responds:

I took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion for all Americans. Religious acceptance is a deeply rooted American value, and regardless of political persuasion, it’s a value we must protect.

It’s too bad that someone can obtain so much attention based on their intolerant rhetoric, especially when unemployment is above 9 percent. On the other hand, the nation will be able to see how extreme the rhetoric has become. I call on all Americans to reject religious intolerance and embrace our constitution which upholds the promise of liberty and justice for all people.

Justice for all people is a concept not understood by that element of society who spend so much time being afraid... and hating because of it.

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George Bush is beginning to look like the smarter of the two

It is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican party that some have gone so far as to call Perry the winner of the recent New Hampshire debate... in spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that he wasn't even there.

Call me Chicken Little, but...

This is a lesser of evils situation.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee. Democrats suck, but if you want to turn the U.S.A. into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia... keep voting Republican. 

Jason Childs is the founder of the Center for Progress in Alabama... and a “Liberty University-trained evangelical pastor.” He has since come to his senses and is telling us what he discovered... and exactly why we should be very afraid.

"… It is so sad that as the people of the world are fighting for freedom, we here in the United States are going in the opposite direction. The far right, under the control of fundamentalists, is declaring an all-out war on human progress."

Eisenhower tried to warn us... but we ignored him. The GOP abandoned a fiscally conservative philosophy in favor of the religious, socially conservative philosophy espoused by the right before Nixon was elected. It was a matter of expedience. The GOP needed the money and the votes... so they made a pact with the devil. Now the fiscal conservative rant is for show, with the real goal being the christification of America. 

The Christian extremist element has been infiltrating our government for many years... long before Eisenhower made that fateful speech as he was leaving office. Nixon was his Vice-President, but Eisenhower would not endorse him in his Presidential bid. Eisenhower recognized from whence the money supporting Nixon came. Nixon lost... Kennedy became President... putting a chink in the conspiracy. It also put into motion a long succession of too-far left politicians. The reaction took time, but the right came back with the religionists even more firmly in control.

The drive to make this land a Christian theocracy has never ceased.  Early evidence is found in the change to coinage design in 1864, when "In God We Trust" was first added. A more recent, major intrusion of Christianity into public life occurred in 1954 with the change in our Pledge of Allegiance... adding "under God" to  Francis Bellamy's original offering. They are persistent.

We turn our back on seemingly minor violations of our Constitution, but these are part and parcel of an overall conspiracy to turn this country more toward authoritarian theocracy and further from the intent of our Founders. If "we the people" do not wake up and it goes far enough... we may have to kiss our Constitution bye bye. 

Each time you hear me criticise Palin, or Huckabee, or Bachmann, it is because their origin and their paths are so clear. George W. Bush answered to "a higher authority." Romney is subtly attacked for being Mormon... something the Religious Right knows would be less than ideal. They want a Bible-wielding crusader.

The Republican party is infested with this conspiracy. All of the major Republican candidates except perhaps Romney are fully owned subsidiaries of the conspiracy, and it is a conspiracy blessed by god. The Religious Right are slick salesmen, and those of this country feeling a need for something in which to believe are swallowing the bait hook, line and sinker.

Mr. Childs has recent, first-hand experience with the conspirators and their goals. Read Jason's story HERE.

The left wingnuts of the Democrats (tree huggers, gun grabbers, etc.) are dangerous in their own way, but our Constitution does not face near the threat from that side of the spectrum as from the Religious Right. The left is disorganized... factionalized... the right is not, and they are winning the battle because they have won the Bible-thumping hearts of the majority.

The radical left is not the answer. A centrist left with a focus on fiscal conservatism is required, and it would not be all that difficult to move the left closer to the center. I urge you to join the D's and work for that goal. It may not be palatable for you... it wasn't for me... but it is necessary. The specter of Christian theocracy in this country is a far greater threat to the dream of our Founders than the loony-tune left has ever offered.

Lets move the left to the right, and try to save this country's greatness.

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H/T

Why America is no longer exceptional

This is one of the more damning reports I believe I’ve ever read.

“81 percent of seniors from our top fifty-five colleges and universities failed a test of basic U.S. history questions drawn from a national exam designed for high school seniors.  Only 22 percent knew, for example, that the words “government of the people, by the people, for the people” came from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  If most American youngsters don’t learn about their nation’s history in the K-12 years, they are unlikely ever to learn about it.”

From a History News Network article. Read the whole story HERE.

The sad part about this is we don’t seem to ever learn that putting dogmatists in charge of educational content contributes to the decline of understanding and knowledge. Judging from recent ballot victories, this might be just what the majority of Americans want.

The discussion in this report is about history, but social studies and science are also under dogmatist attack. Witness a recent opinion piece in Forbes, another in the Palm Beach Post, and some of the work coming from the Texas SBOE.

I'm sorry. The people who vote Republican want conservative, but that is not what they are getting. The Republican party long ago married itself to the "social" conservatives, and those now make up the vast majority of the biggoted dogmatists who have floated to the top of the right wingnut cesspool.

I'm all in favor of fiscal conservatism, but that goal will remain unachievable so long as these science deniers and historical revisionists remain in power. Their brand of "conservatism" more resembles the dream of the Taliban than that of the Founders of our nation. 

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Governor Goodhair sure has Helen stirred up

And well she should be. Every Texan should be stirred up. The crap this Governor has elevated to emergency status is beyond imagination. 

Texas is facing a $27 billion budget shortfall, the balancing of which will inevitably cripple public schools, post secondary education, the ability of nursing homes to care for the elderly, and even of the highway department's ability to repair roads. The first budget proposal calls for cutting 9,600 state jobs, and will undoubtably to the loss of thousands more due to collateral damage to private sector industries and support services.

But this is not an emergency, according to Rick Perry. He just kind of brushes it aside and gives another speech railing against Washington excesses. Goodhair pretends the true emergencies in Texas don't exist, and that he and his wingnut cronies are not responsible for anything.

But what does Goodhair call an emergency deserving of the full and undivided attention of our state legislature? ...a bill requiring every woman seeking an abortion to view a sonogram of the fetus.

Helen does not understand. Texas is crumbling around our ears and Goodhair is only concerned with social issues. Read Helen's commentary HERE first, and be sure to read the comments. There are some doozies. Then read HERE where Helen addresses one of those comments. 

Priceless.

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