Judy Jennings for State Board of Education District 10 Democratic Primary, March 2, 2010

Please vote for Judy Jennings, Cynthia Dunbar is trying to end public education in Texas.

Unlike incumbent Cynthia Dunbar, Sam Houston saw public education as a great boon. “No longer will the means of elementary learning be limited to those whose private resources are equal to the expense, but the road to distinction in every department of science and moral excellency, will be equally open to all,” he said. And the founders of Texas considered education so essential to “the rights and liberties of the people” that they charged our Legislature with establishing “an efficient system of public free schools” in our Constitution.

The Legislature, in turn, created the State Board of Education to set policy for public education in Texas. But lately, some board members have acted so irresponsibly that the Legislature actually considered stripping the board of many of its duties. The problem: too many members caught up in fighting “culture wars” at the expense of figuring out how to provide our children with an education that will prepare them for the challenges of this new century.

What would you do if your local school board trustee cared more about pursuing a personal agenda rather than seeing to the needs of your child's school? It's hard to imagine such a trustee getting re-elected in any school district in Texas, let alone the eighty-four ISDs that fall, in whole or in part, within the boundaries of SBOE District 10.

We need board members who will be guided by effective measures of what's working, not by ideology, pet peeves or partisanship. Dr. Judy Jennings will be just such a board member, well equipped to make important decisions about meeting the many needs of a diverse and growing state. Read more about Judy here.

“In effect, [Republican incumbent Cythina] Dunbar is on the board to sabotage public education. ... Dunbar should resign and leave the governing of this state's public schools to people who use them, serve them, care about them and understand that they are the future of Texas.”

Gore vs Cheney

Gore said he wished Cheney would have given President Obama more time
in office before criticizing national security policy. A stern critic
of Bush policy over the years, Gore told CNN's John Roberts that "I
waited for two years after I left office to make statements that were
critical, and then of policy."

GOP Senator Opposes Using Stimulus Funding To Combat Pandemic Flu

Republicans continue to display a lack of foresight.

The Canidates

Educational Background:
Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A.
Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

The Sarah Palin Church Video Part One

Looks like lying is not Sarah Palins main problem, insanity is.

Sunlight Foundation

"The Sunlight Foundation is committed to helping citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best congressional watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency."

This looks to be an amazing website.

Texas Attorney General's Office

I was just on the Attorney General's website trying to contact them. It does not look like contact info. is available on their website.

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Bush's War

Illinois House panel criticizes deputy governor in hearing on $1 million grant to school

Deputy Gov. Louanner Peters on Wednesday spent more than an hour dodging questions from an Illinois House committee investigating a $1 million grant that wound up going to a troubled private school instead of a church because of what Gov. Rod Blagojevich has called a "bureaucratic mistake."
...
The hearing to probe the grant came after the Blagojevich administration steered $1 million to the private Loop Lab School to make good on the governor's pledge to help Pilgrim Baptist Church rebuild after a fire. Instead of giving to the church, the money went to the school, which rented space from the church.

The grant came as state and federal authorities were trying to collect thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes from the school, the Tribune reported Wednesday. Other potential roadblocks also were cleared to make the grant possible: The governor gave a rare and swift pardon to the school's director, a convicted felon; the school registered as a charitable organization for the first time in its 25-year history; and the school filed three years' worth of required state tax documents in one day.

Governor of Illinois Moves a Million Dollars of State Funds to Baptist Church

The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.

Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist
activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before
the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

"This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God," Davis said. "Get
out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in
something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what
this state was built upon."

Disbelief in religion means you have "no right" to speak to members of government? Wow. And note the "D" after her name — she's a member of the party most (but definitely not all!) American atheists lean towards.
There's more on this exchange: it looks like Sherman kept his cool, while Davis spewed her hate.
Here is the audio, courtesy of the Illinois Information Service.

Just how many astroturf groups did tobacco fund?

Thanks to the Tobacco documents we've learned how tobacco companies have secretly funded astroturf organizations like junkscience.com, secretly paid for think tanks to run political campaigns for them, and even created their own astroturf scientific journal. The latest pile of astoturf to be uncovered is detailed in a new paper by Anne Landman, Daniel Cortese and Stanton Glantz:

Karl Rove in a violation of the Hatch act

By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 26, 2007; Page A01
Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

Failure of No Child Left Behind

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2008)

A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas' public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.

...60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate
...The discrepancy between the official dropout rates, in the 2 to 3 percent range, and the actual rates can be attributed to the state's method of counting...
The study has been published in the peer-reviewed policy journal "Educational Policy Analysis Archives"

White House Opposes Surveillance... Of Its Own Surveillance Policy

Since it was formed in 2004, on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been blasted by civil libertarians
as a tool of the administration, more interested in whitewashing War on
Terror–related privacy violations than serving as a genuine check on
government intrusion. One of the board's five members even resigned in protest,
citing among other things "the vast array of alphabet soup agencies and
bureaucracies in the national security apparatus" that sought "to control and modify the Board's public utterances."
So last year, Congress sought to give the board greater autonomy by
moving it out from under the aegis of the White House and
reconstituting itself as an independent boad within the executive
branch. The response of the White House, Wired reports, has been to drag its feet in appointing a new board -- meaning there is no one on the board as of January 30th -- prompting bipartisan criticism from top members of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.



The board's second annual report
(pdf), released late last month, does not exactly inspire confidence in
its assiduousness as a privacy watchdog -- even when staffed. After
touting its excellent working relationship with the White House, it
moves to a "nothing to see here" review of the post-9/11 use of the
material witness statute (MWS) as a detention tool. Aside from one
"terrible mistake," the report asserts the board "was not made aware of
specific problems with the use of the MWS in the anti-terrorism
context" and cites a claim by the Justice Department that "on only nine
occasions since the attacks of September 11, 2001 has the MWS been used
in terrorist-related investigations." That is hard to square with the
findings of a joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,
which found some 70 instances of 9/11-related detention, though the
discrepancy may be explained by the frequent use of immigration
violations as a pretext for detentions that were actually related to
terror investigations.

John F. Kennedy Speech

Compare this speech by Kennedy to any speech of any current politician; this is a speech that makes you feel good, an intelligent straight forward speech free of the infuriating political double talk of most current politicians.

John F. Kennedy

Greater Houston Ministerial Association Q & A

delivered 12 September 1960

EFF sues the DOJ for withholding records of telecom surveillance immunity lobbying

By Ryan Paul
Published: September 28, 2007 - 09:43AM CT

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in an effort to obtain records that could shed light on telecommunication industry lobbying activities. The EFF suspects that major telecommunications companies like AT&T have attempted to use political leverage to compel lawmakers to support legislation that would grant the companies legal immunity for their involvement in the federal government's extralegal electronic surveillance program.

The EFF requested records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) last month from the Department of Justice and Office of Legislative Affairs. The records sought by the EFF include documentation of interaction pertaining to FISA amendments and surveillance immunity between Department of Justice officials, representatives of the telecommunications companies, and members of the Senate or House of representatives. The government has failed to process the FOIA request within the 20-day maximum waiting period stipulated by law, so the EFF has followed up its request with a lawsuit (PDF) demanding swift compliance.

Recent reports have revealed evidence that the telecommunications companies have been heavily lobbying for immunity in order to avoid potentially costly and embarrassing litigation.

Related Stories

Bush administration proposes retroactive immunity for phone companies

The fall of the Godmongers

I highly recommend reading this article.

Praise Jesus, it's the collapse of evangelical Christian rule in America. Rejoice!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 21, 2007
...Because right now, there is perhaps no greater item we as a struggling human ant farm can be grateful for, no single social emetic we can look to for inspiration or hope or a happy tingly sensation in our collective groinal region indicating a possible move away from our long-standing Dick-Cheney-in-hell attitude of shrill bleakness, alarmism and religious righteousness than the simply wonderful implosion of the evangelical Christian right that's happening right now in America.
...They're the throngs of megachurch lemmings Karl Rove masterfully manipulated and rallied and whored to Bush's very narrow advantage in two elections.

They're the ones who've made all the headlines and influenced all sorts of laws and national policy changes lo, this past half-decade concerning everything from stem cell research to gay marriage to evolution, sanitized school textbooks to failed abstinence programs to RU-486 restrictions to silly anti-science rhetoric, the ones who gasped in horror at a woman's bare nipple and made a disgusting mockery of Terri Schiavo and actually applauded when John Ashcroft spent $8,000 of taxpayer money to throw some heavy drapery over the shamefully exposed breasts of the bronze (female) Spirit of Justice statue in the Hall of Justice. And so on.

They are, in short, responsible for a great many of the most notable social and intellectual embarrassments in America since the new millennium took hold, and rest assured, we and the rest of the civilized world shall recall their bleak accomplishments for much of our natural born lives, and shudder.
...Because this is the delightful thing about the fundamentalist worldview (and, for that matter just about any strict religious worldview you can name), the thing that absolutely and forever guarantees its frequent and eventual downfall: It can never be sated.

It's true. No matter how clamped down we as a culture become, no matter how much misinterpreted Biblical dogma we're forced to swallow, no matter how many insidious laws are passed limiting behaviors and restricting independent thought and repressing sexuality and banning dildos in Texas, it will never be enough.

And why? Because the fundamentalist mind-set is not so much a firm and rational set of beliefs based on thoughtful interpretation of strict Biblical screed as it is, well, a paranoid wallowing in fear. Fear of the Other, fear of change, of progress, of the new and different and young and the sexual and the truly spiritual.

Bush's Holy War on Nature

By Chip Ward
September 16, 2005
...This much is clear: The Bush administration does not respect a broad American consensus that the quality of our lives is directly linked to the integrity and health of the environment. Differences in philosophy about property rights, the role of government, and the best means to change self-destructive behaviors will translate into different approaches to environmental policy -- for example, whether to curb pollution by creating market incentives or by passing tough laws. But until now Republicans did not reject the need for environmental policy altogether. What happened?
The answer is a familiar one: Bush's righteous base, the rightwing fundamentalist Christians, are having their way -- the zealots who think Revelations is the only guide to foreign policy and that Nature is a mere stage for their personal salvation drama -- men like Majority Leader Tom DeLay who have publicly proclaimed that they do not believe in evolution, or other Republican congressional leaders who got 100% ratings from the powerful Christian Coalition, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, presidential hopeful Bill Frist, Policy Chair Christopher Cox, National Leadership Chair Rob Portman, powerful senators like Mitch McConnell, Kay Hutchinson, Rick Santorum, George Allen, and many more who are, environmentally speaking, the American Taliban.

Our President himself recently declared "the jury is still out" on evolution. The administration's push to satisfy its base by devaluing and discrediting evolutionary theory has profound implications for environmental policy and law. If you don't believe in the evolutionary sciences, chances are you also don't heed or trust the ecological sciences that underlie environmental law and policy. When conservation biologists talk about keystone (or endangered) species, fundamentalists are far more likely than most Americans to listen skeptically. The value of biodiversity as a measure of ecosystem health is going to be of little concern to those who do not understand or accept the critical role that species interaction plays in keeping ecosystems resilient in the face of disturbance and stress.
In fact, fundamentalist Christians often have only contempt for ecological science, which they view as nothing more than the cover Pagans use to push a godless, nature-worshiping agenda. To many fundamentalists, enviros are the new commies. Utah's righteous patriarchal politicians cannot even utter the term "environmentalist" (usually pronounced environ-MENTAL-ist, as if it were a psychological disorder) without attaching the adjective "extreme" to the term.
If you believe that God made the world for you and instructed you to dominate it and be fruitful, then you are likely to see yourself as above and beyond the natural world. If you are God's chosen, then how can you fear that he will not provide for you no matter how large your numbers grow or what you do to your surroundings? God, after all, can change nature's laws, which are part of his "intelligent design" in the first place. So you are unlikely to fret about practicing environmental restraint or worry about environmental toxins -- righteousness being the best prophylactic against disease in a world where God's will is done.
If you believe that the world's end is imminent, then why not use it before you lose it? If you believe that when the world-ending moment arrives, you will be "raptured" away and Christ will return to rule at last, then, hey, bring it on! Those who are "left behind," as fundamentalist Tim Lehaye describes it in his bestselling novels, deserve to suffer because they failed to accept Christ as their personal savior. So the President's fundamentalist base favors the present over a future they disown.
Perhaps the greatest gap between the belief systems of fundamentalists and environmentalists is the difference between hubris and humility. Fundamentalists have a death grip on truth and do not entertain doubt; while one of the key insights of the ecological sciences is that nature may not only be more complex than we thought, but more complex than we can think. Conservation biologists respect the intricate and reciprocal nature of living systems and realize that even the most seemingly insignificant species may turn out to play an unexpected and important role in them. Such insights underlie
precautionary approaches.
According to Bush's political base, the future is theirs; nature was put here for us to use as we please; God will provide; and foolish unbelievers will be abandoned, like those desperate refugees at the New Orleans Super Dome, in a trashed and shredded world. We had our chance, but decided to listen to scientists, believe in dinosaurs, hug trees, and wring our hands over pupfish, spotted owls, and the odd centipede or two. While our jaws drop at their arrogant and reckless behaviors, they just shake their heads and chuckle condescendingly at all of our "liberal whining." It's a holy war, after all, and they are most righteous.
Bush's assault on the environment makes perfect sense once you see the bargains that drive it. The fundamentalists give Bush political power; his corporate cronies get free reign to plunder the land for their profit; and the fundamentalists get the heads of nature-worshipping enviros on an arsenic platter. The rest of us, of course, get left behind.

Chip Ward, assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System, is a political activist and leader in the struggle to keep the Great Basin Desert from becoming a nuclear waste dumping ground. He is the author of Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land (Island Press).

Copyright 2005 Chip Ward

Other Article Links:
This piece first appeared at Tomdispatch.com.

...connected so many things (including what was happening in Iraq and here ...

...New Orleans is now a vast toxic dump (and, as at Ground Zero in New York after 9/11, a toxic cover-up is sure to follow
the city's embattled wetlands are in dismal shape; a superfund toxic waste site remains underwater; the whole area may prove an "underwater Love Canal"; parts of the Gulf of Mexico are now covered with huge, if unacknowledged, oil slicks;...

...As relief expert David Langness wrote at Juan Cole's Informed Comment website on his return from New Orleans, the city is

"under a toxic brew of foul water,...

...Cases of silenced government scientists and experts, censored reports, disbanded scientific advisory panels, and withheld evidence abound. (The National Resources Defense Council has listed dozens of examples on its website.)...

Faith Based Dominist Groups

It furthermore doesn't help when one of the main people partnering with the President on "faith-based issues" is the former head of Straight, Inc. himself.
(Of note, Sembler and Bush set up an agency similar to Florida's FACCCA as an alternative licensing board for faith-based "behaviour mod" facilities; after five years of multiple incidents of abuse at these facilities exempted from licensing (including a facility where two attempted escapees were forced into a pit
in a manner more resembling something out of Gitmo than a rehab facility) Texas finally discontinued the program--but not before people were forced into "faith-based coercion". George W. Bush has since attempted to use the failed Texas model as a nationwide model for "faith-based services".

Daniel Cooper says Bible Study is more important than doing his Job.

The head of the U.S. federal government agency that doles out benefits to disabled veterans is under fire for saying Bible study is "more important than doing [my] job."

Two organisations, Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), demanded an investigation Tuesday of Daniel Cooper, President George W. Bush's undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Their complaint stems from an appearance Cooper made in a fundraising video for the evangelical group Christian Embassy, which carries out missionary work among the Washington elite as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, "it's not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that's more important than doing the job -- the job's going to be there, whether I'm there or not."
Veterans for Common Sense and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation believe Cooper violated the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government officials from advocating a particular religion while on the job.

They also believe Cooper violated ethics rules that prohibit government officials from using their name, picture, or title for proselytising or fundraising.

"We're very concerned about this because hundreds of thousands of veterans are waiting for their benefits while Cooper himself says that promoting his religion is more important than helping the veterans," Veterans for Common Sense's Paul Sullivan told IPS.