I Wonder If Our Friends In Connellsville Know About This

For years a banner hung in the auditorium of a public High School in Cranston, Rhode Island.  It was the official school prayer until the Supreme Court banned state sponsored prayer in 1962.  Since then the banner remained affixed to the wall.  Here is the text:

Our Heavenly Father.

Grant us each day the desire to do our best. To grow mentally and morally as well as physically. To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers. To be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen.

You can see the banner here.  While the general ideas laid out in the "prayer" aren't that offensive (it is, let's remember simply a prayer "to do our best" and to "help us be good sports" and so on), what is offensive is that it's an official prayer to God hung in a public school.

After the ACLU and a local high schooler named Jessica Ahlquist filed a lawsuit objecting,  the judge in this case ordered it removed, writing:

The Supreme Court has traditionally drawn a clear line between government conduct which might be acceptable in some settings and the conduct which is prohibited in public schools. In Van Orden, where the Supreme Court held that a monument displaying the Ten Commandments was acceptable on the 44-acre grounds of the Texas State Capitol, the Court underscored this distinction:

This case, moreover, is distinguishable from instances where the Court has found Ten Commandments displays impermissible. The display is not on the grounds of a public school, where, given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state.

And what happened to Jessica?

The good Christians of Cranston, Rhode Island objected:

She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

Not exactly a WWJD moment for them, I'm afraid.

More recently, however, Jessica's received another award:

Since her successful challenge last year of a prayer banner at Cranston High School West, Jessica Ahlquist has been traveling the country speaking about First Amendment rights.

But not until now has she been invited to speak at the Playboy Mansion.

Ahlquist, 17, is scheduled to speak at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, CA on May 22nd where she will receive a Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. The award in the Education category -- $5,000 cash and a commemorative plaque -- is for Ahlquist's "courageous and successful lawsuit" in the Cranston prayer banner case, a publicist for the foundation said in a statement.

She won. This "evil little thing" won for religious freedom. For everyone.

I wonder if our friends in Connellsville and New Kensington know about this.

News Foils

First, let's look at a typical climate science denial from the Braintrust at the Tribune-Review:

During an unusually chilly Memorial Day weekend, which felt more like a brisk Labor Day weekend, a New York ski resort near the Vermont border reported up to 3 feet of snow. Writes Roger L. Simon of PJ Media, “Somewhere Al Gore is gnashing his teeth, while concocting another speech to tell us that cooling actually means warming or some such palaver.”

Now let's look at what they're actually saying up in Vermont - this was from early February:

The three Vermont legislative committees picked the right day last week to hold a joint hearing on the effects of climate change on businesses.  Some people were late after having to pick their way through the remnants of overnight freezing rain. As the hearing progressed, temperatures outdoors rose toward record heights. Weather forecasters talked of flood and wind alerts, and warned of plunging temperatures the next day.  The consensus among the 40 or so people who testified at Wednesday’s hearing was not so much that we must adapt to climate change in the future, but that we’re being forced to adapt already, and we must continue.  The most challenging part of the adaptation is not the warmer, wetter climate we’re increasingly experiencing. What is particularly vexing are the wild, odd swings in temperature and precipitation — the kind that were going on outside the Vermont Statehouse as lawmakers and witnesses spoke — that make planning, producing and stability more difficult.  [Emphasis added]

Wild, odd swings in temperature and precipitation like 3 feet of snow on Memorial Day?

I guess we have to talk again about the differences between CLIMATE and WEATHER.  From NASA:

Weather is basically the way the atmosphere is behaving, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities. The difference between weather and climate is that weather consists of the short-term (minutes to months) changes in the atmosphere. Most people think of weather in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, brightness, visibility, wind, and atmospheric pressure, as in high and low pressure.

In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space. An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms.

Speaking of which, did you know that the Weather Channel is forecasting 81 degrees for Whiteface Mountain today?

 That's the place that had the 3 feet of snow earlier this week.

Odd swings in temperature and precipitation due to climate change.  Yep, it's all there.

No, Not THAT!!!

UPDATE: This post and this post PROVE BEYOND ALL DOUBT that Maria and I spend absolutely no time coordinating our blogging efforts!  Go to her post first.

On May 27, Politico posted this:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann may be the congresswoman with nine lives. But 2014 could be the gravest threat to her political career yet.

The bomb-throwing conservative and onetime Republican presidential candidate is girding for what promises to be a ferocious reelection contest. Awaiting Bachmann is a serious Democratic opponent who has the full backing of his national party and a suburban Twin Cities electorate that six months ago nearly tossed her out of office.

The most glaring problem for Bachmann, though, may be a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating whether her campaign concealed payments to an Iowa state senator who did work for her 2012 presidential bid. (A state ethics law bars senators from doing paid campaign work.)

And late last week, Minnpost.com reported that the FBI would be joining the investigation and interviewing a former Bachmann chief of staff.

And here's what Minnpost.com reported:

The FBI is investigating complaints of alleged campaign finance violations in Rep. Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign.

The FBI joins the Office of Congressional Ethics, the Federal Elections Commission and an Iowa state Senate ethics committee in probing whether Bachmann's presidential campaign paid an Iowa state senator from her MichelePAC, a fund that should not have been used for campaign expenses, and whether the state senator stole the email list of an Iowa home-school group from another Bachmann staffer, Barbara Hekki, prior to the Iowa caucuses in January, 2012.

They also reported (a few paragraphs later):

The entry of the FBI into the investigation raises the possibility that there were potential criminal violations. In addition to the alleged theft of the home-school list, the FBI is said to be looking into the campaign's demand that certain former employees, whose pay was withheld at the end of the campaign, sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their compensation.

The very next day, this video was posted on youtube:


And this came from the AP early this morning:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a conservative firebrand and a favorite of tea party Republicans, said Wednesday she will not run for another term in the U.S. House.

While in situations like this it's always good to remember the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.  We should not not automatically assume that the ethics probes or the FBI investigation or the near loss last time of her seat had anything whatsoever to do with her decision not to run this time.

She even says so in her video.

So we simply know it's true simply because she said it.  I mean when has Michelle Bachmann ever said anything untrue before?

Break Out the Champagne: Michele Bachmann Won't Seek Re-election Next Year!

Michele Bachmann pulls a Ravenstahl and announces she will not seek re-election next year. And, just like Lil Mayor Luke, she says it's in no way due to any pending investigations or because she can't win another term. Uh-uh, nope, not at all.

 

You can take a trip down memory lane of 2pj posts about Ms. Bachmann here.

The Party Of Reagan?

Senator Bob Dole doesn't think so.

Here he is being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News this past Sunday:


Thanks to Think Progress for a transcript:

WALLACE: You describe the GOP of your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans. Could people like you, even Ronald Reagan — could you make it in today’s Republican Party.

DOLE: I doubt it. Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, 'cause he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.

Understandably, while this story's made its way onto much of the left leaning news sources (talkingpointsmemo, americablog, and so on), I was wondering if there was any (ANY) echo on any conservative blogs.

Well, my friends, take a look at this from the American Conservative.  After quoting Dole's interview with Wallace about how Reagan "couldn't have made it" in the contemporary GOP, W. James Antell III writes:

This has become a common refrain among a certain kind of Republican. Jeb Bush said much the same thing, throwing his father into the mix of party elders who would be out of step with today’s GOP.

Dole’s legislative accomplishments ranged from being part of the bipartisan majorities that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to playing a key role in the passage of the Reagan economic program. The Republicans of his era were more temperamentally conservative, even if less ideologically so. They believed in balanced budgets and would have been horrified to hear a party leader say “deficits don’t matter.”

Newt Gingrich, who became Dole’s partner in crime during the GOP Congress of 1995-96, is a good example of the party’s evolved brand. He led Republicans to their first House majority in 40 years, displaying a creativity that past Republican leaders conspicuously lacked. But he was undone by his excesses, cultivating an image of partisanship, over-the-top statements, and a penchant for unpopular crusades.

Today’s GOP is as much Gingrich’s party as Reagan’s or Nixon’s. Chest-beating often replaces prudence, the party frequently makes use of both libertarian and traditionalist themes without taking either of them very seriously.

Um thanks, Newt?

But at least that's rational - check this out from breitbart.com.  Guess what?  Instead of countering Dole's argument (and positing some evidence that Reagan WOULD be welcome in the contemporary GOP, they just BASH DOLE INSTEAD:

Dole complained that he would not make it in today's Republican Party. However, Dole could not make it in 1976 on the bottom of the GOP presidential ticket against when the Party ran against Jimmy Carter or the top of the ticket 20 years later when he ran against Bill Clinton.

And that's hardly surprising considering the state of the contemporary GOP.

Memorial Day, 2013

Springboro Ohio, Creationism and the Tea Party Dogwhistles

We'll start here, at Fox News:

A proposal by an Ohio school district to add creationism to a list of controversial topics deemed appropriate for classroom discussion has ignited a debate over the separation of church and state among parents and a civil rights group.

The Springboro Board of Education took comments on the proposal at a meeting Thursday night attended by parents, students and teachers. Some parents urged the board to abandon the plan, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sent a letter to the board, saying the policy would violate the separation of church and state.

"Basically they would be teaching creationism to counteract the teaching of evolution," ACLU spokesman Nick Worner said Friday. "Anytime that you promote or teach the beliefs of one religion over all other religions or beliefs in a public school classroom, that's a problem."

And Fox later gives us some details:

According to the school district website, "evolution/creation," ''pro-life/abortion," contraception/abstinence, legalization of drugs, gun rights, and global warming would be among the topics added to a list of "controversial issues."

Many "areas of study involve issues on which differing positions are held by individuals or groups," and all sides of an issue should be explored "fully and fairly," the proposal says.

Remember the list of topics in that first paragraph. It'll become more important later.  The ACLU of Ohio sent a letter to the Springboro Board of Education outlining the constitutional issues surrounding the proposals - actually there are two policy changes.  One for policy 8800 and the other for policy 2240.  It is the second, Policy 2240, that dabbles in creationism.

My first question was the context of where these "controversial issues" would be discussed.  If it was in a "social studies" or "contemporary issues" class, then what's the problem?  As long as the facts are presented as facts (evolution=science, creationism=religion) then what's the problem?

It's how the board fails to limit the discussion in that way, is the problem.  From the ACLU letter:

This policy appears to explicitly permit the teaching of creationism because "evolution" is on the "controversial issues" list and equal facts for the opposing viewpoint means classroom time spent on the religious theory of intelligent design (or creation science). It has been firmly established that this practice is unconstitutional, in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court of the United States has unequivocally held that so-called "balanced treatment" laws and policies which gave equal class time to evolution and creationism were unconstitutional because they served no secular purpose and instead had a primary purpose of advancing a particular religious viewpoint.

Now here's the text from Policy 2240:

The role of the teacher in the presentation o f assigned issues is vitally important. All sides of the issue should be given to the students in a dispassionate manner. The goal is for the students to be taught to think clearly on all matters of importance, and to make decisions in the light of all the material that has been presented or can be researched on the issues.

Giving sympathetic "science" teachers the room to do the "both sides" of the "teaching the controversy" thing.

But there's another point that Fox left out.  Here's the complete text of the "controversial issues" from the policy:

For purposes of this policy, controversial issues include: religion when not used in a historical or factual context , sex education, legalization of drugs, evolution/creation, pro-life/abortion, contraception/abstinence, conservatism/liberalism, politics, gun rights, global warming and climate change, UN Agenda 21 and sustainable development, and any other topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion and/or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community.[Emphasis in original.]

There's a dogwhistle in there, signaling to Springboro's Tea Party element. Did you see it?

It's the UN Agenda 21.  And to the folks at crazie central (aka World Net Daily) it's:

...a 40-chapter U.N. program to introduce fascism worldwide in the guise of environmental regulation.

Confusing, until you take a look at the last time this happened in Springboro:

Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.

And:

Kohls is the head of the Warren County Tea Party. Although she said her desire to teach creationism is not directly related to the emerging political movement, it’s not inconsistent with Tea Party ideals.

“My input on creationism has everything with me being a parent and not a member of the Tea Party,” she said. “We are motivated people who want to change the course of this country. Eliminating God from our public lives I think is a mistake and is why we have gone in the direction of spending beyond our means.”

Of course Kelly Kohls is still on the Board.