Tim Pawlenty Supports Teaching Intelligent Design, Opposes Gay Rights

Newsweek interviewed Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty believes that the war in Iraq was a good idea even if “did we start off with an incorrect premise.” He believes Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. His worst answers came on social issues, even believing it is acceptable for schools to teach intelligent design:

Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.

Where are you personally?
Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.

I know you are opposed to gay marriage, but what about medical benefits for same-sex couples?
I have not supported that.

Why not?
My general view on all of this is that marriage is to be defined as being a union of a man and a woman. Marriage should be elevated in our society at a special level. I don’t think all domestic relationships are the equivalent of traditional marriage. Early on we decided as a country and as a state that there was value in a man and a woman being married in terms of impact on children and the like, and we want to encourage that.

To borrow a phrase, have your views evolved over time?
In 1993 I voted for a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodation, housing, and employment. That was 16 years ago.

Yes, gay-rights activists regarded you as a pretty cool guy at the time.
We overbaked that statute, for a couple of reasons. If I had to do it over again I would have changed some things.

Overbaked?
That statute is not worded the way it should be. I said I regretted the vote later because it included things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren’t based on sexual orientation, just a preference for the way they dressed and behaved. So it was overly broad. So if you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday as Mr. Johnson and you show up on Tuesday as Mrs. Johnson, that is a little confusing to the kids. So I don’t like that.

Has the law been changed?
No. It should be, though.

So you want to protect kids against cross-dressing elementary-school teachers. Do you have any in Minnesota?
Probably. We’ve had a few instances, not exactly like that, but similar.

Little Green Footballs asks:

So what happens if a cross-dressing elementary school teacher wants to teach “intelligent design” creationism? Imagine, if you will, the massive cognitive dissonance that would ensue.

Tea Baggers And Republicans Get Ready For War on Christmas

The tea-baggers talk about limiting government but, as with most conservatives, their idea of freedom is the freedom to do what they think is best. One tea-bagger has proposed a law making Christmas carols mandatory for the schools:

Merry Hyatt has found allies in her quest to put an initiative on the ballot next year requiring public schools to play Christmas carols.

Hyatt, who moved to Redding four months ago, said she joined the Redding Tea Party Patriots and recruited several members to help her collect the 433,971 signatures needed by March 29.

Hyatt said she has partnered with a couple of churches in Redding and one in Wildomar in Southern California to collect signatures. All the signature pages must be turned in together to the Shasta County registrar, she said.

The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn’t followed.

I don’t suppose she’d go for Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. Would she like or if we forced her kids to sing the Dreidel song, or perhaps make viewing of the Seinfeld Festivus episode mandatory?

Conservatives will probably see opposition to this as being part of their imagined War on Christmas. Congressional Republicans are also out to protect Christmas:

South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, Jr. and 18 of his fellow House Republicans this week introduced Resolution 951, which makes it clear that Christmas should not be watered down for political correctness.

“I am troubled by the growing sentiment that the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ is not appropriate,” Brown said in a statement on his web site. “I am worried that attempts to celebrate a ‘politically correct’ holiday season may cause the loss of some of the traditions sacred to this widely celebrated holiday.”

The nonbinding resolution states that it was never the intention of the Constitution’s authors to “prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog” when they prohibitied the establishment of an official religion.

It goes on to say that the House “strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas,” and “expresses support for the use of… symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.”

“I believe it is important to preserve the right for everyone to worship as they believe,” Brown said. “As a Christian, I feel it is also important that I have the right to celebrate Christmas and observe its significance as a national holiday and I strongly believe that wishing someone ‘Merry Christmas’ should never be met with disapproval.”

To further bring his point home, Brown commented that while Christmas is a national holiday, its true meaning is to “celebrate of the birth of Christ.”

Will we also get a law to protect Hanukkah?

Abstinence-Only Education Funding In Health Reform Bill To Please Republicans

The House health care reform bill restricts abortions to get conservative votes. Now it turns out that conservatives also got something slipped into the Senate bill–funding for abstinence-only programs. From The Gaggle:

Their provision would restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.

If the Senate language survives reconciliation, the Title V program will be extended through 2014. This will not, however, bring abstinence funding back to the levels of the past decade. In 2008, Title V grants accounted for just under 25 percent of the federal abstinence budget (the rest of the budget came from other abstinence-only funding sources not restored in the Senate bill, including Community Based Abstinence Education Grants and the Adolescent Family Life Act).

How do Republicans, who claim to be fiscal conservatives, justify spending money for abstinence-only programs when such programs have repeatedly been proven to be ineffective? What is the point of offering Republicans such compromises when they won’t vote for the final bill regardless of what is in it?

David Brooks Praises Obama on Education

Praise for Barack Obama’s education plans comes from an unexpected source–David Brooks. A portion of his column:

The news is good. In fact, it’s very good. Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform.

Over the summer, the Department of Education indicated that most states would not qualify for Race to the Top money. Now states across the country are changing their laws: California, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee, among others.

It’s not only the promise of money that is motivating change. There seems to be some sort of status contest as states compete to prove they, too, can meet the criteria. Governors who have been bragging about how great their schools are don’t want to be left off the list.

These changes mean that states are raising their caps on the number of charter schools. When charters got going, there was a “let a thousand flowers bloom” mentality that sometimes led to bad schools. Now reformers know more about how to build charters and the research is showing solid results. Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University recently concluded a rigorous study of New York’s charter schools and found that they substantially narrowed the achievement gap between suburban and inner-city students.

The changes also will mean student performance will increasingly be a factor in how much teachers get paid and whether they keep their jobs. There is no consensus on exactly how to do this, but there is clear evidence that good teachers produce consistently better student test scores, and that teachers who do not need to be identified and counseled. Cracking the barrier that has been erected between student outcomes and teacher pay would be a huge gain.

Duncan even seems to have made some progress in persuading the unions that they can’t just stonewall, they have to get involved in the reform process. The American Federation of Teachers recently announced innovation grants for performance pay ideas. The New Haven school district has just completed a new teacher contract, with union support, that includes many of the best reform ideas.

Louisiana Establishing Rules To Challenge Teaching of Evolution

Gradual Change

Parents who object to teaching established science on religious grounds should be told to shut the frak up–not be taken seriously. I’ve previously noted the move towards teaching creationism in the schools in Louisiana. Now rules are being  writen in Louisiana to make changes in science instruction based upon objections to teaching evolution:

The state’s top school board Wednesday approved procedures for residents who object to materials that challenge the teaching of evolution in public school science classes.

The rules, which were praised by evolution critics, stem from a law approved last year by the Legislature.

Backers say the law is needed to give science teachers more freedom to challenge traditional theories, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Critics contend the measure, called the Louisiana Science Education Act, is aimed at injecting religious themes into public schools.

Science is established through rigorous testing, not popular vote, and cannot be judged by whether scientific findings are consistent with religious beliefs. Evolution is established science which has repeatedly passed the tests of the scientific method. As Doug Mataconis comments:

…science should not, cannot, be subject to “due process” or majority will. If it is, it’s not science, it’s propaganda.

Washington Monthly Details Problems at Ave Maria

Monaghan

Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan is well known for both his business ventures and his far right wing religious views in Michigan, but his attempts to start a religious-based law school didn’t go over well in the Ann Arbor area. He wound up finding an area in Florida which was more hospitable to his plans, as described in The Washington Monthly:

By early 2002, Monaghan had three promising schools—Ave Maria College, St. Mary’s, and Ave Maria School of Law—but they were scattered across Michigan. In the hopes of bringing them together on a single campus, he submitted plans to build a new Ave Maria University at Domino’s Farms. The proposal might have sailed through unnoticed if it weren’t for one detail: a 250-foot crucifix. That’s taller than the old General Motors building and almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The idea touched off a firestorm in Ann Arbor Township, a wealthy rural community with roughly 5,000 residents near the city of Ann Arbor. Many locals still nursed resentments over Monaghan’s previous architectural ventures; years earlier he had tried to build the “Leaning Tower of Pizza,” a thirty-five-story copper-and-bronze-clad tower with a slight eastward slant. A few also grumbled that the onetime pizza baron—who had already opened two convents, a pair of Catholic radio stations, and a Catholic newspaper in the area—was trying to turn the township into a theocracy.

In the end, the local planning commission denied his petition to build the university, and Monaghan was forced to look further afield. He eventually settled on a scraggly stretch of tomato fields bordering southwest Florida’s Corkscrew Swamp. The site was twenty miles inland of Naples, which has a high concentration of Catholics and conservatives, and Monaghan believed they would be friendlier to his vision. And, as luck would have it, Barron Collier Companies, a powerful local landowner, offered to donate some 750 acres on which to build the university. In return, Monaghan agreed to work with Barron Collier to build a planned community around the school, with the profit split down the middle.

What they envisioned was an old-fashioned company town with a theocratic twist. Monaghan and Barron Collier would own everything from the local utility company to the building supply that provided concrete for wells and foundations. But the most startling part of the whole arrangement was the plan for governing the community. In Florida, developers can petition to act as the local government for a number of years while a development is under construction. Monaghan and Barron Collier began pushing the Florida state legislature to pass a law that would allow them to control the local government in perpetuity—and, according to an investigation by the Naples Daily News, they eventually succeeded. While their powers were technically limited when it came to regulating behavior, they clearly intended to keep a tight grip on community life. The original letter of intent between Barron Collier and Monaghan said the town would “allow no public activities which are offensive to traditional Christian values or which might represent a scandal to Catholic and Christian sensibilities. Thus, no topless bars, abortion clinics, ‘adult’ bookstores or the like shall be permitted.”

It initially appeared that Ave Maria would be a success for the right wing but now is in serious trouble. Steve Benen summarizes:

Until a few years ago, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Catholic institution founded by billionaire pizza mogul Tom Monaghan, seemed poised to become a top-drawer institution. It was created with the help of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and other prominent conservatives, which gave it credibility in major political circles. Its graduates had an astonishing 100 percent bar passage rate, and many went on to high-powered jobs and prestigious clerkships.

Today it’s among the worst law schools in the country, if not the very worst, and appears to be on the verge of financial collapse.

The reasons for the decline have mostly to do with Monaghan’s hunger for power. He attempted to run the law school and his other education ventures like pizza franchises, opening and closing campuses with little regard for students and faculty, and systematically cracking down on those who questioned his decisions. One devout Catholic professor who voiced oppositions to Monaghan’s plans had his tenure revoked (and his career ruined) based largely on trumped up charges that he sexually abused a coworker.

Dionne Responds to Wild Charges Which Media Accepts

E.J. Dionne notes that the media is far too willing to repeat nonsense attacks from the right without demanding that those who make the attacks can back them up:

Upon Barack Obama’s election, even my most conservative friends who supported John McCain said Obama could do a world of good for poor children in the country by stressing the importance of education, hard work, staying in school and taking responsibility. Yes, those are often thought of as conservative values.

But when Obama proposed to do just that on the first day of school, the far right — without asking any questions or seeking any information — decided to pounce, on the theory that everything Obama did should be attacked relentlessly as part of some secret and dangerous ideological agenda.

Out popped Jim Greer, the Florida Republican chairman, who accused the president of trying to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.”

In a normal world, the media would have asked Greer for proof of such a wild charge and, since he didn’t have any, his press release would have gone into the circular file.

But, no, the media is so petrified of being criticized for being “liberal” that it chose to take a lunatic charge seriously and helped gin up this phony controversy.

Of course there is noting socialist in either Obama’s views or in his speech to school children. Comparing Obama’s speech to those given by other presidents, Dionne concludes:

If that’s “socialist,” then Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and just about every parent in America are “socialists.”

Modern conservatives might have spent a little more time in school learning what “socialism” means.

Dionne also responds to the false right wing meme that their treatment of Obama is justified by the way in which Democrats treated Bush after his election:

Defenders of the right-wing argue that the left said terrible things about George W. Bush. That’s true. What the apologists miss is that the deep anger at Bush did not set in until he had been president for several years. Despite the rage over Florida and the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision, Bush did not face until much later in his administration anything like the hostility that Obama already confronts. Liberals, staunch liberals, were even willing to work with Bush on some issues — remember, for example, Ted Kennedy’s work on the “No Child Left Behind” Act.

And the entire country, including almost all of the left, united behind Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Here, to provide a personal example, is my own column of Oct. 12, 2001. Yes, what I wrote looks naive now, but I’m still glad I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt at that moment.) The far, far left that trashed Bush immediately after 9/11 was isolated and treated as cranky and even subversive by the mainstream media. Note how quickly Van Jones was driven from his administration job for singing that wacky post-9/11 petition. The far left faces much tougher public and media discipline than the far right.

The right-wing decided almost from Day One that a president elected with 53 percent of the vote (and 365 electoral votes) was illegitimate. They are trashing a moderate liberal as a socialist propagandist. They are getting a lot of press coverage for doing so. Where is the accountability?

Am I continuing to be naive in believing that, one of these days, a phalanx of responsible conservatives will stand up to the extremists? Boy, do I miss William F. Buckley Jr.

Newt Gingrich Praises Obama Speech to School Children

While many conservatives have been acting outright paranoid about Barack Obama’s speech to school children, Newt Gingrich has praised it:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended President Barack Obama’s speech to school children Tuesday, urging “every child” to read the remarks.

Some conservative critics have accused the president of trying to “indoctrinate” school children with a speech Tuesday welcoming students back to school, but Gingrich said during an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” that the attacks are without merit.

“President Reagan did it, President George H.W. Bush did it,” he said. “I read the speech yesterday when it was posted and I think the White House was smart to post it.”
“It’s a good speech,” Gingrich added. “I recommend it to everybody if you have any doubts. I would love to have every child in America read it, think about it, and learn that they should stay in school and they should study.”

Many conservatives are claiming that the speech is intended to indoctrinate school children in socialism and are urging boycotts of the speech. The text of the speech is posted here.

Planned Obama Speech Inspires More Paranoia On The Right

The Los Angeles Times on the latest example of delusion and paranoia coming from the conservative movement:

Calls to boycott Obama’s speech to kids offer a disturbing lesson in paranoia

Those who are whipping up hysteria over the president’s address are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion.

While it long ago crossed the borders of reason and civility, the hysteria over healthcare reform is — at some level — understandable, because wellness and infirmity are really just stand-ins for those most terrifying of issues, life and death.

But there is no similar way to rationalize the bizarre controversy now raging over President Obama’s plan to deliver a brief televised address on Tuesday to the nation’s grammar school children.

According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Obama will “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.”

Sounds innocuous. Who, after all, could be against good study habits, personal responsibility and productive lives? As it turns out, quite a number of people who seem to believe that Obama intends to induct their children into — well, it’s not quite clear what they’re afraid of. The Web and talk radio are abuzz with various attempts to organize a boycott of Tuesday’s speech. One group is urging parents to demand that their children be excused from watching the president and be sent instead to the school library to read the Founding Fathers. (The theory, one supposes, is that a good dose of the Federalist Papers will inoculate the young against Obama’s attempts to subvert the republic through good grades.)

On Wednesday, Fox News devoted a substantial portion of one of its prime-time newscasts to a discussion of whether Obama is, in fact, trying to seduce schoolchildren to some darkly obscure personal agenda. The sole guest, a spokesman for the libertarian Cato Institute, reported that “we’ve gotten a lot of calls from people asking, ‘How do I keep my child from being indoctrinated?’ ”

On Thursday, Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, accused the president of attempting to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.” According to Greer, “the idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run healthcare, banks and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating but goes against the beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”

Anxiety over the speech seems particularly high in Texas, where many districts are offering parents involved in the boycott movement the option of taking their children out of class. (Whoever thought we’d see Texas treat advocacy of personal responsibility like sex education?)

The irony wasn’t lost on everybody in the state. Puzzled Texas education officials told the Houston Chronicle that students often watch presidential speeches broadcast during school hours and that, in 1989, President George H.W. Bush specifically spoke to students about drug abuse. “It’s hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than attacking the president of the United States for talking to students about the importance of getting a good education and being a good citizen,” said Kathy Miller, president of a statewide school monitoring group. “I wish our elected leaders were responsible enough to denounce this kind of wild-eyed paranoia. But the problem is too many of them are actually feeding this kind of nonsense — like when the governor flirts with secessionists and state Board of Education members say the president sympathizes with terrorists.”

Miller has identified precisely the process at work in the healthcare hysteria and, increasingly, elsewhere where the GOP thinks it can shove the Obama administration into a ditch. Republican officials such as the Florida state chairman are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion that regards Obama not as an elected official with whom they disagree, but as an illegitimate usurper of the presidency.

That paranoid fantasy is what’s really behind the “birther” movement and the allegations that the president is — take your pick — a secret Marxist or a secret Muslim.

It’s the kind of fanciful anxiety that produces comments like this, posted on a conservative website this week: “Barack Obama and his left-wing Chicago machine regime are putting into place laws and institutions which will insure that there will never again be free elections in America.”

These are the people who are stockpiling ammunition and keeping their children at home next Tuesday.

I recall no such fears from the left when Ronald Reagan and other Republican presidents have given similar speeches to inspire school children.

Supreme Court Rules Against School Performing Strip Search For Ibuprofen

In April I noted a case going to the Supreme Court involving the strip searching of a teenage girl at school to search for suspected contraband Ibuprofen. The court ruled today that her rights were violated. The New York Times reports:

In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.

The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. But in searching her undergarments, they went too far and violated her Fourth Amendment privacy rights, the justices said.

Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.

“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

In fact, no pills were found on Savana when her underwear was examined by two school officials, both women, who were acting on a tip passed along by another student.

Thursday’s ruling sends the case back to the lower courts to assess what damages, if any, should be paid by the school district. But, by a vote of 7 to 2, the Supreme Court held that the individual officials in the case should not be held liable, because “clearly established law” at the time of the search did not show that it violated the Fourth Amendment.