Teen Stands Up To Brownback, Refuses to Apologize For Negative Tweet

November 28, 2011 — Ron Chusid

I recently posted a story about a teenager who tweeted a negative comment about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to her sixty-five followers. Brownback’s office, monitoring for negative on-line comments, found the tweet and reported this to her school’s principal. Neither the principal or Brownback’s office showed any appreciation of First Amendment rights and the principal demanded that the girl apologize to Brownback.

The student has refused to apologize. AP reports:

A Kansas teenager who wrote a disparaging tweet about Gov. Sam Brownbacksaid Sunday that she is rejecting her high school principal’s demand for a written apology.

Emma Sullivan, 18, of the Kansas City suburb of Fairway, said she isn’t sorry and doesn’t think such a letter would be sincere.

The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka, Kan., when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback’s greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback,” and then specified what the comments were.

She actually made no such comment and said she was “just joking with friends.” But Brownback’s office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor’s name, saw Sullivan’s post and contacted the Youth in Government program.

Sullivan received a scolding at school and was ordered to send Brownback an apology letter. She said Prinicipal Karl R. Krawitz even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to turn in Monday.

Her mother is showing far better understanding of freedom of speech than either the principal or Brownback.

Sullivan’s mother, Julie, said she isn’t angry with her daughter, even though she thinks she “could have chosen different words.”

“She wasn’t speaking to the 3,000 followers she has now,” Julie Sullivan said. “She was talking to 65 friends. And also it’s the speech they use today. It’s more attention grabbing. I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers.

“If she wants to tweet her opinion about Gov. Brownback, I say for her to go for it and I stand totally behind her.”

 Update: Brownback has apologized for the over-reaction of his staff.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Civil Liberties, Republicans. Tags: , , . 2 Comments »

Michele Bachmann First To Sign Pledge Banning Pornography And Calling Homosexuality An Unhealthy Choice

July 8, 2011 — Ron Chusid

There was  a time when there typically was a religious right candidate in the Republican primaries. Such candidates would inevitably be beaten by the establishment candidate. Today the religious right dominates the GOP, and almost all candidates promote social conservatism. It will be interesting to see how many candidates sign a pledge from Family Leader. Michele Bachmann was the first to sign this:

Presidential candidates who sign the pledge must agree to personal fidelity to his or her spouse, the appointment of “faithful constitutionalists” as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy and divorce law.

The Marriage Vow also outlines support for the legal advocacy for the federal Defense of Marriage Act, humane efforts to protect women and children, rejection of Sharia Islam, safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. military service members, and commitment to downsizing government and the burden upon American families.

In addition, candidates are asked to recognize that “robust childrearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.”

In addition, Think Progress reports that this calls for the banning of “all forms” of pornography and states that homosexuality is both a choice and a health risk. Undoubtedly conservatives will fail to see how these conflict with claims to support limited government, not to mention violating the First Amendment.

I would love to see Democratic candidates counter this with a pledge to support individual liberty, including each individual’s right to chose who to marry, uphold the First Amendment, and preserve a social safety net to protect families in need. Unfortunately we know that Democrats are not very likely to openly stand up for liberal principles in such a manner.

Posted in Republicans, Social Issues. Tags: , , , , . 15 Comments »

Sharon Angle’s Religious War

August 4, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Sharon Angle has previously called “Second Amendment remedies” to pursue the Tea Party platform, and possibly to take out Harry Reid. Another sign of her theocratic views has been found in an interview on Christian talk radio:

“And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.”

This mindset will further reinforce to some that religion infuses everything Angle believes but also might explain her hostility to government programs, believing essentially they are produced by a false God. And she frames the race as one she has been praying over for some time, a war of ideologies and faith: “And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change.”

Is this a political campaign or a call for a religious war. Is this call for “warriors to stand beside me” another version of her call for “Second Amendment remedies”?

I think that Sharon Angle needs to pay less attention to the Bible and First Commandment and more to the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Posted in Republicans, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Court Rules Against Bush Era Censorship Under Indecency Rules

July 13, 2010 — Ron Chusid

An appeals court has thrown out the indecency policy used by the FCC during the Bush administration to attack the media. Media Decoder reports:

A United States appeals court tossed out the indecency policy of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, calling it a violation of the First Amendment.

An appeals panel said the F.C.C. policy was “unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.”

The ruling was immediately characterized as a victory for big broadcasters like ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, which have been fighting the indecency policy for years.

Tuesday’s ruling vacates a 2004 decision by the Bush administration F.C.C. to step up enforcement of the indecency policy on the broadcast airwaves. Earlier that year, the singer Janet Jackson’s breast was bared during the Super Bowl halftime show on CBS, reigniting a decades-old debate about broadcast standards.

For once even Fox is on the right side in this battle against censorship:

In a statement, Fox Broadcasting said it was extremely pleased by Tuesday’s decision. “We have always felt that the government’s position on fleeting expletives was unconstitutional,” said the company, a unit of the News Corporation. “While we will continue to strive to eliminate expletives from live broadcasts, the inherent challenges broadcasters face with live television, coupled with the human element required for monitoring, must allow for the unfortunate isolated instances where inappropriate language slips through.”

This is a positive move towards defending First Amendment rights, but I wonder what will happen if this goes to the Supreme Court which remains under right wing domination.

Update: A Message For The FCC

Posted in Civil Liberties, Courts, George Bush, Television. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

The American Taliban Uses Religion To Justify Discrimination

June 5, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Robert Stacy McCain, in discussing Robert Knight’s column, writes “In the secular world of modern intellectualism, it is too easy to forget that not everyone is secular, worldly or modern.” Actually with one of the major political parties in this country becoming outright theocratic and desiring to deny our First Amendment rights to separation of church and state, this is something we never forget. We are often shocked to see such views expressed in 21st century America. In his column entitled We’re smarter than God, Robert Knight (author of Radical Rulers: The White House Elites Who Are Pushing America Toward Socialism) falls back on religious views to justify discrimination against  homosexuals.

It is easy for the authoritarian right to accept Knight’s argument as McCain does since “more than 97% of Americans are heterosexual.” It is not justified to use one’s religious views to promote government restrictions upon the rights of any minority, regardless of how small.

Knight and McCain are convinced that god is on their side in opposing homosexuality and preservation of discrimination against gays in the military. Knight writes:

Those of us who believe that God created male and female and that sex outside marriage – adultery, fornication and homosexuality – is wrong and harmful, are just not being intelligent. It’s apparently not enough to love friends and family who are into homosexuality; we have to love the behavior that threatens their bodies and souls.

The problem with this view is that the world is full of many people with many views as to the nature of god, whether there is a god, and if there is a god what god actually believes about human conduct. No side in such debates has any real evidence and it all comes down to one’s opinion. The founding fathers recognized this when they devised a secular government with separation of church and state.

In secular America, everyone is entitled to their religious views but religious views are to never be the  justification for government policy. Constitutional scholar and then candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Barack Obama expressed such a theocratic position during the CNN/You Tube debate in 2007, arguing “we are under obligation in public life to translate our religious values into moral terms that all people can share, including those who are not believers. And that is how our democracy’s functioning, will continue to function. That’s what the founding fathers intended.” Obama also discussed separation of church and state when interviewed by CBN in 2007:

For my friends on the right, I think it would be helpful to remember the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy but also our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves.

It was the forbearers of Evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they didn’t want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it. Given this fact, I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism.

Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers. We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community.

Those who believe homosexuality is morally wrong are free to refrain from homosexual relations but do not have the right to impose this view upon others. Even many who are religious agree that we should not impose our views upon others.  McCain expresses a bizarre and nonexistent fear in writing, “Homosexuality may no longer forbidden, but it is not mandatory — yet.”

When Republicans pursue policies based upon religious views there is certainly a difference in degree but morally they are no different than the Taliban or any other group supporting theocracy and opposing the modern world. Such a tremendous difference in world views is also something we must remember when Obama and other Democrats sometimes pursue policies we disagree with. Most people will never agree with any political party on all issues, but that is a different matter from opposing the overall theocratic worldview held by the authoritarian right.

Posted in Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Op-eds, Separation of Church and State, Social Issues. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Sarah Palin Still Does Not Understand The First Amendment

May 27, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Back during the 2008 campaign I noted how Sarah Palin thought the purpose of the First Amendment was to protect politicians such as herself from criticism by the press. Speaking in Idaho recently Palin showed that she still has not learned what the First Amendment means.  Palin complained about media coverage of a local conservative politician by saying, “I think it’s appalling and a violation of our freedom of the press.”

Palin  showed no respect for the actual First Amendment when she tried to practice censorship in Wasilla (here and here). It makes one wonder what she learned when receiving that degree in communications.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Republicans vs. Secular America

May 27, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Dan Kennedy warned in The Guardian about the leading Republican candidates who are blatantly disregarding First Amendment rights as they ignore the secular nature of our government as established by the Founding Fathers:

If you’re part of secular America – that is, if you’re an atheist, an agnostic, a religious liberal or even a mainstream believer who thinks religion should be kept out of politics and vice-versa – then you should be very afraid of what the Republican party has in store for you in 2012.

No news there, you might say. The Republicans, as we all know, have been in thrall to the Christian right since the Reagan era. But there’s something new, something more intolerant, something truly ugly in the works. And if you don’t believe me, let’s start with Tim Pawlenty, unassuming governor of Minnesota in his day job, fire-breathing Christian warrior and aspiring presidential candidate in his spare time.

“I want to share with you four ideas that I think should carry us forward,” Pawlenty said on Friday at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC. After invoking “basic constitutional principle and basic common sense,” he continued:

“The first one is this: God’s in charge. God is in charge … In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn’t say we’re endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It’s by our creator that we are given these rights.”

Never mind Pawlenty’s fundamental and no doubt deliberate misreading of the founders’ intent. (Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, is well-known for having cut up a Bible to remove all supernatural references to Jesus.) How, in practice, does Pawlenty envision “God’s in charge” as a governing principle?

Pawlenty didn’t say. But he oozed mild-mannered hatred for anyone who doesn’t share his beliefs. In a bizarre closing in which he invoked the civil war general (and future president) Ulysses S Grant as some sort of rough-around-the-edges, proto-Tea Party role model, Pawlenty trashed anyone who attended “Ivy League schools” or who go to “chablis-drinking, brie-eating parties in San Francisco”. (You can watch Pawlenty’s address at CSPAN.org, starting at the 1:38:30 mark.) It sounded like a parody of Pat Buchanan’s famous 1992 “culture war” speech. Except that Pawlenty is one of the Republicans’ two most plausible candidates for president in 2012.

The other would be former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who fell far short of the prize in 2008, but whose legendary self-discipline has put him in a strong position for 2012.

The trouble is that Romney has already declared war on secular America. In December 2007, you may recall, he delivered a speech in which he defended his Mormon religion at a time when he was under assault from evangelical Christians. It was, in many respects, a sensible plea for religious tolerance.

Except that Romney called for tolerance only among believers, explicitly omitting non-believers. “Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me,” Romney said. “And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.”

As New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote the next day, “Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious.” Brooks – a conservative, though a secular one – warned that Romney was calling for “a culture war without end”.

Kennedy concentrated on Romney and Pawlenty as he considers them early front runners but warns that two potential fringe candidates are even worse:

If you have not seen Sarah Palin asking God to build a natural-gas pipeline in Alaska, well, do yourself a favour right now (see also her recent speech at the Tea Party convention). Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, personifies the Christian right in its purest form. “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” Huckabee said in 1998. There is no reason to think he’s changed his mind.

“While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us,” wrote James Madison.

In contrast to Madison, the Republicans propose a theocracy of believers. It is an assault not just on anyone who isn’t one of them, but on the American idea, and on liberal democracies everywhere.

He excludes Ron Paul from his warnings  but I believe it is only because he has not paid much attention to Paul, not considering him a credible candidate. Despite the common misapplication of the libertarian label to Paul, he also opposes separation of church and state and in many ways is as big a threat to liberty as the establishment Republican candidates.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Texas School Board Drops American History Down The Memory Hole

May 22, 2010 — Ron Chusid

The Texas social studies curriculum requirements which I discussed a few days ago have passed on a party line vote. Needless to say, it was the more Taliban-like party which supported remodeling our educational system more along the Soviet model to promote ideological purity.The Texas Board of Education has voted to drop the actual facts about our history down an Orwellian memory hole.

The new standards ignore the views of the founding fathers and are written based upon the mistaken belief of the Republicans that the United States was founded as a Christian country. They ignore the actual beliefs of the Founding Fathers–denying their intent to form a secular government which includes separation of church and state. Presumably to avoid being embarrassed by the writings of Thomas Jefferson, which make it clear that the First Amendment was intended to create a wall of separation between church and state, the new standards remove Jefferson from a list of enlightened thinkers in world history.

There are multiple other historical fictions which will be taught, for example:

The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated — something most historians deny — draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis’s and Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, say that international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty, and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn.

This is the second incident this week showing a problem with federalism. coming after Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul expressed opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Personally I think that the reactionaries on the Texas school board who desire to use children in their political games should be charged with child abuse.

The new standards are to be instituted in the fall of 2011. One fear is that the size of the Texas market might lead publishers to change text books sold nationally to meet these standards. Several states are considering legislation to prohibit the use of text books which are rewritten on such ideological grounds. I wonder if this might even accelerate a move towards ebooks in the classrooms, making it easier to have books with different versions of history available. If hard copies are made they might even have red and blue covers.

In addition to efforts by other state legislatures to prohibit the purchase of text books written with such ideological bias I would love to see universities refuse to accept diplomas from Texas high schools and require applicants from Texas to pass a high school equivalency exam which includes actual American history.

The Texas Freedom Network has been posting information on the curriculum along with attempting to fight the changes.

Update: I now read that, in response to national criticism, Thomas Jefferson has been rehabilitated. Positively Orwellian.

Posted in Education, Republicans, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , . 7 Comments »

Texas Board of Education Using Curriculum Standards To Rewrite History and Eliminate First Amendment Rights

May 17, 2010 — Ron Chusid

The Texas Board of Education has been trying to rewrite history and spread right wing views with their proposed curriculum standards. This extends even beyond the expected attacks on science from the right. As the right wing opposes separation of church and state they are using their guidelines to rewrite history, including ignoring  the writings of the founding fathers regarding the meaning of the First Amendment, along with rewriting history in several other areas:

New changes a Texas State Board of Education member wants to make to proposed curriculum standards represent a stunning rewrite of American history on issues ranging from religious freedom to civil rights and would politicize public school classrooms, the president of the Texas Freedom Network said today.

“Even at the eleventh hour, board members are trying to rewrite history and promote political agendas in our kids’ classrooms,” TFN President Kathy Miller said. “The education of our schoolchildren should be based on the work of academic experts and scholars, not the political biases and fringe ideas of dentists, realtors and other politicians on the state board.”

Don McLeroy, a Republican board member from College Station, has circulated to board colleagues changes he plans to recommend next week when the board resumes debate over proposed new curriculum standards for social studies. Among the changes McLeroy wants to make:

· Add a standard to the eighth-grade U.S. history course that maintains separation of church and state was not the intent of the Founders who drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights: “Contrast the Founders’ intent relative to the wording of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, with the popular term ‘Separation of church and state.’”

· Strike from a standard in the high school U.S. history course a 1948 court decision, Delgado v. Bastrop ISD, that barred segregation of students of Mexican descent in Texas public schools. McLeroy proposes replacing that decision with 2009 Supreme Court employment discrimination decision involving white firefighters in Connecticut (Ricci v. DeStefano) and a 2005 decision dealing with the government’s powers of eminent domain (Kelo v. City of New London).

· Change a high school U.S. history standard to downplay the positive impact of Progressive Era reforms and suggest that the work of the era’s reformers like Upton Sinclair, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. DuBois created a negative portrayal of America.

· Add a standard to high school U.S. history requiring students to “evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U.S. sovereignty.”

· Add a standard to high school U.S. history having students “discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio.”

George Orwell couldn’t have described a more scary scenario in 1984.

Posted in Education, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , , . 7 Comments »

Maine Republicans Adopt Extremist Tea Party Platform

May 10, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Maine in recent years has been unusual on the east coast for having two Republican Senators, who are among the few remaining moderate Republicans left in the country. I wonder how long it will be before the tea party decides to purge them as occurred with a  conservative (but not conservative enough) Senator in Utah last weekend. As a sign of where they are going, Maine Republicans have adopted the tea party platform. Maine Politics reports:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion’” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”

It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.

Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”

Among the other “nutcase stuff,” the platform prohibits any funding to ACORN or other groups they dislike (or have black members), declares marriage to be an institution between a man and a woman,  calls to discard political correctness and fight the war against radical Islam to win,  and advocates sealing the borders.

Their fear and hatred of minorities is seen, beyond repeating the usual right wing smears against organizations such as ACORN, by their views on immigration.  They call for “No amnesty, no benefits, no citizenship -ever- for anyone in the country illegally. Arrest and detain, for a specified period of time, anyone here illegally, and then deport, period.” It’s “deport, baby, deport” on immigration, and “drill, baby, drill” on energy.

The same ignorance of health care is seen in this document as we saw throughout the health care debate. Their ideas on expanding coverage cost control are the same ineffective ideas I’ve debunked in many previous posts. They attack a non-existent “government take-over of health care” as being unconstitutional, declaring health care is not a right but “a service.” Elsewhere in the document they demand that, “Congress participates in the same health care plan as the general public. No preferential plans or treatment.” They remain oblivious to the fact that one of the driving ideas behind health care reform was to give the rest of the country the same type of health care choices as Congress now has.

I even think someone pulled out a Ouija board to contact Ayn Rand to add this clause: “Espouse and follow the principle: It is immoral to steal the property rightfully earned by one person, and give it to another who has no claim or right to its benefits.” This ignores both the fact that “property rightfully earned by one person” can be earned only with the infrastructure created by government, which must tax to preserve it, along with the need for a safety net.

In this document full of outright lunacy I especially find it ironic that they quote Thomas Jefferson in one section while also distorting the meaning of the First Amendment elsewhere. After all, Jefferson is probably quoted the most to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers did in fact intend to create a secular government with a strict wall of separation of church and state. Apparently they will quote him when convenient but ignore his actual liberal beliefs. While they oppose the First Amendment, they do strongly support the Second.

If they continue like this the Republicans are on the road to extinction, despite the likelihood of picking up some seats seats this year. A party cannot continue with views which so racially oppose the values which this nation was founded upon. If this lunacy continues, sane Republicans will have no choice but to remove this element from its base or leave the party.

Posted in Environment, Health Care, Republicans, Ron Paul, Separation of Church and State, Social Issues. Tags: , , , , , , , . No Comments »
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