it's hard to see this as anything but a veiled (or not so veiled) attack on family values

Do you think that if you took a random sampling of seven adult women who are not married, all seven of them would express joyful glee at being single? Does that square with the experiences your adult female friends share with you?

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others."

Clearly, the liberals were unemployed.

You want an example of bias? The story about the Texas school board's changes to the state curriculum?

Does he not realize that the campaign is over?

You want an example of bias? The story about the Texas school board's changes to the state curriculum? The New York Times reported on it here.

No doubt in the Commerce Clause

Health Care Pushes Other Issues to the Margins
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — One weekend last month, American forces drove into the Marja area of southern Afghanistan, opening the biggest military operation of the Obama presidency. In the five weeks since then, President Obama has made 38 speeches, statements or other public remarks and never once mentioned the operation.

In fact, amid roughly 100,000 words uttered in these mostly scripted events during that period, the terms “Taliban,” “Marja” and “terrorist” have never passed his lips. Nor has he had anything to say about settlement construction in East Jerusalem, militants in Pakistan or terrorist trials in New York. By contrast, he has used the words “health,” “insurance” or some variation of those terms more than 800 times.

The battle over health care in recent weeks has consumed Mr. Obama’s presidency, not to mention the rest of the nation’s capital, overshadowing virtually every other issue, foreign and domestic. Although his administration and Congress continue to work in other areas, like immigration, energy and jobs, by and large the nation’s leadership has been so fixated on health care that it would be easy to think it is the only issue of real import.

Mr. Obama’s decision to put off his trip to Indonesia and Australia to lobby for health care has undercut his own argument that he was paying attention to the region after his predecessor supposedly neglected it. And even some Democrats worry that his failure to talk about Afghanistan misses an opportunity to rally the public behind the war effort and to express support for the dangerous work of the troops.

309. David Nieporent (now, with child) Posted: March 20, 2010 at 01:41 AM (#3482675)

You want an example of bias?

and it's hard to see this as anything but a veiled (or not so veiled) attack on family values.

, "Mary Helen Berlanga, a lawyer who specializes in immigration, disability, and administrative law

David is just playing at the propagandist's favorite saw, claiming that regardless of merit the journalist must treat all claims as "equal." Creationists write Thomas Jefferson out of the largest Social Studies curriculum in the nation (thus impacting book runs for smaller states will less buying power than Texas?) Well, you have to be "unbiased" and frame that story as a he-said, she-said. Don't you dare let the facts of the matter - or history in this case - "bias" your coverage. It's ########, but that's David's stock and trade.

Plus, what do you care about Republicans? You're a Libertarian.

The one very good thing to be said about libertarians, especially those who run Reason magazine, is their complete absence of "illegal immigration" rhetoric, and their denunciation of the immigrant bashers. Nick Gillespie in particular has been about as principled on that subject as anyone.

No, this is the bull-dung. Ofc the creationists are idiots

Nope (judging, again, from the self-described Libertarians who post here).

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

They want to cut Thomas Jefferson out of a history textbook

But what you are not free to do is treat the people as unequal. David rightly points out that the professions of the Republicans are listed, and the Democrats not**. Is this a big thing? I don't know, depends on context. But it is unfair. The article should have mentioned all professions or none. I don't see a conspiracy, it's probably just the unconscious bias of the journalist at play. But people write based on their unconscious bias, journalists are overwhelmingly liberal, and so it goes.

David is a liberal-baiter more than anything else. Whatever position he thinks liberals will take, he argues the opposite. Which can be very amusing when he guesses wrong and has to back-peddle to explain why he doesn't really agree with liberals. To me, it seems like an intellectual exercise for him, which is perfectly normal for a lawyer. You're supposed to practice making arguments you don't necessarily agree with if you want to represent others.

I wonder exactly how many of the political pundits that occupy the airwaves each day actually believe what they are saying.

What they want is to write *The Enlightenment* out of history.

David rightly points out that the professions of the Republicans are listed, and the Democrats not**. Is this a big thing? I don't know, depends on context. But it is unfair. The article should have mentioned all professions or none.

In her book, One Nation Under God (Onward, 2008), Dunbar (on p. 100) calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.” She charges that the establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical” because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children (p. 103). Link.

In a column posted on the Christian Worldview Network Web site, Dunbar wrote that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration "will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny." Link

People are equal, but their ideas are not. Their ideas should be judged by the quality of their logic and by the knowledge of the person who espouses the idea. In the fields of science and history, there is a legitimate bias in favor of the generally accepted view on any particular subject matter. When a group of people who are politically motivated try to alter the teaching of generally accepted views on science or history, it is perfectly acceptable to ask, in essence "What the #### do they know about this?". Listing the employment of the members of this group is a fairly subtle way of asking this question. People who are supporting the accepted view are legitimately subject to less scrutiny, because they have the weight of the majority of the scientific or historian community at their back.

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.”

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

Note: Creationism did not feature anywhere, so stop bringing it up.

That's a very good point, but in fairness I think you'll find that most of the better MSM reporters (not opinionaters) are fairly well versed in the subjects they cover, even if not as knowledgeable as someone who's been in the field for his or her entire life.

My guess is most of them know they're playing a political game appealing to rubes. Savage seems to be serious in his beliefs, however nutty. And O'Reilly too, as much as he has beliefs beyond his narcissism. Rush always seemed like a scam to me.

That's actually one of most unintentionally hilarious parts about this whole "dispute." Prior to the last decade or so, Texas had, as it has now, a large impact on textbook publication.

Of course when you have some twentysomething from the Style section or the magazine writing a rah-rah feature on a charter school, two weeks after he's written an article about Cal Ripken's family values, that's another story altogether, and that is indeed a problem.

Currently however, California has virtually no impact on the textbook market because we are flat broke

In view of that, maybe a page or two of Friedman and Hayek isn't such a bad idea- maybe California could grab a couple of Texas high-schoolers and have them teach some basic economics to the folks in Sacramento.

The Mac is superior in the same way that my 5yo nephew's crayon drawings are superior to the Mona Lisa.

Not one controversial claim wrt established science or history is mentioned in the article.

Now, do I agree with what these people are trying to do? No. But my objection is not that they are making stuff up, it's that they are (1) distorting balance and (2) politicising the textbooks. For example, the internment of Germans and Italians was minor compared to the internment of Japanese, and doesn't really refute the charge of racism.

By presenting insignificant and irrelevant facts side by side with much more significant events, these people are trying to tell a version of history which supports their ideology, but that almost all scholars would views as seriously distorted. I understand your point, but I'm not quite so charitable. These people may be clever about it, but there's no doubt that they are trying to tell a lie.

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

All this stuff really happened. It's uncontroversial. Now, you may not think these are good things, but then, that's true of any past events.

So what we actually have is two sides, each trying to promote an ideological agenda through textbooks. And the NYT only calls into question the qualifications of one side.

No real need to go to the Commerce Clause for this one. It's pretty clear that the state has the authority to take your taxes and spend them on Medicare. As such, you are being "forced" to buy medical insurance for others. The state could just as legally take your taxes and fund "Medicare for all", thus making you pay for insurance for yourself. The personal mandate is the same thing, only it allows you to find your own provider rather than buying one for you.

Plus, what do you care about Republicans? You're a Libertarian.

I won't applaud if they write a story slanted against Democrats, either.

I point out that this entire problem is caused by government schools, with bureaucrats deciding what children should be taught

I have to admit that I've been pretty surprised to discover, from the last few years of reading BTF, that there appears not to be a dime's worth of difference between Republicans & Libertarians. I've never been a fan of either, but still, I'd assumed some real distinctions existed. Nope (judging, again, from the self-described Libertarians who post here).

Reason used to be a readable magazine. Since Jan 20, 2009, not so much. They may avoid the most blatantly racist tropes of the natalist-right but for the most part they've become a house organ for the obstructionist GOP.

Nieporent and DiPerna both argue with the Demos/Lefties here as if they (Nieporent and DiPerna) are Republicans. This sequence, with Ray's talking about "family values", and pissing on Obama for, shockingly, conducting himself like a typical pol; and Nieporent's having the backs of Creationists on the Texas SBOE, is another example.

David is a liberal-baiter more than anything else. Whatever position he thinks liberals will take, he argues the opposite. Which can be very amusing when he guesses wrong and has to back-peddle to explain why he doesn't really agree with liberals. To me, it seems like an intellectual exercise for him, which is perfectly normal for a lawyer. You're supposed to practice making arguments you don't necessarily agree with if you want to represent others.

And Ray (or any other lawyers here, for that matter), do you think you know more about law than Linda Greenhouse?

This sequence, with Ray's talking about "family values",

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

Entirely predictable that her true goal is to destroy public education. Hate to be cynical, but political libertarians will line up with creationists when their ends align.

I point out that this entire problem is caused by government schools, with bureaucrats deciding what children should be taught

This sounds like Nieporentian liberal-baiting. If it isn't, you once said--correctly--that there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence. I said you should keep that in mind the next time you want to share your thoughts on education.

And Ray (or any other lawyers here, for that matter), do you think you know more about law than Linda Greenhouse?

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

Knight has the gall to accuse her opponents of perverting accurate history, when she wants to teach students something that is absolutely, objectively, false.

Guys, its a ####### textbook. Any history teacher worth his salt would be able to teach beyond the ####### text. If Texas gets its #### passed, it would be annoying but not impossible to overcome.