Bad Deeds for 7-8-2009

Texas Gov. Perry May Appoint Rightwing Extremist to Head State Board of Education – The Houston Chronicle reports Gov. Rick Perry is seriously considering nominating Cynthia Dunbar to lead the State Board of Education.

According to the Houston Chronicle:

In a book published last year, Dunbar argued the country’s founding fathers created “an emphatically Christian government” and that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.” She endorses a belief system that requires “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.”

Also in the book, she calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”

The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical,” she wrote, because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children.

We don’t use the phrase “rightwing nut job” lightly. Gov. Perry has gone too far.

Tell Gov. Perry: Don’t mess with public education in Texas — we won’t accept the appointment of Cynthia Dunbar to lead the State Board of Education. Click the link.

 

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R) Says Earth is 6, 000 Years Old – Arizona state Senator Sylvia Allen (R) voices support for opening up uranium mining in the state. Senator Allen responds to statements by environmentalists by assuring them that the “”The earth has been here for 6,000 years – long before anybody had environmental laws – and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.”

 

Industry-Friendly Nominee for Food Safety Working Group? – A recent issue of Agri-Pulse gave us some bad news. Obama’s considering Michael Taylor to head his new Food Safety Working Group. Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency’s decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto’s genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows.

 

Thugs in Massey Coal Shirts Invade Keeper of the Mountains July 4th Celebration, Try to Bang Heads – Keeper of the Mountains are a West Virginia group opposed to ‘mountain top removal‘ mining. ‘MTR’ is basically wanton environmental destruction, ultra-strip mining, a just-blow-the-sh!t-up ‘energy industry’ practice. The ‘who wouldn’t want a moonscape?’ transformation of beautiful West Virginia.

At the link above is a video sure to get your blood boiling.

 

Young Republicans to Run Candidate Guilty of Voter Fraud – On July 11th, the Young Republicans will once again run a candidate for national Chairman with a criminal background. The candidate, Rachel Hoff, pled guilty to the misdemeanor of notarizing absentee ballot signatures without actually witnessing them during the 2004 South Dakota Senate race, when she was working for the state Republican Party. In 2007, Glen Murphy, then current Chair of the YRNF, plead guilty of Sexual Assault. He was charged for Sexual Battery doing the exact same thing in 1998.

 

Sarah Palin Hallucinates About White House Department of Law – In an ABC News interview released Tuesday, Sarah Palin said, ““I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at this, the things we have been charged with, and automatically throw them out, not make somebody hire their own personal attorney to get out there and fight.”

ABC’s Kate Snow and Rick Klein noted, “There is no ‘department of law’ at the White House.”

 

Palin Speech Causes iPhone App to Explode – In what it hopes will be a blockbuster addition to its trove of popular iPhone applications, Apple announced today that it was introducing a new app that can translate the utterances of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin into English.

The application, called the iPal, is available for downloading today, the company confirmed.
According to Apple, a user of the iPal app can hold his iPhone up to a television when Ms. Palin is appearing and receive a real-time English translation in text form.

Carol Foyler, 34, an early adopter of the iPal app, said that the application is not without its glitches, however.

“I tried to use it last night during a replay of her resignation speech,” she said. “When she got to the part about being a good point guard, my phone exploded.”

 

Republicans Continue to Be Out-of-Touch With the Rest of America – Sarah Palin’s bombshell that she is resigning as Alaska governor actually has boosted her a bit among Republicans, a nationwide USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, though it also has dented her standing among Democrats and independents. Two-thirds of Republicans want Palin, the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, to be “a major national political figure” in the future. Three-fourths of Democrats hope she won’t be. Independents by 55%-34% would prefer she leave the national stage.

 

Bank Lobbyist’s Freudian Slip: ‘We’re Not For Any Regulation’ – Today, Scott Talbott, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at The Financial Services Roundtable (one of the financial services industry’s main lobbying arms) appeared on C-Span to discuss the Obama administration’s proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The Roundtable has already made its opposition to the new agency abundantly clear, while claiming there are other ways to enhance financial regulations. However, when asked what the Roundtable would support, Talbott slipped and said “we’re not for any regulation“

 

Detainees, Even if Acquitted, Might Not Go Free – The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission. Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department’s chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. Officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in future, while prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for war crimes committed in the past.

Regards,

Jim