SBOE Committee to Discuss Ethics Concerns

This requires close watching. Faced with growing a growing list of ethics concerns regarding the Texas State Board of Education‘s management of the Permanent School Fund, the board’s Finance Committee is meeting on Friday to review ethics rules. The Austin American-Statesman has the story here. What isn’t clear, however, is whether some board members are more interested […]

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Hoping Hate Will Win Votes in Texas?

When it comes to right-wing extremism, sadly, Texas seems to provide an abundance — especially with political attacks on gay people. Case in point: Congressman Louis Gohmert, an East Texas Republican. Last week during debate over hate crimes legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Gohmert launched into a diatribe comparing homosexuality to bestiality,  necrophilia […]

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New Revelations on SBOE Ethics Concerns

The Dallas Morning News just dropped another ethics bomb on the Texas State Board of Education. The newspaper reports that two board members “have received thousands of dollars in gifts from a company seeking a lucrative contract with the board, records show, and those members have not reported the gifts on financial disclosure forms.” Today’s […]

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Petty

The news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today has generated a variety of reactions, with great surprise being perhaps the most common. Reasonable people can disagree about who should have received the award, and TFN takes no position on that question. But we think most Americans — except perhaps those at the […]

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Grading the Social Studies Experts: ‘Fail’

They call these guys social studies “experts”? Please. If the Texas State Board of Education were to fine David Barton and Peter Marshall for each of the factual errors in their reviews of proposed (first drafts) social studies curriculum standards — as the board fines publishers for errors in textbooks — it would add up […]

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