With the general election campaign moving into high gear after Labor Day, voters will have more opportunities to meet and hear from candidates. League of Women Voters of the Austin Area Education Fund and public television station KLRU in Austin already have one such event scheduled: a debate featuring candidates for the Texas State Board […]
Education
Promoting Political Theology
It’s educational when religious-right leaders reveal — inadvertently or not — the crass ideological calculations that motivate their agendas. A press release yesterday from Terry McIntosh, a Christian minister who evangelizes Muslims in the Middle East, offers a good example. The press release, headlined “America First,” warns Christians “against the dangers of socialism in the […]
Barton: God Drew the Borders
David Barton, recently given a national forum by Fox News host Glenn Beck to promote his revisionist version of American history, has donned his “biblical scholar” hat yet again. This time Barton has declared that “it’s God, not man, who establishes the borders of nations,” a writer for Religion Dispatches reports. Barton’s statement came on his […]
Fox, Schools and the Anti-Muslim Campaign
The Texas State Board of Education debate over social studies curriculum standards last spring drew unprecedented coverage from the national media, most of it reasonably balanced. The exception was coverage from Fox News, including commentator Tucker Carlson. Carlson and his Fox colleagues made so many false and misleading statements on-air about the debate that we […]
The Right’s Distortions on Sex Education
Montanans are seeing a classic right-wing distortion campaign on sex education — much like we saw during the 2009 legislative session in Austin. You will recall that last year right-wing opponents in Texas screamed that medically accurate, evidence-based sex education would “promote recreational and gay sex.” Unfortunately, absurd scare tactics like that cowed enough lawmakers to […]
