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GETS FORMER SEQUOIA CO. VP NAMED AS ADVISER TO U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Earlier this month, Obama made his first official move to corrupt and undermine the 2010 elections. The move consisted in the little noticed appointment of a technical adviser to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The importance of the appointment was explained at The Brad Blog last Monday. The Official Press Release of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission read as follows: U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION 1225 New York Ave. NW – Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20005 For Immediate Release December...

The Democrats have consistently cultivated a public image as the party of the little guy, the party that stands up against big interests and protects the rights of minorities. You would think that a program that helps minority students, lowers costs, and increases funds for public schools would be right up their alley. You would be wrong. The Democrats in Congress have essentially killed Washington D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program effectively throwing nearly 2000 disadvantaged students back into one of the worst school systems in the country. The very popular program had a long waiting list and has strong support in...

Israel, A Bird’s Eye View by Ari Bussel Israel from above is a miracle and looks too innocent to be generating all the havoc around her. As we increase our distance into the clouds, she looks petite, fragile, almost under-developed, clearly out of proportion with the daily uproar that surrounds her. Flights to Europe that depart at the early morning hours are a disaster, forcing one to wake up at 2AM in order to leave at 3AM for the airport to catch a 5:30AM flight. Essentially, the night’s rest is ruined, nonetheless, seeing the horizon lit with a yellowish-reddish light...

To boost the economy out of the recession, President Obama has chosen to spend an additional $100 billion on public schooling over the next two years. His education secretary, Arne Duncan, is touring the nation to promote this education "stimulus." However well-intentioned, their effort isn't just futile; it's also counterproductive. Far from being an engine of wealth creation, the education system is bleeding the economy to death. The U.S. spends 2.3 times as much per pupil in real, inflation-adjusted dollars as it spent in 1970, but the return on this ballooning investment has been less than nothing. Student achievement at...

LEBANON — When a parent complained in the fall that putting “Silent Night” on a school’s holiday program was focusing too much on a single religion, Principal Mark Finch scratched the carol. But after the Pioneer School pupils finished their concert Tuesday, members of the audience sang it anyway.

A recalcitrant teachers union in Florida once again shows that reform for the sake of the kids doesn't interest it. A federal program called Race to the Top bestows federal money on any district that institutes merit pay and reforms its schools. Guess who hates the idea. Yep, you guessed it: Florida's teachers unions. Instead of launching in full support of school reform in order to help kids get a better education, the union has announced that it will instead be foot draggers and opposers... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Teachers Force School Childen to Celebrate "Santa Diet Holiday" Instead of Christmas

Are Boys Just “Unruly Girls?” Deborah Lambert, December 18, 2009 Is the so-called discrimination against girls and women in school just another scam that should be lumped into the same category as “global warming” and “health care reform?” According to Phyllis Schlafly, the answer is a definite “yes.” Schlafly pointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights plan to investigate whether colleges are “discriminating against women by admitting less qualified men” as the latest attempt by the feminist lobby to “sell the false propaganda that girls are cheated all through the education system, K through 12.” What ever happened to...

MESQUITE, Texas - Joe Mitchell says all he wanted to do was make crosses as gifts for friends when he signed up for a ceramics class at Eastfield Community College in Mesquite.Instead, he says, the ceramics instructor compared the crucifix to a swastika in trying to explain why crosses were not permitted.“I felt humiliated and that my spirituality was being demeaned,” said Mitchell, a retired Dallas resident and student at the public college. “The whole point of art is to express who you are.”Mitchell says he was told on several occasions by instructors and administrative staff that he could...

Forgive me dear readers. I must be blunt and brutally honesty here. Let the chips fall where they may. I about had enough of the lies from D.C. from both sides of the aisle. I do admit I need to have the grammar police visit as I am not a writer and this article is really my blog entry. I’m willing to bet this will upset you deeply no matter if you are of the left right or center. It is the thought that counts as they say and I need to say and back up what millions and millions...

Most people involved in public affairs fall into two grand schools: Some believe that America is a unique nation, a nation built upon extraordinary and good moral values, and a country which is a microcosm of what the world should be. These people need not be Americans. Churchill, for example, was an unabashed admirer of America. Other people believe that America is simply a very arrogant country, a nation inhabited with bumpkins who believe too much in God, and because of its religious faith and confidence, the antithesis of what the world should be. This animus flourishes outside America, but...

Minnesota must be so proud of this moron, Franken has the chair and denies Lieberman an additional moment to finish his remarks saying "I object" while sitting in the chair, McCain scolds Franken and said it was the first time he has ever seen this...BTW, If a Republican has done this all H*** would break loose...(Video)

(912 on the mall) The left's anti-American coup d'etat on America, made possible by the first radical Marxist in the White House, calls for distinctly American counter measures. Dr. Jack Wheeler has "a strategy for any Republican wanting to get elected or re-elected to Congress in 2010, and for any Tea Partyer wanting to take individual action now against a government that ignores the Constitution -- Defund and Disobey." Here's an excerpt of "The Double -D Strategy for rescuing America": Let's talk about the Defund D first. The Founders in their usual brilliance place the power of the purse in...

Demand for the removal of homosexual advocate Kevin Jennings from his position as chief of the Department of Education's Office of Safe Schools is growing, with the Washington Post saying the appointment was wrong and thousands joining a petition. WND reported efforts by the organization Jennings founded, the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network, to indoctrinate young children into the homosexual lifestyle when a conference later dubbed "Fistgate" was held in Massachusetts in 2000. At GrassrootsNation.com, several thousand people have signed a new petition addressed to Obama, demanding Jennings' dismissal. "As a citizen of the United States of America I respectfully...

The biggest gift came from Swift herself. The singer has donated $250,000 to schools around the country that she's either attended or worked with. The money will pay teachers' salaries as well as buy books and fund various educational programs. "Something I wanted to do at the end of this amazing year and especially on my birthday was give back to something I really believe in, which is education," says Swift. "The schools that I went to and the amazing people I got to learn from really turned me into who I am, and I wanted to give back."

A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero. Hudson New York reported: An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques. At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001....

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has just signed a bill into law that forces schools to teach the glories of organized labor and collective bargaining. Doyle has received significant campaign contributions from labor unions over the years prior to forcing their special interest agenda into the classroom. Ever since unions have been involved in teaching, our system has spiraled into laughable mediocrity. It is what happens when you abandon actual education to turn children into racially-sensitive little environmentalists. Teachers' unions even tried to have the fact that 9/11 was committed by Muslim extremists scrubbed from the history books. Their effect on...

Todd and I would like to offer our best wishes to the Jewish community as they celebrate Hanukkah. Known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah commemorates the eight-day miracle that took place when the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated. Though there was only enough consecrated oil for one day, the flame miraculously burned for eight – just long enough to prepare more. This beautiful story is rich with life lessons for members of all faiths. With hope and dedication nothing is impossible, and the Almighty never abandons those who seek the light. - Sarah Palin “Trace the universe back to...

The Islamic Circle of North America has been named in "a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends" by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is bent on waging "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." They say they want to encourage dialogue via these billboards. Great. I'll start. The billboard says that Islam is "the way of life of Adam, Noah, Abraham,...

Indiana's financial shortfall has hit the education sector. Gov. Daniels has sent the message to the state's education leader, that K-12 must cut $300 million from the state's funding because of a $1.8 billion dollar shortfall in revenue. He has asked for school corporations through out the state to find ways to reduce their financial output with out laying off teachers or increasing class sizes. His suggestions are things such as freezing wages and diminishing benefits.

In another example of the so-called "major media" refusing to print anything negative about President Obama, they have given scant attention to the problems associated with Kevin Jennings, his Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is the guy who gave advice to a fifteen-year-old high school student about how to protect himself when he was having sex with an adult man. Mr. Jennings was told that the boy met the man in a bus-station restroom, and it seems that the best he could do was to tell the boy, "I hope you knew to use a condom." This is the same guy...

Various state representatives have initiated educational reforms to combat some of the most egregious problems in our educational system. Representative Dorothy Hukill, in particular, deserves high praise for her bill to ban the use of “restraining rooms” for special needs students in our schools. Yet there is an even greater outrage that must be outlawed. Schools have taken to calling police and arresting children over classroom disruptions. If teachers and principals cannot think of some other form of punishment, then they have no business teaching – period. As a point of reference, here are two of the most shameful news...

Paris, Tenn.- A Henry County High School substitute teacher was arrested on three counts of simple assault after striking three students with a 2x4 during school hours Thursday. Kristopher Sanders, 29, 170 Brooks Ave., McKenzie, was arrested Friday by the Henry Co. Sheriff's Department. Sanders posted $1,000 bond and will appear in General Sessions Court on Jan. 12. At a press conference Monday morning, Sheriff Monte Belew said the paddling was in exchange for the students not having to do any school work. Belew said several students videotaped the paddlings with their camera phones. The videos have been shown around...

Quite an explosive leak! I wonder how this will affect things? It is certainly a thuggish and dangerous thing for Obama to play with National Security over this craptacular idea of socialized medicine. Quite a desperate move. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line. Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.”...

An 8-year-old boy has been suspended from school and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation after he drew a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. A teacher at Lowell Maxham Elementary School in Taunton, Mass., said the second-grade student created a violent drawing, the Taunton Daily Gazette reported. The boy's picture portrayed a crucified Jesus with Xs over his eyes to indicate that he had died on the cross. The child's father, outraged at the school's action, asked to remain anonymous to protect his son. He said his boy drew the picture after returning from a family trip to...

A battle over religion is brewing in central Indiana after a public school wanted second graders to sing a song declaring, “Allah is God.” The phrase was removed just before the performance after a national conservative group launched a protest. The principal of Lantern Road Elementary School in Fishers, IN, said they were trying to teach inclusiveness through their holiday production. It included references to Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Las Posadas and Kwanzaa. However, no other deity, other than Allah, was referenced in the show. “It went off…without a hitch,” Danielle Thompson told the Indianapolis Star. “Several families thought it was...

It is only logical that President Obama will sign any Copenhagen climate change treaty that may result from this week's negotiations. His worldview demands it. His past statements and ongoing actions presage it. Obama believes in AGW (anthropogenic or man-made global warming) theory. He believes in "economic and social justice," and that logically leads to "climate justice." He may believe that the U.S. owes a "climate debt" to the rest of the world. What better way to lead the charge than to carry the ultimate banner of the radical left -- wealth redistribution -- under the auspices of the "crises...

Quite an explosive leak! I wonder how this will affect things? It is certainly a thuggish and dangerous thing for Obama to play with National Security over this craptacular idea of socialized medicine. Quite a desperate move. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line. Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.”...

Marcus A. WintersTeachers’ Unions vs. Progress—Again New York resists reforms that would bring in millions and improve teacher quality. 14 December 2009 Ever wonder how effective your child’s teacher is? Officials in Albany would rather you didn’t know. At least that’s the lesson one has to take from their refusal to allow data systems to match students to teachers, though doing so would help the state compete for a pot of perhaps hundreds of millions of federal dollars. Narrow political interests stand in the way of improving our schools and easing New York taxpayers’ burdens. The use of data...

The U.S. Supreme Court Washington D.C., Dec 15, 2009 / 06:59 am (CNA).- In a case which could greatly affect organized Christian activity on college campuses, the United States Supreme Court has decided to consider whether it was constitutional for a public university to bar a Christian student group on the grounds the group’s rules against sex outside of marriage were discriminatory towards homosexuals.The Christian Legal Society (CLS) chapter at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law applied to the college for standing as a registered student organization, United Press International (UPI) reports. The national CLS requires voting...

Last week's federal report card on math achievement was a welcome piece of good news for D.C. public schools. Although the District still lags far behind the country's top-performing systems, the report card showed fourth- and eighth-graders making strides at a faster pace over the past two years than cities including Atlanta, Chicago and New York. But what remains embedded in the latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the persistent achievement gap between African American and white students both locally and nationally. The average scores of white D.C. fourth-graders over the past two years grew from...

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres. The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another. Outraged over that ruling and a series...

As one Change to Win labor union blocks a Red Cross blood delivery today, what will a health care system taken hostage by labor unions look like tomorrow? As Change to Win’s Anna Burger is leading her coalition of unions to lobby all around the country “until every man, woman and child has quality, affordable care they can count on,” one of her unions is busy blocking the delivery of a Red Cross blood donation to a hospital and picketing private companies’ blood drives. The Red Cross, which has union workers in various locations who are covered both by the...

Phonics Makes a Cameo Malcolm A. Kline, December 14, 2009 A surprisingly positive development in the textbook publishing world leads us to believe that hoped-for change may actually arrive some day. “In four major publishers’ new 1st grade Reading programs for Cali­fornia and Texas, a long-overdue national pro-phonics rout of anti-phonics pedagogy is at last in full cry,” Educational Analysts of Longview, Texas, report in the group’s latest newsletter. “Our reviews of these two submis­sions find the Texas editions clearly stronger on decoda­bility than their Cali­fornia analogs, with some flaws remaining in each.”...

Our country is in big trouble ... huge trouble. It is time that Americans took a hard look at our values, our conception of justice, and our standards for truth. This piece is intended as a first step in that direction. 1) Values The story of Tiger Woods and his (now admitted) "infidelity" is everywhere. The Woods' story has piqued the prurient interests of America and the world. The story has dominated the mainstream media for days while the injustice being committed against our Navy Seals and the revelation of the computer code from the CRU (exposing the biggest hoax...

Our country is in big trouble ... huge trouble. It is time that Americans took a hard look at our values, our conception of justice, and our standards for truth. This piece is intended as a first step in that direction. 1) Values The story of Tiger Woods and his (now admitted) "infidelity" is everywhere. The Woods' story has piqued the prurient interests of America and the world. The story has dominated the mainstream media for days while the injustice being committed against our Navy Seals and the revelation of the computer code from the CRU (exposing the biggest hoax...

Dear Friend, As the Going Rogue book tour ends, I want to thank everyone for their outpouring of support. At every stop along the way my family and I were treated like members of your family and I can’t tell you how honored and thrilled I was by the opportunity to meet so many of my fellow Americans! I've attached a link to some of our favorite photos from the tour. They reflect the warm feelings and energy that made each of the book signing events so incredibly moving. After all our travels, it's even more obvious to me that...

Confirmation of biblical wisdom came earlier this fall from an unlikely source: an Ivy League savant who says it's wrong to depend on the Bible. The prestigious Oxford University Press sent me the new book Morality Without God by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, a Dartmouth professor. (I'm going to quote him a lot, so I'll use his initials.) WSA begins by complaining that his students quote to him Dostoevsky's favorite line, "If God is dead, everything is permitted." WSA then argues that we don't need God: We all should simply agree not to harm others—cause death, pain, or disability—unless there is "adequate...

We must have a revolution in order to prevent us from going hardcore Socialist first stop , Communist second stop . Very interesting analysis by The Rev.

I'm sure a 6-year-old with a crayon could do something not unlike that," snarked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Tuesday. The object of Mr. Gibbs' scorn was Gallup's tracking poll for the day before, which showed only 47 percent of respondents approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing, with 46 percent disapproving. Perhaps Mr. Gibbs' skin was thin because this was the lowest ranking for a president at this point in his presidency since Gallup began conducting presidential approval polls in 1938. Meanwhile, a CNN/Opinion Research Poll also released Monday indicated 46 percent of respondents have a...

The Republican Party, the Party of Reagan has been nearly smothered and suffocated by the RINO-virus which has spread more rapidly than any swine flu pandemic, the GOP has been infected from the top down, and IF it is to avoid the fate of the Bull Moose Party, the principles of Reagan conservatism must be re-established, the fair weather collaborators and Quislings (that means YOU Juan McCain and your butt buddy Lindsey 'Goober' Graham!) MUST be driven out and banished and if they join up with the traitorous 'Rats, so be it. Force them to show their true colors. The...

Congress appears likely to keep the D.C. voucher program closed to new students but open to current ones, curtailing the hopes of advocates who had pressed for a full revival of the controversial program. The news is buried deep within a thousand-page omnibus spending bill released Monday by a joint conference of House and Senate Appropriations Committee members. The proposal allocates $13.2 million to vouchers and would tighten accountability measures for schools that participate in the program, which provides low-income D.C. students with up to $7,500 to attend private schools. Bringing further upheaval to the program, the Washington Scholarship Fund,...

<p>If you want to get away with lying, cheating, stealing, and even sexually predatory behavior towards children, all you have to do is be a Progressive Democrat.</p> <p>Hat tip to Media Matters for providing us with four excellent examples to prove our point.</p>

In this age of political correctness, a college student's best friend is FIRE -- the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Since 1999, FIRE has safeguarded the civil rights of students across the ideological spectrum -- winning victories at 121 colleges and universities, bringing an end to 81 unconstitutional or repressive policies, and benefiting 2.7 million students. Now, FIRE is riding to the rescue of students at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where a heavy-handed attempt at thought control is underway. The Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group of the U's College of Education and Human Development has...

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund said yesterday that it would file a federal civil rights complaint accusing the Philadelphia School District of failing to address violence against Asian immigrant students at South Philadelphia High School. The complaint will claim that the district violated the students' right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, said Cecilia Chen, a staff attorney with the organization. Chen said the complaint would be filed with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The news came on a day when the city schools chief and South Philadelphia High principal spoke out publicly...

WESTPHALIA, Germany, December 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At least eight Russo-German families in Salzkotten, Germany, have suffered heavy fines and now their fathers have been sentenced to prison, because they have refused to send their elementary school-age children to mandatory sexual education classes. The International Human Rights Group, a Christian legal defense organization that defends religious liberty and the right to homeschool in Europe, reports that in addition to refusing to allow their children to attend sex-ed classes, the families also resisted having their children enlisted in a theatre production of "Mein Körper gehört mir" or "My Body Belongs to...

WASHINGTON - The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession. The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators. The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it. While a victory for...

A branch of the University of Minnesota may require all education students at the school to understand and accept that they are either privileged or oppressed and that they be well-versed in issues like "white privilege," "institutional racism” and the "myth of meritocracy in the United States." Critics are condemning the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which proposes making race, class and gender issues the "overarching framework" of all teaching courses. The task group, formed as part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative at the state university, aims to change how...

Is Rep. Michele Bachmann a “lovable little fuzzball”? Those of us who know her on a more personal basis know that’s a pretty good description of Michele personally, but politically,she’s about as tough as they get. Breitbart TV’s B-cast interviews Bachmann, who brings listeners up to date on Barney Frank’s financial-reform legislation, which dropped on the House last week. It’s 1300 pages long, and the vote will be taken — today. It reorders the entire financial-services industry and vastly increases government control over it. Oh, and ACORN, too. Frank bypassed the committee process, according to Bachmann, and she doesn’t see...

I’ve received a lot of e-mail asking why I haven’t written about the controversy over Kevin Jennings, Barack Obama’s “safe schools” czar. To be honest, the story is so shocking that I haven’t quite grasped how to approach it. Jennings ran an outfit called Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its inception in 1995 until last year. During that time, as Jim Hoft at Big Government has detailed, GLSEN offered sex education seminars to young teenagers within the framework of public education that went way, way beyond explanations of human biology and disease transmission. According to multiple sources,...