school districts warn of deeper teacher cuts

NYTimes | School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June.

The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue — state money and local property taxes — have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.

“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

Districts in California have given pink slips to 22,000 teachers. Illinois authorities are predicting 17,000 job cuts in the public schools. And New York has warned nearly 15,000 teachers that their jobs could disappear in June.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan estimated that state budget cuts imperiled 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs. In an interview on Monday, he said the nation was flirting with “education catastrophe,” and urged Congress to approve additional stimulus funds to save school jobs.

“We absolutely see this as an emergency,” Mr. Duncan said.

transit cuts protested in atlanta

NYTimes | When Danielle White boarded her bus to go to work on Tuesday morning, it was emblazoned from top to bottom with a giant, painted red X. Ms. White knew what that meant.

“This is one of the buses that’s getting cut,” said Ms. White, a security guard at the Georgia Aquarium. “I’m going to have to figure out how to get there.”

On Monday night, workers and officials at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority volunteered to paint the X’s on a third of the system’s buses and trains to symbolize the 30 percent cut in service the agency is facing because of a decline in sales tax revenue and a Republican-dominated Statehouse that has been slow to help.

On Tuesday morning, with a parade of X’d-out buses stopping on the street behind them, more than 200 public transit workers and riders gathered at the system’s main hub, Five Points. They were kicking off a week of rallies, telephone campaigns and other events in 11 cities across the country coordinated by the Transportation Equity Network, an advocacy group based in St. Louis, to protest transportation cuts and fare increases.

“We are just crawling out of a recession,” said Sam Massell, a former mayor of Atlanta, “but we will be knocked back into another one if the salespersons are not behind the store counters, if the restaurant workers are not in the kitchens, if the office staff are not behind their desks.”

About 46 percent of the more than 100,000 people who use Marta to get to work each day say they do not have access to other forms of transportation.

More than 80 percent of the nation’s transit systems are considering or have recently enacted fare increases or service cuts, including those in Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., according to a survey released this month by the American Public Transportation Association.

But Marta, the ninth-largest system in the country, faces a particular difficulty because it is the only major system that does not receive any dedicated money from the state. Instead, it depends on fares and a one-cent sales tax in only two of metro Atlanta’s 28 counties, Fulton and DeKalb. While Atlanta chokes on traffic, Georgia ranks 49th in per capita government spending on transportation, according to a report commissioned by Gov. Sonny Perdue.

georgia chips ban the microchip

AJC | We often say that insanity reigns at the state Capitol.

But when we do, we do not literally accuse the people inside of letting their grip on reality slip. We simply mean that our ability to fathom their motives, or their ability to express them, has fallen short.

Referring to a politician as delusional is simply entertaining hyperbole. But it is something that becomes much less funny when a truly tortured soul bears her torment.

Last Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee entertained SB 235, the bill sponsored by Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville) to prohibit the involuntary implantation of microchips in human beings.

In Gov. Roy Barnes’ stump speech, the bill has become a routine example of the Republican tendency to attack problems that don’t exist, and ignore the ones that do. Besides, Barnes argues, if someone holds him down to insert a microchip in his head, “it should be more than a damned misdemeanor.”

Three states have instituted bans, and others have considered the legislation. In Virginia, a bill supporter declared microchips to be the “666″ mark of the beast referred to in the Book of Revelation.

Pearson has said his motivation isn’t biblical or religious – that he is simply working in advance of technology’s next assault on personal privacy. Not unlike limiting the uses of DNA testing by health insurance companies, he argues.

At the House hearing, state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Kennesaw), who is shouldering the legislation in the House, spoke earnestly for better than a half hour on microchips as a literal invasion of privacy.

He was followed by a hefty woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County. “I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip,” the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn’t want to take.

Microchips, the woman began, “infringe on issues that are fundamental to our very existence. Our rights to privacy, our rights to bodily integrity, the right to say no to foreign objects being put in our body.”

She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices.”

She continued. “Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission,” she said.

It was not funny, and no one laughed.

“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” asked state Rep. Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold).

“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied. Setzler, the sponsoring lawmaker, sat next to the witness – his head bowed.

“You’re saying this was involuntary?” Weldon continued.

The woman said she had been pushing a court case through the system for the last eight years to have the device removed.

Wendell Willard (R-Atlanta), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, picked up the questioning.

“Who implanted this in you?” he asked.

“Researchers with the federal government,” she said.

“And who in the federal government implanted it?” Willard asked.

“The Department of Defense.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

The woman was allowed to go about her business, and the House Judiciary Committee approved passage of SB 235.

dangerous elderly firmly opposed

AP | Most Americans still oppose legalizing marijuana but larger majorities believe pot has medical benefits and the government should allow its use for that purpose, according to an Associated Press-CNBC poll released Tuesday.

Respondents were skeptical that crime would spike if marijuana is decriminalized or that it would lead more people to harder drugs like heroin or cocaine. There also was a nearly even split on whether government spends too much or the right amount enforcing marijuana laws. Almost no one thinks too little is spent.

Marijuana use — medically and recreationally — is getting more attention in the political arena. California voters will decide in November whether to legalize the drug, and South Dakota will vote this fall on whether to allow medical uses. California and 13 other states already permit such use.

The balloting comes against the backdrop of the Obama administration saying it won't target marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws, a departure from the policy of the Bush administration, which sought to more stringently enforce the federal ban on marijuana use for any purpose.

In the poll, only 33 percent favor legalization while 55 percent oppose it. People under 30 were the only age group favoring legalization (54 percent) and opposition increased with age, topping out at 73 percent of those 65 and older. Opposition also was prevalent among women, Republicans and those in rural and suburban areas.

Some opponents worried legalization would lead to reefer madness.

"I think it would be chaos if it was legalized," said Shirley Williams, a 75-year-old retired English teacher from Quincy, Ill. "People would get in trouble and use marijuana as an excuse."

Those like Jeff Boggs, 25, of Visalia, Calif., who support legalization said the dangers associated with the drug have been overstated.

"People are scared about things they don't know about," said Boggs, who is married and works for an auto damage appraisal company.

xalisco boys...,

LATimes | A lethal business model targets Middle America. Sugar cane farmers from a tiny Mexican county use savvy marketing and low prices to push black-tar heroin in the U.S.

Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America. Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar.

Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many of those places, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.

Immigrants from Xalisco in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, they have brought an audacious entrepreneurial spirit to the heroin trade. Their success stems from both their product, which is cheaper and more potent than Colombian heroin, and their business model, which places a premium on customer convenience and satisfaction.

Users need not venture into dangerous neighborhoods for their fix. Instead, they phone in their orders and drivers take the drug to them. Crew bosses sometimes call users after a delivery to check on the quality of service. They encourage users to bring in new customers, rewarding them with free heroin if they do.

In contrast to Mexico's big cartels -- violent, top-down organizations that mainly enrich a small group -- the Xalisco networks are small, decentralized businesses. Each is run by an entrepreneur whose workers may soon strike out on their own and become his competitors. They have no all-powerful leader and rarely use guns, according to narcotics investigators and imprisoned former dealers.

Leaving the wholesale business to the cartels, they have mined outsize profits from the retail trade, selling heroin a tenth of a gram at a time. Competition among the networks has reduced prices, further spreading heroin addiction.

"I call them the Xalisco boys," said Dennis Chavez, a Denver police narcotics officer who has arrested dozens of dealers from Xalisco (pronounced ha-LEES-ko) and has studied their connections to other cities. "They're nationwide."

thug life internationale...,

Video - If only Richard Barnbrook had had a flashy armband.

Guardian | Billy Bragg was engaged in a finger-pointing row with a senior member of the British National party during a day of action in London, telling him his "racist fascist" politics offered no help to voters.

Bragg was leafleting in Barking and Dagenham, one of the BNP's top target areas in next month's elections, when he bumped into the BNP's London assembly member, Richard Barnbrook, who has attacked the singer on his blog.

Bragg, who was born and raised in Barking, told Barnbrook: "You do not represent the people of Barking and Dagenham," as the pair became embroiled in a heated argument. "You are exploiting the genuine concerns of people here and you are making the problems worse."

Barnbrook, who was elected to the London assembly in 2008, accused Bragg of "mouthing away" and said the "ballot box will determine what happens".

The exchange came during a day of action against the BNP which saw 541 volunteers deliver 91,000 Hope Not Hate newspapers.

The BNP is due to launch its manifesto this week and has claimed it is on the verge of causing a "political earthquake". It claims it has a chance of taking control of Barking and Dagenham council and of gaining two MPs – in Stoke Central and Barking.

However, the far-right party's campaign has been beset by problems, and it appears to be floundering in the polls. Internal criticism over Nick Griffin's leadership came to a head earlier this month when publicity director Mark Collett was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill him.

In Stoke, the party's number two target, Alby Walker, who led the BNP on the local council for four years, is standing as an independent in the general election.

Walker said he was leaving the BNP because of a "vein of Holocaust denying within the BNP that I cannot identify myself with."

Meanwhile Griffin, who is standing in Barking, has been forced to change the BNP's whites-only membership policy following a legal battle with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Last week the Electoral Commission announced it was launching a formal investigation into the party's 2008 accounts.

These difficulties appear to have hit the party's ability to stand candidates in next month's local elections.

the great unreasoning

ClubOrlov | Doesn't it seem laughable that the entire edifice of modern political science rests on mere opinion? Some mornings I entertain up to a dozen mutually contradictory opinions, and that's before even getting off the toilet! It is a flaw of the English language that when someone is convinced of something, the result is said to be a change of opinion. If one is indeed convinced, wouldn't that change one's convictions? But it's easy to see why nobody bothers to conduct "conviction surveys," because the results would be quite boring. Convictions hardly ever change, because they are generally not amenable to persuasion or argument. Convictions tend to form as a result of actual experiences, not from listening to pundits or experts or from reading the popular press. They form part of who we are, not what we might be thinking at any given moment.

It is almost impossible to change someone's convictions through persuasion or argument, and it is equally difficult to cause someone to form convictions through these same means. That is why the most difficult subjects of our time—ones involving hard issues such as overpopulation, natural resource use and depletion, global climate destabilization, looming national bankruptcy and the like—are more or less left out of public discourse. They are of no consequence as matters of opinion, while as matters of conviction they are political dynamite. Plus, just how many people are there whose lives have provided them with the experiences they would need to form convictions on these subjects? These subjects are avoided for the same reason one doesn't leave coiled hoses lying around a slaughterhouse: the sheep might think that they are seeing snakes, stampede and ruin your whole work-shift. It is much better to just let them move smoothly along and cast their vote for "Baah!"

The relatively few people who do have firm convictions are often regarded as "unreasonable" because their convictions cannot be reasoned away as mere opinions can. That to me seems exactly as it should be. Humanity is in the process of demonstrating that it can successfully reason its way into a cul de sac. But is there any reason to believe that it can also reason its way out of it? Perhaps it is high time to start being unreasonable, to decide for ourselves that we do not like the cul de sac into which our reason has steered us, and to refuse to go into it any deeper. Perhaps we could even find a way out of it. And perhaps a few of those people whose minds you can sometimes almost read will almost be able to read our minds as well, and will choose to follow us out. And the rest will just stand around and argue about it: "Baah!" Fist tap Dale.

packing on the potomac

WaPo | Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to "muster outside D.C." on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.

Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights.

A member of several heretofore little-known groups, including Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Oath Keepers -- former and active military and law enforcement officials who have vowed to resist laws they deem unconstitutional -- Almond, 31, considers packing heat on the doorstep of the federal government within the mainstream of political speech.

Others consider it an alarming escalation of paranoia and anger in the age of Obama.

"What I think is important to note is that many of the speakers have really threatened violence, and it's a real threat to the rule of law," Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said of the program for the armed rally. "They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually."

On the lineup are several heroes of the militia movement, including Mike Vanderboegh, who advocated throwing bricks through the windows of Democrats who voted for the health-care bill; Tom Fernandez, who has established a nationwide call tree to mobilize an armed resistance to any government order to seize firearms; and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who refused to enforce the Brady law and then won a Supreme Court verdict that weakened its background-check provisions.

Those coming to the "Restore the Constitution" rally give Obama no quarter for signing the law that permits them to bring their guns to Fort Hunt, run by the National Park Service, and to Gravelly Point on the banks of the Potomac River. Nor are they comforted by a broad expansion of gun rights in several states since his election.

The brandishing of weapons is "not just an impotent symbol" but "a reminder of who we are," said Almond. "The founders knew that it is the tendency of government to expand itself and embrace its own power, and they knew the citizenry had to be reminded of that."

Countered Horwitz: "Our founders thought they got rid of political violence with the Constitution. That was its point. The basic idea of America is one person, one vote, equality."

Vanderboegh and Horwitz both said: "We have a fundamental difference in worldview."

April 19 is the anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and the government's final confrontation in 1993 with the Branch Davidian cult members in Waco, Tex. But Almond said he chose the date to honor the anniversary of the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord that began the Revolutionary War, "and that is the only reason."

mcveigh tapes

Rachel Maddow previews the McVeigh Tapes on tonight at 9:00pm.

WaPo | Fifteen years ago today, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck filled with explosives and ammonium nitrate fertilizer in front of the Oklahoma City federal building and detonated a bomb so strong it sheared off half the building and killed 168 people. History is still puzzling through the event's lingering effects.

McVeigh is dead (he was executed in 2001) and yet very much with us, in an eerie vibe that rolls around every April 19. At least he is for MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow, who has been having 1990s flashbacks with the anti-government vitriol that most recently accompanied the health-care reform debate.

"Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in the new rising tide of American anti-government extremism," Maddow says at the outset of her MSNBC special Monday night called "The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist."

She's talking, of course, about the latest news about militias, weapons stockpiling, "tea party" anger and the perception of rising unrest in those who seek to reclaim an America supposedly lost to federal control: "On this date, which holds great meaning for the anti-government movement," Maddow says, "the McVeigh tapes are a can't-turn-away, riveting reminder."

What MSNBC has here are 45 hours' worth of cassettes containing prison interviews McVeigh gave to Lou Michel, a reporter from the Buffalo News. The interviews formed the basis of Michel's 2001 book "American Terrorist" (with co-author Dan Herbeck), and they are probably the most comprehensive discussion McVeigh ever had after the bombing, about his life, views and motives.

In Maddow's special, the tapes get a chilling new listen, in which a clear-voiced, unrepentant McVeigh talks how those 168 deaths made him feel: "I had no hesitation to look right at [the victims' families, in court] and listen to their story. But I'd like to say to them: 'The specific details may be unique, but the truth is you're not the first mother to lose a kid, you're not the first grandparent to lose a granddaughter or a grandson.' . . . I'll use the phrase -- and it sounds cold, but I'm sorry I'm going to use it, because it's the truth -- get over it."

froth and scum

Bill Clinton Says Rush Limbaugh Response "Does Not Make Any Sense"

Conservative Talk Radio incites Domestic Terrorism & Hate

everything else is conversation...,

Samurai Trilogy - Duel at Ganryu Island.

social insects inspire human design

RoyalSociety | Humans have long looked to nature for practical inspiration; after observing paper wasps, Réaumur (1719) suggested that people, too, could make paper from wood fibre, without cotton or linen rags. However, the formal use of biology as a design tool, known as biomimicry or biomimetics (Benyus 1997; Vincent et al. 2006), is a recent and rapidly accelerating enterprise in academia (Hesselberg 2007) and industry (Bonser 2006). Biomimicry approaches the biological world as a catalogue of successful designs, honed by natural selection, that can be imitated or translated to solve human problems. The conference ‘Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design’, hosted by Arizona State University, USA, 18–20 February 2010, explored how social insects can serve as models for biomimetic design, and asked what general lessons can be learned about biomimicry.

Social insects (ants, bees, wasps, termites, etc.) are uniquely qualified to inform human design. They have evolved tightly integrated societies with up to millions of members, and have solved many problems inherent to social organization (Wilson 1971). Individual social insect workers exhibit relatively simple behaviours, but collectively, colonies can perform complex functions such as routing traffic, allocating labour and resources and building nests that provide physical and social services. Unlike most human operations, social insects accomplish such feats without a supervisor or centralized control; instead, colony-level patterns self-organize, or emerge, from local interactions that elicit positive and negative feedback responses (Camazine et al. 2001). These interactions are often mediated by stigmergy, a form of indirect communication through modification of the environment. Self-organization and stigmergy motivate the field of swarm intelligence, which designs algorithms for the solution of optimization and distributed control problems (Bonabeau et al. 1999).

The realization of social-insect-inspired design, and biomimicry more broadly, requires communication and collaboration across disciplinary and professional boundaries. ‘Social Biomimicry’ provided a forum for exchange between biologists, designers, engineers, computer scientists, architects and businesspeople.

cilantro haters...,

NYTimes | FOOD partisanship doesn’t usually reach the same heights of animosity as the political variety, except in the case of the anti-cilantro party. The green parts of the plant that gives us coriander seeds seem to inspire a primal revulsion among an outspoken minority of eaters.

Culinary sophistication is no guarantee of immunity from cilantrophobia. In a television interview in 2002, Larry King asked Julia Child which foods she hated. She responded: “Cilantro and arugula I don’t like at all. They’re both green herbs, they have kind of a dead taste to me.”

“So you would never order it?” Mr. King asked.

“Never,” she responded. “I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.”

Ms. Child had plenty of company for her feelings about cilantro (arugula seems to be less offensive). The authoritative Oxford Companion to Food notes that the word “coriander” is said to derive from the Greek word for bedbug, that cilantro aroma “has been compared with the smell of bug-infested bedclothes” and that “Europeans often have difficulty in overcoming their initial aversion to this smell.” There’s an “I Hate Cilantro” Facebook page with hundreds of fans and an I Hate Cilantro blog.

Yet cilantro is happily consumed by many millions of people around the world, particularly in Asia and Latin America. The Portuguese put fistfuls into soups. What is it about cilantro that makes it so unpleasant for people in cultures that don’t much use it?

Some people may be genetically predisposed to dislike cilantro, according to often-cited studies by Charles J. Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. But cilantrophobe genetics remain little known and aren’t under systematic investigation. Meanwhile, history, chemistry and neurology have been adding some valuable pieces to the puzzle.

The coriander plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean, and European cooks used both seeds and leaves well into medieval times.

Helen Leach, an anthropologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has traced unflattering remarks about cilantro flavor and the bug etymology — not endorsed by modern dictionaries — back to English garden books and French farming books from around 1600, when medieval dishes had fallen out of fashion. She suggests that cilantro was disparaged as part of a general effort to define the new European table against the flavors of the old.

Modern cilantrophobes tend to describe the offending flavor as soapy rather than buggy. I don’t hate cilantro, but it does sometimes remind me of hand lotion. Each of these associations turns out to make good chemical sense.

Flavor chemists have found that cilantro aroma is created by a half-dozen or so substances, and most of these are modified fragments of fat molecules called aldehydes. The same or similar aldehydes are also found in soaps and lotions and the bug family of insects.

Soaps are made by fragmenting fat molecules with strongly alkaline lye or its equivalent, and aldehydes are a byproduct of this process, as they are when oxygen in the air attacks the fats and oils in cosmetics. And many bugs make strong-smelling, aldehyde-rich body fluids to attract or repel other creatures.

exposing glenn beck as a dangerous fraud

Glenn Beck interviews Sarah Palin.

HuffPo | Orson Welles, one of Glenn Beck's broadcasting heroes. In fact, the name of Beck's production company, Mercury Radio Arts (officially known as Glenn Beck, Inc.), is based on Welles' CBS radio show -- the radio show that famously aired one of broadcasting's most legendary hoaxes: The War of the Worlds.

Unlike the various Glenn Beck shows and publications, the Mercury performance of the H.G. Welles classic featured a disclaimer at the end (quoted above), formally noting the fictitious nature of the broadcast. Imagine if, unlike Beck, Welles had never broadcast a monologue postscript revealing that what had unfolded on the radio was purely theater. It's not a stretch to suggest that the ensuing hysteria during and after the show would've been far greater.

Every day, for four hours a day, Glenn Beck is playing out a Welles fantasy -- leaping out from behind an array of Carrot Top-meets-Gallagher props and gizmos while shouting BOO! at his audience without taking the slightest responsibility for the ensuing hysteria. In Beck's case, the "boo!" comes in the form of Joe McCarthy style red-baiting and Lee Atwater style race-baiting -- insisting with wildly incomprehensible chalkboard scribblings that Marxists and communists are lurking under our beds waiting to steal our money. Money that's better served feeding Glenn Beck's empire of fraud. I mean, just look! Those random words on the chalkboard spelled out the acronym "OLIGARHY!" Run for your lives, and all that. It's an OLIGARHY!

No disclaimers letting the audience off the hook like Beck's hero, the vastly more responsible performer Welles did. Beck, like several other Fox News Channel actors in Roger Ailes' ratings-at-all-costs strategy, presents his show as an honest assessment of the truth without any sort of in-show sign that it's almost entirely farcical.

One of the most common e-mail responses I've received from Beck supporters so far has been, simply: "Prove it." Suffice to say, I never would have started down this road without some sort of confirmation that my theory about Beck was on the right track. So prior to typing a single word, I spoke with some sources close to and within Fox News Channel and they confirmed exactly what I suspected: Glenn Beck is "a bullshit artist." A faker. A phony.

But don't take their word for it. After all, these are anonymous sources and their words ought to be evaluated accordingly.

For proof, I've tracked down an on-the-record source who says Glenn Beck could give a flying crap about the political process. Glenn Beck himself from last week's Forbes profile:

"I could give a flying crap about the political process." Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. "We're an entertainment company," Beck says.

And there you go. "I could give a flying crap about the political process." Given the hyperkinetic poo-flinging on his show every day, Glenn Beck knows flying crap. There's really no gray area here. It's all about the entertainment value inherent in ginned-up controversy. And right now, anger and insanity sells with Beck's white, conservative, Christian audiences.

the texas curriculum massacre

Don't mess with Texas commercial.

Newsweek | Given the redness of my home state of Texas at the moment—more crimson than rosé—you'd be forgiven for dismissing the recent headline-making flap over revisions to our high-school social-studies curriculum as pure politics. A near majority of the duly elected 15 members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) is locked in a hyperconservative embrace, aligned as a bloc to promote a social-issues-centric view of the world. Other contemporary controversies involving the SBOE have centered on neutering the sex-education component of the science curriculum, taking anything even vaguely PG-rated out of health textbooks (say, a line drawing of a woman's bare breast in a section on self-exam), and questioning the appropriateness of teaching the "theory" of evolution without also teaching creationism. But if those fights were largely relegated to the undercard, the social-studies controversy is a top-draw heavyweight brawl, with the jeering eyes of the nation upon us.

Every 10 years, the SBOE reexamines what the 4.7 million students in public high schools are taught on a variety of subjects. (As opposed to how it's done in other states, this process is conducted outside the purview of the commissioner of education or the state education agency.) After appointing and then hearing from panels of expert "reviewers," the board considers and votes on a variety of curriculum changes: add this, tweak that, outright eliminate something else.
Click here to find out more!

This time around, the vote is in May, but trouble's been brewing since January, when it became clear that the list of historical figures deemed worthy of inclusion in civics textbooks was up for discussion: at various points, Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez were among those on the chopping block, while the inventor of the yo-yo (I'm not making this up) was cheerfully inserted and the laundering of Joseph McCarthy's reputation was contemplated. Aesop's fables were found wanting, as was a discussion of the separation of church and state. There was also a problem of race and ethnicity—or lack thereof. Board members not allied with the conservative bloc complained that the non-Anglo history of the state was getting increasingly short shrift—despite the demographic makeup of the Alamo battlefield, or the fact that Texas will soon be majority Hispanic.

All over the country, educators and progressives recoiled, believing that the befouled byproducts of this process would force changes to their own curricula, given the Lone Star State's massive footprint as a consumer of textbooks. Although the executive director of the Association of American Publishers has called the pervasive influence of Texas "an urban myth," the damage was done—as goes Texas, it was feared, so goes the country.

It's certainly true that some of this owes to conservative ideology asserting itself in a conservative state that Barack Obama lost in 2008 and would lose even more resoundingly today. But there's something else at work—and a clue to it can be found in another revision pushed by one of the most vocal participants in the process. Bill Ames, a conservative gadfly appointed by former board chair and creationism proponent Don McLeroy, attempted to rally everyone round the flag of American exceptionalism—which he described as the belief that America is "not only unique but superior," and that its citizens are "divinely ordained to lead the world to betterment."

May I suggest that a state-level version of this philosophy is behind the SBOE contretemps—and that it's part of a larger argument playing out all across Texas? Remember (would we ever let you forget?) that this is a state that was once a nation. It's a "whole other country," as the tourism slogan boasts, and a wicked independent streak remains a defining—perhaps the defining —feature of our character. Texas and Texans have never cottoned to answering to outsiders. We don't like being told what to do. And we don't like it when our ability to chart our own course, to control our own destinies or the way we live our lives, is in any way hampered.

Consider how else Texas politics and public policy have made national headlines lately and it all seems of a piece. A year ago, on April 15, Gov. Rick Perry was filmed at a tea-party rally playing footsie with those who believe secession is a cure-all for perceived intrusiveness by the federal government. More recently, both Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott invoked the 10th Amendment to the Constitution in discussing the state's options in response to health-care reform, and Abbott committed to joining with attorneys general from around the country in a lawsuit against the federal government. During the GOP primary, gubernatorial candidate and tea-party darling Debra Medina talked openly of the state's right to negate any law passed by the feds that it believes to be unconstitutional. Around the same time, Perry made a prideful show of rejecting the chance to apply for the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top grants, asserting that even a single string attached to federal funds was too many.

One way to view the attempt to revise the social-studies curriculum, then, is as a bunch of Texas patriots drawing an Alamo-like line in the sand against an invading horde of elites. Don't tell us who is and who isn't an important historical figure. Don't tell us to view history through glasses tinted by political correctness. Don't deny us our God-given right to question the validity of evolution or the separation of church and state. We know better. Don't mess with us. Don't mess with Texas … exceptionalism.

judeo-christian "tradition" is a made-in-america myth

ICH | This is an age in which news has been superseded by propaganda, and education by brain-washing and indoctrination. From the advertising used to sell poor quality goods, to the classes in schools designed to make children into conditioned robots of the State, the art of persuasion has displaced the simple virtue of truth.

Since the end of the Second World War we have been bombarded from all sides with references to the Western world's "Judeo-Christian religion," and "our Judeo-Christian heritage." We are told by both church leaders and scholars that our society is based on a supposed "Judeo-Christian tradition".

The notion of "Judeo-Christian religion" is an unquestioned -- almost sacrosanct -- part of both secular and church thinking. American Christian leader Prof. Franklin H. Littel, a vocal supporter of the Zionist state, frankly declared that "to be Christian is to be Jewish," and that consequently it was the duty of a Christian to put support for the "land of Israel" above all else. Pat Boon, the North American singer and evangelist, said there are two kinds of Judaism, one Orthodox and the other Christian.

Yet such a decidedly Christian Zionist outlook is to say the least, wildly simplistic and profoundly ahistorical. As the astute Jewish writer, Joshua J. Adler, points out, "The differences between Christianity and Judaism are much more than merely believing in whether the messiah already appeared or is still expected, as some like to say."

The comments of Jewish author Mr. S. Levin may well explain the Christian's need for the Judeo-Christian myth. Writing in the Israeli journal Biblical Polemics, Levin concludes: "'After all, we worship the same God', the Christian always says to the Jew and the Jew never to the Christian. The Jew knows that he does not worship the Christ-God but the Christian orphan needs to worship the God of Israel and so, his standard gambit rolls easily and thoughtlessly from his lips. It is a strictly unilateral affirmation, limited to making a claim on the God of Israel but never invoked with reference to other gods. A Christian never confronts a Moslem or a Hindu with 'After all, we worship the same God'."

Back in 1992 both Newsweek magazine and the Israeli Jerusalem Post newspaper simultaneously printed extensive articles scrutinising the roots of the sacrosanct Judeo-Christian honeymoon!

The statement heading the Newsweek article read: "Politicians appeal to a Judeo-Christian tradition, but religious scholars say it no longer exists." The Jerusalem Post article's pull quote announced: "Antisemitism is a direct result of the Church's teachings, which Christians perhaps need to re-examine."

"For scholars of American religion," Newsweek states, "the idea of a single Judeo-Christian tradition is a made-in-America myth that many of them no longer regard as valid." It quotes eminent Talmudic scholar Jacob Neusner: "Theologically and historically, there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's a secular myth favoured by people who are not really believers themselves."

Newsweek cites authorities who indicate that "the idea of a common Judeo-Christian tradition first surfaced at the end of the 19th century but did not gain popular support until the 1940s, as part of an American reaction to Nazism . . ," and concludes that, "Since then, both Jewish and Christian scholars have come to recognize that -- geopolitics apart -- Judaism and Christianity are different, even rival religions."

The Jerusalem Post accused the Christian Church of being responsible for the Holocaust. The French Jewish scholar Jules Isaac was quoted as saying: "Without centuries of Christian catechism, preaching, and vituperation, the Hitlerian teachings, propaganda and vituperation would not have been possible."

"The problem," concludes the Jerusalem Post, "is not, as some assert, that certain Christian leaders deviated from Christian teachings and behaved in an un-Christian manner; it is the teachings themselves that are bent."

Joshua Jehouda, a prominent French Jewish leader, observed in the late 1950s: "The current expression 'Judaeo-Christian' is an error which has altered the course of universal history by the confusion it has sown in men's minds, if by it one is meant to understand the Jewish origin of Christianity . . . If the term 'Judaeo-Christian' does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that it is a most dangerous idea. It is based on a 'contradictio in abjecto' which has set the path of history on the wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which are completely irreconcileable, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no difference between day and night or hot and cold or black and white, and thus introduces a fatal element of confusion to a basis on which some, nevertheless, are endeavouring to construct a civilisation." (l'Antisemitisme Miroir du Monde pp. 135-6).

richard dawkins - the pope should stand trial

Guardian | Sexual abuse of children is not unique to the Roman Catholic church, and Joseph Ratzinger is not one of those priests who raped altar boys while in a position of dominance and trust. But as so often it is the subsequent cover-ups, even more than the original crimes, that do most to discredit an institution, and here the pope is in real trouble.

Pope Benedict XVI is the head of the institution as a whole, but we can't blame the present head for what was done before his watch. Except that in his particular case, as archbishop of Munich and as Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (what used to be called the Inquisition), the very least you can say is that there is a case for him to answer. See, for example, three articles by my colleague Christopher Hitchens here, here, and here. The latest smoking gun is the 1985 letter obtained by the Associated Press, signed by the then Cardinal Ratzinger to the diocese of Oakland about the case of Father Stephen Kiesle, mercilessly analysed by Andrew Sullivan here.

Lashing out in desperation, church spokesmen are now blaming everybody but themselves for their current dire plight, which one official spokesman likens to the worst aspects of antisemitism (what are the best ones, I wonder?). Suggested culprits include the media, the Jews, and even Satan. The church is hiding behind a seemingly endless stream of excuses for having failed in its legal and moral obligation to report serious crimes to the appropriate civil authorities. But it was Cardinal Ratzinger's official responsibility to determine the church's response to allegations of child sex abuse, and his letter in the Kiesle case makes the real motivation devastatingly explicit. Here are his actual words, translated from the Latin in the AP report:

"This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favour of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the universal church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner."

"The young age of the petitioner" refers to Kiesle, then aged 38, not the age of any of the boys he tied up and raped (11 and 13). It is completely clear that, together with a nod to the welfare of the "young" priest, Ratzinger's primary concern, and the reason he refused to unfrock Kiesle (who went on to re-offend) was "the good of the universal church".

This pattern of putting church PR over and above the welfare of the children in its care (and what an understatement that is) is repeated over and over again in the cover-ups that are now coming to light, all over the world. And Ratzinger himself expressed it with damning clarity in this smoking gun letter.

conformist dictatorship behind aggression toward the church...,

WaPo | Pope Benedict said on Thursday the sexual abuse scandal shaking Roman Catholicism showed the Church needed to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference by the pope to pedophilia in the priesthood.

"Now, under attack from the world which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognize what is wrong in our lives," the said pope at a mass in the Vatican.

This involved "opening oneself up to forgiveness, preparing oneself for forgiveness, allowing oneself to be transformed," said the pope, whose last public utterance on the scandal was his letter to the Irish people, made public on March 20.

Benedict's focus on penance contrasts to senior churchmen's recent emphasis on defending the Church and the pope from what they portray as an campaign orchestrated by hostile news media.

The pope's personal preacher went as far as to compare the abuse scandal to anti-Semitism, drawing sharp criticism from some Jews and from victims of abuse by priests.

Pope Benedict also hit back at critics of the Church, portraying them as in the thrall of a conformist "dictatorship."

"Conformism which makes it obligatory to think and act like everyone else, and the subtle -- or not so subtle -- aggression toward the Church demonstrate how this conformism can really be a true dictatorship," said the pope.

condemnation builds over vatican prelates gay slur

AFP | Condemnation from gay groups and the French government forced the Vatican into damage control Wednesday over remarks by the pope's right-hand man linking paedophilia to homosexuality.

The Vatican issued what spokesman Federico Lombardi called a "clarification" of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's assertion Monday that homosexuality -- not celibacy -- is the "problem" that causes Catholic priests to molest children.

In the highly unusual statement, the Vatican said Roman Catholic Church officials were not "competent" to speak on psychological issues concerning general society.

Lombardi told AFP the statement was aimed at "clarifying" Bertone's remarks and should not be seen as the Holy See "distancing" itself from them.

Bertone's comment that "many" psychologists and psychiatrists had demonstrated a link between paedophilia and homosexuality, but not the vow of celibacy, drew official ire from France on Wednesday.

"This is an unacceptable linkage and we condemn this," said foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero, joining a chorus of criticism from gay rights groups and editorial writers.

An Italian group Tuesday led gay fury over the remarks, which came as the Church battles paedophile priest scandals in Europe and the United States and allegations that the hierarchy has helped to cover up for abusers.

"The truth is that Bertone is clumsily trying to shift attention to homosexuality and away from the focus on new crimes against children that emerge every day," said Aurelio Mancuso, former president of gay rights association Arcigay.

"This faux pas by the Vatican demonstrates one thing only: great desperation and great impotence," a Spanish gay rights group, COLEGAS, added Wednesday.

A Catholic gay association in Portugal, Novos Rumos, said remarks such as Bertone's "deepen the gulf between the Church as a community of believers and a certain hierarchy".

Wednesday's Vatican statement added more fuel to the fire with a reference to Church statistics defining paedophilia in the "strict sense" as applying to pre-adolescent children.

"That's a ridiculous and unfounded hair-splitting distinction that many American bishops initially tried as well," said David Clohessy, executive director of the US pressure group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests).

"It's grossly inaccurate, totally insensitive and frankly totally wrong," Clohessy told AFP.

According to the Church statistics, made public last month, 10 percent of some 3,000 cases reported to Vatican authorities in the past decade concerned paedophilia in the "strict sense" and the other 90 percent concerned sex between priests and adolescents.

Sixty percent of the cases involved adolescent boys and 30 percent concerned adolescent girls.

Vatican expert Bruno Bartoloni said Church officials were "piling up the gaffes without realising their impact".

Lombardi and other Vatican officials have suggested that the Church is unfairly singled out for paedophilia, noting that it is a widespread social phenomenon.

"All objective and informed people know that the issue is much wider, and to focus accusations only on the Church leads to a skewed perspective," Lombardi said last month.

But Clohessy said: "If eight percent of plumbers molest and seven percent of priests molest, it's still a horrific crisis.

"And plumbers who molest don't have a powerful worldwide monarchy behind them to help them get away with their crime."

He added: "There are many priests who have been caught molesting 75, 100, 150 kids. Find me the schoolteacher or scout leader who have been caught doing that. You can't, because in other institutions, predators get caught and are ousted more quickly than they are in the Church."

africa also suffers sex abuse by priests

VoiceofAmerica | A leading African Catholic archbishop says sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is a problem in Africa as well as in Western countries.

Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said the church in Africa is inflicted with the same scourge as the churches in Ireland, Germany and America. He said the misbehavior of priests in Africa simply has not been exposed to the same glare of the media.

Tlhagale, the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, made his comments in his Easter holiday message published this week.

Africa is one of the fastest growing regions for the Catholic church, which is losing members in the Western world. Many congregants are leaving in protest over growing sex abuse scandals by the Catholic clergy.

Some media reports have accused Pope Benedict of failing to stop priests accused of pedophilia while he was the archbishop in his native Germany and a cardinal in the Vatican.

Tlhagale said the image of the Catholic church is virtually in ruins because of the bad behavior of its priests, whom he called "wolves wearing sheepskin."