Tag Archives: Texas GOP

Jonathan Stickland Liked the Weed – A Lot

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Rep. and self-styled “former fetus” Jonathan Stickland (TP-Bedford) is trying to move past his on-line record indicating that he condoned marital rape and really liked smoking the marijuana so much so that he was curious about growing his own cannabis.  Stickland, a Tea Party stalwart, now claims that he regrets the on-line trail of evidence he left and that yes, he smoked a few spleefs in his time, but he has repented and been forgiven. Red is the last person to cast stones – unless the target thereof is parading as some holier than thou state representative who is fair game for public comment. Red also believes in forgiveness – but not disremembering.   The Trail Blazers Blog from the Dallas Morning News has more.

Notably, our former poor idiot governor Rick Perry has endorsed Bedford pastor Scott Fisher, who he once appointed to serve on two state commissions.

Texas GOP Leaders Take a Step Back from Crazy

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State GOP leaders have denied GOP primary voters a chance to decide if they favor secession from the USA.   The Tea Party wing had requested that the GOP put the following  question on the primary ballot in March:

“If the Federal Government continues to disregard the Constitution and the sovereignty of the State of Texas, the State of Texas should reassert its prior status as an independent nation.”

The State Republican Executive Committee rejected the proposal which would have been a non-binding referendum.

The defeat was not unexpected, as the saner powers-that-be did not want this to become an issue in November’s election.   The SREC clearly disagreed with Tanya Robertson, the SREC member who introduced the proposal and argued that the measure would have been “harmless,” allowing voters to register an “opinion only.” She also suggested the ballot language would have helped “get out the vote” among some Texas Republicans who have been sitting out recent elections. “The goal of these is to take a thermometer of how Texans feels about an issue, and what better issue for Texans to do that with?” she asked.

Indeed, what better way?  Red thinks it is unfortunate  that the rest of Texas will be denied an opportunity to see exactly how crazy the Republican base in Texas really is.

 

We Don’t Need No Smart Peoples Telling Us What to be Learnin’ our Childrens

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In the face of numerous absurd statements in a recently published history book, the State Board of Education – which authorized the ridiculed textbook – has rejected a proposal to have people who might actually know something about history review textbooks for accuracy.  The 8-7 vote against the proposal at least indicates that not every member of the Board is a Tea Party hack.  But it is clear, that the Board functions as a wing of the Tea Party and is attempting to indoctrinate Texas students with conservative ideology at the expense of actual facts.  The Trailblazer Blog of the Dallas Morning News has more.

State Board of Education members on Wednesday narrowly rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to scour Texas schoolchildren’s textbooks for factual errors.

The vote against was 8-7, with all the board’s Republicans except two opposing the measure.

The push for more experts to be involved came after more than a year of controversy over board-sanctioned books’ coverage of global warming, descriptions of Islamic history and terrorism and handling of the Civil War and the importance of Moses and the Ten Commandments to the founding fathers.

A tipping point to add more fact checking may have come last month. A suburban Houston mom’s alert that a newly approved geography text described African slaves forcibly brought to North America as “workers” set off a national furor.

At issue is whether the board should continue to rely on publishers and the public to flag errors. Currently, citizen panels nominated by the board have a narrower mission – to determine whether a book fits into Texas’ curriculum standards. Mostly, current and retired teachers sit on the panels.

Board vice chairman Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, offered the backstop panel of university professors as an amendment to a proposed overhaul of textbook approval procedures. Under his proposal, the board could set up a new panel drawn “solely from Texas institutions of higher education” to check the books for errors.

“I know that people are concerned about pointy headed liberals in the ivory tower making our process … worse,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we reach out to them and say let’s make sure these books are as factually accurate as possible?”

Why indeed?