Glenn Beck and phony historian David Barton are charging $375 to teach college age students fake American history.

"I guarantee you the professors at college will have the wrong answer."

If ever there were a statement that should send you running and screaming away from this "offer" it is that one.

Here is more courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

We spend our mornings in a classroom-like setting and each afternoon we dig through online resources as well as our unique, original library. We will delve into topics such as:

• A Biblical Worldview 
• The Truth in History 
• America’s Godly Heritage 
• Early Education in America 
• How the Bible Influenced America 
• American Exceptionalism 
• God and the Constitution 
• Reclaiming the Land 

We will research our Founding Fathers, discovering their accomplishments, families, and faith, giving individual presentations at the end of each week. This is a specialized training for 18-25 year old.

We tend to give Glenn Beck a pass sometimes these days because he is an outspoken critic of Donald Trump.

However we need to remember that he is essentially just a shyster selling a damaged bill of goods just like Sarah Palin and even Trump himself.

And only thing that keeps him from being really dangerous is that fewer and fewer people are paying any attention to him.

Virginia Republican flyer touts "Christian heritage." Yeah who needs that whole "separation of church and state" rule anyhow?

County GOP ad touts Christian heritage https://t.co/CDX9bHjMqa via @newsleadernow

— wmramsey (@wmramsey) October 29, 2015

Courtesy of the News Leader: 

An ad by the Augusta County Republican Committee touting the need to "Preserve our Christian Heritage" was created to be a reflection of the party's creed, officials say. 

Larry Roller, 87, created the political flier that says, "Preserve our Christian Heritage! VOTE REPUBLICAN" on Nov. 3. The ad ran as an insert in The News Leader Thursday. 

"God is a foundation of our nation," said Roller, of Mount Sidney, who is on the GOP committee. "If you read the histories of our founding fathers, (they say) you should not run for office if you are not a Christian."

The News Leader goes on to point out that in Article VI of the Constitution it states that there will be no religious test for those seeking to hold office in the United States.

This Larry Roller guy, who believe it or not is a former teacher, does not let that change his point of view however:

"They have taken the Ten Commandments out of public places, along with the Pledge of Allegiance and daily prayer out of the schools," he said. "They seem to forget the very first thing they did before writing the Constitution was pray for 3 1/2 hours."

Doesn't this sound suspiciously like the same ideals embraced by white supremacist groups?

Has an answer for that as well:  

Roller said he was aware of supremacy groups using the idea of preserving a Christian heritage when designing the GOP flier, but "just because some people have misused the words does not mean there is anything wrong with using 'Christian heritage.'"

Actually yes, there is.

It essentially excludes every other religious group in the country and suggests that by virtue of their faith, or lack of faith, that they are unfit to serve this nation.

That is antithetical to the values embraced by the Founding Fathers, or espoused in the documents that they created.

However it certainly reflects the thinking, and prejudices, of the Republican party as we know it today.  Doesn't it?

(H/T to Raw Story.)

YouTube video from Counter Arguments explains why America is a secular nation and not a Christian one.

Ya gotta love it when Sarah Palin is used to demonstrate the wrong side of an argument.

As you can see the video is ten minutes long, but it is ten minutes well spent in complete undermining the argument from the Religious Right that this country was based on Christianity and therefore laws must be based on the Bible.

This is one of the videos that you favorite and send to that obnoxious family member who simply cannot accept the fact that the country they live in was not based on the teachings of the religion they practice.

(H/T to the Friendly Atheist.)

Found on the wall surrounding the Thomas Jefferson statue within the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

A man well ahead of his time.

Hell, if he were a modern day politician he would even be ahead of THIS time.

Recent Gallup poll shows that Liberals are now as numerous as Conservatives in America. And that my friends is only the beginning.

Courtesy of Washington Post:  

You may not have realized it, but a large cohort of Americans did something brave this month. For years — in some cases, decades — these lonely, marginalized souls had repressed their shameful feelings, hiding them from the world. 

Then May came along, and they finally decided to come out of the closet. 

As liberals. 

That’s right: A large chunk of Americans recently decided to come out as “liberal” — socially liberal, to be specific. As a result, for the first time on record, self-proclaimed social liberals are no longer outnumbered by their conservative counterparts. 

That’s according to a new Gallup poll that finds the shares of American adults considering themselves “socially liberal” and “socially conservative” each total 31 percent. (The remaining respondents either called their views “moderate” or had no opinion.) Gallup has been tracking these categories since 1999, and the latest numbers simultaneously signify the highest share ever recorded for liberals and the lowest recorded for conservatives.

Okay now we're talking. 

I have been waiting for this day most of my life. Finally, liberals are finding their voice and standing up to be counted.

I remember when Ronald Reagan and "Moral Majority" turned the word "liberal" into a pejorative used to insult people who failed to recognize that America was the apple pie craving, Jesus Christ loving, red, white, and blue enshrouded, country that they believe God had made just for them.

And in our cowardice we failed to stand our ground. Instead we decided to call ourselves "progressives" as if that were going to distract the Right Wing from their constant attacks on everything we hold dear.

But it looks like finally liberals are going to their windows, flinging them open, and shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

After all folks it is not the conservatives who move this country forward, with their death grip on the past and fear of change, it is the liberals, who are always looking forward and wondering what is just over the next hill, or waiting for us in the decades to come.

Does anybody really believe that the Founding Fathers were conservatives? I mean come on, what is more progressive than starting your own country?

No my friends, if you are a liberal, now is the time to stand up tall and straight and have the courage of your convictions.

And if you need further inspiration just look to the young people all around us, who overwhelmingly self identify as liberal, and who seem unaffected by the self doubts that plagued their parents and grandparents.

These millenials know that the future is theirs to shape, and they are already preparing to do so.

And if my own daughter serves as an indication as to where they are taking us, trust me they have ideas so progressive that it will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up.

Personally I am more than ready for what is to come. But then again, I NEVER stopped wearing my liberal badge with pride.

Even Fox News recognizes that America is NOT a Christian nation.

Courtesy of Fox News Opinion:  

The argument that America was at its founding and remains a nation Christian in character has served as cover for a variety of racist and nativist sentiments for generations. It can be found in the writings of those who warned that Catholics threatened the nation’s “free institutions” and fanned the flames of a mob’s destruction of a New England convent in 1834, just as it can been seen decades later in newspaper reports warning that non-Christian Asian immigrants would cause the West Coast to be “swamped, inundated, despiritualized, and un-Americanized.” 

The insistence that the United States is explicitly Christian arises from the assumption that a majority of citizens have been members of one church or another since the nation’s founding. Yet historians have estimated the number of American church-goers in 1776 to be only around 350,000 -- less than a fifth of the population. 

Christianity as a cultural force was certainly more influential than that, and many Americans no doubt considered themselves Christians whether or not they attended church. But it is a fact conveniently forgotten by many that ministers from a variety of denominations were from the beginning among the strongest opponents to establishing a national religion of any kind. 

Even as a matter of demographics, “Christian nation” raises questions. A large number of the people who we now as acknowledge as Americans often go uncounted when we look at back at our country’s earliest days. 

More than a hundred thousand Native Americans, mostly unconverted before the Trail of Tears, were pushed beyond the borders of the United States with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. 

That same year, the enslaved population numbered in the millions—in much of the South, they made up half the population. Given that only a tiny percentage of the enslaved were Christians when they arrived, early America likely included more men and women with connections to African beliefs than members of many Protestant denominations. What do these uncounted non-Christians do to the idea that America began as a “Christian nation”?

Yeah I know this is only on the Opinion page on the Fox News website, but still just the fact that they allow it on their site is a good sign.  As is the fact that many of the comments on that page are in support of the author's point of view.

Personally I would like to be a fly on the wall when that Todd "War on Christmas" Starnes moron reads this article.

I bet when he gets mad he holds his breath until he passes out.

The conservative attack on intellectualism is both deeply ingrained and purposeful.

Courtesy of Salon:  

Deep on page 546 of his 1,839-page budget, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker tucked in a crucial idea. He proposed to strip a principle from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, a school that attracts students from all over the nation and from 131 foreign countries. From the core philosophy that has driven the university since the turn of the last century Walker wanted to hack out the words: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” Rather than serving the people of the state by developing intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, expertise, and “a sense of purpose,” Walker prefers that the state university simply “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In the face of scathing criticism, the governor backtracked and, despite a trail of emails that led to his office, tried to claim the new language was a “drafting error.” 

But Walker’s attempt to replace the search for truth with workforce training was no error. Since the earliest days of Movement Conservatism in the 1950s, its leaders have understood that the movement’s success depends on destroying Americans’ faith in the academic search for truth. For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization. 

Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.

The article goes on to lay out exactly how the conservatives of the 1950's bought into the ideas of William F, Buckley who wanted to replace the progressive thinking of our founding fathers, with a kind of blind obedience to the concepts of capitalism wrapped in Christianity to keep the people malleable.

For liberals it reads like an incredibly frightening Stephen King novel focused on a terrifying creature that attacks the brain and renders people unable to differentiate between facts and faith, and yet all it takes is the memory of the last few decades to recognize the truth.

Here is how the article sums up:

By the time of the George W. Bush administration, Movement Conservatives had constructed a post-modern political world where reality mattered far less than the popular story of Conservatives standing firm against the “Liberal agenda” of godlessness and communism. As a member of the Bush administration famously noted to journalist Ron Suskind, “the reality-based” view of the world was obsolete. It was no longer viable to believe that people could find solutions to societal problems by studying reality. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” this senior advisor to the president told Suskind. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” 

Buckley’s intellectual stand had won. Facts and argument had given way to an ideology premised on Christianity and the idea of economic individualism. As Movement Conservatives took over the Republican Party, that ideology worked its way deep into our political system. It has given us, for example, a senator claiming words he spoke on the Senate floor were “not intended to be a factual statement.” It has given us “dynamic scoring,” a rule changing the way the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the economic impact of tax cuts, to reinforce the idea that cuts fuel economic growth despite the visibly disastrous effects of recent tax cuts on states such as Kansas. And it has given us attempts in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina and Colorado to discard the A.P. U.S. History framework and dictate that students learn instead the Movement Conservatives’ skewed version of the nation’s history. Politicians have always spun information to advance their own policies. The practice infuriates partisans but it reflects the Enlightenment idea of progress through reasoned argument. Movement Conservatives’ insistence on their own version of reality, in defiance of facts, is something different altogether. 

When Governor Walker replaced “the search for truth” with “meet the state’s workforce needs” in the charge to the University of Wisconsin, he did not make an error. He was articulating the principle that has driven Movement Conservatives since their earliest days: Facts and arguments can only lead Americans toward a government that regulates business and supports working Americans, and they must be squelched. The search for truth must be replaced by an ideology that preserves Christianity and big-business individualism. Religion and freedom for mega-business, Movement Conservatives insist, is what America is all about.

It is not hyperbole in my opinion to firmly state that the Republicans in this country are engaged in a form of not so subtle treason, in which they attack truth for refusing to bend to their will and systematically try to keep the population ignorant enough to convince to support policies that damaging to our economy, to our environment, and to our future.

They must be stopped and they must be stopped now.

You know according to Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin is the "perfect example of what the Founding Fathers envisioned" for this country. And we all know how believable HE is.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Conservative rocker Ted Nugent gushed over former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a radio interview, calling her his “hero,” Right Wing Watch reported. 

“Sarah Palin is the perfect example of what our founding fathers envisioned for an experiment in self-government,” Nugent told host Lars Larson. “Mother housewife Wiseau Alaska, taking care of business.” 

Where in the hell is "Wiseau," Alaska?

But yes I am quite sure that this is what the Founding Fathers envisioned as being the perfect example of a political powerhouse in the years to come.

Unless the kind of "business" that Nugent envisions Palin taking care of is selling her body on the streets for crack cocaine.

 Or perhaps the Founding Fathers visualized this as their "perfect example."

But wait, there's more:

Nugent suggested that President Barack Obama was elected because voters wanted to see a Black president instead of what he considered the best president. He also painted Palin’s resignation from the governorship of Alaska in 2009 as an act of sacrifice in the face of what he called “frivolous lawsuits.” 

“She did the most courageous thing in the world, and she handed her governor duties to the lieutenant governor while she was taking on this hate onslaught of the left,” Nugent told Larson. “So that Alaska would be properly served by someone who could pay attention to the responsibilities of the office of government while she was fighting off the leftist mongrels.”

Oh yes quitting her job and giving it to Sean Parnell was SO courageous. 

I mean isn't that what ALL Governors do when faced with opposition from the other side of the ideological fence?

“She’s a reminder that the heart and soul of working hard, playing hard, being the best that you can be in America is alive and well,” he told Larson.

Actually I think "barely alive" would be a better description, right along with "mentally unwell."

These days it seems that Palin does not leave her house unless paid to do so, and when she does she invariably embarrasses herself and has to scurry back to the safety of her Wasilla compound.

Methinks that Nugent is still seeing Palin through his signature pair of red, white, and blue glasses. And simply refuses to see her for what she is.

A national embarrassment.

Evidence of ACTUAL Intelligent Design.

It's just too bad that so many Americans refuse to recognize the hand of the creators in bringing everything around us to life. And their purpose for doing so.

Texas parents upset that high school workbook summarizes the 2nd Amendment the way it SHOULD be interpreted.

Image courtesy of The Blaze.

Courtesy of Fox News:  

Parents at a high school near Dallas say the authors of a book on U.S. history misfired when they defined the Second Amendment -- and now one of the book's co-authors says the book is being revised. 

The work book used at Guyer High School in the city of Denton, "The United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination," includes the "summary" definition of the Second Amendment to include the right to "keep and bear arms in a state militia." 

The edited definition is seen by gun-rights advocates as an affront to the Second Amendment, which states in full: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." 

Parents at the school criticized the book for distorting the definition of the Second Amendment in favor of those opposed to gun rights. 

John J. Newman, the book's co-author, told FoxNews.com that the text of the book was written before the 2008 Supreme Court ruling, District of Columbia v. Heller, which protects individuals' rights to possess firearms. He said the book's only intent was to summarize the Second Amendment and admitted that the current definition is incorrect. But he said a revised and corrected edition is set to be sold in May 2014. 

"There was no devious intention in the definition," Newman said. 

Yeah well I am one who believes that the Founding Fathers ABSOLUTELY meant for the amendment to only protect the militia's right to own and carry weapons, and that if they had ANY idea of how their words would have been twisted and reinterpreted, and the deaths that resulted from those actions, they would have rewritten it much more clearly or stricken the 2nd Amendment altogether.

I feel badly for this book's author as he was really only trying to make the information accessible and understandable. Perhaps he simply forgot that Texans love their guns almost as much they love their first cousins and sisters.

You know maybe if these parents would simply allow that definition to remain in the workbook they could spare one or two of their offspring the horror of having to help staunch the bleeding after one of their Constitutionally protected firearms blows a chunk out of the skull of their best friend.

An outcome, by the way, INFINITELY more likely then having to take up arms against their own government or fend off an attack by an invading force.

Tea Party leader says that "Sex is not about fun." I think I finally understand why these people are so angry all the time.

Tea Party leader Jerome Corsi

This is a quote from Captain Cock blocker up there, "Our founding fathers knew that if we went this direction, there was no more moral compass and you won’t be able to explain to your children — you’ll have to face the fact that we lost holding the line on one of the most principle issues in the Bible, and that is sex is not about fun. If you want to have fun read a book."

Yeah okay, now either this idiot has NO idea how to actually have sex, or he is reading some incredibly good books.  I am guessing the first one.

And does he REALLY believe that the Founding Fathers did NOT have sex for fun?

Has he not read about Benjamin Franklin? Or Thomas Jefferson?  I really don't think they shared his view on sex.

This idiot seems to believe that early Americans were these religiously upstanding monks who were completely celibate unless they were married. When in fact we know that they were simply men, and that many of them drank heavily, gambled their lives away, and had quite a lot of sex outside of the bonds of holy matrimony. (You know the BEST kind of sex!)

Hell if sex were not fun we as a species would have died out long ago.


Personally I feel sorry for this asshole's wife. How much pleasure do you think he ever gave her? (You know, before he slid his bulk off of her and let her finally catch her breath and start dealing with the shame of having to actually touch him?)

Gee no wonder these Teabagger's are always waving signs attacking the President and bitching about everything under the sun. They are sexually frustrated.  I also think it kind of explains that whole fixation on guns as well.

If you know what I'm saying.

(H/T to Liberal America.)

Two groups, with differing views, buy ads to educate the public about religion and the Founding Fathers. Can you say censorship?

Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:

Last week, the Christian chain Hobby Lobby ran an ad in dozens of newspapers proclaiming the Christian heritage of our country, with “godly” quotations from the Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court, and Congress.

Here it is:

In response, the Freedom From Religion Foundation paid for several full-page ads of their own, celebrating our “godless Constitution” and how our Founding Fathers actually supported separation of church and state. FFRF said it was the “single most expensive ad campaign in our history.”

Everything was cool and a number of papers printed the ad without issue.

Guess which one The Oklahoman, refused to print.

No fair peeking.

Apparently when you run a paper dedicated to informing the populace, there are SOME tidbits of truthful information that you dare not share.

Amazing new gun control ad.

Courtesy of Time:

In the ad, an upset-looking man — presumably a former employee — storms into an office with a rifle and draws a bead on his boss. What happens next makes this what may be, in the words of BuzzFeed, “the best gun control ad ever produced.” 

I firmly believe that if, by some miracle, the Founding Fathers were to be transported forward into time and see how badly the 2nd Amendment has been interpreted and how much devastation that it has caused, they would either petition to excise the entire thing or subject it to severe rewrites in order to further clarify what they had meant by it.

They would probably also choose to walk through the halls of Congress slapping each and every Republican lawmaker that hey happened across.

Misrepresenting the 2nd Amendment. There was never an intent for an individual right to bear arms.

Earlier today somebody sent me this link, which I read an found most intersting.

Here is a portion of what it said:  

The United States Congress was enforcing the idea that state militias of private citizens were the best form of military because they knew that it's nearly impossible for the citizens to rise up against an organized, professional military. A military like the one the British had, a military like the one we have today. A military that the citizens could not possibly overthrow. 

This is also why, up until recently, all case law has allowed the states to regulate arms. It is clear what the founders intended. They did not intend to take regulation away from the states, in fact the opposite is true, just as they did not intend to have a professional national military. 

After the revolution we were a confederacy of 14 separate individual states (yes, 14, I am counting Vermont). That didn't work, so we got a new constitution, our current one, and we became more like one state, and now we are as one state, not fifty. 

If the states decide to license all gun owners, or have ownership requirements, such as training, then that is the right of the state. It could be argued that such is also the right of Congress. 

It's clear that the Second Amendment, much like the Third Amendment, and like the wording of Article I, Section 8, is arcane. The Constitution was not handed down by a divine power, nor was it inspired by one. In particular, the Second Amendment was to ensure that the federal government could wage war, but the military power would be preserved to the individual states. Thinking along those lines has long since been abandoned. 

What is particularly interesting about the Second Amendment debate is that it puts conservatives on the wrong side of the big government argument. They don't like big government telling the states what to do, except when big government wants to tell the states that they can't regulate firearms, or allow people to get gay married. It's an absurd contradiction, to say the very least. In fact, the very amendment that conservative justices on the Supreme Court used to push guns, the 14th, is one that many prominent conservatives would like to see repealed. 

Anyone for states’ rights should be in support of the state having the ability to regulate the arms of its own residents and the sale of firearms and ammunition within its own borders. Anyone against activist judges should decry the recent Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment, as it is far from what its authors intended. It was designed for national security. 

We in the United States no longer have amateur militias. We have professional police and the most advanced, and most expensive by far, military in the history of the known universe. 

I can't say with certainty whether Madison would approve of America's 21st century war machine, but I can say for sure that if he were here today he would reject the Supreme Court's interpretation, and be puzzled as to why the United States isn't fighting the epidemic of gun violence that we alone suffer from in the ranks of modern and free nations. 

Currently there is an incredible amount of passion and misinformation on the topic of the intent behind the 2nd Amendment (Hell even Bill Fulton and I argued about it he other day.), however I feel confident that if the Founding Fathers were to suddenly wake up out of their deadly slumber to what we are dealing with today, they would immediately tear up that Amendment and rewrite it from scratch.  And I seriously doubt it would have much resemblance to the one we have been dealing with for the last two hundred plus years.

Don't you agree?

Here is a reality check for those who continue to claim that this country is a Christian nation.

This might be of some help the next time one of those fundamental family members or uber religious Facebook friends make one of their ridiculous assertions again.

Just have them read this and then dare them to respond.

Louisiana lawmaker surprised to learn that Christianity is not the only religion in America.

"Wait, there are HOW many religions?"

Courtesy of Mobile News:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools. 

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday. 

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said. 

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.” 

HB976, now signed into law as Act 2, proposed, among other things, a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups. 

Other members of the local legislative delegation, including Senator Dale Erdey, Rep. J. Rogers Pope and Rep. Sherman Mack, opposed HB976. They argued that public school funds should stay with the public schools. 

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s staff pushed hard to get the educational bills approved in the early days of the session, which ended June 4. 

Hodges, who represents District 64 on the northwest side of the parish, and another freshman lawmaker in the local delegation, Clay Schexnayder from Dist. 81 in the southwest, voted with the House majority in favor of HB976. 

The school funding mechanism, however, did not come up for a vote until the end of the session. By then, a Muslim-based school had applied for support through the new voucher system. 

During debate over the MFP (Minimum Foundation Program) funding formula, Hodges learned more about the consequences of the educational changes. She voted against the new MFP funding formula; Schexnayder voted for it. 

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Don't you love it when a narrow mind is forcefully expanded against its will?

"What, there's more than one type of religious school? But I just wanted to use public school funds to indoctrinate children into MY religious belief. not into one of them primitive Muslin faiths which worship the wrong gosh darn God!"

What is it that it says in the bible again, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Did you know?

This may help you the next time somebody tries to convince you that this country was founded as a Christian nation, or that moving away from religion or God is to move away from the traditions that made this country great.

Do you know what made this country great?

Freedom. And the most important freedom that those who came here were seeking was freedom from having somebody else's religious beliefs shoved down their throats.

How soon we have forgotten.

Is creating a Federal Mandate to buy health insurance unconstitutional? Not according to the Founding Fathers!

"Don't worry Barry. I've got your back."

Courtesy of The New Republic:  

In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.

But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate. 

That’s not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it. 

Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.

I swear there is NOTHING I enjoy more than using facts to smack down a GOP talking point.

(H/T to Andrew Sullivan.)

Alaska man files lawsuit claiming that Barack Obama can't be president because he is "Mulatto." Hasn't Sarah Palin been embarrassing enough?

Sorry kid you can't be president. Wrong color.

Courtesy of E News PF:

A man from Juneau, Alaska, has filed suit with the state's Division of Elections to bar President Obama from appearing on that state's ballot on the basis that the President is a "Mulatto", and "the race of 'Negro' or 'Mulatto' had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution." Gordon Warren Epperly, who lists his address as a P.O. Box, filed the nomination petition objection on February 21, 2012. 

According to the complaint: 

Barack Hussein Obama II, Aka Barack Hussein Obama, Aka Barack H. Obama has the race status of being a "Mulatto." Barack Obama's father (Barack Hussein Obama I) was a full blood Negro being born Nyang'oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya and raised in the Colony of Kenya. Barack Obama's mother (Stanley Ann Dunham) was a white Caucasian woman being born in Wichita, Kansas on November 29, 1942 and raised in the state of Washington and in the State of Hawaii. 

Therefore: 

As stated above, for an Individual to be a Candidate for the Office of President of the United States, the Candidate must meet the qualifications set forth in the United States Constitution and one of those qualifications is that the Candidate shall be a "natural born Citizen" of the United States. As Barack Hussein Obama II is of the "Mulatto" race, his status of citizenship is founded upon the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Before the [purported] ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the race of "Negro" or "Mulatto" had no standing to be citizens of the United States under the United States Constitution.

(You can read the entire complaint here.)

In other words since many of the Founding Fathers were men of their time who did not recognize that people of color should have as many rights as white people, those people should be forever barred from holding office in America?

Now you know why people like Sarah Palin, Sean Parnell, Dan Sullivan, and Don Young keep getting elected in Alaska.  Because the stupidity and ignorance run deep in the Last Frontier.

Jesus who even uses the term "Mulatto" anymore?

Tennessee Teabaggers try to, quite literally, whitewash American history. Update!

Courtesy of the Commercial Appeal:

Members of Tennessee tea parties presented state legislators with five priorities for action Wednesday, including “rejecting” the federal health reform act, establishing an elected “chief litigator” for the state and “educating students the truth about America.” 

About two dozen tea party activists held a news conference, then met with lawmakers individually to present their list of priorities and “demands” for the 2011 legislative session that opened Tuesday. 

Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.” 

That would include, the documents say, that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.” 

The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.” 

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

This is why I am always working to energize the Democrats, by pointing out the important things the President has accomplished and reminding everybody that we need to elect more Democrats, not just to help Obama continue his agenda, but to protect America from the destructive anti-science and anti-educational agenda of the conservatives.

The Teabaggers see their overwhelming 2010 victory, a victory they were only able to realize because Democrats let themselves be discouraged into staying home, as a mandate. And they fully intend to change the way history, science, and government are taught to reflect their insane point of view.

Teaching history in such a way that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers," is going to make it almost impossible to teach about the contributions of many important black leaders. Or is that the point?

Taking the accomplishments of minorities in this country out of our textbooks is to remove any opportunity for today's non-whites to find inspiration within their pages. No mention of Booker T. Washington or Harriet Tubman? After all they were once slaves and according to the revisionist history of the Teabaggers, slavery was virtually abolished by the Founding Fathers

What of more modern minority leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks? They fought against discrimination. In a perfect country there can be NO discrimination.

And need I even ask about President Obama's accomplishments?

Apparently not:  

The group also wants the state legislature to reject key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as “an insult to Constitutional principles.”

Our Founding Fathers were great men, of that there is no doubt, but in the end they were just that, men.

They were not gods to be worshiped, they were men to be admired.  They did a great thing, but not a perfect thing. Our children deserve to know that. They deserve to know the truth.

And they certainly don't deserve to have KKK members Tea Party members writing their history books for them.

Update: As everybody pointed out the article I linked to is from last year. I follow the link from the original source over at the Huffington Post and did not check the date. But yes it is still happening this year as well:

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners. 

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

Different year, same Teabagger shit.