TEXAS DECIDES TO REIN IN 'LIBERAL' CURRICULUM

Lawmakers insisting on state oversight of online teaching plan
- John Griffing

Texas lawmakers have decided they want to rein in a controversial public school curriculum content and management system that at one point taught “Allah is God.”

Most of the state’s classrooms, some 80 percent, are using the CSCOPE program that also has raised eyebrows because educators had refused to allow parents and others to see what being taught.

Twenty-five state representatives now have signed onto a proposed oversight statute that would target CSCOPE, the online system that set up firewalls and passwords so that parents would not be able to see the curriculum.

Bill author State Rep. Steve Toth said, “It’s imperative that we bring CSCOPE under the direction and oversight of the locally elected members of the State Board of Education. Repeated instances of impropriety along with a decidedly liberal leaning agenda makes this move of the utmost importance. ISDs all over the State of Texas have been misled as to what CSCOPE is and what it contains. We’ve got to get this right.”

The action followed a recent hearing by the Texas State Senate Committee on Education, where lawmakers expressed alarm and more.

The hearing was chaired by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, and concerned CSCOPE’s secrecy and lack of transparency, as well as complaints that teachers are contractually prohibited from revealing classroom content to parents.

The committee consensus appeared to focus on the fact that parents and the public have not been allowed access to CSCOPE instructional materials. The committee also argued that Texas’ TESCCC (CSCOPE’s de facto parent company) is funded with state dollars, and therefore, CSCOPE content “belongs to the people of Texas.” The TESCCC is a “public entity,” as is CSCOPE, and must therefore submit to state oversight, they also said.

Senators also found the way CSCOPE was set up, it exposes teachers to legal action if they revealed CSCOPE content to the public. CSCOPE representatives admitted to this, but claimed it was unintentional – a mistake in language.

During the hearing, four panels were heard by the committee..  Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/texas-decides-to-rein-in-liberal-curriculum/#alDsuMVjcS9Odj2q.99

I Will Not Be Intimidated

-  Steve McCann

As a young boy I was shot by a man whose clear intent was to kill me as I had deliberately, by throwing broken bricks at him, interrupted his attempt to rape a young teen-aged girl, allowing her to escape. To this day I can still see the evil in his face and the sun glistening off the barrel of the pistol he aimed in my direction. As I turned and began to run away he fired hitting me in back. The bullet entering my chest felt as if someone had hit me with baseball bat followed immediately by an excruciating burning sensation as I fell to the ground from the impact. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but I was able scramble to my feet and run as far as I could until finally passing out from the shock and loss of blood. Fortunately, someone came to my rescue and took me to a military hospital and the first step on my journey to the United States.

According to the current incarnation of the American left, who traffic constantly in victimhood and noble intentions, I should be in the vanguard of the mandatory gun control and confiscation movement. That somehow it was the inanimate object this soldier was holding and not him that was responsible for the attempt on my life or to ignore the fact that his mindset was such he would have used any weapon at hand to accomplish the same goal.

On the contrary, I own a handgun today because of the experience of coming face to face with the evil that permeates some men's souls. I and the girl I rescued were defenseless. There were no police or armed citizens around and the death of another homeless and unknown boy and girl, buried in an unmarked mass grave, would have been just another easily ignored casualty of the post-War period. I was determined that I would never again face a similar circumstance. I have had in my possession firearms for virtually my entire life, as I have been fortunate to live in the one nation on earth that has embedded in its founding document the right to bear arms.

Today, I am, along with a vast majority of my fellow citizens, being made the scapegoat for the failed policies of the so-called progressives -- whether it is the inability of society to deal with extreme psychopaths or the mentally deranged, because the left insists they are entitled to the same rights as other citizens, or the never-ending attempt to rehabilitate criminals incapable of rehabilitation. Consistent with their inability to ever admit a mistake, the left and much of the Democratic Party instead focuses on symbolism over substance and the path of least resistance -- going after the law-abiding hard working people who are the backbone of America.

But the motivation is more insidious than that. Those that self-identify as progressives, leftists, socialists or Marxists, have one overwhelming trait in common: they are narcissists who believe they are pre-ordained to rule the masses too ignorant to govern themselves. Over the past thirty years as these extremists fully infiltrated academia, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and taken over the Democratic Party, the American people have lost many of their individual rights. They are now being told what they can eat, where they can live, who they must associate with, where and how their children must be educated, and soon what medical care they are allowed to access, as well as the type of car they can drive and the amount of energy they are permitted to use.

The last bastion of freedom is unfettered gun ownership, so that too must go. That the left is willfully and egregiously exploiting the actions of a deranged psychopath in the tragic death of 26 people (20 children) in Newtown, Connecticut to achieve this end exposes their true motivation.

For more of the article go to: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/i_will_not_be_intimidated.html#ixzz2HOnk7SKc 

Obama’s Disarming Haste

- Daren Jonescu

According to the Washington Post's Philip Rucker, President Obama is committed to moving quickly on gun violence legislation. Reported as good news, in truth this carefully projected haste and urgency ought to be regarded -- and would be reported, by a media that did not have a stake in leftist authoritarianism -- as the gravest warning sign.

"A warning sign of what?" asks the scoffing useful idiot. "Of the end of even the pretense of liberal democracy, constitutional republicanism, or any other form of government answerable to the governed."

It became a cliché during the last century to say that tyranny has the advantage over freedom in a crisis, because while the legitimate government must follow its own internal processes for assuring the consent of the people (or of their representatives) prior to acting, the tyrant may simply issue a decree, irrespective of anyone's objections.

It is true that legitimate governments comprised of co-equal branches, or of deliberative bodies, are somewhat limited in their power to act precipitately. And that limit is precisely the source of their legitimacy.

In almost all circumstances, sometimes even including the most grave and pressing, legitimate governments are compelled to engage in some measure of deliberation. That is, they are restricted in their actions and responses to what can be agreed upon through a process of reasoning. If there are disagreements about the need for action, they must be heard. If there are quibbles about the course of action to be pursued, they must be heard.

Churchill argued vehemently and repeatedly in and out of the British parliament against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, and in favor of forceful action. Through this process, his case, which was initially unpopular both in parliament and among the British people, grew in force and effect, and Churchill himself was chiselled by it into a greater leader of men -- precisely when Britain, and the world, needed such a leader. His path to action was longer and more laborious than Hitler's, but he had right on his side -- and he won.

Churchill was forced to these extremes of patient argumentation in the face of an immediate threat to his nation's survival by a tyrannical lunatic commanding the most powerful military in Europe. That is a case study in what I am calling "legitimate government." Illegitimate government, by contrast, would follow the opposite trajectory: pursue the most radical policy proposals while circumventing or avoiding patient argumentation and debate, even in matters of relatively little urgency.

To state this contrast differently, a free nation thinks before it acts in its own best interests, even in a genuine crisis, while an unfree nation is dragged into unthinking action against its own interests, in response to an illusory crisis.

When Rahm Emanuel described the Obama administration's modus operandi as "never let a serious crisis go to waste," many conservatives latched onto this supposed revelation as Exhibit A against the administration's integrity. In truth, Emanuel was putting the idea out there early, in the first weeks of the administration, so that, through repetition, it could be transformed, over the course of Obama's first term, from evidence of alarming cynicism into the definition of responsible governance.

Thus it is that mainstream reporters can now matter-of-factly describe the White House's mission on gun control this way:

Obama's advisers have calculated that the longer they wait, the more distance there is from the Newtown massacre and the greater the risk that the bipartisan political will to tackle gun violence will dissipate.

"This is not something that I will be putting off," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview broadcast last Sunday.

At the White House meeting, [Sheriff Richard] Stanek said, "the vice president indicated that there was a very short timeline for him to get back to the president with his recommendations because the American public has a short memory."

Think about that. The president and vice president of the United States are urging immediate action on gun control, pre-empting all debate about the measures' constitutionality; and their justification for this urgent, anti-constitutional action is that "the American public has a short memory." In other words, this is not a real crisis (i.e., an ongoing threat), and the public will soon realize that, and carry on with life as usual; therefore, we must act before that happens.

For more of the article go to: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/obamas_disarming_haste.html#ixzz2HOlxZyeC