The National Education Association (NEA) should come clean, be honest, and change their name. The National Indoctrination Association (NIA) would be more fitting. According to a report from the Baptist Press, the NIA has been up to their usual schoolyard bully routine, pushing their radical agenda onto America’s children.

At their annual conclave held in Philadelphia early this month, the organization’s executive committee — without the approval of their members — voted to aggressively advance elements of the homosexual agenda. The committee voted on and approved three proposals. First, the committee voted to put the weight of the so-called education association behind an effort to pass federal hate crimes legislation, a measure that would greatly expanded federal power and would ultimately lead to the silencing of moral opposition. The second resolution would boost the NEA’s website to “include all resources” devoted to homosexual causes, and the third resolution called upon them to push to make sexual orientation training to be a requirement for earning teaching credentials.

And people wonder why parents want choice in education!

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I am glad to know that Barry and his boys over at (some) Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) are on our mailing list and read my updates. Someone forwarded me a blog post by Rob Boston at AU. They are attacking our July issue of Washington Watch, where we outline the growing threat to Christian speech and the intolerance of groups like the ACLU.

In particular, they claim my report of what is happening in my home state of Louisiana with the Tangipahoa school board was a distortion of the facts because we said the ACLU wanted Christians jailed for praying. A distortion? Oh really? The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans newspaper, reported on the incident in the April 6, 2005 edition. The ACLU suits against Tangipahoa are almost too numerous to count, however, the one in question was where a non-school employee opened a high school base ball game in prayer that ended with “in Jesus name.” An unnamed father [puppet of the ACLU] complained and according to the last line in the Picayune story “the father asked the ACLU to file a motion for criminal contempt, which carries the threat of jail time and fines” which the ACLU was eager to comply with.

Unfortunately, for the (some) Americans United, I know the Louisiana situation very well. For instance, the federal judge that is handling this case is the former head of the state chapter of the ACLU and she used to lobby the state legislature for all kinds of left wing ideas. And then there is Joe Cook, the executive director of the ACLU that initiated this case. (Cook recently retired so they are without an executive director at present, but they are praying they find a replacement) When Cook was asked about the school board’s efforts to pray before their meetings, Cook compared the praying Christians to Islamic terrorists when he said: “They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion. Which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London.”

For more information, read my op/ed about the case that was published in the Shreveport Times.

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WHEN: Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 10 AM ET

WHAT: The U.S. Senate is expected very soon to attempt an override of President Bush’s veto of the bill to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research. Patients from around the world who have been successfully treated with adult stem cells will be joining the news conference. Doctors will discuss the impact of their work and how adult stem cell research holds the most promise in treating patients.

WHO:

• Stephen Sprague has been completely free of his leukemia since his cord blood stem cell treatment almost 10 years ago.
• Eight years ago, Doug Rice was told he had two years left to live with congestive heart failure. He was successfully treated with his own adult stem cells that were injected into his heart.
• Dr. Amit Patel, a doctor with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, has treated numerous patients for heart damage with adult stem cells.
• Dr. Julio Voltarelli, Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has successfully treated Juvenile (Type I) diabetes patients with their own adult stem cells.
• Prof. Francisco Silva, Vice President of Research and Development for PrimeCell Therapeutics, has been involved in studies using adult stem cells to treat patients with heart damage and spinal cord injury.

WHERE: National Press Club (Lisagor Room)

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You can find out more about the Washington Briefing here.

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Our own Tom McClusky (not that anybody really “owns” Tom McClusky…) has penned an op-ed for National Review Online calling for the abolition of the office of Surgeon General:

The position of surgeon general today has become mostly one of a bully pulpit to serve as a federally funded advocate for various health causes (complete with a uniform straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan play — “I am the very model of a modern surgeon general.”) The authority of the surgeon general has been reduced through reorganizations and, we are led to believe, a politicization of the confirmation process. Today, the office has a budget of $3 million and the surgeon general is paid close to $200,000 annually. However they have little or no authority to coordinate the federal government’s public health activities. This coordination is already being done by more than 50 different federal offices that are involved in protecting public health.

Read the rest at NRO.

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In an article on Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle and the homosexual activists who are decrying him as “homophobic”, the Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ-TV says, “An estimated 243,000 gay people live in the city of Fort Lauderdale.”

My World Almanac says the 2005 population of Fort Lauderdale was 167,380. We know the idea that homosexuals are 10% of the population is a myth, so what can we say about the claim that they are 145% of the population?

According to the Census Bureau, Fort Lauderdale does indeed have the second highest percentage of same-sex unmarried partner households of any major American city (exceeded only by San Francisco). So the mayor may really be in some political hot water. But that percentage is–2.1% (S.F. is 2.7%; nationally they are 1.0%).

Numerically, there are 1,418 (that’s one thousand four hundred eighteen) unmarried same-sex partner households in Fort Lauderdale. That would be 2,836 individuals.

I guess the other 240,000 homosexuals in Fort Lauderdale just aren’t the “marrying”–or “partnering”–kind.

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The statement by my friend and former colleague, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, was very disappointing. He admitted to a “serious sin” in a statement he released to the press on Monday, prior to news reports revealing that his phone number appeared on a long list of client’s numbers of the now infamous DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

In the release David assumed complete responsibility for what he did and that he “asked for and received forgiveness from God and [his] wife in confession and marriage counseling.” These allegations first surfaced about 4 or 5 years ago when David was considering running for governor of Louisiana. He backed away from the race admitting to marital problems and he and his wife sought counseling. This public revelation coincides with that time frame.

While I commend him on assuming personal responsibility and working to make things whole in his life, I cannot defend David’s behavior. Adultery is a serious matter that affects not only the individuals involved but families and the well being of the entire community. Voters have the right to consider issues like this when they assess the character of an elected official.

Having said that, the American people have shown themselves to be very forgiving toward a public official who admits their failures and takes redemptive steps. And despite what some have said since he released his statement, so does God. Proverbs 24:16 reads “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.” I hope to see David back on his feet again.

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A good example has just come to us from Boston of why people did not trust Washington on its recent promises to enforce a “new and improved” immigration law and assimilate immigrants into the American family. USA Today reports that Massachusetts officials are suing the federal government in court to stop the U.S. Justice Department from forcing the state to publish the 2008 election ballot in both English and Chinese in certain polling areas.

According to USA Today, this bilingual ballot is the result of a settlement reached between the state and the federal government back in 2005 when DOJ “accused Boston poll workers of mismarking the ballots of Asian voters who didn’t speak English.” Did I miss something? I thought you had to be an American citizen to vote. And I thought that to become an American you had to be able to read, write and speak English.

Americans are OK with walking into the local ethnic restaurant and navigating a bilingual menu; that’s a cultural experience. But walking into a voting booth and navigating a bilingual (and someday, inevitably, multilingual) ballot threatens something that is truly an American experience. The phrase e pluribus unum captures it, and the way we vote is one of its most important symbols and expressions.

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Among a sample of adolescent virgins from intact two parent families, females who reported having a close relationship with their father during the initial interview were less likely to report having engaged in sexual intercourse during a follow-up interview one year later, when compared to similar females who did not report having a close relationship with their father.

Source: “The Parent-Child Relationship and Opportunities for Adolescents’ First Sex” Regnerus, M. D., Luchies, L. B. Journal of Family Issues Vol. 27, Number 2. , 2006. Page(s) 159-183.

(HT: FamilyFacts.org)

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In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, government in the form of “Big Brother” aimed to control the attitudes and perceptions of its citizens through thought control. Eerily, fiction is slowly becoming a reality as those who speak out against homosexual behavior are now having their liberties threatened because of their religious beliefs and association. New “hate crime” laws threaten to curtail the freedoms of speech and religion.

As Dr. D. James Kennedy has warned, they have the potential to “shut down churches and send pastors to prison for simply reading a part of the Bible. “Hate Crimes Laws: Censoring the Church and Silencing Christians” is a provocative, 40-minute DVD that looks at this ominous legal tool of the homosexual lobby.

The program features Dr. D. James Kennedy; Ake Green, a Swedish pastor arrested for preaching against homosexuality; members of the Philadelphia 11 who were charged with a hate crime while peacefully protesting; Christine Sneeringer, an ex-lesbian; Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and Pastor Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries (who was prosecuted under hate crimes laws in Australia). Order this exceptional video today.

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