Take Action to Keep Right-Wing Revisionist History Out of Schools
Changes for textbook standards recently proposed by the Texas State Board of Education would add right-wing revisionist history to social studies textbooks in an attempt to indoctrinate students. Because of the size of Texas' market, major textbook publishers have sometimes in the past used the Texas standards as a default for textbooks sold in other states.
With the Texas Board tightly controlled by Radical Right members, we need to make sure that doesn't happen. Tell the publishers not to distributed books with Texas' controversial phony "facts" in other states.
The Rise of the Corporate Court: How the Supreme Court is Putting Business First
From Bush v. Gore to Citizens United: The Making of a Corporate Democracy
People For the American Way Foundation this month released an important report, called The Rise of the Corporate Court: How the Supreme Court is Putting Business First, which examines how pro-corporatist ideologues on the Supreme Court are tipping the scales of justice and denying Americans their fair shake.
A decade ago in Bush v. Gore, five Justices on the United States Supreme Court intervened in the 2000 presidential election to halt the counting of more than 100,000 ballots in Florida, thus delivering the presidency to the preferred candidate of America's largest corporations--like Enron, Haliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Blackwater, AIG and Goldman Sachs. These corporations proceeded to shape public policy in significant ways, promoting financial deregulation, privatization and the spread of corporate welfare, the contracting out of warfare, and the creation of what economist James Galbraith has called a "predator state."
The Far Right is still surging, and People For the American Way is one of America's best lines of defense.
Renew your membership now to help us expose the Right's extremism, and take back the power in our democracy from the corporations and put it in the hands of the people.
THIS MONTH
Arizona Republicans Use Rhetoric of Fear to Push Through Draconian Immigration Law
The Arizona Senate yesterday passed one of the harshest immigration enforcement laws in the country. The bill, written by right-wing state senator Russell Pearce, would allow police to arrest anyone who could not immediately prove they are in the country legally. Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law despite criticism from civil liberties and immigrants' rights groups.
Last month, People For the American Way Foundation released a report exposing the Right's playbook on the immigration issue -- a playbook into which this new Arizona policy fits snugly.
Wall Street Reform: A Big Flop for the Big Lie Strategy?
Over the past two decades, Wall Street pushed hard to weaken government oversight and loosen regulatory restrictions on the financial industry's behavior. Once Wall Street was able to play by its own rules, old standards went out the window. The resulting binge of greed, speculation, fraud, and reckless risk-taking resulted in a financial meltdown that has cost millions of Americans their jobs, homes, and retirement savings. The federal government was forced to step in to prevent an even more chaotic and catastrophic financial collapse.
As Congress takes serious steps to stop the abuses that have cost the nation so dearly, big Wall Street banks and their political enablers have been doing their best to block reform. They're using every trick in the book, including setting up a fake grassroots group that was designed to sound like a progressive organization. Some unconvincingly suggested that Republicans were opposing the Senate reform bill because it wasn't tough enough on Wall Street. A centerpiece of these obstructionist strategies has been repeating over and over again a brazen lie that the reform legislation before Congress would put taxpayers on the hook for "endless" bailouts. The bill would in fact do the opposite.
This month, Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he will retire from the Supreme Court at the end of the term. Stevens, who was nominated to the Court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford, is the Court's Senior Associate Justice.
Florida Special Election Shows Strength of Opposition to Citizens United
Democrat Ted Deutch decisively won a special election to fill the open seat in Florida's 19th congressional district. Deutch made his support for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC a centerpiece of his campaign.
Members of Congress announced a sweeping legislative remedy to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened up elections to unlimited corporate spending. The DISCLOSE Act would require the disclosure of corporate money spent on influencing elections, and it would prevent foreign companies, government contractors, and bail-out recipients from spending money in American elections.
This month's edition of the Young Elected Officials (YEO) Network's Frontline News explores domestic and sexual violence policies, and how YEOs around the country are making a difference.
Young Elected Officials Network is a program of People For the American Way Foundation.
Remembering Dorothy Height
Dorothy Height, a leading civil rights activist who spent 41 years at the head of the National Council of Negro Women, died this month at the age of 98.
In her decades of leadership in the civil rights movement, Height inspired millions of Americans to change their country for the better. Dr. Height's strong leadership helped to carry the country through the civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s and the continued battles for justice and equality in the decades that followed.
The Freedom Federation's "Awakening" conference convened at Liberty University on April 15 and 16 with the ambitious goal of transforming America by touching off the greatest religious revival that America or the world has ever known. Short of that, the gathering was all about rebranding the Religious Right political movement as a "multiracial, multi-ethnic, transgenerational" movement that cares about social justice (sorry, Glenn Beck). In short, the conference was meant to send a message to young and non-white evangelicals: this ain't your father's Religious Right.
May Day on the Mall: Lifting The Curse That Obama's Election Has Brought Upon America
On Saturday, May 1, Religious Right leaders and public officials will gather at the steps below the Lincoln Memorial to beg God to forgive America for having elected wicked leaders like President Obama. If you can’t make it to the national mall on Saturday morning, you can watch live on God TV or via webcast thanks to the American Family Association.
The "May Day -- A Cry to God for a Nation in Distress" event is the brainchild of Janet Porter, a Religious Right activist/conspiracy theory-promoting radio host, and member of presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee's inner circle. Porter believes America is under a curse for having "made the choice of death" by electing President Obama (even though God TV warned us not to). She announced the May Day event at last fall's How to Take Back America conference.
ENDA: The Religious Right Dusts Off Its Hate Crimes Playbook
As we've been noting for a while now, the Religious Right is gearing up to fight the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and is planning on doing so by, quite literally, using the same false attacks that they tried to use against hate crimes legislation.
Right Wing Watch: Is It Even Possible For Glenn Beck To Jump The Shark?
Remember a few months ago when Glenn Beck aired his "documentary" entitled "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free ... or Die," which aimed to explain how today's liberals and progressives are just like the Nazis and Communists who murdered millions of people?
Well, apparently that message was a bit too subtle, which is why Beck is back with a new documentary, this one entitled "Progressivism: America's Cancer."
Undermining Trust in Government: A Cynical, But Winning, Strategy
John Perr wrote a must-read post over at Crooks and Liars about how Republicans, when in power, fail miserably at governing and seem to do their best art destroying our country. The results of their policies -- economic or otherwise -- inevitably force them out of office, but last long enough that they are able to pin the woes on their democratic successors and make "Government" the scapegoat for all the nation's problems, with particular anger being directed at the then-incumbents: Democrats.
The threat of filibuster is holding up Senate business more than ever before, and Senators are at odds over whether to do away with or amend the rule that's causing so much trouble.
People for Executive Vice President Marge Baker joined a panel at American University's Washington College of Law to discuss what can be done to loosen up the gridlock in the deliberative body.
Right Wing Watch: ALIPAC's Gheen Blackmailing Graham In Order to Prevent Him From Being Blackmailed By President Obama
Earlier this month, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC publicly demanded that Senator Lindsey Graham admit to being gay, claiming that he is being manipulated into supporting immigration reform by powerful interests in government who are threatening to expose his "secret" if he doesn't.
Alan Colmes had ALIPAC's William Gheen on his program to discuss this rather unique strategy, asking Gheen how he knows that Graham is gay since Graham insists that he is not, to which Green explained that he's worked for gay politicans in the past ... so he apparently has really good "gaydar" or something.
Double your delay: Senate GOP picks another tactic off the obstruction menu
Some more evidence of the Senate GOP's extraordinary efforts on behalf of getting nothing done: trying to put off a vote on Wall Street reform, Senate Republicans are filibustering the motion to proceed to the legislation, adding yet another layer of delay to stall the bill.
Right Wing Watch: Is Religious Right's Star Ex-Muslim a Serial Liar?
Dr. Ergun Caner, the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, has been a rising star on the Religious Right, entertaining audiences at major Religious Right gatherings with his hip, irreverent stories about his upbringing as a radical Muslim and his conversion to Christianity. His story was featured on Focus on the Family's broadcast, "From Jihad to Jesus."
Turns out, according to a growing chorus of critics -- many of them Southern Baptists and other Christians -- Caner has apparently been lying for years about his childhood and his life story.
