Target Centermass

Category: Politics

  • Mich. School Board to Vote on Bible Class

    The school board in a small town in Michigan, facing popular demand, is wrestling with the idea of adding a course to its curriculum focusing on the Bible.

    A yearlong dispute over whether to add a religious group’s Bible class at small-town Frankenmuth High School in rural Michigan comes to a head at Monday’s school board meeting.

    At issue is whether the proposed curriculum conforms to a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision barring public schools from indoctrinating children in religion but upholding the right to teach about religion.

    The dispute in Frankenmuth, about 75 miles north of Detroit, is the latest skirmish in a nationwide battle between religious conservatives and church-state separationists that has stretched from Fort Myers and Miami, Fla. to Camden, N.J.; North Kansas City, Mo.; Kewaksum, Wis.; and Westcliffe, Colo.

    The school board will get a report Monday from a curriculum committee, made up of teachers and administrators, and will decide whether to adopt the proposed class, Pendleton said. He said he doubts the board will do so.

    One year ago, hundreds of Frankenmuth parents and students asked their Board of Education to offer a Bible course based on materials from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

    What if the town was full of flat-earthers or Holocaust-deniers? Should the numbers sway the content of public education?

    The Greensboro, N.C.-based council says its curriculum conforms to the law. But People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties union say its materials illegally promote religion.

    “It’s religious right people who want to impose a theocracy in this country,” said Judith Schaeffer, deputy legal director of Washington-based People for the American Way. Her group has urged Frankenmuth to reject the class.

    National council lawyer Mike Johnson vigorously defended his group’s course outline.

    “It’s completely defensible. The approach is objective, certainly nondenominational,” Johnson said from Shreveport, La. “It presents the Bible as history and literature, but it does not proselytize.”

    Nondenominational within a particular grouping of religions perhaps, but I suspect little would be included outside of the biblical viewpoint from a non-Christian perspective.

    The curriculum, based on the King James Bible, includes topics ranging from “Periods of Hebrew History in the Old Testament” to “The Parables of Jesus — Literary Genre.”

    In a letter to Frankenmuth school officials, Schaeffer said the course material teaches the Bible from a Protestant Christian perspective, rather than objectively, and teaches the creation story, Noah’s flood, Tower of Babel and resurrection of Jesus as history.

    National Council does not release the names of districts that use its materials. But Johnson said 288 schools in 35 states have adopted its course outline.

    At the eye of the storm is David Pendleton, president of the seven-member board on which he has served for 20 years. The district in Michigan’s rural Thumb has about 1,200 students, 500 of them at the high school.

    “It’s stirred up about as much controversy as the abortion issue,” he said.

    Founded in the mid-19th century by Lutheran missionaries to the Indians, and followed by German pioneer farmers, the Bavarian-themed tourist town of 4,600 remains a conservative community, Pendleton said.

    As far as most board members are concerned, teaching the Bible at Frankenmuth High School would be a good thing, he said.

    “I would love to see it. Other board members would love to do it. But can we do it legally? I don’t think so. But, we’ll see,” he said.

    I cannot believe a school board member is actually stating that legality is the only thing driving the question. Strike that — I have no problem believing it. Who cares about the integrity of the education they’re elected to protect?

    The dispute came to a boil at a Jan. 13 school board hearing, when parents Marcia and Robert Stoddard submitted petitions signed by about 1,200 parents and students asking for the course, The Saginaw News reported.

    There was a time in high school when I might have signed this. Who knows where I would be now with the possibility of this added indoctrination?

    This is why high school is not the place for such an issue in exclusion. By that, I mean the impact or beleifs of religions can rightfully be touched upon in history or philosophy classes, but there is no need to focus on just one at this stage and in such a public forum, be it supposedly for literary, historical or philosophical reasons. This is especially true when alternative religions are not granted the same exposure.

    About 100 people filled the Rittmueller Middle School cafeteria, with shouts breaking out at one point between an avowed atheist and a course supporter.

    “It’s our history, and we must accept it,” the paper quoted high school student Dan Redford as telling the board. “It would be a crime to stop students from learning about our world.”

    Classmate Brandon Bierlein disagreed, saying, “It’s best to leave the Bible to the pastors.”

    While opposing the National Council on Bible Curriculum’s course, People for the American Way says that public school instruction about religion and the Bible is legal and desirable.

    “Schools of course can teach students about the Bible, about the Quran, about people’s beliefs,” said Schaeffer of People for the American Way. “The issue is how do you approach this material.”

    Religion lies at the center of American society, and an educational system that ignores religion renders the nation’s history incomprehensible, said Charles Kriker, founder of the journal Religion and Education and a retired professor at Iowa State University.

    “You really can’t understand things if you exclude that factor,” he said from Ames, Iowa. “Just because something is controversial doesn’t mean you have to ignore it.”

    I only occasionally agree with the ACLU and, when I do, I usually feel a need to cleanse myself afterwards.

    They are right in this case, though. What if the course, popularly demanded, is implemented and peer pressure is placed upon its enrollment? What if I move my future family there and my children are pressured to take such a course with no courses available for contradictory views?

    At the age of high school students and those younger, the public responsibility towards religion should be towards protecting the reasonable rights of the family and the church within their own domain. It should not be one of such blatant advocacy towards a particular indoctrination.

  • Internal U.N. Audits Ignite Debate

    Internal United Nations audits released today show “extensive mismanagement” of the Iraq Oil-for-Food program.

    Internal U.N. audits sent to the director of the Iraq oil-for-food program uncovered extensive mismanagement of multimillion-dollar deals with contractors and fraudulent paperwork by its employees, according to copies of the some of the reports obtained by The Associated Press.

    An independent panel investigating corruption in the humanitarian program released the 55 internal audits on its Web site Sunday, a day earlier than originally planned after some of the reports were leaked to the media.

    The panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who was appointed in April by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to investigate the growing scandal, was given access to the audits that were conducted throughout the duration of the program, along with other relevant documents.

    The oil-for-food program was created as a humanitarian exemption to sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the 1991 Gulf War. Beginning in 1996, it allowed Saddam Hussein’s government to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and other items.

    The contention over access to the audits led some congressional investigators to accuse the United Nations of stonewalling outside investigations of alleged corruption at the program. At least five congressional probes are running separately from Volcker’s.

    In November, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., accused U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of trying to cover up the extent of fraud at the program and called for his resignation.

    Now that the internal audits are being released, the two sides disagree about what they show.

    Today’s released briefing paper can be found in a PDF file here, and copies of the internal audit reports have been published here.

  • Palestinian Abbas Claims Presidential Victory

    The Palestinians have voted and the presidential replacement for terrorist Yasser Arafat has declared victory.

    Former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas declared victory in the Palestinian presidential election late Sunday after exit polls gave him a commanding lead over his rivals.

    Abbas dedicated his win to “my brother,” a reference to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

    “There is a difficult mission ahead — to build our state, to achieve security for our people, to provide a good life for our people, to give our prisoners freedom, our fugitives a life in dignity, to reach our goal of an independent state,” Abbas said.

    Israel is prepared to immediately make “all the necessary adjustments” to work with Abbas, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told CNN.

    “The main challenge is still ahead for him,” Olmert said. “Will he fight against the terrorists? Will he try to stop this bloody, violent war against the state of Israel? This is the main question. This is what interests us.”

    President Bush said: “This is a historic day for the Palestinian people and for the people of the Middle East.”

    A poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found Mahmoud Abbas had 66 percent of the vote and his closest challenger, Mustafa Barghouti, had about 20 percent.

    ….

    Abbas, a moderate now serving as interim chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, would take the reins held by Arafat, the popular leader who died in November. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was the candidate of Arafat’s Fatah party.

    The 69-year-old once served as prime minister but quit the post, accusing Arafat of undermining his authority by refusing to give him control of the Palestinian Authority’s security organizations.

    Official results are expected Monday, but the challenge of the job is already presenting itself as Israel is set to demand the new Palestinian president act against missile attacks into Israel from Gaza.

    A new Israeli coalition due to be sworn in today will demand swift action by Yassir Arafat’s successor to stamp out rocket fire by militants against Israeli targets around the Gaza Strip.

    ….

    The prime minister is expected to invite the new Palestinian president for face-to-face talks, although Palestinian officials are concerned Mr Sharon would want them to focus primarily on Israeli security.

    “Of course, we expect a new, different Palestinian leadership that will be prepared to move in the direction of peace,” said Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister.

    An Israeli official said the government wanted Mr Abbas, assuming he won, to match his rhetoric against the armed intifada with a serious effort to end incitement against Israel and to stop militants from launching Qassam rockets against Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Only then would moves such as a release of Palestinian prisoners and the resumption of talks be considered.

    “No one expects terrorism to stop tomorrow, it’s not realistic,” the official said. “But he needs to send a signal to his own people that the war is over and then we can sit down and talk.”

    Palestinian militants yesterday fired two rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

    I expect nothing new anytime soon. Abbas is assuming the reins of an untamed beast, one that has been fed on brutality and hatred for decades.

  • Ukrainian Transport Minister Found Dead

    With opposition leader Victor Yushchenko’s victory apparently assured in the Ukrainian presidential do-over, there may be a break on the fraud allegations of the earlier balloting. Is this the smoking gun?

    Ukrainian Transport Minister Heorhiy Kirpa, a supporter of the trailing candidate in Sunday’s presidential election, was found dead in his house from a gunshot wound Monday, a spokesman for the nation’s railways said.

    Local media speculated that Kirpa’s death was a suicide but officials did not confirm that. The Unian news agency reported that a gun was found near his body.

    A duty officer in Kiev’s police headquarters told The Associated Press that Kirpa was found wounded. When asked whether Kirpa had committed suicide, the officer would not comment.

    Kirpa’s death came a day after a presidential election rerun in which opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko held an insurmountable lead over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Opposition figures claimed that Kirpa allocated trains to ferry Yanukovych supporters to vote at multiple polling sites in Nov. 21 presidential balloting that eventually was annulled by the Ukraine Supreme Court.

    That overturning of the election led to Sunday’s rerun.

    Well, obviously it’s a smoking gun, but is it the smoking gun, one pointing to a man who tried to screw over the wishes of his own countrymen?

  • Yushchenko Declares Victory in Ukraine Re-vote

    The people of the Ukraine have made their choice … again … maybe.

    Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko declared victory early Monday in Ukraine’s presidential election, telling supporters it is the dawn of a new political era in the former Soviet republic.

    Although final results will be released Monday morning, Yushchenko had a huge lead in early returns, and exit polls indicated he would defeat Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

    I hope Yushchenko is not relying only on exit polls.

    Yushchenko, who was poisoned with dioxin during the campaign, told tens of thousands of supporters who had massed in Independence Square, “After today, everything is going to change in the Ukraine.”

    “For 14 years, we were independent, but we were not free,” he said. “This is a unique, clear political victory, an elegant victory from the people who have proved their power.”

    The bitterly contested race was a repeat of a November 21 election whose results were thrown out because of widespread fraud. Yanukovych won the official count by 2.7 percentage points in that election.

    In response, Yushchenko supporters gathered daily in the square, calling for another election. Sunday night, they gathered in celebration.

    “Today, the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian people have won. The Ukrainian people have won,” Yushchenko said.

    Three exit polls released just after the voting ended showed him with a 12- to 20-point lead lead over Yanukovych, who was backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Damn, there’s those exit polls.

    Yanukovych told reporters that he still believed he could win — but that if he did not, he would fight as an opposition voice in parliament.

    With ballots from just over 60 percent of precincts counted, Yushchenko was leading 56 percent to 40 percent, The Associated Press reported, citing election officials.

    Okay, so it looks like much more than just exit polls. In addition, so far there have been no official allegations of fraud that haunted the previous balloting. The Yshchenko campaign was confident that the “election results could not be ‘stolen’ this time.”

    “I am very happy that our Ukrainian people rose up and fought for freedom and democracy, and I think that we will have our victory,” a Yushchenko supporter said.

    Whoever wins, and it certainly looks like Yushchenko right now, certainly has a tough row to hoe, as Ukraine has been torn in half by this election.

    The election will determine Ukraine’s relationship with Europe and Russia. Yushchenko has stronger ties to the West than does Yanukovych.

    The winner will face the challenge of uniting the country and building stability. Ukraine is divided geographically, with people in eastern and southern regions of the country largely supporting Yanukovych and those in other areas, including Kiev, mostly backing Yushchenko.

    ….

    If Yushchenko wins, he will also face the challenge of building a relationship with Russia.

    Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma has called on whoever loses to congratulate the winner the next day to help build stability. Asked whether he would call Yushchenko if the polls prove accurate, Yanukovych said he would do so, with regret.

    He has argued that the new election was unnecessary and unconstitutional. But international monitors condemned irregularities and fraud in last month’s vote, and Ukraine’s supreme court ultimately ruled the results invalid.

    To say the winner is inheriting a nightmare, both internationally and domestically, is certainly accurate.

  • San Antonio Requires Strippers to Wear Permits

    We’d better be talking about some unobtrusive permits here.

    The City Council today approved a measure that will require strippers to wear permits while they are on stage.

    City Councilman Chip Haass pushed the amended human display ordinance as making it easier for police to identify dancers.

    But a lawyer representing several strip clubs in the city said it would also create a physical danger by making it easier for an obsessed customer to find out a dancer’s real name and where she lives.

    Attorney Jim Deegear has said he will file a lawsuit challenging the measure, which the 11-member council passed unanimously early Friday during a marathon meeting that began Thursday afternoon.

    Deegear says the city’s strict rules are part of an effort to drive his clients out of business.

    The strip clubs’ attorney makes a very valid objection about the publication of a dancer’s personal information. This is a rather poor idea.

    There is one lingering question, though: is some sort of test needed to obtain such a permit and, if so, how is it scored?

  • Ukraine Rivals OK Vote Reforms for Rematch

    Time for an update on the circus that has become the Ukrainian presidential election: it’s a do-over.

    Ukraine’s political rivals agreed early Tuesday on legislation to ensure a fair vote during the rerun later this month of the fraud-ridden presidential runoff but remained divided on constitutional amendments trimming presidential powers.

    In addition to supporting changes in election laws, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma agreed to change the Central Election Commission, which was accused of covering up rampant fraud during the Nov. 21 runoff.

    On Monday, Kuchma and Russian President Vladimir Putin had said they would abide by the results of the new election, removing major question marks surrounding the Dec. 26 rematch. The vote was ordered by the Supreme Court, which last week struck down the election commission decision that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won the runoff.

    “Of course we will … accept the will of any nation in the former Soviet space, and will work with any elected leader,” Putin said during a state visit to Turkey.

    Yanukovych emerged from seclusion and declared he was confident of victory. Kuchma had supported Yanukovych in the runoff against Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko but has distanced himself from the prime minister over the past two weeks as protesters swarmed the capital.

    Tuesday’s agreement on electoral law changes was reached during six-hour talks involving Kuchma and the two candidates and brokered by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

    Kuchma emerged from the talks after midnight and said the parties had failed to reach agreement on his initiative to push through constitutional reform to transfer some powers from the presidency to parliament.

    Yushchenko had opposed the constitutional changes, saying that Kuchma and his allies want to weaken the presidency, fearing his victory in the election rematch with Yanukovych.

    However, just before the talks, Yushchenko’s allies in parliament reached a tentative agreement with pro-government lawmakers to approve changes in the electoral laws and the constitutional amendments on presidential powers simultaneously Tuesday.

    Should this fail, I would suggest best-of-seven Rock, Paper, Scissors.

  • Colombian Rebels Told to Kill Bush

    Some bad people might want President Bush dead and, surprisingly enough, this time they aren’t Islamists.

    Colombia’s main rebel group asked followers to mount an assassination attempt against President Bush during his visit to Colombia last week, Defense Minister Jorge Uribe said. There was no evidence Saturday that rebels even tried to organize such an attack.

    Uribe told reporters late Friday that informants said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, told followers to attack Bush during his four-hour visit in the seaside city of Cartagena last Monday, where he met with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

    The defense minister, who is no relation to the president, said security forces were on full alert during the visit. About 15,000 Colombian troops and police, along with U.S. troops and Secret Service agents provided security. There was no indication Bush’s life was ever in danger.

    Uribe did not say where the informants had heard about the purported order to attack Bush.

    The Secret Service did not comment on security details, as is its policy.

    “We have full confidence in the fine work of the Secret Service and their work with security officials on the ground when the President travels,” White House spokesman Jim Morrell said Saturday.

    The FARC has declared U.S. troops in Colombia military targets. The troops are training local forces and providing logistics and planning assistance for military operations against the rebels.

    However, the rebels never publicly declared Bush a target during his first-ever visit as president to Colombia. Bush visited Colombia after attending a summit in Chile.

    Damn drug-trafficking Marxists.

  • Ukraine: Viktor’s Victory Beginning to Vanish

    The controversy around the Ukrainian presidential election continues to swirl, as Ukraine’s parliament is now calling for a do-over.

    Ukraine’s Parliament passed a non-binding resolution Saturday to annul the results of this week’s presidential election, CNN reported.

    The lawmakers also voted to dissolve the nation’s Central Election Commission that declared the winner of the election, which has been widely condemned by international observers as being rigged.

    That commission ruled Viktor Yanukovych, the government’s hand-picked, pro-Moscow successor, had won the election.

    Parliament’s Saturday resolution said the results did not reflect the will of the Ukrainian voters and should be made invalid. It also said new elections are needed.

    It is not presently clear which governmental entity has the authority to void the election, the Parliament, President Leonid Kuchma, or the nation’s high court, which has stayed Yanukovych’s inauguration pending the outcome of an investigation.

    This is beginning to make the Bush-Gore 2000 results look as cut and dried as they really were.

  • Study Claims E-Voting Irregularities in Florida

    Hey, guess what? Are you sitting down? Good. It seems some folks at UC-Berkeley apparently have issues with the presidential election results.

    Voting irregularities in three Florida counties that used electronic voting machines in this month’s election may have awarded as many as 260,000 votes more to President George W. Bush than were expected, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

    The Berkeley researchers claimed on Thursday that their findings raise questions about the accuracy of voting results in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties, all of which have more voters registered as Democrats than Republicans. According to statistical models, voters in those three counties delivered between 130,000 and 260,000 more votes to Bush than were expected by a post-election analysis, the researchers maintain.

    “Something went awry with electronic voting in Florida,” says Michael Hout, a sociology professor, who led the research effort.

    Hout says that the odds of the Florida irregularities happening by chance were less than 1 in 1000, and he calls for an examination of the results. “It’s like a smoke alarm and it’s beeping,” he says. “We call upon the voting officials in Florida to determine whether there’s a fire.”

    The irregularities do not account for enough votes to give the state to Democratic challenger John F. Kerry, who lost to Bush in Florida by more than 377,000 votes.

    The possibility of problems with e-voting was a topic much discussed before the November 2 election.

    To obtain their results, the Berkeley researchers analyzed publicly available voting data from all of Florida’s counties using a technique called multiple-regression analysis, which accurately identified butterfly ballot problems in Palm Beach County during the 2000 election, Hout says.

    The technique involves building a statistical model to predict voting patterns based on a number of factors, including history of voting, median family income, age, and race. Hout’s team conducted its study using data compiled from the November 2 election.

    “We noticed that three counties stood out from those expectations,” Hout says. “These were counties that had a significant departure from what we would expect, statistically, given the patterns in all those other counties.”

    Using their statistical model, Hout’s team forecast that Bush should have received 28,000 fewer votes in Broward County than he received there in 2000. However, Bush received 51,000 more votes than he did four years ago. In Palm Beach County, where Bush gained 41,000 votes, the Berkeley research suggested a loss of 8900 votes. For Miami-Dade County the research showed Bush should have gained 18,400 votes. In fact, he gained 37,000 votes.

    The counties in question used e-voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems.

    It seems that the factors the study was based on left out a series of intangibles that the Berkeleyites either couldn’t measure or didn’t want to face, such as 9/11 and Bush’s steady leadership since in the war against Islamist terror, an inept campaign by an irresolute Democratic candidate, and all-too-transparent media hatchet jobs, for starters.

    Would their models have me, an atheist who voted for the Libertarian candidate in each of the four general elections I’ve previously been of age to vote in, now casting a ballot for President Bush? I doubt it, and it seems I’m not the only one with questions about this academic piece of work.

    A spokesperson for the Information Technology Association of America, an IT vendor group, dismissed the Berkeley results, saying that the study appeared to ignore the political, social, and economic factors that affected the vote. “It is unclear to us that the technology, which is the one factor the authors appear to have focused on for this study, should be viewed as causal above the many other factors that could affect a voter’s decision,” said Charles Greenwald, an ITAA spokesperson, in an e-mail interview.

    Greenwald also criticized the study for not being peer reviewed.

    The Berkeley research has already been informally reviewed by academics at Harvard University, and will no doubt be scrutinized now that the results are posted on Berkeley’s Web site, Hout says. He declines to provide the names of researchers outside of Berkeley who are familiar with the results, saying they asked not to be identified.

    Because there is no paper audit trail for the e-voting machines used in Florida, it may be difficult to ultimately explain the irregularities. “Our statistical approach is just about the only way we have to uncover what went on in Florida or in any other state that uses e-voting as it exists today, except Nevada where there is a paper trail,” Hout says.

    The model found an even larger discrepancy when certain factors weighing the data in Bush’s favor were removed, bringing the total possible discrepancy to 260,000 votes, Hout says.

    The team did not, however, find this level of irregularity in 12 other Florida counties that used e-voting machines, he says.

    Hout is unable to explain why some e-voting counties would experience irregularities while others did not, but he says that the irregularities were more likely to occur in counties that voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000. “This becomes an important clue that investigators who know something about both the software and the hardware can use,” he says.

    Hmmmmm … can’t explain why Bush made gains in Democratic areas? See my above comment.

    The Berkeley study also appeared to debunk speculation about voting irregularities in several heavily Democratic counties that voted Republican in the 2004 election. After applying the statistical model to Dixie County and Baker County, both of which bucked party affiliations and voted overwhelmingly for Bush, Hout’s team found nothing amiss. These counties, which used paper ballots that were optically scanned, have historically voted Republican in national elections, Hout says.

    Hout’s researchers also examined the election results in the hotly contested state of Ohio and found no irregularities there. “Our results do indicate that Ohio probably did get it right,” Hout says.

    Look, they can’t argue the state was stolen, as their study’s questionable numbers are insufficient to alter the Florida vote. They can’t support previous allegations in Ohio. They have no evidence other than their own projections and expectations. In short, they ain’t got diddley.

    This is just only another in a series of attempts to try to create an air of illegitimacy over the election, the sanctity of our republic be damned.