August 2009 Archives

Last night I spent an hour watching a documentary that included some footage from the civil rights movement. It offered a short clip of Dr. Martin Luther King saying at what appeared to be a press conference that it was his request that President Kennedy sign an executive order declaring segregation illegal. At the time he made this statement, President Kennedy was under great pressure to advance civil rights without threatening his own chances...

When I was in high school government, our government teacher gave us a ten question test to see where we would land on the political spectrum. I remember thinking that test was bogus back then and that point was rammed home more so when my classmates (and teacher) labeled me as a liberal leaning communist anyway. See, I grew up in Clear Lake and in Clear Lake you are automatically a liberal if you vote...

I've always had a lot of respect for Senator Bob Dole.  He is an honest-to-God WWII hero, with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with the combat "V" - for his valor in attempting to assist a downed radio man.  In his service as a Congressman and Senator, he was widely regarded as a man able to bridge the moderate and conservative wings of the Republican Party.  Since his retirement (and loss in the...

The torture-defending spokespersons for the Republican Party were on full display yesterday on the Sunday news shows. First there was Papa Dick Cheney stopping by Fox News Sunday for a softball game with Chris Wallace, what Andrew Sullivan aptly named, A Teenage Girl Interviewing the Jonas Brothers. Then we had daughter Liz on This Week making some incredible claims (even for Liz, and that's saying something) about the Bush Justice Department. Finally, John McCain on...

Proponents of "enhanced interrogation techniques" point to the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as evidence that the methods work.  However, as today's article by the Washington Post explores, the situation is more complicated than just that.Yes, KSM was uncooperative and gave deliberately misleading information immediately after his capture.  Yes, KSM appears to have become a powerful asset for the Intelligence Community after waterboarding and sensory deprivation.  However, we must not make the mistake of assuming...

A couple of stories over the last couple of weeks have highlighted the need for a tutorial on the first amendment. I spend a good amount of time when I teach government over what is protected in free speech and what isn't protected. By now, everyone knows about Glenn Beck's comments on Fox and Friends in late July. This post isn't about those comments because they have been hashed and rehashed. However, there has been...

It occurred to me that I haven't done an education piece in awhile. As the school year gets going, people are going to be more and more concerned with TAKS scores. TAKS scores seem to be the life blood of our industry. My campus was one student away from being exemplary (the top rating). We had to "settle" for being recognized. Being recognized on the heels of Ike is a huge accomplishment for our campus....

Remember Wiley Drake? To refresh your memory, he is the pastor of a church in Buena Park, California who told Alan Colmes on June 2 that he was praying for the death of President Obama. Well, Wiley's not alone. Steven Anderson, pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona said, as part of his August 16 sermon entitled "Why I Hate Barack Obama," that he was going to pray for President Obama to...

My opposition to the previous administration's policies that led to torture and detainee abuse should come as no surprise to anyone here.  I don't think I need to rehash those arguments.However, the Attorney General's move to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing in the implementation of those policies has provoked a backlash from the Obama administration's critics.  They claim this will threaten intelligence gathering operations and make our country more vulnerable to attack.A former FBI counterterrorism official,...

The release of the CIA Inspector General's report containing some of the details of what the Bush administration called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the rest of the civilized world calls "torture" has brought former Vice-President Cheney out of his cave to revive the question of whether or not torture works. The fact that the question of 'do the ends justify the means' is even part of the conversation tells us the depths to which we...