Loss of Privacy

Go tell your representatives to stand up for fact-based education.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Texas State Board of Education’s moves to impose educational standards into its textbooks intended to indoctrinate Texas public school students with a telling of U.S. history that is based in extremist religious ideology.

You’ve probably also heard about some of the more jaw-dropping proposed changes to the curriculum, such as booting Thomas Jefferson off of a list of influential thinkers in place of explicitly religious figures, and the totally fabricated assertion that our system of government is based specifically on the laws of Moses. This comes from the same group of theocrats who famously fought to undermine evolution in science classes and delete from science textbooks the scientific consensus on the age of the universe because they conflict with the Bible.

As terrible as this religious imposition is for Texas students, all Americans have reason to fear. Due to the size of the Texas textbook market (and because other highly populated states do not use statewide textbook contracts in the say way), the backward dictates of its theocratic school board effect textbooks used by public school students all across the country.

Someone in Congress is finally standing up to this abuse of power and unconstitutional overreach by the religious extremists on the Texas State Board of Education. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (T-DX) recently introduced a resolution (H. Res. 1593) that supports fact-based curricula in public schools without meddling by those with an avowed religious agenda. Students in Texas and all across America need to know that Congress wants them to have an education based on facts and science, not myth and religious bias.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Watch the video message above from Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Sean Faircloth supporting Rep. Johnson’s resolution, and then tell your member of Congress to become a co-sponsor.

Sign it.

In the US state of Texas, the board of education is drafting its own version of American history.

The board is changing school textbooks to correct what they say is a “left leaning” bias in education.

But some say the changes have religious and racial overtones.

As Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett reports, the group’s decisions could have a major impact on how history is taught across the US (09 April 2010).

If you’re caught driving while drunk in Montgomery County, Texas, your name is going to be publicly listed on twitter. County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam decided that this is the best way to keep people from driving drunk during the holiday season.

The Houston-area county will start publishing names on Twitter during holiday weekends such as the Christmas holidays, Fourth of July and Memorial Day, which are thought of as times when a lot of people drive while intoxicated.

Many worry about the privacy implications of a prosecutor so willing to name and shame people who have been charged, but not convicted yet.

A “person who’s been arrested is still innocent unless proven guilty,” said Houston defense attorney Paul Kennedy in a blog posting. “My question is should the DA dismiss a case against a motorist or should a motorist be acquitted by a jury of his peers, will Mr. Diepraam offer a public apology on Twitter as well?”

Just “because facts are publicly known and made available by the media, doesn’t mean the prosecutor has to actively publicize these facts,” wrote Venkat Balasubramani, a lawyer and Internet law blogger.

Mr. Diepraam, however, believes in anonymity through obscurity and isn’t being deterred.

“We’re not putting information in the public that’s unavailable,” he said. “In our area, we’ve got a population of around 6 million people and I sincerely doubt that the fact that I’ve put someone’s name on a Twitter page is going to affect their right to a fair trial.”

Names of those arrested for DWI will be posted on District Attorney Brett Ligon’s Twitter page.

The court of public opinion is far worse than an actual court with an actual decision of guilt or innocence. Once a person is found not guilty, is the DA going to publicly issue an apology and provide some sort of compensation concerning the perceived losses of being wrongfully accused?

Regardless of what a person thinks of a drunk driver, placing a person charged with a crime in the same group as those guilty of the crime is also reprehensible. This plan has not been thought out and the prosecutors will think twice once the lawsuits start rolling in.

The Texas health department has been banking leftover samples of DNA without informing parents. The state has been doing this since 2002 and, after a lawsuit, Texas has passed a new law that is designed to protect the identities of the babies whose blood was collected. It also specifically states that parents can’t find out what their child’s blood is being used for.

You can download a Directive to Destroy form here [pdf] to request that your child’s sample be destroyed. Once the state receives the form, they have 60 days to destroy the blood cards.

While Christmas is going to remain in the schoolbooks of most Texas schools, Neil Armstrong is going to be taken out of their 5th grade science books.  Why would someone do this?  They claim it’s because he wasn’t a scientist.  Except that he was.

He received an aeronautical engineering from Purdue University, and a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He later was a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

And he’s also the most identified person from NASA.  You know, the science people.  Texas has, apparently forgotten something Armstrong said as well.  “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”  And then he walked on the freaking moon!

More than 50 people mentioned in current textbooks are not included in the proposed standards, including Carl Sagan, Colin Powell, Nathan Hale, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Debs, John Steinbeck and Mother Teresa.

Some board members argued for more accomplishments of minorities to be included in the final version. An early recommendation to remove the late farm workers leader César Chávez and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall provoked a strong reaction. Both are expected to remain in the textbooks.

“We can’t satisfy everyone,” said board member Barbara Cargill, of The Woodlands. “We don’t want to burden textbooks with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of names … As we go through this process we will see a lot more minorities than we ever have been before, so that’s a positive.”

Oh golly gee willikers.  We can’t expect people to know who important people like Neil Armstrong and Carl Sagan.   Why, they haven’t really contributed anything to society have they?

What’s really going on here is they want more religion and minorities taught and a whole lot of other stuff sacrificed to accomplish this.  It’s pretty sad when the state says their kids are too dumb to grasp everything so major events need to be removed so we can be PC about it.