If Only Every High School Sophomore Was Like This One!

From the American Constitution Society Blog:

Citing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s frequent inaccuracies and “gross distortions,” a high school sophomore from New Jersey has challenged the Minnesota congresswoman to a debate on the U.S. Constitution, U.S. history and civics, The Minnesota Independent reports.

In an open letter to Bachmann, student Amy Myers writes:

As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted. The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter.

… Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:

I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.

Read the full letter here.

I predict great things for Ms. Amy Myers. And we should all be working for the time that most high school sophomores know enough about the Constitution to see through the charlatans like David Barton and the ‘useful idiots’ like Michelle Bachmann.

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The Sad Story of Dick Lugar

As Indiana’s Republican Senate primary unfolds, I can’t help thinking of T.S. Eliot’s famous line: “This is the way the world ends–not with a bang, but a whimper.”

One of my earliest forays into political life was during Dick Lugar’s first campaign for Mayor. I supported him as he moved into national politics, and even after I left the Republican party. I didn’t always agree with his positions–Tea Party rhetoric to the contrary, his career trajectory has moved him steadily to the right–but he was reasoned and reasonable, and clearly an expert in foreign affairs. I could and did differ with him on issues like gay rights and abortion, but I respected him.

It must be galling for someone of his stature and intellect to be the underdog against a candidate like Mourdock, a small man supported by the angry mob that currently comprises the GOP base. The fact that over 80% of Indiana’s Republican County chairmen support Mourdock not only explains current internal polls showing Lugar losing, it speaks volumes about what the Grand Old Party has become.

So Lugar has come to the sort of decision-point we all face at one time or another: to face the challenge with integrity–increasing the liklihood he’ll lose–or to grovel before the know-nothings and hope to salvage one final term.

He’s chosen to grovel.

This morning’s paper reported that Lugar has withdrawn his sponsorship of the Dream Act, a measure that would have been relatively uncontroversial in saner times. The Dream Act permits undocumented young people who were brought to this country as babies to gain citizenship by graduating college or serving in the Armed Forces. It recognizes that the charges of criminality leveled at adults who entered the country illegally are unfair when applied to children who had no choice in the matter. Most of those children have grown up as Americans, and have never lived anywhere else. Whatever one’s views on the larger immigration issues, punishing children for the acts of their parents is gratuitous and cruel and serves no purpose. But in our bipolar world, any recognition of complexity, any evidence of human compassion, is “liberal” and therefore unacceptable to those in the GOP most likely to vote in the primary.

The sad part of all this is that Lugar will never be able to satisfy the culture warriors and Tea Party voters who are enraged at his support for weapons reductions and treaties, for his willingness to follow the Constitution and vote to confirm qualified Supreme Court candidates with whom he might personally disagree. These are voters for whom any acknowledgment of nuance and/or complexity is “elitist” (or, if you are black, “uppity”). Rather than regaining their support, Lugar is disappointing the moderate Republicans who are left–the very voters whose larger-than-usual turnout for the primary is his best hope of prevailing.

Going into this primary, Lugar’s choice was simple, if painful. He could defend a long and illustrious career as a statesman, or he could try–desperately and probably unsuccessfully–to  recast himself as one of the current pack of radical ideologues.

Evidently, he’s chosen to go out, not with a bang, but a whimper.

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Great Line…..

From Andrew Cohen:

Former government lawyer John Yoo taking credit on behalf of the Bush administration for Sunday’s strike against Osama bin Laden is like Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, taking credit for the results of the 1998 Academy Awards.

Perfect!

What Planet is This?

Never in a million years did I think I’d write what I am about to write: progress on gay rights and same-sex marriage is the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal political landscape.

Yes, you read that correctly. Think about it.

Within the past couple of months, the Justice Department concluded that DOMA is unconstitutional, and announced that it will not defend it in court. The silk-stocking law firm hired by the Republican troglodytes in Congress to defend the measure backed out, citing its own commitment to gay equality.

In the last few weeks, I’ve read an impassioned essay by a conservative Evangelical pastor berating his fellow Evangelicals for their political activism against same-sex marriage and taking them to task for hypocrisy. I’ve seen a You Tube of a young Republican (and boy, are they rare) testifying to a state legislative committee in favor of same-sex marriage. I’ve seen two polls conducted by respected national opinion research firms, both of which found a slight majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage. And most recently, this news item appeared on the ABC News website:

“The Navy will allow same-sex couples to wed in ceremonies on its bases and officiated by Navy chaplains after the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is officially repealed, according to new training guidelines published last month by the Navy’s chief of chaplains.”

This ship has sailed. There will be rearguard actions, there will be setbacks, but the war is over, and the good guys won.

Unfortunately, the rest of the country is going to hell.

State legislatures are passing increasingly insane measures. In Texas, the legislature has overruled law enforcement and the administrations of the state’s universities, and authorized students who are so inclined to carry guns on campus. (That should “shoot down” their academic recruiting—nothing as comforting as knowing that the student you just failed is mad as hell and packing heat…). Arizona was just the first of several states to pass anti-immigrant measures that—whatever their highly dubious merits—they know to be unconstitutional. (Profiling aside, the Constitution makes immigration an exclusively federal issue.) Here in Indiana, where I live, in addition to passing our own version of such a bill (over the strenuous protests of our largest employers), the legislature passed–and the Governor signed—the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill, which among other things de-funded Planned Parenthood, the only provider of healthcare services for some 22,000 low-income women. (The fact that denying two million dollars to Planned Parenthood will cost the state four million dollars in federal family planning money didn’t matter any more than the health of Indiana’s poorest women mattered.)

I won’t even mention the efforts of Governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan to deny public sector workers the right to engage in collective bargaining, or their wars on public schools and teachers. Or the states that have passed their very own “birther” bills.

When you look at Congress, it’s even worse. The 2010 elections swept a large number of absolutely crazy ideologues into office, where they are busily trying to abolish Medicare and Medicaid, cause the national government to default on its obligations by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, voting that climate change doesn’t exist (I kid you not!) and engaging in all sorts of other mischief, the consequences of which they clearly do not begin to understand.

Seriously, if it weren’t for the progress on gay rights, there’d be no progress at all. And if that isn’t enough to make you head out for the nearest bar, I don’t know what is.

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