Sugar City writes U.S. Supreme Court

The Idaho Affiliate of the American Family Association

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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Bryan Fischer, Executive Director

BUDGET CRUNCH SHELVES PLAN WHICH WOULD HELP MERIT PAY

Due to budget restraints, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna has withdr

awn a funding request for a program which would enable education officials to track the academic performance of each individual student over time.

Longitudinal information on student test scores would enable the state to award merit pay based on a teacher’s proven ability to improve the academic performance of individual students, an assessment which is not possible at this point due to inadequacies in the state’s data base.

Merit pay should be awarded not just on the basis of absolute academic performance, but also on the basis of marked improvement. Teachers who show proficiency in helping students make up lost academic ground should be eligible for bonus compensation.

ID applies for grant to better track students | Idaho Statesman

SUGAR CITY, IDAHO STRIKES BLOW FOR ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION IN LETTER TO SUPREME COURT

The First Amendment’s freedom of speech was intended by the Founders to protect freedom of vigorous political speech; it was never intended to protect obscenity, profanity or pornography. Only an activist judiciary ignoring original intent could use this provision to shelter conduct which the Founders would have found reprehensible and worthy of legal sanction.

The city council of Sugar City, Idaho (pop. 1,500) has sent a letter of complaint to the nine justices of the Supreme Court, asking them to reconsider rulings which have harmed the nation’s moral health. A copy of the letter has also been sent to the Idaho Supreme Court.

In particular, the council is concerned about a 1981 case in which the justices imaginatively ruled that the First Amendment prevents towns such as Sugar City from banning adult-oriented entertainment businesses entirely, even though taking your clothes off in public and dancing around a pole is action, not speech, let alone of the political variety.

City leaders said in the letter that their study of the issues “convinces us that the Framers merely intended to protect political and religious speech.”

The letter was written in conjunction with the passing of a city code amendment creating a zoning law which will prevent adult-oriented businesses from opening within 1,000 feet of libraries, parks, schools and churches.

I spoke this morning with city council president Harold Harris, who said this is a proactive measure, since Sugar City currently has no sexually oriented business. Under the new code, Mr. Harris says, the only place an SOB could be located is in the city’s junkyard, which coincidentally would be where it belongs.

City Councilman Bruce King said, “We have a responsibility to speak up when judges misinterpret or misapply its provisions, even judges on the Supreme Court.” Bully for them all.

Idaho Press-Tribune: Idaho town sends letter to US Supreme Court

SCIENTIFIC MCCARTHYISM ALIVE AND WELL: STEIN BOOTED OVER INTELLIGENT DESIGN

In Ben Stein’s 2008 documentary, “Expelled,” he exposed the tyrannical repression of scientific skepticism about Darwinian theory on college campuses.

He has now become the latest exhibit of this Stalin-like repression of free speech as he has been forced to withdraw as the University of Vermont’s

commencement speaker because of complaints about his criticism of evolution.

Although accused of being anti-science, Stein says quite correctly, “I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists. I want all scientific inquiry to happen, not just what the ruling clique calls science.”

A number of states are considering academic freedom bills, which will protect the right of science teachers to freely explore all scientific facets of controversial issues, including evolution. Idaho currently does not have such a law in place, which has allowed the University of Idaho to place a bag over the head of biologist Scott Minnich, one of the leading advocates of intelligent design theory.

Newsmax.com - Evolution Spat Nixes Ben Stein Speech

MEDIA ADVISORY – GUEST HOST THIS SATURDAY ON “AM IDAHO SATURDAY”

I will serve as Doug McConnaughey’s guest host for the first hour of his “AM Idaho Sa

turday” program on Boise’s KIDO 580 AM radio station. I’ll be on from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. Rep. Steven Thayn will be my guest on the program, as we discuss some of his innovative ideas for education.

We also hope to hear from Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, discussing the issue of academic freedom and the censorship of Darwinian skepticism in science curricula.

The call in numbers are 208-580-5436 in the Treasure Valley and 888-580-5436 toll-free nationwide, and you can listen live via audio-streaming by going here. (http://www.kidoam.com/?pollId=40)

Idaho Values Alliance: Guest host on AM Idaho Saturday

If you value the work of the IVA, please consider a donation today. Information on how to donate, including making a secure online donation, may be found here. Thank you!

BONUS BYTES

Rough days for President Obama, who has gone from “I won” 11 days ago to “I screwed up” yesterday. According to Rasmussen, just 37% of Americans now support his stimulus bill, and 50% of us think (correctly) that it will make things worse. Things got so bad that one Blue Dog Democrat said that he “got quiet encouragement from the Obama folks” to oppose this porker. Newsweek has already admitted that the president “has all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” but hopefully says he “began making his comeback” yesterday. Imagine! A president who has to make a “comeback” after two weeks in office! The Old Media has even turned his ineptitude into a virtue, complimenting him on being brave enough to admit his mistakes, something Reuters glowingly says is “rare for presidents.” Obama’s approval rating plunged from 83% to 64% in the space of a week – and that was before the tax debacles that torpedoed Tom Daschle and other nominees this week. A majority of Americans also disapprove of his decisions to use taxpayer funds to pay for overseas abortions and to close Guantanamo Bay. (Obama admission of mistake rare for presidents | Reuters; Newsmax.com - Obama's Approval Numbers Plummet In Just One Week)
The stimulus bill contains some toxic provisions regarding religious liberty. Tucked away in its 700 or so pages is an anti-faith plank that will censor religion and force people of faith out of the public square. It specifically prohibits stimulus funds from being used for “modernization, renovation or repair of facilities ... used for sectarian instruction (or) religious worship.” This essentially would result in a ban of after-school Bible clubs from public schools and prohibit the use of their facilities on weekends by churches for worship services. Said Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, “Apparently, President Obama’s idea of faith-based initiatives is to remove faith from all initiatives.” (Liberty Counsel: "Stimulus" Package Will Stimulate Discrimination Against People of Faith)
It hasn’t taken President Obama long to break one campaign pledge after another. On the campaign trail, he promised never to sign a bill into law for at least five days after it had passed Congress, in order to “giv(e) the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.” But yesterday he signed the bloated SCHIP bill, which will be paid for by a staggering 161% tax increase on cigarettes – a load which will fall disproportionately on the poor he said would see no tax raises under his administration – less than three hours after it passed Congress. He also sign a Fair Pay act two days after it received final passage (despite paying his own female campaign staff just 78 cents for every dollar his male staff made), and it wasn’t posted for comment on the White House website until after it had been signed into law.
Sen. Mitch McConnell points out that if we’d spent a million dollars a day every day since the birth of Christ, we still would have spent less than is contained in the stimulus bill. At that rate, we would have had to start spending in the days of Homer. Even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that the stimulus bill will in the end do more harm than good to the American economy by loading down future generations with debt. And Karl Rove notes how many billions and billions of dollars in this bill are funneled directly into government rather than into the economy. While Obama’s limitation of executive pay has a populist ring to it, he justified the limits by saying he didn’t want “executives being rewarded for failure.” But that’s what the entire $700 billion bailout bill has been about, has it not? Plus, the cap will siphon off top talent to non-bailout firms who are under no compensation caps. The problem for banks: if they don’t take taxpayer money, how they compensate their execs is between them and their shareholders. But once they do take taxpayer money, then those compensation packages do in fact become our business. (Hot Air » Blog Archive » McConnell on the stimulus: $1 million a day since the birth of Christ; CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul; Opinion: What Is Congress Stimulating? - WSJ.com; Karl Rove Says Expanding Government Won't Help Democrats Stimulate the Real Economy - WSJ.com)
President Obama still has not said what he is going to do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees when he shuts the place down. One ally after another – starting with Britain – say they’re not going to take them. And Saudi Arabia just told us yesterday how well it works to release them: eleven of the people on its Most Wanted list of terrorists are former Guantanamo Bay alumni, all of whom passed the Saudi “rehabilitation” course. Some 133 of Gitmo’s 700 detainees were Saudi, and 117 have been returned to their home country and have also gone through the rehabilitation program. Hardly reassuring. The Pentagon said in January that 61 former detainees are now back on the battlefield looking for ways to kill innocent Americans. Let’s say we recapture those 61: what do we do with them? President Obama has no answer. (Hot Air » Blog Archive » The Gitmo alumni on Saudi Arabia’s Most Wanted list)