he got in around midnight last night. Already another body here is AMAZINGLY helpful.

msbelle, I hope things begin to fall into place for the two of you.

Kate P., happy moving day (tomorrow)! Go to the Station Inn for me when you're settled in your new hometown!

Texas to revise history textbooks: liberals out, Limbaugh and Gingrich in.

The Texas State Board of Education review committee is preparing to vote on a draft of proposed standards for history textbooks. Noting that the draft has “nothing about liberals,” the Houston Chronicle reported:

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.” [...] Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.

The 15-member committee, stacked with 10 Republicans, is expected to vote along party lines. Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin, César Chávez, and instead add history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.”

Jesus Jump-Frogging Christ.

More and more I'm starting to think that we have to treat the wacko ultra-right-wing Conservatives as more of a cult than a political fringe.

Like Scientology, but without the tax breaks.

Dammit, Texas. I think I had a pretty good public school education. Don't fuck it up.

Texas teaching the bible in public schools this year: [link]

Texas textbook changes impact way more than just Texas. In some states, each individual school district or school picks which textbooks it uses. In other states, the state board of education picks which books are used for all the schools in the state. Texas and California are both statewide-textbook-choice states, and so publishers will do just about anything to get Texas and California to pick their books, including editing them to fit whatever standards those school boards want. And then those textbooks, made to fit the Texas and California standards, are the same ones being offered for sale to schools all over the country.

Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin, César Chávez, and instead add history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.”

George Washington? Really? And Abraham Lincoln the first Republican president? Weird.

Hil just answered my question as to how Texas has so much power over textbooks. I mean, surely they don't have more schoolkids than the rest of the country. I'd say Utah might have an edge on schoolaged people, but I don't want Utah deciding proper curricula either.

Part of my job is editing educational video modules for textbook publishers, and I can't even tell you the number of times we've been asked to change something "because it needs to sell in Texas."