I like it when people use creativity to make their point, don't you?

NEW YORK, Jan 1 (Reuters) - A statue stolen last month from Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff's Florida home has been returned undamaged, and with a note attached, to a country club where the accused swindler is a member, Palm Beach police said on Thursday.

The attached note read: "Bernie the Swindler, Lesson: Return stolen property to rightful owners. Signed by The Educators," according to police.

"We don't know who that is," Sgt. Chris Proscia told Reuters. "We think it was done just to prove a point."

We love The General. Frank Schaeffer at Huffpo, h/t Mike:

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild.

...Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, [and]...became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator.

Read more...

Via The Times Picayune:

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., earmarked $100,000 in a spending bill for a Louisiana Christian group that has challenged the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the public school system and to which he has political ties.

The money is included in the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal 2008 and specifies payment to the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education."

The earmark appears to be the latest salvo in a decades-long battle over science education in Louisiana, in which some Christian groups have opposed the teaching of evolution and, more recently, have pushed to have it prominently labeled as a theory with other alternatives presented. Educators and others have decried the movement as a backdoor effort to inject religious teachings into the classroom.

The nonprofit Louisiana Family Forum, launched in Baton Rouge in 1999 by former state Rep. Tony Perkins, has in recent years taken the lead in promoting "origins science," which includes the possibility of divine intervention in the creation of the universe.

The group's stated mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." Until recently, its Web site contained a "battle plan to combat evolution," which called the theory a "dangerous" concept that "has no place in the classroom." The document was removed after a reporter's inquiry. Read full article here...

The Republican senator may have the support of the majority of his hypocritical party, but he isn't out of the woods yet. Please contact your Senators and tell them to say no to Vitter's intentional violation of the separation between Church and State and demand the earmark be removed from the bill. Remember to be polite.

Truthout.org:

The President's brother Neil is making hay from school reform.

Across the country, some teachers complain that President George W. Bush's makeover of public education promotes "teaching to the test." The President's younger brother Neil takes a different tack: He's selling to the test. The No Child Left Behind Act compels schools to prove students' mastery of certain facts by means of standardized exams. Pressure to perform has energized the $1.9 billion-a-year instructional software industry.

Now, after five years of development and backing by investors like Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and onetime junk-bond king Michael R. Milken, Neil Bush aims to roll his high-tech teacher's helpers into classrooms nationwide. He calls them "curriculum on wheels," or COWs. The $3,800 purple plug-and-play computer/projectors display lively videos and cartoons: the XYZ Affair of the late 1790s as operetta, the 1828 Tariff of Abominations as horror flick. The device plays songs that are supposed to aid the memorization of the 22 rivers of Texas or other facts that might crop up in state tests of "essential knowledge."

Bush's Ignite! Inc. has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005, mainly in Texas, where Bush lives and his brother was once governor. In August, Houston's school board authorized expenditures of up to $200,000 for COWs. The company expects 2006 revenue of $5 million. Says Bush about the impact of his name: "I'm not saying it hasn't opened any doors. It may have helped with some sales." (In September, the U.S. Education Dept.'s inspector general accused the agency of improperly favoring at least five publishers, including The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns BusinessWeek. A company spokesman says: "Our reading programs have been successful in advancing student achievement for decades; that's why educators hold them in such high regard.")

John Gizzi, editor of Human Events was on the Washington Journal promoting the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

He kept referring to the panel as educators and said he had no idea what their views are. Hmmm, he doesn't know anything about Phyllis Schlafly ?

Download | play -WMP

A caller from NY (moderate Republican) asked him about the make-up and religious background on the panel that put together the list.

Gizzi: I don’t look at their religion anymore than the clubs they belong to. It’s a panel of educators and public policy experts.

The next call

Caller from N. Carolina (Democrat): They are all neo-conservatives, you are not being forthcoming sir.

Gizzi: I would certainly say the people are conservative, but neo-conservative denotes something entirely different. The degrees of the conservatism of the people on that list are indeed very different.

So in a one call he has no idea about the makeup of his own panel of experts that voted on this article, yet in the very next call he knows precisely that they are conservatives. It took all of 3 minutes to flush him out of his spider hole. What this points out is how low he sinks in the depths of chicanery. Everyone knows all about the values that Human Events preachers, so why lie about it? It's like the old saying that you have to be more afraid of the thief who would steal a nickle because he's capable of stealing anything.

Jesse has more on this called: #11 was Pandagon

Religious Right Wing Group on Tolerance: They're Anti