Millard Public Schools will stop using a children’s book about global warming — but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.

A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” contained “a major factual error” in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels.

Mark Feldhausen, associate superintendent for educational services, this week sent a letter to parents who complained, including the wife of U.S. Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, outlining the committee’s findings.

“Although the authors have pledged to correct the graph in subsequent editions, the committee recommends that this correction be made to all MPS-owned texts before using it with students in the future,” Feldhausen wrote.

Corrected versions will continue to be used in Millard’s sixth-grade language arts curriculum, he wrote.

However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, he wrote.

The committee found the video “without merit” and recommended that it not be used.

Robyn Terry, the congressman’s wife, had described the video as a “political commercial.”
Lee and Robyn Terry released a statement saying they were pleased with the decision and “impressed” by the district’s handling of the case.

“We are pleased with their decision not to use the politically natured global warming video as a classroom instruction tool and that they have set a standard that information-based texts must be factually correct to be put in front of our children,” they wrote.

A committee of five middle school parents, three teachers and one administrator met to determine whether the book and video served a proper purpose within the curriculum.

The book, new to the Millard curriculum this year, was part of “Plugged in to Non-Fiction,” a collection of books on a variety of subjects. Parts of the book were required reading for sixth-graders in Millard reading and language-arts classes.

Three parents, including Robyn Terry, complained to the district. The Terrys’ 12-year-old son attended Beadle Middle School last year. Mrs. Terry said that the materials used in his class portrayed global warming as fact when scientists disagree.

In the video, DiCaprio attributes global warming to mankind’s “destructive addiction” to oil. He says “big corporations” and politicians gained too much money and power “on our addiction,” making them “dangerously resistant to change.”

In the letter to parents, Feldhausen said the committee recognized there are “multiple viewpoints” on global warming. The committee recommended that all teachers using the book “make students aware of both sides of the global warming theory,” he said.

What fascinates me about this story is how the media is treating it. One would think that the state of Texas wanted to teach their children that Adolph Hitler was a cool dude and that global warming is a myth.

We are bombarded daily with schools telling our kids that homosexuality is normal and teaching about every other culture on earth with the exception of American culture. Here in California the teachers are constantly pushing their liberal mentality on our children. Its about time someone put an end to this nonsense. JD

AUSTIN – In a landmark move that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past.

Board member Mary Helen Berlanga showed frustration at the numerous amendments offered during a meeting of the State Board of Education on Friday in Austin.

Split along party lines, the board delivered a pair of 9-5 votes to adopt the new standards, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for future textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade.

Texas standards often wind up being taught in other states because national publishers typically tailor their materials to Texas, one of the biggest textbook purchasers in the country.

Approval came after the GOP-dominated board approved a new curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation – a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer.

Before the final votes – one for standards in elementary and middle schools, the other for those in high schools – the board’s five Democrats criticized the Republican majority for injecting their political and religious views into the curriculum and giving short shrift to important minority figures in history.

The GOP majority, primarily social conservatives, called the standards a major step forward that will boost instruction in history, government and other social studies classes.

Regarding the complaint that Republicans and conservative ideology have been given more prominence, board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, said the panel was trying to make up for the liberal-slanted curriculum now being used in schools.

“I think we’ve corrected the imbalance we’ve had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle,” said McLeroy, one of seven social conservatives on the board. “I’m very pleased with what we’ve accomplished.

Board Democrats accused the Republicans of a “cut-and-paste” job that included a flurry of late amendments undoing much of the work of teachers and academics who were appointed to review teams to draft the curriculum requirements last year.

“Here we are trying to approve standards for our children that will be used for years, and we are being asked to approve all these last-minute cut-and-paste proposals,” said Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi.

“I don’t think any teacher would accept work like this,” she said. “They would have thrown this paper in the trash. We’ve done an injustice to the children of this state.”

Board member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, called the proposal a travesty.

“The board has made these standards political and had little academic discussion about what students need to learn,” she said. “I am ashamed of what we have done to the students and teachers of this state.”

Several Republicans left the board meeting room while Democrats laid out their objections to the document, but returned to defeat a Democratic effort to delay action on the proposal until July. One Republican, Bob Craig of Lubbock, supported the delay motion.

Board member Geraldine Miller, R-Dallas, was absent for both votes, on postponement and then final adoption.

For the record, there is no such thing as a “sex addiction.” Steve Phillips, like Tiger Woods, had the four ingredients needed to get laid. Money, fame, looks and an expense account. JD

Steve Phillips, the former ESPN baseball analyst and New York Mets general manager, said Monday that he knew he had a sex addiction problem in August — two months before he was fired from his role with the network.

“What I want to do is take ownership,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show. “I made some mistakes … I’m fully responsible for what I did.”

Phillips spoke publicly for the first time since he left the Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Services clinic in Hattiesburg, Miss., the same clinic golfer Tiger Woods reportedly attended.

“

Phillips I couldn’t stop myself from doing the things I was doing, even knowing the consequences.

Phillips didn’t talk extensively about his time at Pine Grove, but did say that it is a place for people who are “broken” and “struggling to find answers.”

Phillips said he realized he had a sexual addiction problem in August, while he was having an affair with ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley. That affair eventually included Hundley contacting Phillips’ wife at their home. It made its way to the New York tabloids, where Phillips was front-page fodder, in October.

“I recognized in August, I needed help,” Phillips said. “I started calling facilities.”

He said he had made the decision on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, to attend the sexual addiction clinic. He was fired by ESPN two days later. Hundley was also let go by ESPN.

At the time, a representative for Phillips said he was entering a treatment facility “to address his personal issues.”

“I couldn’t stop myself from doing the things I was doing, even knowing the consequences,” Phillips told Lauer on Monday.

A month earlier, Phillips wife, Marni, had filed for divorce. The couple had been married for 19 years. He has four children.

He said he has returned to his home, but doesn’t know if his marriage can be saved. He declined to say if he had anything to tell Hundley.

“All of that is in the past,” he said. “My focus is moving forward, trying to save my family.”

Hundley, in a taped piece that preceded the Phillips interview, said that she was “young” and had made mistakes as well.

Phillips was the general manager of the Mets from 1997-2003. He said during that time, while taking a leave of absence from the team after a sexual harassment allegation, he had counseling locally for sexual issues, but didn’t enter a treatment facility.

He worked at ESPN from 2005 through October.

We here at the brokencountry have been big fans of Howard Stern for years. We have had this argument with people for years. We like Howard because he says whats on his mind without fear of what others think.

We think putting Stern on American Idol is Americana at its finest. JD

From the “You’ve got to be kidding me” file: The New York Post is reporting “American Idol” producers are in talks with Howard Stern to replace Simon Cowell on America’s No. 1 rated show. You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Not that we don’t respect Stern, and see him as far more than the one-note shock jock he’s often painted as, but we still think this is a horrible choice for several reasons.

One, he knows very little about modern music, a point he proves every time he has a musical artist as a guest on his show. Having Ellen DeGeneres on the judging panel is one thing, but combining two non-musical entertainers on the judging panel would be deadly to the show’s credibility. But more importantly, Stern is a tremendously polarizing figure, and — misunderstood though he may be — his presence alone would cause many to tune out.

But perhaps this is all much ado about nothing: The Post report says the negotiations may simply be a ploy to get Sirius to start shaking in their boots and re-up his contract, which is up next January. Let’s hope this is the case, because we’re not ready for Ryan Seacrest to start making Baba Booey jokes on “Idol.”

Its about time President Obama realizes that people do not want government sponsored health care. The federal government mismanages virtually every program they currently run, why would health care be any different?

Nothing like watching Obama get knocked a few rungs down the political ladder. Perhaps now he will be an effective president. One more thing. Get rid of your speaker of the house. Pelosi is an embarrassment to the democrat party. JD

WASHINGTON – After insisting for a year that failure was not an option, President Barack Obama is now acknowledging his health care overhaul may die in Congress.

His remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night sounded contradictory at times, complicating congressional leaders’ effort to revive health care legislation as Democrats hunger for guidance from the White House. Even while saying he still wanted to get the job done, Obama counseled going slow, and bowed to new political realities. Democrats no longer command a filibuster-proof Senate majority, and voters and lawmakers are far more concerned with jobs and the economy than with enacting sweeping and expensive changes to the health system.

“I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision,” Obama said Thursday night.

“And it may be that … if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not,” the president said. “And that’s how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they’ll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time.”

It seemed to be a shift in tone for the issue Obama campaigned on and made the centerpiece of his domestic agenda last year.

“Here’s the key, is to not let the moment slip away,” Obama also said.

Sweeping health legislation to extend medical coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans passed both chambers of Congress last year and was on the verge of completion before Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in a Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election last month. Brown was sworn in Thursday, giving Republicans 41 votes, enough to block the initiatives of the Democratic majority.

Now the health legislation hangs in limbo. Lawmakers are looking to Obama for a path forward, but he has not publicly offered specifics. His signals have been mixed. At the DNC event he said Republicans should be part of the process — something they’ve shown little interest in and that would doubtlessly drag out a legislative effort that many rank-and-file Democrats want to end quickly. The health care bill has become unpopular with the public and a political drag for lawmakers.

“The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas. What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let’s just go through these bills. … And then I think that we’ve got to go ahead and move forward on a vote,” Obama said Thursday.

“But as I said at the State of the Union, I think we should be very deliberate, take our time. We’re going to be moving a jobs package forward over the next several weeks; that’s the thing that’s most urgent right now in the minds of Americans all across the country.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday that there is no meeting set yet for the president to talk over health care strategy with Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

“There’s nothing on the block on this right now,” he said. “But I think this just goes to the president continuing to want to hear ideas.”

Bipartisan congressional leaders are planning to join Obama at the White House on Tuesday, but Gibbs reiterated that the meeting will be centered on how to create jobs and boost the economy.

Obama had also said Thursday night that “we’ve got to move forward on a vote” on health care. When asked what the president meant by that, Gibbs said only that White House officials are “still working with Capitol Hill on the best way forward.”

Obama’s comments came just hours after he met Thursday afternoon with Democratic congressional leaders, but the discussion focused mostly on jobs, and the leaders emerged with no announcement about a path ahead for health care. Rank-and-file Democrats are eager for them to settle on one by the end of next week, after which lawmakers will return to their states and districts for a weeklong recess where they’ll likely face questions from voters on the issue.

Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said Friday that the White House has not requested a sit-down on health care with Republicans.

“The president wants to start over on health care? Sen. McConnell’s been saying that for months,” said Stewart.

It was just a short time ago that democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were making fun of the tea baggers. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart were taking great pride of making an obvious sexual connection to the tea baggers. Now the tea party movement is taking hold and will be a major influence in the upcoming November elections. Its not so funny now, is it Nancy Pelosi? Ed.

Nashville, Tennessee (CNN) — A grassroots movement that exploded last year is now working on its underpinnings as what’s being billed as the first national Tea Party convention gets under way.

The convention started off with fireworks Thursday night as former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado used his kickoff speech to slam President Obama.

“People who could not even spell the word ‘vote,’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama,” Tancredo said to cheers Thursday night.

A spokesman for the Tea Party Nation, the group that organized the convention, said Tancredo’s speech may have provided some red meat but termed it problematic.

“It doesn’t further the dialogue,” said Mark Skoda, a businessman and founder of the Memphis Tea Party, who is also serving as spokesman for the convention.

Contrary to Tancredo’s remarks, the Tea Party is not about “name-calling,” said Rand Paul, whose campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky is supported by the Tea Party.

“There are politicians who have gone into the movement and tried to become part of the movement,” he said on CNN’s American Morning.”But really the movement is about individual people.”

The activists are mostly concerned about the “fiscal insolvency of our nation,” he said. “We have to do something, and it’s not going to come from the career politicians.”

Speeches are not the focus of the convention. Panels, sessions and workshops are the bread and butter of this event. Among the sessions scheduled for Friday are ones on how to conduct voter registration drives and where to find conservative votes, women in politics, how to organize a Tea Party group, how to involve youth in the conservative movement, grassroots “on the ground,” how to unite state Tea Party groups, technology in the Tea Party movement and why Christians must engage.

“This convention is a way to galvanize the conservative movement in a way that the general rallies do not,” said Skoda, leading a panel on technology in the movement.

Organizers hope the three-day event will help strengthen the anti-big-government movement. On its Web site, Tea Party Nation says the event is “aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movement’s multiple organizations’ principal goals.”

Organizers told CNN that they’ll announce at a news conference Friday afternoon a set of “first principles” for candidates seeking support from the movement. Skoda refused to term the principles a “litmus test,” but said candidates would have to adhere to the principles to be eligible for Tea Party fundraising and support.

The principles include fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states’ rights and national security.

There has been pushback against the convention and its organizers from both outsiders and some in the movement because of the Tea Party Nation’s for-profit status and because the price of entry attendees have paid for access to the workshops and seminars being held through Saturday.

Red State blogger Erick Erickson wrote that while he has good things to say about some groups within the Tea Party, “this national Tea Party convention smells scammy.”

Mark Meckler said he and Jenny Beth Martin, co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, aren’t participating in the convention because “it wasn’t the kind of grassroots organization that we are, so we declined to participate.”

Organizers say some 600 people have paid $549 each to attend the convention and that the event is sold out. But they add that tickets costing $349 are still available for Saturday night’s banquet, where former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will give the convention’s keynote address.

Neither convention organizers nor a spokeswoman for Palin would confirm reports that she’s getting paid around $100,000 for her keynote appearance.

“I will not benefit financially from speaking at this event,” Palin said in a statement this week. “Any compensation for my appearance will go right back to the cause.”

Sherry Phillips, who along with her husband, Nashville attorney Judson Phillips, founded Tea Party Nation, said earlier this week in a message to supporters that “we fully expect to break even at this event. We may even make a few thousand dollars to cover local operating costs of TPN.”

Phillips also fired back at her critics, saying, “We never did this to make us rich or famous. Quite the contrary, we are patriots who love our country, our members and the people who are coming to Nashville to attend this great event.”

If all else fail, bail. It sounds to me that perhaps people are finally realizing that global warming is the single biggest hoax perpetrated on mankind. Ed.

India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri

The Indian government’s move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.

The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.

In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing in the face of global warming.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further.

He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

“I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.

It will bring together 125 research institutions throughout India, work with international bodies and operate as a “sort of Indian IPCC,” he added.

The body, which he said will not be rival the UN’s panel, will publish its own climate assessment in November this year, with reports on the Himalayas, India’s long coastline, the Western Ghat highlands and the north-eastern region close to the borders with Bangladesh, Burma, China and Nepal. “Through these we will demonstrate our commitment to climate science,” he said.

The UN panel’s claims of glacial meltdown by 2035 “was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” he said, while stressing the government remained concerned about their health of the Himalayan ice flows. “Most glaciers are melting, they are retreating, some glaciers, like the Siachen glacier, are advancing. But overall one can say incontrovertibly that the debris on our glaciers is very high the snow balance is very low. We have to be very cautious because of the water security particularly in north India which depends on the health of the Himalayan glaciers,” he added.

The new National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology will be based in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, and will monitor glacial changes and compare results with those from glaciers in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.