Here’s an idea from the misnamed Wisconsin Government Accountability Board: Let’s make the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker even nuttier.

On Monday morning the Wisconsin ‘Elections Watchdogs’ alerted media that the Walker recall petitions would be available sometime later that day. By dinnner time, they basically said, never mind.

You can’t make this stuff up.

From our coverage:

Stunner: Walker Recall Petitions NOT Available for Online Review

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As Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary upended all previously held notions surrounding the unfolding GOP primary race, a common and vocal narrative has become increasingly prevalent; namely, that while he excites the Republican base, Gingrich is an unelectable, personally unlikable candidate that will be trounced in the general election.

This notion is utterly false.

While it is certainly accurate that any of the four remaining candidates for the Republican nomination will provide a stark, and compelling, contrast to the failed policies of the Obama administration, it is Newt Gingrich who has of late tapped into a visceral chord of discontent that permeates throughout much of the nation.

And, contrary to the narrative promoting Gingrich’s un-electability, the anger and discontent felt throughout the nation is not relegated to the conservative base of the Republican party. Nearly every political demographic in the nation, left, right, and middle, is frustrated with the Obama administration’s failure to improve the economic health and overall condition of the country.

Right direction/wrong direction polls have consistently shown that more than three-quarters of the country feel as though the nation is on the wrong track. In a recent poll released by Rasmussen Reports, only 24% of American feel the country is headed in the right direction.

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“The essential issue in this race is freedom,” said Senator Rick Santorum in a triumphant speech on the eve of his strong second-place showing in the Iowa caucus.

But what kind of freedom is Santorum talking about? Reason.tv caught up with Santorum at a campaign stop at Des Moines Christian Assembly in Urbandale, Iowa, where he spoke to schoolchildren and their parents about the importance of electing a leader who will promote good social values to the citizens.

“Why wouldn’t leaders in this country stand up and promote marriage?” asked Santorum. “Stop, in any way they could, the sexual promiscuity that goes on that leads to out-of-wedlock births.”

Santorum picked up the endorsement of Jim Bob Duggar, patriarch of the Duggar family (of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting”), who sung the national anthem to kick off the festivities. Also in attendance was social conservative activist and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Ralph Reed. Reed has not endorsed a candidate in the race yet, but he stresses that social conservatism remains a core value to GOP voters.

“You’re not going to do well, either in Iowa or beyond, if you’re not pro-marriage, pro-family, and pro-life,” said Reed. “Whether you’re coming from a libertarian perspective or a more traditional conservative perspective.” (more…)

Eric Holder has been on a racialist bender the last few weeks.  Last week, he said his skin color is responsible for the fury of criticism over his Justice Department allowing thousands of guns to flood Mexico.  Friday, he blocked South Carolina from implementing a voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act saying it was racially discriminatory.

Sixteen states, including South Carolina, must submit all election law changes to the United States Justice Department for approval.  States also have the option of bypassing DOJ and going straight to court for approval, an option they should readily choose.  This law, unlike so many federal laws, actually has a legitimate Constitutional basis – the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which bars racial discrimination in voting.  Passed in 1965, it was designed to prevent states from drifting toward renewed discrimination.  It is now being challenged as unconstitutionally outdated by Arizona and Shelby County (AL) in federal court.

Eric Holder’s Voting Section, where I used to work, interposed an objection late in the day today.  These Christmas Eve gifts are becoming tiresome.  In 2009 it was Obamacare.  Today, it was blocking Voter ID.

In the objection letter, DOJ said that South Carolina did not meet its burden to prove that photo identification laws did not have any discriminatory effect.  Notice the word “any,” more on that later.  The data show, according to DOJ, that 1.6 percentage points more voting blacks don’t have a driver’s license than whites.  Roughly 10 percent of blacks registered to vote don’t have a photo ID, and 8.6 percent of whites don’t.  That represents a “discriminatory effect” under the statute.

There are several problems with the objection.  But some law first:

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Football fans understand that each game played either moves a team forward toward the conference playoffs, conference championship, and Super Bowl, or toward the role of spoiler, where their role is to affect the outcome of the seasons’ top teams. While they watch their favorite players, they recognize that one injury can make the difference between a good season and a bad season unless there is depth in the team’s capacity. The ability of a team to work together, weather, home field advantage, seasoned leadership, knowing the other team’s playbook, all of this factors in when developing a championship team. True fans understand the complexity involved in bringing home the ring.

Politics also involves such complexity and as we ramp up toward the 2012 election, it behooves the citizenry of this country to become educated in the strategies used by both parties to enhance the viability of their candidates while reducing the credibility of the opposition. For those who enjoy politics, following the primaries is as compelling as watching the football season unfold, and for the populace as a whole, a much higher stakes game is being played that goes beyond who will gain the office of chief executive. The 2012 election has the potential to influence the direction of our country for many years beyond a presidential term of office.

Strategy 1: Discredit the messenger. Within a party and between the parties, this strategy is used to cast doubt in the mind of the voter as to whether the person running for office has the intellectual or moral capacity to lead our country. While it is important to get to know each candidate, to understand his or her strengths and weaknesses, it is also critical to remember that we are not always given the choice of voting for the best person to hold office; we are given a choice of picking the better person to become president. We need to have a set of criteria that this person must meet, much like the ideal candidate for a job. While most people cannot meet every expectation, it is the combination of skills and personality that makes a person the most viable choice. What traits make a good president? Part of this depends on the challenges that person will face. What experiences have prepared the candidate for this role? How has the candidate dealt with adversity, job growth, managing others? What problems face this person going in? Does the person have the depth to understand the long as well as the short term impact of each challenge in relationship to any solution being proposed? Does the candidate exhibit the intellectual capacity to weigh all considerations against a long term goal for leadership? What future does this person envision for our country?

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NewsObserver.com:

Gov. Bev Perdue’s off-the-cuff remark about suspending Congressional elections to focus on the economy went viral. Her aides tried to walk it back, calling it “hyperbole” and suggesting she was joking.

Was she? You decide.

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The California solar company, Solyndra, heralded by the Obama administration as a prime example of how the Recovery Act created new jobs while promoting his vision of renewable energy, is closing their doors. Just over a year ago, Obama himself spoke at the facility, praising it as “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.” Once a beacon of solar light in the progressive green jobs agenda, Solyndra had received a $535 million federal loan with the help of newly minted energy secretary, Steven Chu, only to find themselves staring down bankruptcy and the release of more than 1,100 workers.

Lying within that massive federal loan was a number of sub-awards to other vendors, 40 payments of which were greater than $25,000 each. The largest sub-award went to another administration favorite, CH2M Hill, to the tune of $9.6 million for their construction engineering services. The company is a $6.3 billion consulting, engineering, and construction firm, and shares some similarities to the failed Solyndra. In fact, CH2M used the nearly $10 million sub-award to design Solyndra’s solar manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. Besides that amount, CH2M is also a major beneficiary of the stimulus, having been awarded four of the top ten contracts from stimulus funding last summer – to the tune of $1.2 billion. As of this April, the company boasts of $1.6 billion in contracts from the Recovery Act.

Perhaps even more apparent is another similarity to the Solyndra company – CH2M Hill’s decline in employment. Reports of layoffs at CH2M began in January when KEPR-TV announced that 1,350 layoffs were coming in September due to the end of stimulus funding. The company recently organized a job fair for those affected by these layoffs, and an additional 1,000 layoffs at the contractor’s Hanford reservation. The job fair comes exactly one year after it was revealed that the company was inflating jobs reports by using a metric known as ‘lives touched’.

How did companies such as Solyndra and CH2M Hill become such lucky recipients of taxpayer money through the stimulus?

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Character always matters. Character is the foundation of civilizations, it is the font of understanding a person’s value and values. People of discernment always judge a person based upon their character or want of it. At the core of character is good judgment (and hopefully wisdom). Character always matters except where ideology is concerned.

Character can be understood by a person’s actions and associations. During the 2008 Presidential campaign apparent deficiencies in character – mainly seen through associations with extremists and domestic terrorists, failure to release pertinent personal information and academic writings/grades, and a less than stellar senatorial voting record of “present” were entirely ignored by the majority of the electorate apparently unconcerned with such matters as character.

With falling poll numbers, a disturbingly split and degraded society, and partisans on both sides of the political divide louder than any shrinking rational middle the country now faces a growing economic crisis while fighting multiple wars. The entire world is affected by the precipitous drop in the US financial markets, not only Americans.

The Dow was at approximately -440 when the President, some 40 minutes behind schedule, delivered his partisan-and-blame speech on the economy on Monday afternoon – his most important speech up to this time – whereupon the Dow dropped further to close past -600. The roller coaster markets continued to shake as Tuesday ended up, but Wednesday brought another -520. Instability in the markets translates to fear.

The downgrade by S&P is fundamentally about a loss of trust and faith. Investors at all levels are emotional capitalists trying to gain a profit and also protect their funds in a hostile “irrational market.” In this market “protection of assets” mainly translates to selling as prices collapse.

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With little more than a year before the 2012 elections, the press has started to sharpen its focus on the candidates. Judicial Watch, meanwhile, is deeply concerned about the integrity of the electoral process — especially given the rampant voter registration fraud caused by the “community organization” ACORN and its partner in crime Project Vote in the last several election cycles. (Do not believe the rumors that ACORN is defunct. As I’ve said before, the organization has splintered into organizations across the country and they are prepared to wreak havoc in 2012. Project Vote is going strong, and hasn’t changed its stripes.)

Last Tuesday, I moderated a Judicial Watch educational panel entitled “The Voter Fraud Threat to Free and Fair Elections” at Judicial Watch’s headquarters here in Washington, DC.

My guests were: John Fund, a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy and the upcoming The Threat of Voter Fraud to Free and Fair Elections; Christian Adams, former Department of Justice Attorney in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division; and Catherine Engelbrecht, Founder of both King Street Patriots and True the Vote.

It was about as good a panel as we’ve ever hosted, and viewing it will educate, worry and motivate you. You can click here to watch a video of the panel, which was also streamed live over the Internet. We will have a written transcript on our website very soon.

Following our educational panel, on Thursday we released documents obtained from the Colorado Department of State showing that ACORN and its affiliate, Project Vote, successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. And, as you might expect, following the policy changes the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average!

See what I mean by chaos and havoc?

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of Governor Scott Walker and the state’s legislators who passed the controversial union law that captivated the nation last February and March. Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi previously ruled that the Legislature violated the state’s open meetings law in approving the bill. The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Judge Sumi’s decision, ruling she had no authority to interfere with the legislative process. But this matter is about much more than a controversial state-level law and its meanderings through the court process. The original law itself, and its ultimate victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has everything to do with elections.

In 2010, millions of Americans went to the ballot box and handed Democrats across the country election defeats at all levels. The GOP took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, won 29 gubernatorial elections, and established Republican majorities in several state legislatures. Exasperated with out-of-control spending and busted budgets, among other reasons, people wanted a change. The 2010 elections gave the GOP the mandate to effect change from the top down and laterally across the states.

In early 2011, Gov Scott Walker lived up to his campaign promise of pushing for legislation that would finally slow down the public sector union gravy train and empower local governments to negotiate with unions.  We all know the results: tens of thousands of well-organized protestors and union thugs descended on Madison while a dozen or so Democratic lawmakers fled the scene of the crime to stall the legislative process. The law passed in March, and it was quickly struck down by a County Judge.

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To the men and women who inspired this post. May your victories be triumphant and your defeats devastating.

The established academic definition of the word Politics was put forth by Harold Dwight Lasswell. Laswell was a 20th Century political scientist and he defined politics as a struggle for power that ultimately decided “Who Gets What, When, How.” That is a serviceable meaning that gives understanding to the word in its academic form. Yet, somehow I doubt that is what turns people on to politics. In fact, if it were so, if that were the story, many would fail to pay attention. “Who Gets What, When, How” is decided in chambers and behind doors. Politics is a spectator’s sport made for the open field. Power to decide is only the final ends to a much bigger and fascinating story that is routinely played out. Mr. Lasswell’s and those like him missed it altogether. Scientifically sterile, they rushed for a diagnosis and never even glanced at the patient. Lasswell’s dictum severs the story from its true source.

Politics it is just that: A story. Politics is a human story. It is about people — their ambitions, desires, visions, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and vulnerabilities. Since it is a contest of the strong willed and the dynamic kind, naturally only the ambitious enter this arena. It is not made for the timid and even its most accomplished contestants will emerge with scars. That is why some unlikely friendships have emerged from inside politics. They see their lot as a fraternity. They hold a sort of boxer’s respect for one another. And rightly so, it takes a person with a unique constitution to compete in such a personal fashion. They are gladiators for our amusement and entertainment. They live to enter that arena, not government. Government is a job. Politics is a behavior. Government is boring. Politics is anything but boring.

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Eight weeks after the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Joanne Kloppenburg finally conceded defeat in her bid to unseat Justice David Prosser.

“David Prosser has won this election and I have congratulated him,” Kloppenburg said Tuesday in a press conference a block from the Capitol.

However, in her prepared remarks, Kloppenburg was adamant that “[T]housands of votes were not counted, were counted incorrectly, or have been called into question.”

Kloppenburg’s concession was as atypical as the election process itself.

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We are hearing a great deal about a budding “Democracy movement” spreading throughout the Middle East. Many are calling it an “Arab Spring.” The belief is that after centuries of totalitarian oppression, the Arab street is suddenly pining for more freedom; rebelling against the elitist ruling class of kings, emirs, despots and tyrants. This is most likely true for a great number of those filling the streets of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain and myriad other Middle Eastern, predominantly Muslim nations. But there is a less than honorable component amongst the rebellion that simply waits for the “right” to a democratic vote. Contrary to how the idea of a move to Democracy presents, in the volatile Middle East there are elements in play that could make it a move in the wrong direction.

Each and every day we hear the misnomer that the United States of America is a Democracy. We hear it from the average man on the street, the mainstream media and even from those we have elected to office. But the fact of the matter is this: we are not a Democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. A thorough and convincing exhibit of the facts surrounding this reality is presented in Notes on Democracy: And the Republic for Which It Stands. The fact that this issue is even in need of address is a scathing commentary on the constitutional illiteracy of the American electorate and serves as a sobering reminder that, often times, what sounds good – what “feels good” – isn’t always as it presents.

The distinction – between the benefits of a Democracy and a Constitutional Republic – is incredibly important, and while some describe our nation as a Democracy in an error of ignorance, others – some with schemes of political opportunism – do so with a nefarious purpose and bad intentions.

James Madison, recognized as the Father of the US Constitution, said this about factions and Democracy in Federalist No. 10:

“Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people…From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

Why is this important in the context of what is happening in the Middle East at this very moment?

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It’s official.  I have returned to my Liberal roots, and have chosen to embrace Liberalism as I did from birth until 1994.  It makes no sense to fight the tsunami of government anymore, and the truth is, Liberals have had it right all along.  I was completely brainwashed by right-wing talking points, and during a session with my masseuse, she opened up some chakras that wiped my mind clear.

No longer having a mind, I’m putting my intellect to work on making Liberal policies work with maximum impact.  I hope Big Government readers can forgive me.  Your close-mindedness and hate speech cannot hold a candle to doing what is right.

Healthcare

As a Resurrected Liberal, I strongly endorse government intervention to protect people, primarily from themselves.  People have shown they are not capable of personal responsibility or making good choices.  They eat too much.  They drink too much.  They are too stupid to know who the best candidate is.   Therefore, I endorse a Universal Health Care option that, among other things, will tackle several epidemics in our country.

Obesity, for example, is running rampant.  The First Lady has made it her project to get people to eat healthy and trim down.  The problem is that a lot of people just won’t listen, and they are going to eat bad food no matter what they get told, and no matter how often they get the USDA Food Pyramid shoved in their face.

I propose a tax be instituted on all people who exceed their ideal body weight, as determined by the Department of Health.   The tax should really hit fat people hard, because once their pocketbook lightens, they will, too.  I suggest a $1000 tax per pound per year per person.  When they visit their doctor for their free health care, the doctor will record their weight on a standardized scale that a government factory will produce, populated with unionized government employees at a flat salary of $90,000 per year, plus a pension that will have contributions made on their behalf as part of their employment.

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Patrick “Kit” Bobko was willing to jump out of airplanes to earn his airborne wings as an Air Force Academy cadet, so the dying dinosaur that is the Los Angeles Times is not going to intimidate him.  Nor is the fact that California’s 36^th Congressional District has a marked Democratic registration advantage.  On Tuesday May 17^th, Kit will be facing a cast of over 15 competitors in an early test of California’s wacky new open primary law.  Refreshingly young, smart, and conservative, Kit Bobko might just foreshadow the new resurrection of California’s DOA Republican Party.

Congressional Candidate Kit Bobko

The 36^th District covers the southern coast of Los Angeles County, anchored on the south by the hills of Rancho Palos Verdes where amazing rich people enjoy spectacular views of the Pacific from Malibu to Catalina Island.  It then heads north, ending in the bohemian nightmare that is Venice.  In between are Torrance and the beach cities of Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach, where Kit has twice been elected to the city council and has battled all manner of liberal nitwittery.  These are generally prosperous towns, getting wealthier the closer one goes toward the unrivaled beaches.  These people are natural Republicans but don’t seem to know it – educated, affluent, and entrepreneurial, they are the enemies of a liberal machine that still somehow get their votes.   Last year they famously reelected a liberal state senator over her GOP rival despite her clear disqualification from office – she tragically died during the campaign.

Up to the 90s, the voters would check the box for GOP candidates in state and federal elections, but for the last several terms they sent Democrat Jane Harman to Washington.  Harman easily won reelection in 2010, but Congress being no fun when the Democrats weren’t in a majority anymore, she quit earlier this year.  Harman didn’t need the aggravation – she was likely the richest member of Congress thanks to her recently deceased husband Sidney, who founded the Harmon-Kardon audio empire and recently bought Newsweek for $1, which was much more than it was worth.  Harman called herself a “blue dog” Democrat, which meant she pretended to be a fiscal conservative and hid the usual contempt for American security that her comrades typically display when she was home, and then went back east and voted so left that it would make a Bolshevik blush.

Kit may just have an edge because he does not have the capacity to be two-faced, a likely result of the training he received as an Air Force Academy graduate.

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Activists in the Lake County Tea Party have received over 300 pages of email correspondence between school officials via FOIA. The emails uncover appalling actions by these officials. The following from  Paul Mitchell at the Lake County Tea Party exposes information about this past school board election, and the consequences that the President of the teacher’s union, Maria Garcia, feared would harm the union’s ability to collectively bargain, if any of the Lake County Tea Party affiliated candidates won the election. The emails how the tactics the officials would use to prevent that occurrence.

The following was sent to District 46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barkley, union leaders Christine Wilson, Diane Elfering, and fellow incumbent candidate Sue Facklam,  from Garcia’s email account in District 30 (Wed., Feb. 23rd, 11:34 AM), where Garcia works as a teacher.

“I think that all members of both Unions should be apprised of this information… There will be no collective bargaining with those 3 on the board. I am very afraid that Sue and I will not have the funds necessary to fight a ‘party’.”

In the following email, Facklam, a voter registrar writes the following, referring to registering high school students to vote.

“Don’t let them turn us in; gifts to register to vote is probably illegal! I did offer Erika [Garcia’s 18-year-old daughter] more gift cards if she can gather up more friends!”(Wed., March 2nd, 10:14 AM to Mary Garcia at her D30 account.) It is a felony to offer remuneration to anyone for voting or registering to vote.

Mitchell explains, “The emails reveal evidence of extensive contributions, expenditures, and in-kind contributions that, by law, ought to have triggered formation of a campaign committee, and been reported to the State Board of Elections.”

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Wisconsin is home to the Circus World Museum (it is in Baraboo where the Ringling Bros. Circus was founded).

Now it appears as if it will be home to yet another political circus that could drag into the summer months.

From a park on Madison’s North side, a defiant Joanne Kloppenburg announced Wednesday that she’s requesting a statewide recount in the Supreme Court race. The official canvass of the statewide results indicated she lost to incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser by more than 7,300 votes.

The campaign of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser issued a swift and stinging response immediately following Kloppenburg’s news conference.

“We learned something this afternoon from JoAnne Kloppenburg. Apparently nothing will stop her from going ahead and wasting taxpayers hard‐earned money to discover what election officials did on April 5th – that Justice David Prosser was reelected.

“We’ve now had a statewide canvass and four separate examinations of the canvass in one county. The record books show the largest number of votes turned in state history on a recount is 489. Their losing margin now stands at fifteen times that.

“And now, ironically, less than 24 hours after the Government Accountability Board concluded that the April 5th canvass in Waukesha County was correct, she today insists that it needs further examination.

“With the official canvass showing her down by over 7,300 votes, the only way she can achieve her nakedly political goal is to do one thing: challenge and disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin citizens who exercised their right to vote April 5th and believed this election over. Justice Prosser’s recount team will work diligently in the weeks and months ahead to protect the votes of Wisconsin citizens at the same time Ms. Kloppenburg’s campaign works to take them away.”

Clearly, it’s on.

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Ronald Reagan’s poignant question to then President Jimmy Carter during a debate in 1980 clinched the presidential election. Carter presided over one of the worst economies. The economy had tanked and inflation had skyrocketed. Additionally, Iranian radicals had held 52 Americans hostage for almost a year. But that’s nothing compared to our nation’s economic malaise brought to you courtesy of Obama’s presidency.

Compared to the current economy, Carter was presiding over a picnic.

The first political ad for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign was just released. It’s a pre-emptive measure. It’s also a powerful ad that will now set a new standard for the GOP.

Skyrocketing Debt.The national debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion on Bush’s watch. This was outrageous. This increase in national debt additionally increases interest payments to the bond holders. Americans must then pay the extra taxes just to satisfy the increased interest payments to satisfy those bond holders. In fairness, much of the increased debt was associated with 9/11 and the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which, at the outset, had bi-partisan congressional approval. Even so, there were critics of Bush from those fiscally responsible players on the left, “We pay in interest four times more than we spend on education and four times what it will cost to cover 10 million children with health insurance for five years,” Pelosi sternly warned in 2007. “That’s fiscal irresponsibility.”

Obama, by comparison, went into an absolute spending frenzy and increased the debt to an unsustainable and new historical record. Pelosi, the left and their media echo are all silent. Obama maintained Bush’s wars and even started his own new and unpopular war in Libya. He did this without congressional approval or even consultation. More silence.

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On March 23, 2011, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, will partner with Rock the Vote, a self-professed “nonpartisan” organization, for the first annual Democracy Day. This event is advertised as a celebration of the 40th anniversary of passage of the 26th Amendment, which gave 18 year-olds the right to vote. The NEA claims that this amendment was passed because of a joint effort by teachers and students, and so will mark this occasion by providing high school teachers with a lesson plan and a free video that will hope to “empower students to navigate the election system, register to vote, and use their rights in our democracy.”

The fact that the liberal teachers’ union organization, which has access to millions of American adolescents, will hope to bolster Democratic voter turnout for the 2012 presidential election by couching their political agenda in a “civics lesson” is, at the very least, unethical, and consistent with the incestuous nature of public sector unions. The fact that it is partnering with Rock the Vote, which produced a video, in support of President Obama’s Healthcare bill, that urged young people to abstain from sex (aka, the “f” word) with anyone who did not support Obamacare, makes their pitch laughable. Yes, NEA is even touting that this Democracy Day lesson will meet the national educational standards.

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