One year ago today, we launched BigGovernment.com. As you probably know, our first posts dealt with the video sting of ACORN, orchestrated by the new citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It had an impact.

It also marked a new chapter in on-line media. Most of the conservative on-line media are scorekeepers. The provide opinion, but don’t really move the ball forward. I know that sounds both hyperbolic and self-serving, but consider: after the second day of our video release the U.S. Senate voted to defund ACORN and the Census Bureau severed all ties with the embattled organization. All of this happened before either the Washington Post or New York Times had devoted a single column inch to the burgeoning scandal. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 16 years. Nothing politically happened until one of those papers weighed in. Until last year. The game totally changed and, even today, neither the JournoList-supporting Post nor the hemorrhaging Times understands this. Newsweek is dead. USA Today is shedding staff as fast as it can while Time clings to life as something to glance at on an airplane and every other part of the legacy media retires to “background noise.”  Simply put, no one cares about them anymore.

There was a time that news organizations like the Post and the Times could set the national agenda. They were the arbiters of what was news and what was “important.” A wink from one of their reporters would set off a national debate. If they ignored a story, well, it went nowhere. They were the “casting couch” of all possible news. Those days are over.

(more…)

Recently the Obama Administration cut funding to Upward Bound, a successful educational program with a proven track record. Upward Bound provides support to participating students in their preparation for college entrance. Upward Bound serves high school students from low-income families and high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor’s degree. 95% of Upward Bound graduates have entered post-secondary education and are four times more likely to earn a college degree than students from similar back-grounds who do not participate in the program. The Obama Administration will cut funding for this successful educational program.

Radical Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings will get a fat raise in funding this year.

At the same time, despite the runaway federal spending and record budget deficits, Barack Obama is including $410 million in the 2011 budget for his “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings. This is an increase of $45 million over last year’s budget. Obviously, some things are more important than others. These funds ought to buy a whole mess of fisting kits, leather bar guides and child porn books. And, the money will come in handy for the sexual indoctrination of teens and pre-teens.
Citizen Link Blog reported:

So want does Jennings intend to do with this money?

For starters, he says he’s going to make “school climate” measurement a top priority—and, in fact, he’d love for “school climate” to eventually be made part of the “Common Core” national standards movement! He plans to begin with “a new grant program coming out of this department where we’ll be providing possibly as much as $70 million for investments in school climate projects.” (He revealed all this and much more in this month’s Phi Delta Kappan magazine. Scroll down to the “Safe at School” title.)

(more…)

On January 20, 2009 President Barack Obama promised to “begin again the work of remaking America.” He wasn’t kidding. In his first year Barack Obama and Democrats set all kinds of spending records. They managed to triple the national debt in a year and watched the unemployment rate jump to double digits. President Obama dithered and waffled on national security and joined with Marxist dictators to side against an American ally.

But you haven’t seen anything yet. The democrats in Congress are moving closer to passing the most radical anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family bill through Congress that we have seen in decades.

HR4530 is a radical Safe Schools Czar’s dream come true.

Forget reading, writing and arithmatic, Democrats have more important subjects in mind for your child. Democrats are working to push HR 4530 through Congress. This bill will force educators to prohibit harassment, violence and discrimination faced by students based on their sexual orientation. That doesn’t sound so bad, but that’s not all it does.

(more…)

Andrew Breitbart and Sean Hannity wonder if Barack Obama’s radical Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings can help the young girl in New Jersey who was told this week not to read her Bible during free time.

Andrew Breitbart called out to the radical anti-Christian Safe Schools Czar to help this poor abused Christian girl in New Jersey:

(more…)

Byron York has a story at the Examiner on the first lawmaker to call for the scalp of Kevin Jennings, “Safe School” Czar (no we can’t believe we just typed that title, either).

Republican Rep. Steve King is sending a letter to the president today calling for the firing of gay activist Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. “The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality,” King writes. “There is more to safe and drug free shools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.”

In the letter, King points to a foreword Jennings wrote for a 1999 book entitled Queering Elementary Education, as well as Jennings’ work as founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. King also mentions a 1988 incident in which Jennings, then a teacher, chose not to alert any authorities when he learned of a teenage boy, a student, who had become involved with an adult man. Finally, King points to stories Jennings has told of his own drug use. “Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free,” King writes.

Full story here. Personally, we’re not so much offended by Mr. Jennings as we are that this position even exists. We don’t believe anyone should occupy this position.