Tag The Right

Entries 5 Total

Slipping below the water-line

Aug 3, ’11 4:30 PM

Record Numbers Are Receiving Food Stamps, N.Y. Times, Aug. 3, 2011, at A13:

The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 45.753 million in May, up 2.5 percent from the previous month, the Department of Agriculture said. Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases were 12 percent higher than a year earlier, the Agriculture Department said Tuesday in a statement on its Web site.

This is up from 43.6 million last November, at the time “nearly a year and a half into the economic recovery.” (WSJ: Some 43 Million Use Food Stamps, 2/3/11)

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The war on science

Feb 21, ’11 2:39 PM

Guardian: House Republicans cut funding to UN climate science body

America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection.

The funding ban to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – stripping $2.3m (£1.31m) from an international organisation that relies heavily on volunteer scientists – was among some $61bn (£38bn) in cuts voted through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Saturday.

If enacted, the cuts package would reduce spending on environmental protection by nearly one-third, or about $3bn (£1.85bn), advancing a key objective of the conservative Tea Party of dismantling government regulation.

The cuts also exhibit the strong hostility to climate science among the Tea Party activists with funding bans on the IPCC and a newly created climate information service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – a reorganisation which was to be funded out of existing budgets.

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Illegal Alien Invaders!

Jan 2, ’11 5:31 PM

Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.

The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.

Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.

[A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”]

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Texas Conservatives Approve Changes to School Curriculum

Mar 15, ’10 1:33 PM

Democracy Now: Texas Conservatives Approve Changes to School Curriculum

Conservatives on the Texas Board of Education have approved a series of major changes to the state’s social studies curriculum. The new curriculum stresses the superiority of American capitalism, questions the separation of church and state, and presents Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

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Are You or Have You Ever Been a Lawyer?

Mar 8, ’10 8:22 AM

There was an editorial in this morning’s New York Times that reminded me of a lecture I wanted to attend the other day put on by Professors Frank Deale and Steve Zeidman on Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, Docket No.: 08-1065 (argued Wednesday, November 4, 2009), a case now before the Supreme Court on prosecutorial misconduct. The title of the editorial piqued my interest: “Are You or Have You Ever Been a Lawyer?” Liz Cheney and now Sen. Chuck Grassley and others are trying to make an issue of current Justice Dep’t employees who represented detainees at Guantanamo prior to being appointed to DOJ.

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