GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





Executive meeting TONIGHT!!!

Bryan Library 6:30 p.m. Come help Democrats plan to Get Out the Vote in November. Refreshments and good company.





In Memory of Erma Jefferson

Hi, my name is Ella Foster

If you are receiving this e-mail its because my mother Erma Jefferson had you in her address book as one of her many political friends. As a tribute to my mother a lot of her political memorabilia and pictures and also awards will be on display. There will also be a display for remembrances and this is where I could use all of my mother friends help!!!!. If you have any pictures with my mother or just pictures of my mother please alloy me to make copies of them. If you would just like to do a anecdote, memories,or remembrances, please send a picture of you and your remembrance as soon as possible.

The address is 2914-A Prairie Flower Bryan, Texas 77803 if you have any questions please contact me my e-mail address is ella_foster2001@yahoo.com





Religious Right Gears Up To Push Political Choices From the Pulpit

Church-State Watchdogs Say Both Candidates’ Backers Cross the Line

By Jennifer Siegel

As the presidential candidates prepare to compete for religious voters this November, some preachers on the Christian right are vowing to test longstanding tax rules that inhibit politicking from the pulpit.

The Alliance Defense Fund — a legal outfit launched by James Dobson and other prominent conservatives in the mid-1990s — has recruited 50 pastors to deliver sermons in September that will include direct endorsements of political candidates. Although churches and other religious groups, like all not-for-profits, are required by law to eschew partisanship in exchange for their tax-exempt status, ADF’S Pulpit Initiative advances a premise yet to be fully tested in the courts: that religious leaders speaking from the pulpit should benefit from special speech protections.

http://www.forward.com/articles/13622/





July Issue of Texas Monthly

Go here: http://www.texasmonthly.com/2008-07-01/btl.php

The July issue of the Texas Monthly contains an excellent editorial, beginning on page 10, entitled, 'Mission Impossible: Why we should end the war in Iraq - now.' It was written by William Broyles, the founding editor of the Texas Monthly. I highly recommend it.





Dear MoveOn member...

Now that Barack Obama is the official Democratic nominee, it's time for a huge outpouring of progressive support that everyone can see.

So today we're launching a massive nationwide visibility campaign. Together, we're hoping to give out half a million (!) bumper stickers so voters in every town will know how excited people are about Barack Obama.

Can you help out by ordering a FREE bumper sticker and placing it somewhere visible? (You can also forward this email to your friends if you think they'd be interested.) Just click below:

https://pol.moveon.org/obamastickers/?id=12804-542748-Ppntp1&t=4

If hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members put these stickers on their cars, bikes, doors, windows, and laptops, we'll show that voters all over the country are ready for real change.

These high-quality bumper stickers look great wherever you stick 'em. Click below to get your free bumper sticker, no strings attached!

https://pol.moveon.org/obamastickers/?id=12804-542748-Ppntp1&t=6

Thanks again for all you do.

–Nita, Peter, Daniel, Karin and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, June 6th, 2008

NOTE: We have Obama Bumper stickers and pins in the office for a donation.





Defenders of science shouldn't let the sophists carry the day

Public questions in America about science have become the playthings of the manufactured controversy, or "manufactroversy," in which political activists invent a scientific disagreement that isn't real.

By Leah Ceccarelli
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008001029_rhetoricop17.html

Public questions in America about science have become the playthings of the manufactured controversy, or "manufactroversy," in which political activists invent a scientific disagreement that isn't real.

An example is global-warming skepticism. PR man Frank Luntz admitted as much in an infamous memo in which he confessed that disagreement about global warming was fading away, but he nonetheless urged Republicans "to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." This tactic was taken from the tobacco industry, which likes to say there are two sides to every question.

South African President Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Mbeki ingeniously turned the scientific community's values against it by drawing on the importance of open debate, a skeptical attitude and the need for research. Mbeki alleged that scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS had been branded as "dangerous and discredited." Claiming the moral authority of a leader who suffered political intimidation in apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the scientific community for its "campaign of intellectual intimidation."

The intelligent-design movement now has a "teach the controversy" campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein's recent movie, "Expelled," portrays scientists casting out anyone who questions biological orthodoxy. This movie is the most extreme application yet of the intelligent-design movement's "wedge" strategy to break the scientific community's influence over how science is taught. Of course, any claim by biologists that there is no scientific controversy to teach merely feeds the notion of an orthodoxy.

In light of this, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. I understand the impulse to remain silent in the face of nonsense, but I think it's shortsighted to cede the public stage in the naive hope that no one will pay attention.

There have long been those who misuse the power of persuasion. In ancient Greece, the Sophists taught the art of persuasion to those who could pay their fee. These included Gorgias, who apparently boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore an expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed there are always two sides to a question and that it was the Sophist's job to make the weaker case appear the stronger. It was to oppose such deception that Aristotle wrote "Rhetoric." Aristotle wanted to teach experts how to confute those who mislead.

My own research seeks to reveal what makes today's manufactroversies work. First, I've discovered that modern-day sophists skillfully invoke values that are shared by the scientific community and the public, such as free speech, skeptical inquiry and the revolutionary force of new ideas against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difficult to argue against someone who draws on these values without seeming unscientific or un-American.

Second, the modern sophists exploit the gap between the technical and public spheres. Scientific experts who can't spare the time for public communication are then surprised when the public distrusts them.

Third, today's sophists exploit a public misconception about what science is, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data. Any dissent is cited as evidence that there's no consensus, and thus that truth must not have been discovered yet.

A more accurate portrayal of science recognizes it to be a process of debate among a community of experts in which the side with superior evidence and argument wins. Unanimity of belief never exists, but the process of science moves forward with the weight of a supermajority.

It is perverse to continue debating an issue that has already been settled for the vast majority of scientists merely so that policymakers will delay action, or so that the losing side can be taught on an equal footing in the classroom.

Aristotle believed that things that are true "have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites" but that it takes a skilled user of rhetoric to defeat sophisticated sophistry. I concur. The manufactured controversy must be exposed for what it is ­ the assertion of an important scientific debate where none exists.

Science will continue to be the victim of anti-science sophistry until the defenders of science learn to use my field ­ rhetoric ­ to achieve what Aristotle envisioned for it: to make strong arguments carry the day before an audience of non-experts.

Leah Ceccarelli is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and is the author of the book, "Shaping Science with Rhetoric."





Top Students Said to Stagnate Under NCLB

By Debra Viadero
June 18, 2008
http://www.edweek.org/l

While the nation's poorest-performing students have made academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the brightest students appear to be languishing for lack of attention, according to a report released today by a Washington think tank.

People have been complaining ever since NCLB passed that focusing resources on the bottom students would come at the expense of high-achieving students, said Tom Loveless, one of the authors of the report. There hasn't been any Robin Hood effect, but the high achievers haven't been gaining, either.

Titled "High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB", the report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation draws on national test-score data and results from a nationwide survey of 900 public school teachers in grades 3-12 to paint a portrait of a generation of high achievers left to fend for themselves as schools and teachers shift their time and resources toward educational strategies aimed more at bringing the bottom up than on raising...

http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/20080618_high_achievers.pdf





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America