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Weekly Issues Alert        February 4, 2010

 

In This Issue

Budgeting Away Your Freedom

Science Catches Up With Common Sense: Abstinence Education Works

Hiram Sasser Talks Education on Fox News

Sexualizing the Military; the Attack on Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Last Chance! Order Your 2010 Primary Voters' Guide Today!

 

Budgeting Away Your Freedom

This week, President Obama released his proposed budget for the Fiscal Year of 2011 (begins in September 2010), which includes a new record deficit of $1.56 trillion, to be paid for with your hard-earned money and your children's money for years to come.  The proposed budget grows government at an alarming rate and provides massive spending on what President Obama calls "investments in the American people."  Additionally, it pushes for lots of tax increases for those who produce the jobs in our economy (and allowing numerous other tax cuts to expire), and few budget cuts and tax cuts.  Many of the budget cuts decrease funding for defense projects and NASA.  Also in the budget, Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds that have been recovered from banks would be distributed to small businesses instead of being used to pay down our national debt. 

In response to the President's budget proposal, Senator John Cornyn suggested that Congress set up a special commission to identify and eliminate wasteful spending.

 

Science Catches Up with Common Sense: Abstinence Education Works

Good news this week: a study released on Monday reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that students who are taught abstinence-only sex education are less likely to engage in sex than students who were taught other methods, including condom use.  Texas is not an abstinence-only state.  In Texas, schools do not even have to teach sex education.  However, if a school teaches sex education, they must teach about abstinence more than any other method and tell students abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.  During the 2009 Texas Legislative session, Planned Parenthood and Austin liberals tried unsuccessfully to pass a law to ban abstinence-only teaching in public schools.  Since this is now proven to be the best approach, it should follow that abstinence-only teaching will be the leading method of sex education, yet we expect a huge fight over this in the next legislative session.  Recently, President Obama has cut federal funding for abstinence-only sex education in public schools.  Jonathan Saenz, director of legislative affairs, said this about the study: "Now that science and research have caught up with common sense, I hope educators will use their time and our tax dollars wisely by teaching students what works best, abstinence."

For more information on this and other issues, visit our Texas Legislative Update blog.

 

Hiram Sasser Talks Education on Fox News!

Yesterday morning, Hiram Sasser, director of litigation, appeared on Fox and Friends to talk about how children are the real losers when "educrats" dig in.  Hiram commented on the outrageous situation in New York where a teacher, who is no longer allowed to teach children, has been collecting $100,000 a year since 2001 for doing nothing because he has tenure.  Check out this video to see Liberty Institute in action.

 

Sexualizing the Military; the Attack on Don't Ask, Don't Tell

On Tuesday, a Senate committee held a hearing discussing how to repeal the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined his plan for dropping the long-standing policy, and others including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell have announced support for repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  For years, Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been a part of military guidelines, requiring the dismissal of any open homosexuals serving in the military.  Repealing the policy would likely decrease morale and cohesiveness at a crucial time for our military serving at home and overseas.  Send an email to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former president of Texas A&M University, asking him to stop this attack on our military for the President's social experimentation!

 

Last Chance to Order Your 2010 Primary Voters' Guides!

This year, Americans again have the opportunity to hold their elected officials accountable!  The primary election is on March 2, 2010 (early voting is Feb. 16-26, 2010).  As always, Liberty Institute will release the 2010 Primary Election Voters' Guide for all statewide races.  This Friday is the last chance to request large numbers of the hard copy of our Voters' Guide!  If you would like to make sure you receive a hard copy of this year's Guide, email your address (your privacy is protected) to programs@libertyinstitute.org to get your free Voters' Guide!  If you can volunteer a few hours of your time to help this be the best Voters' Guide yet or you want to distribute the guides at your church or elsewhere, email Megan at programs@libertyinstitute.org to find out how you can get involved.

 

 

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