Vitter earmarks funds for religious group

Vitter earmarks funds for religious group
Nonprofit supports creationist education
Sunday, September 23, 2007
By Bill Walsh

WASHINGTON -- Sen. David Vitter, R-La., earmarked $100,000 in a spending bill for a Louisiana Christian group that has challenged the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the public school system and to which he has political ties.

The money is included in the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal 2008 and specifies payment to the Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education."

The earmark appears to be the latest salvo in a decades-long battle over science education in Louisiana, in which some Christian groups have opposed the teaching of evolution and, more recently, have pushed to have it prominently labeled as a theory with other alternatives presented. Educators and others have decried the movement as a backdoor effort to inject religious teachings into the classroom.

The nonprofit Louisiana Family Forum, launched in Baton Rouge in 1999 by former state Rep. Tony Perkins, has in recent years taken the lead in promoting "origins science," which includes the possibility of divine intervention in the creation of the universe.

The group's stated mission is to "persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." Until recently, its Web site contained a "battle plan to combat evolution," which called the theory a "dangerous" concept that "has no place in the classroom." The document was removed after a reporter's inquiry.

(snip)

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1190529501310280.xml&coll=1

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)


CONTRIBUTIONS — VITTER RECEIVED $6,000 FROM ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: “Vitter received $6,000 from Abramoff tribes from 1999 to 2001 and refunded it the day before he sent one of his letters to Norton in February 2002. He also used Abramoff’s restaurant for a September 2003 fund-raiser but failed to reimburse for it until this year.”

COUSHATTA CAMPAIGN — VITTER INSERTED LANGUAGE INTO BILL HELPING ABRAMOFF CLIENT: One of Abramoff’s tribal clients, the Coushattas, “opposed a plan by the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians to open a casino at a non-reservation site, expected at the time to be outside Shreveport, La., not far from a casino owned by the Coushattas.” Vitter “inserted language in the fiscal 2004 Interior appropriations bill — completed late in 2003 — requesting that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Indian Gaming Commission deny an application from the Jena Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana for land for a gambling casino.” To encourage him, Abramoff had hosted a September 2003 fundraiser at his restaurant, “just two months before Vitter inserted a provision in an Interior spending bill helping one of Abramoff’s tribal clients .”

backwardness, rises to the occassion. Soon we will be 50th in everything when Jindal privatizes it all and we have that great 2 class society that the republican greed pig captalists want.Just like Mexico.