Evangelical minister and conservative/Tea Party activist David Barton is also a pseudo-historian who writes awful books that make real historians laugh hysterically and cry helplessly. Glenn Beck is a huge fan of his, which probably tells you all you need to know about the degree of truth in Barton’s ouevre.
Anyway, Barton’s latest piece of crap, The Jefferson Lies, is so full of Barton Lies that his publisher, Thomas Nelson, has recalled the thing.
A small victory for truth and justice today.
While Virginia is becoming more “purple,” it is still a conservative state. But even so, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds that 52% of voters oppose the new law forcing women to have ultrasounds before they can have an abortion. Only 41% approve of the law.
Even more interesting, and heartening, 72% believe that government shouldn’t enact laws whose purpose is to change women’s minds about having an abortion.
Now the battle lines are clearly drawn for 2012. In his speech at the Reagan Library, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the most highly-touted vice presidential pick, crossed the Rubicon into the sorry land of those who would extinguish the New Deal and the Great Society. He declared that Social Security and Medicare “actually weakened us as a people.” Whoever the Republican nominee is, this deluded thinking is what President Obama will be fighting against.
Americans have received Social Security checks since January 31, 1940, and have been signing up for Medicare since July 1, 1966. If we’re so “weakened,” how did we manage to win World War II and the Cold War, how did we manage to go to the Moon? How did we become the world’s only superpower? Are our extraordinary men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan “weakened” because their grandparents are receiving benefits they paid for?
I believe we are weakened by the growing inequality between those at the tippy-top and everyone else. Marco Rubio may not agree with me, but Thomas Jefferson did.
Embattled Farmers 