MnIndy file photo

This is some extremely shoddy journalism from Mickey Kaus. The Slate blogger asks if “ACORN chicanery” elected Sen. Al Franken, who won a razor-thin 2008 race for the U.S. Senate after eight months of legal challenges. Kaus links a “tactfully phrased Minneapolis Star Tribune story” to argue that fraudulent votes might have stolen the election for Franken.

ACORN claimed to have registered 48,000 new Minnesota voters. If just 1% were ineligible but cast ballots, or had ballots cast for them illegally, and survived the recount process … that’s 480 votes, almost certainly overwhelmingly cast for Franken.

Let’s look at this.

First, the story Kaus links to is actually a column by the conservative Katherine Kersten, whom the paper refers to as “a Twin Cities writer and speaker,” and who limns the column with attacks on the “liberal agenda.” Kersten has no proof that any illegitimate votes were cast, only that “Minnesota’s laws on proof of voter eligibility are notoriously loose.”

Second, “surviving the recount process” in Minnesota was more difficult than it sounds now. Ballots were counted once and recounted twice, and challenged ballots were counted in a hearing that was streamed live. Republicans had a lot of time, and a lot of incentive, to make the cause that thousands of ballots were illegitimate. They made their case. They narrowly lost.

Franken doesn’t have to face voters again until 2014, so the attempt to smear him here is just a way of draining the ACORN story for all it’s worth and casting illegitimacy on the Democrats’ Senate majority. It’s one thing for, say, Newsmax to engage in this; I am mystified as to why Kaus would do it. From arguing that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore by blocked recounts to arguing that ACORN maybe, kinda-sorta, might have registered an illegal voter in Minnesota. Strange.

Todd Herman, who runs new media at the RNC, heartily endorses the ACORN-Franken conspiracy.

UPDATE: Media Matters reports that, in addition to Slate, The Fox Nation and Gateway Pundit have picked up Kersten’s opinion piece to “baselessly cast doubt on Franken’s campaign victory.”

David Weigel is a politics reporter for the Washington Independent.

Her Sunday-only column this week took aim at atheism and what she perceives as its detrimental impact on society. She argues that without faith in God, people have no basis to form a moral framework. As a society we are embracing atheism, she writes, “[b]ut before we do, we would be wise to consider the potential consequences.”

Such as? Bloodshed. “The French Revolution, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union — all sought to replace Judeo-Christian ethics with reason, and ended in massive bloodletting,” she wrote. “In ancient Rome, disabled babies were left on hilltops to die.”

Her column sparked outcry from many atheists who say that faith in a Judeo-Christian God does not form the basis for people’s compassion, sense of equality, ethics and morals. People do.

Craig A. James, author of The Evolution of Religion, responded to Kersten’s column on his blog, The Religion Virus:

Her argument presupposes that God exists and gave us our morality, and presupposes that without God there will be no morality. But if you drop the presupposition, that is, assume God does not exist, then the Bible itself proves that Kersten is wrong! The Bible (and many other supposedly God-inspired writings) is full of all sorts of great moral lessons (and some terrible ones, too), and since these were written by men and women, not God, it proves that humans can be moral without divine guidance.

George Francis Kane, public relations officer for the Minnesota Atheists, said that equality is inherently a secular concept:

Atheists base their moral judgments on the actual effects of actions on peoples’ lives, rather than principles religion claims to know with certainty. The religious conception of equality that Kersten touts is equality before the god of the Bible, and is not realized until the afterlife. Equality before the law is a secular concept that could only arise when the legitimacy of government is based in the consent of the governed, rather than divine election. Atheists demonstrate compassion no less than that of Christians, but based upon quality of life rather than unbending absolutes.

PZ Myers, a Minnesota biology professor and recent winner of the Humanist of the Year Award, responded to Kersten on his blog Pharyngula:

I always like how these doctrinaire promoters of “Judeo-Christianity” primly declare that they have such moral authority, when their faith has such a poor track record of promoting morality. Christians have advocated slavery, have murdered people for the awful crime of miscegenation, have decreed that people who don’t have the kind of sex they prefer are second-class citizens. Christians are thieves, murderers, rapists, and jay-walkers; it seems that having a belief in a transcendent authority actually doesn’t equate to being necessarily law-abiding and ethical or even, shocking as that may be, immune from the temptations of their natures.

ACLU-MN investigated the allegations and in court documents filed in U.S. District Court said the Muslim organizations from which TIZA is leasing its space are illegally benefiting from the leasing arrangement.

According to the complaint, Asad Zaman serves as executive director, trustee and principal of TIZA and is also vice president of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, the religious organization that leases space to the school.

“He is thus subject to conflicts of interest resulting from his roles on behalf of both lessors and lessees with respect to the charter school,” the complaint asserts. “He has been quoted as stating that ‘Islam makes no distinction between public and private life.’”

The complaint lays out a number of other instances of entanglements between religious organizations and the school, improper prayer services, improper exposure of students to religious iconography and the posting of religious materials in public areas.

In addition, the complaint cites cases where Islamic religious traditions are alleged to be encoded in school policy. According to the complaint, the school handbook requires “girls in grades six through eight to wear a skirt or jumper with pants underneath or a ‘full-length dress (jilbaab)’” and states that female teachers must “be covered from neck to wrist and ankle.” Those rules do not apply to boys or male teachers.

The suit seeks a stop to state endorsement of TIZA and a refund of state monies received by the school. It also faults the Minnesota Department of Education for lack of oversight, especially in light of media reports about possible infractions.

“The lack of government oversight is a matter of grave concern, because the Minnesota Department of Education gives over $30 million annually in rent subsidies to charter schools and due to the agency’s lack of supervision, we have no way of knowing how much taxpayers are subsidizing religious organizations,” Chuck Samuelson, executive director of ACLU-MN in a statement Wednesday. “However well-run and academically challenging a religious school may be, it is unconstitutional for public funds to be used for religious education.”

Irony abounds here: Amid bankruptcy talk, the paper is looking to a free web tool to save itself? And it’s doing so when the main Strib Twitter feed has remained un-updated since October? (I’m unsure if @startribune, which last posted on Oct. 7, is the paper’s official Twitter feed or if @strib, which shows no followers yet some 8,600 updates, is.) And they’ve got a Twitter account set up for one of those taking a buyout, Chismar of the Greengirls blog?

Scanning through its Twitter accounts, it seems like the paper’s 24 blogs are following the letter of the law, but not the spirit. All sites appear to be updated automatically, mostly through Twitterfeed, instead of via personalized tweets. (While all blogs are on Twitter, it’s unclear that all bloggers themselves are required to contribute. My direct-tweets to various bloggers have gone unanswered.) With wave after wave of buyouts, who can blame those who remain?

In a recent post, Kay Krhin of the parenting blog Cribsheet confirms that all Strib blogs are on Twitter, giving a clue to what you won’t be finding there:

Cribsheet is now on Twitter, along with the rest of the Star Tribune blogs. I know as of right now that May and I won’t be giving you a play by play of our days with things like “Diaper report. Orange. Too many clementine cuties?” or “I just stepped on Lightning McQueen with my bare foot. Spoiler and all. Ow!” We are both feeling a little too blogged down to commit to twittering and add it to our reportoire. BUT if you are one who follows Twitter’s tweets and want to know when we’ve put up a new Cribsheet post. You can sign up and follow us…

Here’s more details of the memo.

Strib HQ Photo: Paul Schmelzer

Strib Teamsters again reject concessions: The Teamsters press operators union at the Star Tribune has for the second time rejected contract concessions that would’ve cut their wages by 16 percent over the life of the agreement. Last month the union voted down a similar deal. At that time, two other Teamster locals at the Strib voted for the concessions, but due to an agreement struck between the three groups, a no-vote by any single local would kill the agreement for all. In an interesting twist, the Teamsters Joint Council is claiming they approved no such thing and that the contracts for Teamster drivers and mailers will stand. The pressmen’s givebacks would’ve meant the cutting of 60 of the 340 shifts per week, pay cuts of 10 percent for members and changes to overtime provisions, among others.

Funeraltweeting? Our sister site, the Colorado Independent, is outraged that The Rocky Mountain News used the microblogging tool Twitter to liveblog the funeral of a three-year old. My take: the form of Twitter itself — a 140-character limit, which often leads to abbreviated words — is too informal for such an affair. Plus, RMN didn’t bother to capitalize or punctuate its tweets, adding to the feeling that it was a glib endeavor.

Kersten’s idea of a “storm”: Conservative Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten is again tilting her rightward-bent lance at the majority-Muslim charter school TIZA, writing that a “storm is brewing” between the school and the Department of Education over the state’s concern about the school’s voluntary Friday prayer time. But David Brauer of MinnPost provides critical context that Kersten omitted, a letter a TIZA administrator sent to the state. While Kersten calls the note “defensive,” Brauer says “the letter patiently and respectfully makes it case, then offers to make the changes anyway.” He concludes that the paper has “occasionally provided supporting documentation for past Kersten columns, but it really needs to make that a habit when TIZA is involved.”

The Pulitzer Prize of YouTube: YouTube and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are teaming up to award $10,000 to a videomaker covering under-reported stories of global importance. Begun Sept. 8, the contest will give its winner funds for travel, production aid from the Pulitzer Center, high-end equipment and distribution on YouTube.

The concern over Welcoming Schools reached a fever pitch last week when Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten penned what advocates call a “hit piece” on the guide. Kersten’s column aimed to expose what she calls the “real agenda” (or was that “homosexual agenda”?) behind the curriculum. But her heavy-handed column was followed only a day later by a contrasting counterpoint by her paper’s editorial board: After seeking more information on the guide from Out4Good, the Minneapolis-based program charged with implementing Welcoming Schools, it published a glowing endorsement of the guide calling it a “worthy” and that “such a program is overdue.”
“Minneapolis is considering using it on a pilot basis in three elementary schools — Hale, Jefferson and Park View — because staff members at schools around the district asked for help,” the Star Tribune wrote. “The district uses other anti-bullying programs, but none that specifically addresses gender stereotypes or anti-gay harassment.”

And that’s been the point of the guide all along — to supplement existing programs. Kersten claimed that the curriculum ignores other types of bullying. “It says relatively little about bullies’ traditional targets,” she wrote, “kids who are overweight, short or the wrong skin color, for example — and places heavy emphasis on anti-gay name-calling.”

It might not be traditional in the “traditional family” sense, but anyone who has grown up in public schools during the last five decades has seen or experienced anti-gay bullying. It’s the most prevalent and underreported form of bullying in schools: Gay and lesbian students fear being outed if they report bullying and straight students who experience anti-gay bullying are afraid they’ll be labeled gay if they report. But typical anti-bullying programs don’t cover LGBT issues.

Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green gives some startling statistics about how damaging anti-gay bullying can be — even for straight students. “In the 28 random shootings in US schools between 1982 and 2001, nearly all the boys who committed the violence had stories of being constantly bullied, teased and ‘gay-baited’ — not because they were gay, but because they were different from the other boys; shy, artistic, theatrical, musical, non-athletic or ‘geekish,’” he wrote. “Indeed, according to a nationwide survey, children said they feared anti-gay harassment more than any other kind of name-calling. And this happens to children who don’t come from a family with a GLBT member.”

Minneapolis had been working to address a growing problem of anti-gay bullying in the schools long before Welcoming Schools. The district’s health education standards require students from second grade and up to learn about different family structures, including gay and lesbian families, and for students as young as kindergarten age to learn about what makes people different, including LGBT people.

Kersten asserts that Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green was trying to pull a fast one on district residents by not being up front with the Welcoming Schools guide’s emphasis on anti-LGBT bullying. She quotes Green as saying that guide is “a tool to combat bullying, by focusing on diversity, gender stereotyping and name-calling.” Kersten adds “but the curriculum’s underlying social/political agenda leaps from every page.”

But if Kersten read the paragraphs directly preceding this cherry-picked sentence, she would know that Green’s statement on the guide was explicitly about anti-LGBT bullying.

Further, Kersten says that the guide’s teaching “on ‘family diversity,’ drums into kids the idea that ‘traditional families’ are outdated.”

The guide says nothing about trashing traditional families; in fact, it seeks to create a welcoming environment for students from traditional families as much as it does for students from non-traditional ones. Ellen Kahn, director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation Family Project, said last week, “The Welcoming Schools Guide is a comprehensive resource designed to transform elementary schools into fully welcoming learning environments for all students and their families. The Guide is meant to reflect the real fabric of our diverse communities — children raised by single parents, grandparents, multicultural families, ‘traditional’ families, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents.”

The KSTP camera crew walked onto school grounds after school officials failed to return the station’s request to film at the school, KSTP reporters said. The Inver Grove Heights school contends that KSTP did not ask permission to film on school property, and in fact told police that they were not allowed. “I asked police to tell those unidentified individuals to leave the property,” school director Asad Zaman told KARE-11. KARE did request permission to film at the school, was allowed on school grounds and was filming when the incident occurred.

While KSTP contends that its crew was not told to stay off school property, Inver Grove Heights Police Officer Steve Her told KARE that he did tell KSTP to stay off school property before the confrontation with school officials.

Inver Grove Heights police are considering trespassing charges against the station and assault charges against school officials.

David Brauer at MinnPost makes an important observation: KSTP did not have permission to film minors at the school, but did it anyway.

“The video shows that just before the attack, KSTP was taping school kids,” Brauer notes. “A reporter calls it an ‘innocent start,’ but most journalists get releases when photographing school kids — and that’s at typical schools; this one’s been battered by repeated threats. To me, KSTP was within its rights but acting stupid; TIZA wildly overreacted. No heroes here.”

KSTP was instrumental in propping up Kersten’s source for her column on the school: Republican and education activist Amanda Getz. Getz’s testimony to Kersten and KSTP was directly contradicted by the Minnesota Department of Education findings released on Monday.

MDE conducted several visits to the school, one of which was unannounced, and found (pdf)  that many of the media and blog claims were inaccurate. In a press release Monday, the department said, “MDE has determined that, with regard to the areas reviewed, most of TIZA’s operations are in compliance with state and federal law.”

The report found two changes that TIZA would need to make in order to be in full compliance with separation of church and state concerns. It needs to offer bus service at the end of the school day as opposed to at the end of after-school activities (students can participate in sectarian or nonsectarian after-school programming) and it needs to hold Friday afternoon voluntary prayer sessions at a location off school grounds.

School officials say they will address the changes. “TiZA takes these concerns very seriously and, in the coming weeks, will bring together faculty, parents and outside experts to work with the Minnesota Department of Education to address the concerns,” the school said in a statement Monday. “TiZA is committed to resolving these concerns and continuing to provide a quality education for every child at our school.”

David Brauer reviewed the claims made by Kersten, and with a few exceptions, the MDE report contradicted her claims and those of her sources. For instance, Kersten’s complained of ritual foot-washing, an activity that was approved by MDE in 2004. Statements by Kersten’s source, a Republican and education activist who also served as a substitute teacher and asserted that students were forced to pray, are contradicted by the MDE report.

Kersten’s overblown criticism of the school resulted in hate-tinged blog posts and message board comments, and incited harassing phone calls and e-mails at the school, which in turn required an increased police patrol in the area, caused one member of the legislature to suggest Kersten’s resignation, and prompted the creation of a petition for her removal that was signed by a Pulitzer Prize winner.

In reporting on the findings by MDE, a KSTP camera crew visited the school Monday morning after repeated requests for comment went unreturned. The crew were told by police that the school’s officials were “unhappy” that the camera crew was there, and officials forcibly took the camera from the camera crew and waited for police to arrive. Police are considering charges of assault against school officials and trespassing against the camera crew as they investigate the incident.