Teaching style

Citation format: Author, title, place of publication, publisher, year of publication—Biased
Citation format: Book, chapter, verse—Not Biased

Allows students to speak freely—Biased
Allows students to speak freely about how freedom isn't free—Not Biased

Requires students to raise hands to ask questions—Biased
Requires students to raise hands to hail the professor—Not Biased

At an announcement ceremony in a hangar at the Auburn Airport, Doolittle never mentioned Abramoff's name, saying instead that he was under attack because of his conservative political philosophy.

"Make no mistake about it, it is because of our fight on these issues that has led many working to defeat me," he said. "They don't like the fact that I want to keep your taxes lower. They don't like the fact I voted to eliminate entire programs that the federal government had no business funding in the first place."

Personally, I don't like the fact that 15% of what is donated to your PAC goes into your private bank account. And, that's just for starters.

Update: According to what I just read in the interview transcript posted by the Auburn Journal, Doolittle has had a tough time with media due to the Abramobb scandal. They once interrupted his planting of 300 bulbs. Gosh!

[Photo: Sac Bee/Renee Byer]

Despite refusing to comment on the Abramoff questions for more than a year, Doolittle said he understands the concerns of his constituency and intends to speak publicly on the issue throughout the campaign to help clear the air.

"Because it's my character that's been put at issue, it makes it a different kind of election," Doolittle said. "It makes it more difficult. I only hope the voters will evaluate me on record."

But he never mentioned his friendship with former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who last month pleaded guilty to corruption charges and agreed to tell the FBI how he bribed certain lawmakers."Obviously, by what the revelations have come out, he's been engaged in some serious wrongdoing," Doolittle said.

Doolittle himself has not been charged with any crime. But anonymous sources cited by the Associated Press and other news organizations say federal investigators are looking into a Doolittle-Abramoff connection.

-snip-

Doolittle's ties to Abramoff have apparently not hurt his political fundraising activities. His most recent campaign finance records show that the congressman finished 2005 with more than $300,000 in the bank.

That's more than five times as much as the war chest of Auburn Mayor Mike Holmes, who plans to challenge Doolittle in the Republican primary."Now that he's made this announcement, a formal announcement that he's running for re-election, more people will start taking an interest in the campaign and will also be contributing to our efforts as well," Holmes said.

As evidenced by this photo, the locals didn't care for his answer.

Among other topics, Doolittle also spoke about some of his recent work in Washington D.C., which, he says, includes protecting American heritage.

In January, Doolittle co-sponsored a resolution supporting the motto "In God We Trust," which appears on currency and in many public places, such as courtrooms. It's a bill the congressman considers necessary for the good of the nation.

"This resolution is necessary in order to prevent a few anti-God bullies from white-washing our nation's heritage with their so called 'politically-correct' rhetoric," Doolittle says in a statement on his Web site.

Doolittle said Wednesday that his resolution supporting the motto was still pending.

And in a strange twist, despite multiple media reports of what Abramoff and his various financing means actually gave Doolittle - some printed sources range as high as $140,000 - the Congressman said he doesn't know how much money he's received from Abramoff. "I've never looked independently at it. I've read different media reports. It really is of no concern to me. Whatever you've seen, I've seen. All I know is I try to raise as much money as possible. That's my job as a Republican leader," he said, citing his position as House Republican Conference Secretary, the sixth-highest ranking spot in House leadership.

"And that, even as we neglected our duty to our readers and viewers to tell them the truth, we begged for the favors and attentions of the psychopaths and sociopaths and even put ourselves on their payrolls, then we attacked, ridiculed, ignored, and otherwise dismissed any one and every one who tried to tell us what the sociopaths and psychopaths were up to, and to top it all off when it finally began to be impossible to ignore the damage the psychopaths and sociopaths were doing to the country we were unconsionably slow to correct our errors and mend our ways and we refused to admit our mistakes or our complicity but instead set out to blame all the people who were right about the sociopaths and psychopaths---we blamed the Democrats for not being tough enough, we blamed the bloggers for being irresponsible and paranoid, and we blamed all of the critics for being consumed with an irrational hatred of George W. Bush."

A month later, Wilkes hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a lobby shop run by former aides of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Wilkes, Gelwix and their wives and associates then began donating to DeLay, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, among others.

They donated more than $85,000 to Doolittle's campaign and political action committee between 2002 and 2005. Doolittle acknowledged to The Washington Post recently that he sponsored earmarks, totaling $37 million, in defense funding bills for PerfectWave Technologies, beginning in 2002. Wilkes divested his majority interest in PerfectWave late last year after the Cunningham charges and his role in them became public.

Santorum and his wife received a $500,000, five-year mortgage for their Leesburg, Va., home from a small Philadelphia private bank run by a major campaign donor — even though its stated policy is to make loans only to its “affluent” investors, which the senator is not.

Good-government experts said the mortgage from Philadelphia Trust Co. raises serious questions about Santorum’s conduct at a time when he is the Senate GOP’s point man on ethics reform. They explained it would be a violation of the Senate’s current ethics rules if Santorum received something a regular citizen could not get.

Q: Do you think any of this is going to impact your re-election?

A: Oh! I think it's safe to say it is impacting my election, sure. I've had about a million dollars' worth of negative publicity attacking my character, my wife's character. I think as things move on, people will have to assess for themselves whether this is a partisan attack or whether this is legitimate. I know how I feel about it. I guess time will tell.

His most recent book is The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, which was released September 13, 2005. Kozol documents the continuing and often worsening segregation in public schools in the United States, and the increasing influence of neoconservative ideology on the way children, particularly children of color and poor children, are educated.

Kozol is still active in advocating for public education in the United States and is an outspoken critic of the voucher movement. He continues to condemn the vicious inequalities of education and speaks unrelentingly of the apparently perpetual apartheid of black and Hispanic children in the deeply segregated public schools of almost every major city of the nation.

Fearing that an unknown candidate could defeat an indicted incumbent and certainly lose to a well-funded Democratic in November, Ohio GOP Party Chairman Bob Bennett made a slew of phone calls to Ohio GOP lawmakers, the White House, and Ohio legislators to consider whether an established candidate, such as GOP State Sens. Jay Hottinger or John Carey, should enter the primary.

"There were numerous back up plans and back up plans to the back up plans," said an Ohio Republican. "Scrambling is an understatement."

Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all you can find to replace it is a low- wage job at the big-box store with no health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can't pay the bill, so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused by deliberate government policy? Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and where does societal responsibility come in?

Cheney has a curious, shifting history on issues of blame and responsibility. He was vice chair of the congressional committee that spent 11 months investigating the Iran-Contra affair and author of its minority report. As John W. Dean highlights in a recent essay, the 500-page majority report concluded the entire affair "was characterized by pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy." But Cheney's report said the Reagan administration's repeated breaking of the law were "mistakes … were just that -- mistakes in judgment and nothing more."

Those of you who saw Cheney's interview with Jim Lehrer last week may recall the passage on Darfur that ended with this:

Lehrer: "It's still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless."

Cheney: "Still happening, correct."

Lehrer: "Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and -- so you're satisfied the U.S. is doing everything it can do?"

Cheney: "I am satisfied we're doing everything we can do."

His head still tilts over more to the right when he lies.

"The most heated public moment occurred during McClellan's off-camera "gaggle" with White House reporters yesterday morning. It featured NBC's David Gregory, one of McClellan's most persistent inquisitors over the last year, who raised his voice while asking a question about the incident.

"Hold on," McClellan interrupted, pointing out that "the cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later."

"Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras," Gregory replied. "Don't be a jerk to me personally when I'm asking you a serious question."

"You don't have to yell," McClellan said.

"I will yell," said Gregory, jabbing his finger in McClellan's direction. "If you want to use that podium to try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong."'