[UPDATE (July 16): The new chair of the Texas State Board of Education is not Cynthia Dunbar, but another socially conservative member, Gail Lowe. Texas commentators say Lowe's appointment will continue the anti-evolution, Reconstructionist bias of the board. The scary details are here.]
JISHOU, HUNAN — After doing some research, I have concluded that Texas is just plain wacko. Perhaps some of you are not surprised at this news.
Back in April, I wrote about the Texas State Board of Education’s efforts to weasel creationist ideas into the state science curriculum. Despite efforts by its overtly right-wing Christian chair, Donald McLeroy, and his cohorts on the board, most of the creationist ideas were tossed out.
Since then, McLeroy’s heavyhanded tactics and nutball pronouncements about evolution and science cost him a lot of the support he had in the state legislature. He lost the chair of the SBOE.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry now has to choose a new chair from the other board members. The leading candidate now is apparently Cynthia Dunbar, who may be even nuttier than McLeroy.
Dunbar has accused — in print — presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of being a terrorist, and then refused to retract her statement. And even weirder, she opposes the very existence of secular public schools and home schools her own two kids.
She is on the Texas State Board of Education.
From the Houston Chronicle:
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