The right wing tactic of “teaching the controversy” is popping up again in Nebraska; this time Republicans are using it to confuse children about climate change, but I’d be willing to bet they also have their sights set on Charles Darwin. Kate Sheppard has details: Nebraska Kids to Learn America Is Awesome, Climate Change Is Just a Theory.

Students in Nebraska are getting new standards for social studies curriculum, after weeks of intense debate. The state Board of Education reached agreement on two items of controversy this week: whether to include “American exceptionalism” and how to teach about climate change, the Lincoln Journal Star reports.

The fight had been over whether to explicitly teach the idea of American exceptionalism, as one board member proposed, and whether to include information about climate change, which the current standards do not mention. The board approved the standards after making some changes:

The words “American exceptionalism” do not appear in the final draft, but the concept does. In the sixth- through eighth-grade U.S. history standards, one of the “indicators” — examples of what to teach — is the “unique nature of the creation and organization of the American Government, the United States as an exceptional nation based upon personal freedom, the inherent nature of citizens’ rights and democratic ideals.”

Likewise, climate change appears in the sixth- through eighth-grade geography standards, but is presented as a theory, not as fact, asking students to evaluate “recent global climate change theories, and evidence that supports and refutes such theories.”

“American exceptionalism,” gotta love it. An amorphous concept, but wingnuts never get tired of it. It’s very important to believe in the special nature of their own specialness.

Big Supreme Court news today, as SCOTUS decides to take on the issue of gay marriage. And they’re going after the big fish — California’s Proposition 8 ban and the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will take up California’s ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals.

The justices said Friday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state’s gay marriage ban, though on narrow grounds. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state could not take away the same-sex marriage right that had been granted by California’s Supreme Court.

The court also will decide whether Congress can deprive legally married gay couples of federal benefits otherwise available to married people. A provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act limits a range of health and pension benefits, as well as favorable tax treatment, to heterosexual couples.

The cases probably will be argued in March, with decisions expected by late June.

Toe-sucking human-toad hybrid Dick Morris is still trying to figure out why Romney lost, and he’s finally starting to get a handle on it. Bottom line: “Wake up, white people!”

Now that all the data is in, the fundamental reason for Romney’s defeat is apparent, if largely unreported. It is not just that blacks, Latinos, and single women showed up in record numbers at the polls. It’s that whites didn’t.

The final numbers suggest that 91.6 million votes were cast by whites — seven million less than the 98.6 million that were cast in 2008! Meanwhile, 16.6 million blacks voted — 300,000 more than in 2008; 11 million Latinos voted — 1.7 million more votes than were cast by Hispanics in 2008.

We lost because whites stayed home!

Yeah - it wasn’t that the voters rejected the right wing agenda, it was a simple case of not enough white people! Because everyone knows that all Caucasians are wingnuts, right?

But wait. Maybe it wasn’t the sleeping white people. Maybe it was — Hurricane Sandy! Yeah, that’s it! The hurricane put all the white people to sleep!

Why didn’t whites vote and why didn’t we all spot it sooner?

Impact of Sandy.

There was no good national polling after Sandy struck. Gallup, for example, suspended its polling. At the last minute, it put together a national sample ’ with lots of disclaimers about the dangers of inaccuracies due to the difficulty of sampling storm-hit areas ’ and it showed a slight Romney lead.

Romney was, in fact, leading before Sandy and that his chances blew away in the storm with its famous bipartisan photo of Governor Chris Christie with Obama. And there was no way to measure the impact of Sandy since there could not logistically be any polling. Why was I wrong? I’m a pollster, not a meteorologist!

“Damn it Jim! I’m a Fox News shill, not a real pundit!”

But wait. Maybe it wasn’t the hurricane. Maybe it was — BAIN!

But the real question is why the support for Romney among whites was so shallow that the winds of Sandy blew it away. The answer lies in the fundamental strategic mistake the Romney campaign and the super PACs made in June and July ’ of not answering Obama’s Bain Capital attacks.

These withering attacks undermined Romney’s standing among white voters and led directly to their diminished turnout. The Romney campaign and the Super PACs were so wedded to their attack ads that they failed to realize that Bain posed a mortal threat to the credibility of their candidate.

And so we come full circle, back to “Wake up white people!” Wheels within wheels within endlessly spinning wheels. Dick Morris is clearly plugged in to the Fox News audience — racist and unapologetic, with the IQ of a blue soap dish.

Wingnut welfare, writ large. If you were wondering why in the world Jim DeMint would resign from the Senate to take over the leadership of the Heritage Foundation propaganda tank, wonder no more.

Senator Jim DeMint announced today that he was retiring from the Senate in order to run the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

He’s also probably getting quite a raise. …

As a Senator, he makes $174,000 per year. At Heritage, he’ll probably make at least $1 million.

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