Obama has lashed out at the McCain campaign for questioning his support of a bill during his tenure in the Illinois Senate that authorized sex education for kindergartners. But it did. Obama finesses the question by asserting that sex education should only be “age appropriate.” According to an online ABC News article:
'Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,' Obama said. 'If they ask a teacher 'where do babies come from,' that providing information that the fact is that it's not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that's going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'
Great, so whack job Illinois public school boards would decide what constitutes “age appropriate” sex education for kindergartners? Is there such a thing?? How about letting parents decide! The bill did provide with an opt-out provision for parents which guaranteed that “refusal to take or participate in such course or program shall not be reason for suspension or expulsion of such pupil.” How comforting. No suspension, but what would happen? Would the child be ostracized in class? I wouldn’t put anything past our “education” establishment at this point. Fortunately this bill never passed.
However, while reviewing the validity of each candidate’s claims on this issue, I found that Obama really has done a few things! According to Factcheck.org:
He was a cosponsor of what became the Chicago Education Reform Act of 2003, which allowed for an increase in the number of Chicago charter schools and required the Chicago Board of Education to enter into a formal partnership with the Chicago Teachers Union to "advance the Chicago Public Schools to the next level of education reform." He was also a cosponsor of a bipartisan bill to help Illinois high school graduates be eligible for in-state college tuition rates even if they weren't U.S. citizens.
On the federal level, Obama sponsored three amendments to The America COMPETES Act, which became law in 2007. All three amendments were passed in the Senate by unanimous consent and became law. One amendment proposed language that would create a mentoring program for women and minority groups during their studies in Department of Energy programs. He also proposed language to support summer learning programs and boost their math curricula. And he put forward a requirement that women and minorities be represented in the President's Science and Technology Summit.
Wow! Truly presidential timber! Now, this Factcheck article was written to disprove McCain’s charge that Obama supports sex education for children. The title of the piece is:
“Off Base on Sex Ed - A McCain campaign ad claims Obama's "one accomplishment" was a bill to teach sex ed to kindergarten kids. Don't believe it.”
It appears that yet another member of the “objective mainstream media” has jumped into the tank for Obama, because the article itself makes clear the legislation did call for kindergarten sex ed, only finessed with the caveat “age appropriate.” And technically speaking they are right that Obama did accomplished things in the Illinois and U.S. Senate. They’ve made it glaringly obvious. Count them: one law and three amendments passed! WOW!! Mindboggling!
After providing this glowing account of Obama’s real accomplishments, Factcheck.org does go on to acknowledge “Whether or not one considers any of these measures earth-shaking, they're accomplishments nonetheless.”
Need we say more?
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