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You can follow the show on Twitter at inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Bachmann, who at the time was a Republican congressmember from Minnesota, expanded on her allegations the next day. It can have very dangerous side effects. Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one. The campaign is just around the corner, and even though the Iowa caucuses are nearly a year away, we are already being inundated with dubious claims from potential candidates.
Frequently, those claims touch upon issues related to science. Rand Paul R-Ky. John McCain denounced the allegations Wednesday, calling them "sinister" and saying they "need to stop.
The State Department has responded to the allegations with very harsh language, calling Bachmann's charges "vicious and disgusting lies. Even Bachmann's own former presidential campaign chief, Ed Rollins, said she was being extreme and dishonest. It's rare for a senator to publicly rebuke members of his own party. But that's just what Arizona's McCain did, saying on the Senate floor, "These attacks have no logic, no basis and no merit, and they need to stop," after the five House Republicans questioned whether Abedin has ties to terrorism.
Bachmann, from Minnesota, and the four other representatives sent letters to top intelligence and security officials last week warning that the Muslim Brotherhood, a global religious Islamic movement whose members have been linked to terrorist groups in the past, may have infiltrated the top levels of U.
Prior to that, she spent five years as a federal tax litigation attorney. Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, who have five children and have opened their home to 23 foster children, live in Stillwater, Minn.
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The reason we publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy. Stand up for the facts! More Info. I would like to contribute. Anyone wanting to understand how President Bachmann might behave should pay close attention to what happened at New Heights. Under pressure from parents, Bachmann resigned from New Heights. But the experience left her with a hang-up about the role of the state in public education. She was soon mobilizing against an educational-standards program called Profile of Learning, an early precursor to No Child Left Behind.
Under the program, state educators and local businesses teamed up to craft a curriculum that would help young people prepare for the work force — but Bachmann saw through their devious scheme. To combat this dark outcome, Bachmann joined up with a Junior Anti-Sex League-type outfit called the Maple River Education Coalition, which was largely composed of Christian conservatives rallying against educational standards.
The group met in a church, and its sessions resembled old-time religious revivals, complete with whooping and hollering. Maple River eventually morphed into an organization called EdWatch, which railed against various dystopian indoctrination plans, including the U. In , she joined four other Republicans in Stillwater in an attempt to seize control of the school board.
Bachmann learned her lesson. The slate of five had been put together by a local Republican kingpin named Bill Pulkrabek, who this spring was jailed for domestic assault after he allegedly pulled his mistress down a set of stairs by her hair. According to Pulkrabek, Bachmann initially came to him asking for advice on how to defeat Gary Laidig, a moderate Republican state senator, but he advised her to run for the school board first.
And indeed, right after the school-board fiasco, Bachmann decided to take on Laidig. In her later telling of the story, however, Bachmann substituted a higher authority than Bill Pulkrabek. It was God, she insisted, not a girlfriend-abusing politician, who instructed her to get involved in politics.
In another version of the story told by Bachmann, she ran against Laidig only because a GOP endorsing convention in April of that year spontaneously selected her, prompting yet another Home Alone extreme-surprise moment. She is at once the most entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying to the infidel is a kind of holy duty.
It has taken just over 10 years for Bachmann to go from small-town PTA maven to serious presidential contender, a testament to both her rare and unerring talent for generating media attention, and to her truly astonishing energy level and narcissistic tenacity. Bachmann ended up unseating Laidig — and since then, getting herself elected is pretty much the only thing she has accomplished in politics. Her time in the Minnesota legislature was concentrated in two lengthy and unsuccessful protest campaigns.
The other was a hysterical campaign against gay marriage that involved some of the strangest behavior ever attributed to an American elected official. In , after the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued its famous ruling permitting gay marriage, Bachmann proposed an amendment to the Minnesota constitution banning gay marriage — despite the fact that the state legislature had already passed a law making same-sex unions illegal.
In , after she saw a news story about the Chinese calling on the world to abandon the dollar as its reserve currency, Bachmann somehow took this to mean that the Obama administration might force ordinary Americans to abandon their familiar green dollar bills for some international and no doubt atheist currency.
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