One of our readers from the right side of the house spent a lot of time putting together a rebuttal to an ongoing debate we’re having concerning the censoring of President Obama’s recent speech to school children. While I disagree with most of this reader’s assertions, I do appreciate the insight this gives into what their side is thinking, and I appreciate that they took the time to write some real reasons rather than just throwing out labels.

Here’s what the reader wrote:

September 8th, WhosPlayin.com filed an open records request, and has received internal as well as constituent emails sent by, between, and on behalf of School Board members and the Superintendant, Dr. Jerry Roy.

As you recall, many parents rejected Roy’s explanation that the decision was based on logistics, due to the fact that it was revealed to one of our readers/commenters that it had been forbidden to show the speech. Many of these parents expressed their frustration with the school board the next week.

A look at the emails that went back-and-forth on the matter provides a better picture of the situation:

Senate Finance chairman, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) released his Chairman's Mark version of his health care proposal today.

You can download and read the mark here. (pdf, 1.3MB)

The document is 223 pages, written in generally understandable form, explaining current law and proposed changes. It is not yet in the form of a bill, and is not yet available through Thomas.

Last night I attended the LISD Board of Trustees meeting, and took some video.

It is hard to find the words to express my further disappointment in the board and superintendant.

20 citizens spoke at the public forum, 18 of which addressed the censorship of Obama's speech to students. Of the 18, 17 were there to express dissatisfaction with the decision to ban the speech. I only actually know a few of the people who spoke up, and at least one referred to this blog post.

Here is a YouTube playlist of all of the videos, kicked off with me a couple of hours before the meeting sharing my thoughts in a video blog:

TYLER—Hank Gilbert (D-Whitehouse), a candidate for Texas Governor, issued the following statement at the conclusion of the President’s healthcare address tonight:

“Texas has a higher percentage of its citizens living without health insurance than any other state in the nation. Instead of working constructively to do something about this problem, Governor Perry and Senator Hutchison behave like children on a school playground—each one peevishly blaming the other for our state’s problems. Or Washington. Or the 10th Amendment. Basically, doing anything BUT acknowledging their own failure and disregard for their fellow Texans.

One thing you also haven’t heard them say is how they’ll solve the health insurance crisis in Texas. Whether or not the President’s national healthcare plan becomes a reality, we have to do something about health insurance in Texas. We lead the nation in the number of uninsured children. We rank 46th out of the 50 states when it comes to the number of people covered by employer-funded healthcare plans.

That’s inexcusable. During the 24 years Rick Perry has held public office, and during the 18 years Kay Bailey Hutchison has held statewide office, neither has demonstrated the courage Texas needs to pull our state up by the bootstraps from the health insurance sinkhole. These two have more than four decades of government experience between them, and this is the best we get? Allowing health insurance lobbyists to control the agenda in their offices? Campaign coffers filled with money from health insurance interests?

I applaud the folks in Washington who are trying to do something to ease healthcare costs in an effort to help small businesses and ordinary Texans who have been abused for decades by greedy insurance companies. Insurance companies need aggressive competition and fair but strict regulation so consumers are protected and prices don’t skyrocket out of reach of ordinary Texans. Here in Texas, the first step toward making sure that happens is reforming the Texas Department of Insurance. As your governor, I will transform this agency, in cooperation with the Legislature, to make the Texas Insurance Commissioner an elected office held accountable to the voters, and not the governor.”

President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress Wednesday night to make his case for what he wants included in health care insurance reform.

We carried the live stream, but don't yet have an archive video of the speech. But you can view the speech on C-SPAN

Read the full text of the President's remarks here.

The President's speech was given at 11:00 AM Central Time today.



(Read prepared remarks here)

The following is a letter from a retired long-time Lewisville ISD employee to the board:
Dear LISD board members.

Knowing all of you and working very closely with most of you for many years, it's very disheartening to be writing you at this time to express my sadness, disappointment and complete disagreement with your decision to not air President Obama's address on Tuesday.

Standing on the Bridge, Standing Up for Change

Lewisville, TX

This past Friday, my fellow local Democrats and other supporters of health care insurance reform held a rally at the Lewisville office of Congressman Michael Burgess. Although I supported that effort and participated in the preparation and publicity, I only spent a few minutes there, snapping a few pictures and waving to my fellow patriots.

Early in the week, we had decided that although the main body of our rally would be at the office of Michael Burgess, he wasn’t really the audience for our support of health insurance reform. Burgess may or may not have been in the office – in fact, he may have been out doing another joint town hall meeting with Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota. We have tried to express our opinions to him and our two Senators, but we know that regardless of what they all may say about wanting some type of health insurance reform, their actions and their votes speak louder than their words.

For this reason, we wanted to share our message with regular people, and engage them with the truth. We know from polling data that a majority of Americans support reform, but we also know anecdotally that the belligerent right has screamed the loudest, and raised the most dire predictions of doom.

So what we did was to create our own hand-made banner, not with a witty or sarcastic bumper-sticker slogan, but designed to drive home the three main principles of what President Obama is looking for in his plan for health insurance reform:

WhosPlayin presents this calendar of community events for those in the Lewisville, Flower Mound, Highland Village area of Denton County Texas:

(Right-click, select "refresh" or reload if calendar doesn't display)

About the events calendar:

In 2006, humorist author Kinky Friedman ran for Governor of Texas as an independent. Today Friedman announced he would run as a Democrat: