Signs and Wonders: Limbaugh laments losing the language battle

Words matter. Rush Limbaugh made an interesting point on his radio program yesterday. He said the language we use regarding marriage is the reason homosexual activists have made such in-roads: “I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word ‘marriage’ to be redefined by simply adding words to it.” He said such language as “gay marriage” and “heterosexual marriage” creates the illusion that both are marriages and are just different types of marriage, which he pointed out is not true. Limbaugh added that, in part, because conservatives lost the battle over language, conservatives will soon lose the war over marriage, and that it will become legal nationwide.

None of the above. Fifth graders at a public school in Corpus Christi, Texas, were learning that the United States deserved the 9/11 attacks because of our bad behavior toward other nations in the world. Kara Sands, a mother of a student at Flour Bluff Intermediate School, reviewed a quiz her son brought home and found the following question: “Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?” The answer the teacher was looking for was B: “Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere.” Other possible answers were (A.) “Other people just don’t like Americans,” (C.) “Terrorists hate everyone,” and (D.) “None of the above.” Sands posted a photo of the quiz on her Facebook page, and local television stations took it from there. The school board ended up agreeing with Sands that the quiz and a related video called Remembering September 11th were inappropriate for the school, and would be discontinued.

Vacation vs. White House tours. President Obama, in an effort to make a point about sequester cuts, famously cut White House tours from the budget. That means kids coming to D.C. over spring break will be shut out from the presidential mansion. Meanwhile, the president’s own kids are taking a spring break vacation that the conservative group Judicial Watch suspects will cost much more than the cost of maintaining the White House tours. Judicial Watch has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the Obama administration asking for expense reports related to the girls’ vacation. I’m normally not a fan of bringing the children of public officials into political fights, but I think Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton has a point when he says, “The Obamas’ unnecessary personal luxury travel is an abuse of office in this age of sequester, unemployment, and out-of-control government debt.” Judicial Watch is the group that publicized details about Malia Obama’s March 2012 spring break trip to Mexico. That vacation cost taxpayers $115,500.87, according to the group’s findings. According to the Daily Caller, that would be enough to keep White House tours going for about two weeks.

Sanford paying a price. A special election in South Carolina for a U.S. House seat is getting nasty. Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is still the odds-on favorite to win a runoff against Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic. Sanford got 37 percent of the vote in a 16-person primary field. It looks like a no-brainer that he will be able to find at least 13 percent more from among those now out of the race. But Bostic is not going down without a fight. On Thursday night he said Sanford had lost the trust of the people of South Carolina and if he wins the primary, Republicans could lose a safe seat to Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert. Sanford, for his part, was contrite. “I failed,” he said. “And I failed very publicly. What I would say is the events of 2009 absolutely represent a failure on my part for which there were and always will be at some level consequences. But that does not mean that because you’ve had a failure on your personal life, that you cannot step back into life again.”