The Alabama Policy Institute is connected with James Dobson and Regnery Publishing and ...

The above is an interview of the Alabama Policy Institute's Gary Palmer by Dobsonite Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family/Citizen Link. Among the gems are Gary's fretting over "the right to life" yet also "the encroachment of government into everybody's life." Tort reform is a family issue per Gary. There's a lament over the bad science behind global warming but the interview is rather vanilla. Gary and Shepard are playing their role as weary warriors possibly with more than is required

I'm not sure what "Fully Associated" means as to API and Focus on the Family yet I presume Dr. Dobson and his minions approve of the work of Gary and API in their "Family Policy Council".

I also wasn't aware of their environmental book for children. Here's what API claims ...

In 1996 we helped change environmental education in America with our commercially successful publication, Facts Not Fear: Teaching our Children about the Environment. The book, which has been translated into two other languages, was born out of the need for a user-friendly resource to help parents give their kids a common-sense approach to understanding and appreciating our environment. The work has been praised as a valuable and important tool that helps put media hype and hysteria into a more honest and responsible perspective.

That Regnery Publishing put out Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment surprises me not. PR Watch notes both authors "are committed, paid activists in the conservative anti-environmental movement."

That one author Michael Sanera is a policy hack that has worked in both conservative administrations and think tanks was no shocker. His Ph. D. in political science and background as an Army Intelligence Officer I suppose qualifies him on both education and science. I'd briefly looked into the John Locke Foundation in covering Mary Katherine Ham and the Goldwater Institute while covering the efforts of Jeb Bu$h in "school reform". I've noted Gary Palmer's connection to Regnery before as well.

The book's other author Jane Shaw has also made a living at least partially on wingnut welfare. Her B.S. in English Literature from Wellesley College is impressive but hardly would make her a scientist or educator either.

The entanglements between these right wing policy shops, message machines, family councils, and the like is admittedly impressive on some levels. That they often provide a tax deduction for the fat cats while then turning around and influencing policies that benefit these same wealthy and powerful people does frustrate me. That they do their work under the cover of looking out for regular folks is however intolerable. John Gunn

UPDATE ~ I was also unaware that Whacky Tacky Tom Parker was the founding Executive Director of the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute). And I thought he was just an unreconstructed rebel.