PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS, AIMED AT CONVERTING VOTERS TO REPUBLICANS

How much of this kind of thing is out there, and we just don't know it?

Two weeks into the new year, conservative outlets continue to promote the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar, a 12-month wall calendar "celebrating a century and a half of civil rights achievements by the party of Lincoln."

The stated purpose of the Republican Freedom Calendar is to promote the story, "as remarkable as it is untold," of "the many important Republican achievements in advancing civil rights." But actually the calendar does a good deal more than that. Not only does the calendar ignore the civil rights achievements of Democrats, it paints the Democratic Party as a perennial enemy of civil rights. The calendar also omits the embarrassing chapters in Republican history.

One-sided history would be expected, I suppose, if the Republican Freedom Calendar were a campaign flyer. But the calendar is a government publication prepared by the Policy Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. Like the Education Department’s contract with black commentator Armstrong Williams, the Republican Freedom Calendar represents an alarming use of taxpayer dollars for Republican propaganda aimed primarily at African Americans.