Sometimes, even in the darkest of moments, you find out that your students learned your lessons well. Have faith in your students, and they will have faith in you. #edusky

So much for dignity. Not that I am surprised, mind.

This just sets my hair on fire.

The Trump Administration's foreign policy boys skipped everything in their history classes from 1890 to 1945, didn't they?

This is the reality the ‘just do it legally!’ people blind themselves to avoid seeing..

Oh, the cognitive dissonance. "Lectures suck! Have your students watch this TED Talk instead!"

One of these is not like the others.

Fighting that stupid urge to post about workplace related pettiness yet again.

Because

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.” That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

Or a historian, or a government/civics teacher... I teach US Government to high schoolers. Imagine how that class is going to be once we're back from the winter storm closures.

Huh. My facebook feed had been relentless for months about throwing right-wing politics at me, and now suddenly it's wall-to-wall opposition to what happened in Minneapolis this week. That seems like something worth noticing.

Minnesota's state FBI-like bureau is suing Noem. It says before pre-emptively declaring the killing righteous and abandoning the crime scene, feds took exclusive custody of evidence, including "apparently seized cellphones." MN asserts a sovereign right to investigate crimes within its borders.

Again, when Bill effin' Kristol gets this and Congresscritters don't...

Folks, holding up Pretti as a martyr is not about diminishing prior victims of ICE. It's not 'hey, brown people brutalized don't count' - anything but! It's not appealing to white supremacists either. What it is about is removing the 'but did they deserve it?' question from the table.

The only likely benefit of this winter storm is that I probably will get an extra day or two before having to explain this weekend to the high schoolers in my Democracy classes.

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

With the rapid and repeated movements of detainees to prevent lawyer access, timely court filings, venue establishment, and due process by their peers from the same area, our government is now applying the logic of using Guantanamo Bay for terrorists to American soil. It has to stop.

Call Congress. Call your Reps. Call your Senators. If they are complicit, make them scared at the firestorm of anger. If they opposed it all along, they can use it as a sledgehammer against their cowardly colleagues. Make them hear the roar.

Congressional Dems need to face the hard truth that people are dying in Minneapolis to oppose ICE precisely because some Dem Reps in Congress aren't. They are dying because the Reps somehow can't see the moment. Would doing so have saved the MP'ers? Maybe not - but they stood because you wouldn't.

And people think public transport is bad...

Hiring season for independent schools is just about upon us, and as a long-time department chair at one, I was planning on reposting and expanding my threads on finding a job at them. Any thoughts on what you'd like me to cover or add? AMA.

It's trite to say, but it still saddens met that so many adherents of a faith whose core tenet is in seeing and encouraging the best in people can only believe in the worst in people. Where Jesus welcomed, they exclude. Where Jesus aided, they harmed. When Jesus listened, they plugged their ears.

A fundamental problem in the United States is the common belief that leadership is about the show - that the performative action is what constitutes leadership. The quiet, the careful, the deliberative - that gets no credit, and the credit they deserve goes to the flash, the noisy, the in-your-face.

Is Maria Corina Machado really that much of a naive idiot? Does she really not have someone with enough of a finger on American politics to realize how bad an idea kowtowing to Trump really is for Venezuela's long-term prospects, let alone her own?

Hey, here's a proposal; how about we pay the President and members far more generously - but in return any and all income earned outside of their government salary during their time of office is automatically turned over to the Treasury in turn. Sold a bunch of stock? The Treasury thanks you.

Lots of Tory loyalists out there telling Crispus Attucks he deserved to get shot alongside his four buddies by those Redcoats - they were just enforcing George III's laws and were in fear of their lives.

One element that today's extrajudicial killing in Minneapolis is highlighting for me is the utter abandonment of proportionality in law enforcement for so many Americans. The number of reactionary numskulls who think any deviation from LEO orders, legal or not, deserves dying is appalling.

Yet another example of those who kowtow to this sort of bullying end up paying for it - literally. How many examples do people need?

So, just to get this straight: a group of masked men attempted to knowingly and fraudulently claim to have a child to gain access to facilities with minors they have no relation to. If they had done this at a school with an SRO, what would have happened?

I wrote this for this last Thanksgiving, but the sentiments it concludes with are ones to embrace for this coming year. Happy New Year in hope, everyone.

You know, pediatric dental insurance is useless if the insurance says it will only pay for one type of crown - and that every dentist contracted to take that insurance says that they absolutely will not do.

BREAKING: Four House Republicans have just forced a vote on healthcare subsidies. Four GOP members of Congress have signed on to the Democrats' discharge petition, and now a mandatory vote on extending ACA tax credits must be held.

Top of my to-do list when my son was being emergency airlifted was calling around to see who had the cheapest CT scans. Hard to have a phone call on a helicopter though.

Given the economy right now, what is going to happen at the start of the new year when millions get the double whammy of restarted student loan payments and vastly increased medical insurance premiums? Do we think several hundred bucks a month disappearing for so many families might be... bad?

What is so galling about the end of the student loan pause is that MOHELA acted in such bad faith in processing paperwork such as PSLF validations that they were fined millions for it. They sat on paperwork of mine for years that would have seen my loans done - and now won't ever get processed.

At that stage of life where it's 50-50 that the people I think of as 'older' and more specifically 'gotta be older than me' on social media.... aren't.

So... how much is the bottoming out price of gas due to a significant reduction in goods being shipped around the country because people aren't buying like they used to due to tariffs?

I think it would be a winning strategy to run for Congress on the platform of banning any recognition of a president on anything but their presidential library for a decade after their last moment they can possibly serve as president. No free park entry for birthdays, no renamed buildings. Nothing.

During Edward III's wars in Scotland and France, it was common to offer criminal pardons if offenders would fight in that year's campaigns on their own dime. As the wars dragged on, the ever-present possibility of a pardon vastly increased lawlessness in England. Just throwing that out there.

How's this for compromise. Congress can double its salary - but in return, they have to divest from all other incomes during their time in office other than their partner's basic salary. If you can't 'live' on your salary as a Congressman, let's make it livable while ditching all other temptations.

TN07 is a story about gerrymandering: the GOP cracked Nashville into 3 districts when it redrew the 2022 map, destroying the Dem seat there. Fast-forward: a section of Nashville, which just 5 years ago had a Dem representative, is now voting Dem by huge margins but it's been designed to not matter.

Before the idiots chime in... if we could hold elections in 1862 and 1864, any of the current nonsense with Venezuela definitely won't justify limiting elections next year.

Let me tell you a tale of Thankgivings past, present – and future. Though I grew up in California, I spent my postgraduate years (grad school for the US types) attending the University of Durham from 1998-2004. It seemed a better bet for learning medieval history there than in sunny SoCal.

Let me tell you a tale of Thankgivings past, present – and future. Though I grew up in California, I spent my postgraduate years (grad school for the US types) attending the University of Durham from 1998-2004. It seemed a better bet for learning medieval history there than in sunny SoCal.

Just a friendly reminder as we go into the holidays: Folks don't have to explain to you why they don't drink. If you offer them a drink and they decline, don't ask them why. It's not your business. Just offer them something without alcohol to drink instead. And move on.

A friend who teaches theology shared with me a post about CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which discusses foundational Christian logic across denominations. It reminded me of Dale's tweet below, and I wanted to share some thoughts here regarding modesty and respectability, which are often hot topics.

One of the great underlying truths behind our current set of societal problems is that most Americans truly believe it is a right and a privilege to not have to pay any attention to the world around them, and anything that would require that - politics, science, common decency - is anathema to them.

Joining @morningjoe-msnow.bsky.social at the top of the 6ET to discuss this article I wrote last night. www.thebulwark.com/p/what-ameri...

I missed this Trump admin memo when it came out, but it’s a doozy: tossing our First Amendment to explicitly permit supervisors to instruct subordinayes to accept Jesus & even what church to attend & how to pray. Latest from @chrisrodda.bsky.social: www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...