I wonder what it says about a school that they have decided to have faculty who retired years and years ago come back to make videos telling people to send their kids to that school now. As opposed to the 40% of their total faculty they RIF'd this year.

Fashion designer Jeremy Scott delivers commencement speech to Kansas City Art Institute graduates. Wait for it…

Alito’s logic in this case—that characteristics that correlate with racial identity, like partisanship, aren’t constitutionally protected and can be used to disenfranchise legally is *the exact thinking* that gave us poll taxes and literacy tests.

Anyone else have a problem that legislature driven redistricting goes through fine but voters voting to redistrict is never fine?

In a landscape where the political parties are defined by their stances towards ethnic and racial minorities, there is no such thing as separating partisan and racial gerrymandering. Stating that action can only be taken on the racial if there is no partisan component is absurdism on its face.

I have to admit, I did not have OPEC imploding on my bingo card.

Given the petty love of theatre by the current administration, I would have expected their announcement on reclassifying marijuana to have come this last Monday. Wasted opportunity.

Let's all use this occasion to take a look at the many ways Tennessee Republicans have shown how much they value and respect the Traditional Nuclear Family™

In medieval England, the Feet of Fines was a set of legal documents that among other things recorded fictitious legal disputes in order to publicly register money or asset transfers between two parties. No dispute actually existed - it was just a vehicle to justify payments. Sound familiar?

There's nothing like a friggin' spam filter rerouting an important email that looks nothing like any actual spam you ever receive to ruin your day. And with so many spam emails now clogging the internet, finding that needle in the haystack again is one hell of a chore.

Péter Magyar, who unseated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Sunday in a landslide, shared a bombshell with reporters that the outgoing leader had diverted taxpayer funds to bankroll the American Conservative Political Action Conference. trib.al/ct7GGV3

I suspect the Pope sounds "woke" to many Christian conservatives because the US is steeped in prosperity theology, where the point of worship is to deliver health and wealth to believers. Thus, "feed the hungry" and "show mercy for the poor" sounds needlessly political and "woke."

The biggest problem people will have convincing Americans that bombing civilian infrastructure is evil is the mythic place World War II has in the American mind. Slagging the infrastructure of our enemies was a key strategy then, and so it must be acceptable, no? That is what you have to overcome.

If Federal agents from any agency can just be effectively transferred around to do anyone else's job at will, then arguing about which agency gets what funding is meaningless. The boondoggle of last year's mass funding of ICE simply created a huge police state regardless of on-paper boundaries.

It is quite telling that since the horrific story of Cesar Chavez re: sexual abuse broke earlier this week and calls to change the names of schools and other public spaces named in his honor, not one conservative voice has stepped forward to object that this would be tantamount to erasing history.

Just for fun, let me tell you about somebody you've probably never heard of, but who was once one of the most famous people in England, a national hero, a disgraced fraudster, and an astonishingly accomplished piratical maniac. He led quite a life. (1/53)

Watching all sorts of institutions this year make deliberate choices to destroy the very things that make them viable, sustainable, and in many cases profitable has been something else. This year really is full of groups having utter self-delusions about what they are and what makes them successful.

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.