The comment thread on Gary Stager’s HuffPo article on the Duncan appointment wouldn’t allow this long response, so I’m posting it here. Gary, I’m still informing myself (and as others have noted, your links are now more of my homework), so I’m going to withhold judgment somewhat. I will say that all the reading I’ve [...]

Annotations of Obama’s 2004 Interview on His Religious Beliefs Obama is a year older than me, and that’s only the beginning of the list of ways I relate to him. Here are more things we have in common: He didn’t grow up rich and privileged. When he got out of college, he drove a car [...]

He wins in a Democrat landslide. Hopes are high for a progressive agenda unseen since the New Deal, and he delivers, in the first days of his presidency, an avalanche of legislation meant to fulfill those hopes. But he also inherits a military conflict that his advisers are counseling him to escalate – with a [...]

Preface: What I Learned from the Comments on My “Portrait of the Teacher as a Young Racist” Post I was surprised that my story of anti-black racism in the American South drew strong reactions in the comment thread from readers in New Zealand, Australia, England, and regions of the American Mid-west (where there were no [...]

Interesting post on “secular parenting” writer Dale McGowan’s The Meming of Life: ….If it’s true that education leads to the left, fear-based campaigning should increase in effectiveness as education levels decrease, and you’d expect states with the lowest per-capita educational attainment to favor the fear-mongering candidate. The list below ranks all 50 states and the [...]

Decrepit Old Fool shares this video setting the record straight about ACORN, and the Republican Party’s history of attacking voter registration drives among the working classes with the admitted purpose of discouraging large voter turnouts: DOF concludes with this paragraph containing links worth checking out: The GOP tries to discredit ACORN every election cycle. The [...]

On Blogging in the Late Weimar Republic Reading the headlines of Alltop.com’s “top education” sites‘ brings to mind the cover of the old Supertramp album, showing a man sunning himself in a bathing suit on a lounge chair, surrounded by grimy industrial waste. The album’s title? “Crisis? What Crisis?” Economically, American banking deregulation has dragged [...]