Bill Blum, Former Administrative Law Judge - Common Dreams
Stephan:
Even judges can see the corruption and bias that has overtaken the Supreme Court, which is no longer a disinterested arbiter of justice but has become a christofascist racist cabal in service to MAGAt world.
Clouds are seen above the U.S. Supreme Court building on May 17, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Credit Drew Angerer / Getty
If you’re looking for someone to blame for the gun violence that has left our schools, streets, and communities soaked in blood, don’t point just at the National Rifle Association and their lackeys in the Republican Party. Raise another finger, ideally your middle one, toward a Supreme Court that has enabled the unceasing rise of gun-related carnage in all its ever-more-obscene forms.
The key decision came in 2008, when a 5-4 majority led by the late Justice Antonin Scalia ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms. Prior to Heller, the combined weight of academic scholarship and legal precedent had construed the Second Amendment as protecting civilian gun ownership only in connection with long-antiquated state militias. This view was long seen as reflecting the spirit of the actual debates held during […]
Amy Gardner and Jacqueline Alemany, Reporters - Microsoft Start | The Washington Post
Stephan:
There is so much civil gun violence being provoked by Trump and the MAGAts that, as this article describes,it is beginning to dawn on a few Republicans and Democrats that Congress may face another mass violence event like 6 January, that could kill a number of members of the House and Senate and render one or both houses dysfunctional. Who would have ever guessed that this is what the United States would become? But, then who would have every predicted that being murdered by a gun wound would become the leading cause of death for children in the U.S.?
Scarred by violence, lawmakers plan for possible ‘mass casualty’ event. Credit: Alex Brandon / AP
Imagine the unthinkable: a mass shooting of members of Congress that leaves a large swath of the country unrepresented and shifts the balance of political power in Washington.
In the current political environment, such an outbreak of violence is not as unthinkable as it used to be, according to a bipartisan collection of House members. The attempted assassination of members at a congressional baseball team practice in 2017, the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a dramatic spike in threats against members and, most recently, a possible second assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump highlight the need for Congress to ensure it can continue to govern in the aftermath of mass violence, they said.
To address such a scenario, these four House members — two Republicans and two Democrats — are pushing an unlikely solution: a constitutional amendment that would allow members to be replaced quickly in […]
I keep looking for good trends, positive wellbeing fostering trends, and I see them in other countries but in the United States they are few and hard to find. I have been telling you for years about the growing illiteracy and innumeracy in America, and the growing failure and politicization of public education, and here is the latest data. It is not happy. I don’t know how our democracy is going to survive when half of us are barely literate and only a third of us can name all three branches of government. If traitor Trump and his frankenstein win the executive branch and the rest of the ballot goes to MAGAts I don’t see how we survive. So it is up to us and everyone we know who supports democracy to vote only for Democrats. Not because we think they are close to perfect, but because the alternative is committed to christofascism as the demostrate every day. Just look at the news coming out of Georgia.
Students are welcomed back on the first day of class at Roosevelt Elementary School in Anaheim, California, in 2023. Credit: Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register / Getty
Sometimes, panics are overblown. Sometimes, older generations are just freaking out about the youngs, as they have since time immemorial.
That’s not the case, unfortunately, with kids’ learning right now, more than four years after the pandemic shuttered classrooms and disrupted the lives of millions of children. The effects were seen almost immediately, as students’ performance in reading and math began to dip far below pre-pandemic norms, worrying educators and families around the country.
Even now, according to a new report released this week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research group at Arizona State University that has studied the impact of Covid on education since 2020, the average American student is “less than halfway to a full academic recovery” from the effects of the pandemic.
The report — the group’s third annual analysis of the “state […]
John B. Alexander, Contributing Writer - Daily Kos
Stephan:
This, I think, is one of the most important issues in the election that is just a few days away: why do so many women support a man and a party that cares nothing for their personal wellbeing? A cult that won’t even give them control over their own bodies, and puts a convicted rapist forward as its candidate for President. If you know such a woman help her to see the implications of voting for MAGAt Republicans.
Credit: Hope Care
One of the most inexplicable paradoxes in American politics is the millions of women who actively support Donald Trump. They are not shy about their vociferous adoration of an adjudicated sexual abuser. Trump, on the other hand, has openly acknowledged that he feels he has the right to engage in sexually assaulting women. The pertinent quote from the Access Hollywood tape was, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Given the relatively recent creation and evolution of the MeToo movement, the open support for a known predator by so many females for is especially perplexing. Regarding MeToo, Britannica states, “The movement is credited with giving visibility […]
Anna Phillips, Reporter - MIcrosoft Start | The Washington Post
Stephan:
I found some good news about schools, makes me feel better. Fostering wellbeing isn’t that hard for a community once they make it a priority.
A transformed former asphalt school playground Credit: The Washington Post
PHILADELPHIA — As a girl growing up here, Natalie McHugh used to play on the vast expanses of asphalt and concrete that coated the city’s schoolyards.
She didn’t question as a student why there weren’t more trees or think twice about the blacktop during her decades as an educator at Southwark Elementary School in South Philadelphia. Then, one day, as McHugh monitored recess with the school’s principal, her boss said something that made her see all that asphalt differently: “He said, ‘This is not good, Nat.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’” she said.
Since then, Southwark’s schoolyard has been transformed, one of more than a dozen in Philadelphia where the Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit that helps create public parks, has done things such as plant trees, build rain gardens, and install play equipment and an outdoor classroom. Activists and parents have long worked, school by school, to turn asphalt playgrounds into islands of greenery. But as climate change sends temperatures soaring, the […]
