Thursday Open Thread
Welcome to your Thursday open thread. Are we getting snow again? I keep hearing rumors of snow. Haven’t we had enough this week?
Here is some great news. The gay couple that was responsible for getting Florida’s ban on adoption by same-sex adoptions have finally become parents.
A gay Miami man has officially adopted two brothers after he successfully fought to overturn Florida’s three-decade old ban on gay adoptions.
Martin Gill and his partner were the boys’ foster parents for six years before the adoption was finalized Wednesday.
Gill and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state, calling the ban unconstitutional. The 3rd District Court of Appeal agreed in a ruling last year. The state decided not to appeal.
Gill says he is thrilled they are “officially a family in the eyes of the law.”
I love happy endings! Congratulations to Martin Gill and his family.
If you loved the “Filibernie,” you’ll love the Filibernie in book form.. Coming soon to a bookstore near you!
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is publishing his December filibuster of a tax cuts bill as a book in February, his publisher said Wednesday.
Nation Books said that it would publish the text of Sanders’s eight-and-a-half hour speech against legislation extending expiring tax cuts for two years in book form.
The book, “THE SPEECH: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class” will be available as an e-book on Jan. 28, with a book release the next month.
I hope it sells well and gets to some people who need to read it – like the whole corporate media.
Tags: Open Thread
Check this out:
Charter School of Wilmington may be forced to curb enrollment
OK, this should be good… I thought the whole thing about charter schools was how they could deliver better education for less cost per student than traditional schools…
Capping enrollment would mean larger class sizes – what kind of math are they teaching over there?
Oh, I get it all right – if they can’t continuously take in (and get funding for) more students each year, over their chartered limits, then they are saying they will have to let some teachers go, which will then increase class sizes.
Isn’t this how a pyramid scheme collapses?
In the name of ‘civility,’ Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) gives us all a primer.
In his floor speech, Cohen said:“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing.”
He continued to say that “Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it — believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care” and people have come to believe that too.
Cohen, who is Tennessee’s first Jewish congressman, also used the statement to apologize to fellow Jews.
“I would certainly never do anything to diminish the horror of the Nazi Holocaust as I revere and respect the history of my people,” he said.
“I regret that anyone in the Jewish community, my Republican colleagues or anyone else was offended by the portrayal of my comments. My comments were not directed toward any group or people but at the false mes¬sage and, specifically, the method by which it has been delivered.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47903.html#ixzz1BcvlWcAe
At least The Charter School of Wilmington delivers results. The real reason why they are consistently in the top 100 high schools in the nation is because the students (and their parents) actually Want to go there. Thus, they are motivated to do well.
I remember the ‘old’ Wilmington High School had horrible academic results. It goes to show you that having a beautiful, ‘new’ school with tons of money doesn’t gaurantee results. It’s all about the motivation of the student, the teachers, administration, alliances with business and parents.
In the name of civility — another conservatarian wingnut looking to impose his vision of American government at gunpoint. 1 down and 534 to go.
Or how about this in the name of civility — NJ conservatives get their anti-muslim bigotry on towards a nominee for judge in New Jersey.
when they gonna raid the Sussex County Conservative Caucus?
Bet they’d find the same thing there..
Oh that;s right (pun intended) no one knows who the members are…shhhh
http://www.dailykosbeta.com/story/2011/01/20/890163/-Ignore-Sarah-Palin-Week-(2-28-3-4)
will DL be participating?
I’ve been trying to ignore her.
‘Think Progress,’ that paragon of fair reporting. I guess you failed to realize that this lunatic targets, uhm, like, EVERY member of Congress in his diatribe.
In other words, he’s an equal-opportunity, bipartisan
lovinfreak.I guess a member of Congress addressing his House colleagues on a national scale (C-Span, etc.) doesn’t rate on your us vs. them meter. Hardly equivalent.
OMG! You are exhausting, newshound. I, and others, have said this sort of talk puts Rs and Ds at risk. Freaks + constant violent rhetoric + guns = trouble for everyone.
Stop being deliberately dense.
Pandora, he can’t help it. He’s only parroting what St. Sarah told him in his dreams last night.
“The real reason why they are consistently in the top 100 high schools in the nation is because the students (and their parents) actually Want to go there. Thus, they are motivated to do well.”
That’s only a part of the reason. The rest is that the school selects the best students on its entrance exam. The ugly “secret” of academic testing is that it says far more about the students than about teachers, schools or school districts.
Start out with the smartest kids, give them an accelerated course of study and you’d have to be stone cold imcompetents to end up with anything but the kids with the highest test scores.
That’s not to say I don’t support Charter of Wilmington; I do. I think more secondary schools should be set up with concentrated courses of study, or better yet, methods of instruction tailored to the many kids who don’t learn well in the teacher-textbook-lecture model.
But let’s not kid ourselves about what produced those results. Our slavish devotion to those tests has left us with three “vocational/technical” districts that are selecting students for their academic prowess rather than their interest in vocational courses of study.
At least The Charter School of Wilmington delivers results. The real reason why they are consistently in the top 100 high schools in the nation is because the students (and their parents) actually Want to go there. Thus, they are motivated to do well.
Paraphrasing (I think) Vince Lombardi: “It’s easy to motivate people. Just get rid of everyone who isn’t motivated.”