Red Clay Super’s Message Regarding The Priority Schools’ MOU

Red Clay Super’s Message Regarding The Priority Schools’ MOU

8 Comments
"Please be aware that the MOU and the planning process are not the same. The MOU is an agreement to collaborate during the planning process." So... is Merv saying that the MOU is simply an invitation to get-together and chat?  That nothing in it is binding?  It's just a "Hey, could you RSVP so we can set up a time to come up with a plan that doesn't exist - just ignore all that talk in the MOU about the school leaders' salaries and teachers having to reapply for their jobs, etc. because none of that means anything." Question... the 9/30 due date is today - there's a workshop scheduled tonight. Can the board vote at a workshop? If not, what happens if the deadline isn't met?
Crazy Sheriff Not Done Being Crazy

Crazy Sheriff Not Done Being Crazy

17 Comments
Sussex County Sheriff Jeff Christopher, who wasted untold taxpayer dollars trying to sue the state after the state refused to let him set up his own police force, and who embarrassed the citizenry with his sovereign citizen and sovereign sheriff nonsense (i.e. the highest constitutional officer in the land is God and then the Sheriff, and then the President and everyone else), just announced on the Dan Gaffney show downstate (is that still on the air?) that he is running a write-in reelection campaign.

Monday Open Thread [9.29.14]

4 Comments
Ed Kilgore on what a Democratic win in Kansas should mean:
If the Republican governor of a very Republican state loses for undertaking a conservative political and policy revolution, complete with a purge of party "moderates" and reactionary legislation on just about every front imaginable, it may remind Republicans everywhere that there are limits to a meta-strategy of moving to the right, polarizing the electorate, and then winning on money and pure dumb luck. As a huge bonus, among the injured in a Brownback loss would be the Koch Brothers, right there in their Wichita lair.... Brownback has very publicly made his state a conservative "experiment station" and sought to stamp out any dissent in his party, all in the pursuit of a sort of intellectual rogue's gallery of bad ideas, from supply-side economics to the harshest attacks in the country on reproductive rights. He not only deserves to lose, but his regime needs to be remembered with fear and trembling by Republicans everywhere.
I guarantee you, if Republicans lose in Kansas, it will be because they were not conservative enough. Conservatism never fails, it can only be failed.
Sunday Open Thread [9.28.14]

Sunday Open Thread [9.28.14]

7 Comments
Earlier this past week, Ezra Klein wondered why Vice President Joe Biden was trailing Hillary Clinton by 44 points in the latest poll of a potential match up in the 2016 primary. Ezra said that it wasn't the Biden gaffes or the preception that he is a joke; it's that “Biden is an old-school, white, male politician in a party that’s increasingly young, multicultural, and female.” Seth Masket at the Monkey Cage has a different take, and it is the right one.
It is hard not to agree with the Satanists on this one

It is hard not to agree with the Satanists on this one

3 Comments
From the Orlando Sentinel:
A religious group called The Satanic Temple is making plans to hand out literature in Orange County Public Schools later this school year, following distributions by atheist and evangelical Christian groups. The New York-based Satanist group hopes to use a distribution as a form of protest. "If a public school board is going to allow religious pamphlets and full Bibles to be distributed to students, as is the case in Orange County, Florida, we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions," said temple co-founder and spokesman Lucien Greaves.[/blockquote]
Tom Gordon Blames the News Journal for His Own Lack of Transparency

Tom Gordon Blames the News Journal for His Own Lack of Transparency

25 Comments
This week's unnecessary controversy is over a planned trip to Denmark (!) by Community Services Manager, Sophia Hanson, and an unnamed other county employee to inspect a library that apparently they think is a model for what they want to do with the planned library across the street (sort of) from Chris Bullock's church on Rt 9. County Council did not know of this trip until Councilman George Smiley asked about it after a presentation on this library this week. It isn't clear that any one knows much more about this trip, but Adam Taylor of the NJ asked for more detail and was pretty much told that the County won't release more information on this because the County Executive thinks that the NJ is just going to do a hit piece:
County spokesman Tony Prado said Friday that Gordon administration officials would not talk about the trip. They wouldn't say who was going, when the trip is scheduled to take place, how much it will cost, whose idea it was, or why it is necessary to visit a library in Denmark. "The executive is concerned this is going to be a negative story and he doesn't want to comment," Prado said. "This has been a project that is near and dear to his heart, and the executive feels like this is going to be a hit piece, so he would just rather not comment."