Two Bright Lights in Missouri: The Ferguson Municipal Public Library and Its Director Scott Bonner Who Served the Community Well in a Time of Crisis

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro
Scott Bonner Director of the Ferguson Municipal Public Library

Scott Bonner
Director of the Ferguson Municipal Public Library

By Elaine Magliaro

Here is some uplifting news out of Ferguson, Missouri: The Ferguson Municipal Public Library (FMPL) has been named Library of the Year by Library Journal magazine and Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. According to Caroline Siede (BoingBoing), the library was one local organization that “emerged as a heroic force” during the unrest in Ferguson last year after the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. Siede said that FMPL Director Scott Bonner kept the library “open even as other businesses around him shut down.” She added, “After schools closed indefinitely, the Ferguson library became a place for teachers and students to continue with educational programs.”

The $10,000 prize, officially titled the 2015 Library Journal/Gale Cengage Learning Library of the Year, was announced on Monday. The award is given to the library that “most profoundly demonstrates service to the community, creativity and innovation in developing specific community programs or a dramatic increase in library usage; and leadership in creating programs that can be emulated by other libraries.”

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Posted in Government, Local Government, Missouri, Society, United States | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

A Black Ex-Cop Writes about Race and Policing in the United States (VIDEO)

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

police-brutality-smallBy Elaine Magliaro

Redditt Hudson has an interesting article titled I’m a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing over at Vox. Hudson was a St. Louis police officer for five years. He currently serves as the board chair of The Ethics Project, and as a member of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement for Justice, Reform, and Accountability.

Here is an excerpt from Hudson’s lengthy Vox article:

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That’s a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, “I can’t believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!” He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

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Posted in Equal Rights, Law Enforcement, Police, Racism, Short Video, United States | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Picture of the Day for June 10, 2015: Regarding Discrimination Against Gays and Lesbians

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

Posted by Elaine Magliaro

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Posted in Christianity, Conservatives, Equal Rights, Homosexual Rights, Politics, Religion, United States | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Plaintiffs in “Gay Conversion” Therapy Lawsuit Were Told to Blame Their Mothers for Their Homosexuality

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

JONAH - Copy (2)By Elaine Magliaro

David Porter of the Associated Press reported on an interesting New Jersey court case on Monday. According to Porter, four men sued Jersey City-based Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) “in 2012 under New Jersey’s consumer fraud laws.” The men are claiming that “the group violated state consumer fraud laws by characterizing homosexuality as a mental disorder and claiming it could successfully change patients’ sexual orientation.” JONAH, a nonprofit, had reportedly promised to turn the men “from gay to heterosexual.”

Sabrina Caserta and Dareh Gregorian of the NY Daily News said the purported “cures” were worse than the non-existent disease. Caserta and Gregorian noted that one of the plaintiffs who underwent the so-called “gay conversion therapy” cried on the witness stand “as he described the bizarre, abusive treatments left him depressed and suicidal.”

Benjamin Unger, a 27-year-old Orthodox Jew “who was feeling pressured to get married and start a family…said he went to the Jersey City-based non-profit for help dealing with his attraction to men in 2007.” Unger said that Arthur Goldberg, a co-founder of JONAH, told Unger he could “turn me gay to straight” in under four years. He added that the “scientific” treatments were “highly unorthodox.”

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Posted in Civil Law, Courts, Homosexual Rights, Judaism, Psychology, Religion, United States | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Getting a Religious High in the Hoosier State?: First Church of Cannabis Granted Tax-Exempt Status in Indiana (VIDEO)

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

CannabisBy Elaine Magliaro

Crooks and Liars wrote, “The intent of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana was to allow the free exercise of ‘religious freedom,’ which was highly contested and revised due to public outcry. That’s because the bill was viewed as a license to discriminate against homosexuality. But this religious freedom act opened Indiana up for other churches, some being rather unorthodox.”

It appears that the new Indiana RFRA law HAS opened up the state to at least one unorthodox church already. Jessica Firger (Newsweek) reported last week that the Internal Revenue Service had granted nonprofit tax-exempt status “to a religious organization in Indianapolis known as the First Church of Cannabis.” Bill Levin, the founder of the church, told the Washington Times that the IRS had notified him the previous week of “his organization’s newly approved 501(c)(3) status, which will allow individual federal tax write-offs for people who make charitable donations to the church.”

Firger said that members of the First Church of Cannabis “believe that smoking marijuana is a religious observance.” She noted that marijuana use–whether for recreational or medical purposes–is still illegal in the Hoosier State.

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Posted in Christianity, Conservatives, Constitutional Law, Drug Policy, Equal Rights, Fundamentalism, Homosexual Rights, IRS, Political Science, Politics, Religion, Short Video, States, United States | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Governor Sam Brownback Threatened to Defund the Judiciary If It Rules Against a Law He Favors

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro
Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas

Governor Sam Brownback
of Kansas

By Elaine Magliaro

Things just keep getting worse in the state of Kansas thanks to the policies and political actions of its governor Sam Brownback. Steve Benen of MSNBC said, “If the spectacular failures of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s (R) economic experiment, and the ensuing budget crisis, were the only stories dominating the state, it would be more than enough to put the Sunflower State on national front pages.” He added that “recent developments in Kansas go much, much further.” A recent Kansas development that is getting quite a bit of press coverage is Brownback’s threat to defund the judiciary in his state  if it rules against a law that he favors.

Mark Joseph Stern of Slate reported on Monday that Brownback signed a bill last Thursday “that threatens the entire state’s judiciary with destruction if it rules against a law he favors.” Stern said that the Kansas governor “has spent much of his tenure attempting to curb the state supreme court and consolidate power in the executive branch.” He added that “Thursday’s startling maneuver suggests the deeply conservative governor has no compunction about simply obliterating separation of powers when another branch of government gets in his way.”

According to Stern, the trouble with the judiciary “started in 2014, when the state supreme court ruled that the disparity between school funding in rich and poor districts violated the state constitution.” He said that the justices ordered the legislature to fix the problem. Stern added, “Soon after, the legislature passed an administrative law that stripped the supreme court of its authority to appoint local chief judges and set district court budgets. (Instead, district court judges—who are often quite conservative—were allowed to elect their own chief judge.)”

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Posted in Conservatives, Courts, Democracy, Jurisprudence, Kansas, Neoconservatives, Political Science, Politics, States, United States | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Picture of the Day for June 8, 2015: The De-evolution of the Republican Party

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

Posted by Elaine Magliaro

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Posted in Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, Political Science, Politics, Ronald Reagan, United States | Tagged , , , , | 45 Comments

What Are We Doing to Public Education in the Name of School Reform?: High-Stakes Testing and the Demise of the “Artist-Teacher”

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro
Vicki Cobb

Vicki Cobb

By Elaine Magliaro

Vicki Cobb, an author of nonfiction  books for children, is a former science teacher. She has published more than eighty titles “for grades K-8 that cover physics, chemistry and biology, biographies, geography and the human body.” In 2012, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

On her blog, Diane Ravitch, a Research Professor of Education at New York University and education historian who served as Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991-1993, said that Cobb had recently spoken at a children’s literature conference in Florida. Ravitch noted that Cobb said she was disturbed to meet a new breed of teacher–a breed that “had grown up in the era of high-stakes testing and scripted lessons.” Ravitch added that too many of this new breed of educators think that this is the way school is supposed to be, because it is all they have experienced. Cobb attributed the change in the new teachers “to the takeover of education policy by non educators.”

In an article that she published over at Huffington Post in March and updated in May, Cobb wrote about the demise of what she called the “artist-teacher.”

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Posted in Barack Obama, Dept. of Education, Education, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Are We Doing to Public Education in the Name of School Reform?: High-Stakes Testing and the Demise of the “Artist-Teacher”

Song for a Sunday Morning: Coldplay’s Chris Martin Sings “Til Kingdom Come” at Beau Biden’s Funeral

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

Posted by Elaine Magliaro

At Beau Biden’s Funeral on Saturday, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin sang a version of the group’s 2005 song “Til Kingdom Come.” Martin reportedly volunteered to perform at the funeral service after hearing that Beau Biden had been a longtime fan.

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Posted in Art, Music, Short Video | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Full Disclosure: The George Will Scott Walker Connections

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

george-will-foxBy Elaine Magliaro

Political pundit, Washington Post conservative columnist,  Fox News contributor, and climate change denier George Will has often been heard expounding on matters of great national import and opining about political figures on the Sunday morning nooz programs. At the end of his Wednesday WaPo column about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, it was disclosed that Will’s wife Mari works for Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Eddie Scarry (Washington Examiner):

“Disclosure: This columnist’s wife, Mari Will, works for Scott Walker,” read the tail of Will’s column. It did not say in what capacity she works for the governor but a spokesperson for Walkers super PAC, Our American Revivla, told the Washington Examiner that she serves as an adviser.

Scarry noted that Will has “written favorably of Walker in his Post column and has also lauded him in interviews” in recent years. Scarry said, “During a radio interview in February, Will compared Walker favorably to president Ronald Reagan, calling him ‘a pure Reaganite.'” He added, “In another radio interview one month earlier, Will dubbed Walker ‘potentially the most potent candidate’ out of the Republicans believed to run for president.”

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Posted in Climate Change Deniers, Climatology, Conservatives, Denialism, Media, Political Science, Politics, Propaganda, Science, United States | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments