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Tennessee: “Instead of Raging Over MAUS, Support Local People Who Are Fighting the Ban”
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Whitney Kimball Coe, director of national programs for the Center for Rural Strategies, advises those who are outraged about the removal of MAUS from the eighth grade curriculum by the McMinn County School Board to support those in the South and rural areas who agree with them, instead…
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A Site That Unmasks the Leading Anti-Vaxxers
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: The New York Times recently wrote about Twitter’s suspension of the personal (not the official) account of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Twitter applied its rule of “five strikes and you’re out” because she posted misinformation about COVID and vaccines that could cause harm to others. Among other things,…
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Reader: The Founding Fathers Loathed the Filibuster
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: A reader who identifies as Quickwrit posted the following comment about the filibuster. For most of our history, debates in the Senate could be used to delay consideration of a bill, even to kill it. But the filibuster was not written into law until 1917. Our Founding Fathers…
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Peter Greene on the Diversification of the Koch(topus) Brand
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Peter Greene explains how the Koch machine is creating new brands to hide its identity from the unsuspecting. The billionaires Charles and his late brother David were infamous for funneling Dark Money through front groups whose names sounded innocuous or inspiring. Now Charles Koch is reaching out to…
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Robert Kuttner: Look Up!
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect reviews the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up! “Appreciate the brilliance of the season’s most profound, category-busting movie.” Don’t Look Up is described as a parody of Trumpism and climate denial. It is elegantly that. But more importantly, the movie is a dead-on…
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This Is What Happened on January 6, 2021
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Since there is now a deep partisan divide over what happened on January 6, it’s helpful to remember that there is extensive video footage of the events. Some footage was taken by the media, some by video cameras installed in the Capitol, some by police body cameras, and…
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Holding Parents Accountable When Their Children Kill
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: This very important story appeared in the Washington Post. She had seen her grandson’s red, spiral-bound notebook before that night, but now, as Catherine O’Connor sifted through its pages for the first time, what she read astonished her. “School Shootings,” Joshua O’Connor had titled the first page, above…
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Capital & Main: The Story of an Unlikely Alliance
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: In this article, Marcus Baram of Capital & Main describes a surprising alliance between a veteran labor organizer and his chief nemesis, a man who was a master of union-busting. He begins: They were certainly an odd couple, the unlikeliest of allies: the union organizer and the notorious union…
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Rittenhouse Benefitted from a Well-Funded Defense Team
Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: We have had some animated discussion on this blog about whether the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse was “fair,” since he walks away a free man despite murdering two men and maiming a third. Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and a contributing columnist to the Washington…