The WaPo did a very interesting article on the Christian homeschool movement and some of the underlying ideology behind it. I was surprised to learn how integral they were to the adoption of homeschooling as an alternative to public education but not shocked to hear how xenophobic and isolationist their doctrine is.
Over decades, they have eroded state regulations, ensuring that parents who home-school face little oversight in much of the country. More recently, they have inflamed the nation’s culture wars, fueling attacks on public-school lessons about race and gender with the politically potent language of “parental rights.”
The article follows a family who began to question their fundamentalist beliefs and sent their daughter to public school, only to find it wasn’t full of satanic child molesters, as they’d been told.
From the Guardian, a clear and simple guide (anti-paywall link) to what all the protests are about in Israel. Adding to the list of democracies leaning far to the right, their proposal includes:
Full annexation of the occupied West Bank, a rollback of pro-LGBTQ+ legislation, axing laws protecting women’s rights and minority rights, and a loosening of the rules of engagement for Israeli police and soldiers, are all on the coalition’s agenda.
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McSweeney’s on Roald Dahl’s books being censored years after his death. Many F-bombs, but all of them are worth it. Here’s the best part:
Here’s how art is supposed to work: Someone writes a book. They write it with passion, with abandon, with honesty and lyricism and even a bit of recklessness. It is of their time, using the words of their time.
Readers respond to this recklessness, this abandon, this rawness, this timeliness. The only books that ever mattered to anyone are raw, are unbridled, are risky, and timely. Then, if a parent or teacher reads the book to a kid, and there’s a part that’s risky or controversial, discussions can be had. If the book is old, then the words and sentiments of that time can be taken into account.
It’s not hard.
That is how we fucking learn.
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Great! Catonsville is in the news for excellent reasons; apparently some dumb-ass white supremacist here was talking to Florida Man about blowing up power substations in Baltimore, and somehow that would equal freedom, or something?
We walked across the street to the elementary school and cast our votes yesterday with Finn. This has been a family tradition since she was born (we brought her over in a carrier when she was only several weeks old) and she stood with Jen as she filled out her ballot. This morning we have a new Democratic Governor and Attorney General, and it’ll be legal to smoke (and grow!) weed in Maryland by June 2023. Let’s hope the rest of the country brings good news too.
Trump takes the Fifth during his deposition. I am shocked.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump suggested not answering questions was a sign of guilt. At a campaign stop in Iowa in 2016, Trump said, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
An independent bike manufacturer in California started selling bikes for 45% off to Black riders, called Black Reparations Pricing. Within 18 months, hatred and legal action from the Right shut it down.
“Whenever people of color get any sort of benefit, others respond immediately that they should be getting the exact same kind of benefit,” Vernon says.“People will come out of the woodwork to try to claim a kind of grievance when they don’t seem to have any stake in the issue…”
This was on my mind before the bad news on Friday, but Jen and I have seen it pop up a lot over the weekend: now that abortion is criminalized, how long will it take for data brokers to sell out women based on their period-tracking software? I put an app on Finn’s iPad for this very reason, though I’m better at entering the information than she is. The Heath app on her iPhone is much more secure than this; by design all of the information stays local on the phone itself.
By the way: Not long.
In 1994, after a series of mass shootings, Congress banned many assault weapons. A decade later, the ban expired, and these firearms flooded the market. According to the Wall Street Journal, before 1994 there were an estimated four hundred thousand AR-15s in the U.S.; today, there are twenty million AR-15s or similar weapons.
The New Yorker does a deep dive into the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and how a troubled, bullied kid made a colossal series of mistakes and was co-opted by a whole slew of opportunists eager to exploit his situation. Nobody comes out OK in this story.
Testimony and evidence showed that Reffitt brought an AR-15 rifle and a pistol with him on the trip. He took that pistol with him to Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, along with zip-tie style flex cuffs, a helmet, and body armor.
Excellent news: the first Capitol rioter to stand trial was found guilty on all counts after less than four hours of deliberation. Let’s get the rest of these idiots lined up and sent away ASAP.