News Day

Just got off an informational telephone briefing from NAACP national leaders on the Shelby County vs. Holder decision. What a depressing development! What I take away from today’s decision and discussions: the struggle to defend voting rights is going to intensify at the state and local levels, since there’s no way that Congress will act, even though the Supreme Court left it wide open for them to do so. (I heard a comment this morning on NPR discussion, to the effect that the only thing Congress can agree on is naming post offices — sounds about right.)

At the state and local levels, there will be struggles over restrictive voting provisions, including:

• efforts to make it more difficult to register;
• voter ID requirements;
• making it difficult to vote through mechanisms such as fewer polling places, meaning longer distances to travel and longer lines and wait times;
• purges of voting rolls (already tried last year in Florida, and stopped through the Voting Rights Act)

All of which makes local vigilance, legislative elections and  state Secretary of States’ offices more important than ever.

The NAACP theme for the national convention this year: We shall not be moved. This year is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers, who lived and died working for voter rights.

I remember when Mother’s Day dinner for our very large family meant the A&W drive-in. Mother and Dad piled all of us in the station wagon and we feasted on California burgers and root beer. I know finances had a lot to do with it, but I bet that keeping all of us corralled in a car instead of running loose in a restaurant was also a factor in the dining decision. Continue reading →

There’s a folk tale, variously attributed to India, China and Africa, about blind men describing an elephant. One feels the trunk and says the animal is like a snake. Another feels the leg, and describes the elephant as like a tree. And so on. The varying emphases of recent articles about for-profit higher education reminded me of that story. Continue reading →

Quartz.com has an infographic that sums up the Senate immigration bill’s provisions for a “path to citizenship”. It’s pretty depressing. According to the analysis, the path to citizenship for most immigrants currently in the United States without legal status would be a minimum of 13 years. Doesn’t sound too bad? Wait — there’s more. Continue reading →

Think the end of the drought means no water problems? Think again. In lots of places, we are over-using groundwater, and the situation is getting worse by the year, if not by the month. That means more disappearing lakes and shorelines and, potentially, shortages in drinking water ahead, even in water-rich Minnesota. Continue reading →

Dr. Oz leads the pack. He’s a real doctor, with a real Harvard degree, who endorses fake medicine all over the airwaves. A recent article on Slate debunked some of his more fantastic recent claims, presented on his TV shows, and promptly amplified by manufacturers of products like “garcinia extract.” The authors write: Continue reading →

Map from U.S. EPA website

Which one scares you more — a bomber or a fertilizer plant? Continue reading →

My friend wrote: “So is he in any respect the President people supporting him in 2008 and 2012 expected? What did you expect from O’B in 2008 and 2012?”

I am not sure how to answer these questions. Continue reading →

April 20, 2013 – Last night and this morning, everybody’s talking about Miranda rights and why the feds did or didn’t, should or shouldn’t read them to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old arrested as one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Some of my Facebook friends, and a lot of others, think that it’s outrageous that the feds are “denying him his Miranda rights.” Not so. Continue reading →

Get suspended in ninth grade, and your chances of dropping out of school double, according to a report issued this week by the UCLA Civil Rights Project. That’s true even though “the vast majority of suspensions are for minor infractions of school rules, such as  disrupting class, tardiness, and dress code violations, rather than for serious violent or criminal behavior.” Forty years ago, suspension rates for African American students were almost double the rates for white students — and the disparity has gotten much worse since then. Continue reading →