Spicer: Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping – CNNPolitics.com

The White House on Monday walked back a key point of President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

Source: Spicer: Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping – CNNPolitics.com

And then there’s KellyAnne — 

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also addressed the wiretapping claims in an interview Sunday with the Bergen County Record, suggesting that other covert surveillance methods used by the CIA — as revealed by Wikileaks last week — could have been used in Trump Tower by the Obama administration.

“Do you know whether Trump Tower was wiretapped?” Bergen County Record columnist Mike Kelly asked Conway on Sunday.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said, before suggesting that surveillance could take place through phones, TVs or “microwaves that turn into cameras.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/sean-spicer-donald-trump-wiretapping/

Laura Chapman: HR 610 and Manufactured Chaos

Diane Ravitch's blog

The House Republicans have cooked up a bill to empower states with unencumbered control over federal funds. It is called HR 610. In DC, they refer to the principle of the bill as”block grants.” Otherwise known as send the money without strings so the states can do what they want. An earlier post by Denis Smith explained that federal funds without oversight leads to waste, fraud, and abuse.

Laura Chapman explains more here:

“HR 610 has the Arne Duncan trick of requiring a change in state law if vouchers are not on the books. So the new national system must be voucher-compliant or no federal funds will be available. Federal funds to states are in the range of 8% to 12%, average about 10%. Given that many states have already cut their state budgets for education, and most are in Republican hands, this law is likely to pass. Notice that…

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Retweet to @aurorak12 please re: PARCC incentives at Jewell Elementary | BustED Pencils

Retweet to @aurorak12 please re: PARCC incentives at Jewell Elementary

Posted March 10, 2017 by Peggy Robertson

If you read my post from last Sunday you will know that there is currently a PARCC incentive plan afoot in my former school, Jewell Elementary in the Aurora Public School District. The plan will reward students who show great effort on PARCC and who attend on all testing days. It will punish children who… Read more »

Source: Retweet to @aurorak12 please re: PARCC incentives at Jewell Elementary | BustED Pencils

Here We Go Again: Another Bogus Attempt To Get Guns Into The ‘Wrong Hands.’

Here We Go Again: Another Bogus Attempt To Get Guns Into The ‘Wrong Hands.’
by mikethegunguy
When it comes to reducing gun violence, Gun-nut Nation and its new fuhrer have the perfect solution: lock up every criminal who ever carried a gun and oh, by the way, ‘fix’ the mental health system to make sure that the nutty guy who uses a gun to settle some delusional score or another isn’t allowed to get his hands on a gun… https://mikethegunguy.com/2017/03/09/here-we-go-again-another-bogus-attempt-to-get-guns-into-the-wrong-hands/

When it comes to reducing gun violence, Gun-nut Nation and its new fuhrer have the perfect solution: lock up every criminal who ever carried a gun and oh, by the way, ‘fix’ the mental health system to make sure that the nutty guy who uses a gun to settle some delusional score or another isn’t allowed to get his hands on a gun.

             I’ve been listening to this nonsense for the past twenty years, and while there certainly is something to the idea of removing violent criminals from the streets, the only people who believe that the phrase ‘fix the mental health system’ means anything at all are the same folks who stand around the fence outside Area 51 hoping to see a Martian space ship come down. But the problem is that every once in a while someone from that bunch gets elected to Congress (or the White…

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Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes Are What We Pay for Civilized Society.”
by janresseger
You will notice that I did not mention the issue of school funding in the title of this post. Neither did I mention the name of the state that is the subject of the post. While I cannot tell exactly who is reading this blog, WordPress statistics tell me which posts are viewed, and I know that school funding is a topic people don’t like to read about—especially if it is in somebody else’s state.

School funding is not a taboo subject, however… https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/taxes-are-the-price-we-pay/

janresseger

You will notice that I did not mention the issue of school funding in the title of this post. Neither did I mention the name of the state that is the subject of the post. While I cannot tell exactly who is reading this blog, WordPress statistics tell me which posts are viewed, and I know that school funding is a topic people don’t like to read about—especially if it is in somebody else’s state.

School funding is not a taboo subject, however, if the fight is happening in your state. If we are parents, we know that what’s at stake is a class size of 32 children for third grade, or the presence of a school nurse, or an elementary school library that is staffed and unlocked. We know that the number of college counselors at the high school and the presence of the marching band or the orchestra…

View original post 996 more words

An Interview with Kenneth Zeichner: Relay Graduate School of Education

An Interview with Kenneth Zeichner: Relay Graduate School of Education
by seattleducation2010
The reason that I use Lisa Delpit’s term “other people’s children” here is to underline the point that few if any Relay staff and advocates for the program in the policy community would accept a Relay teacher for their own children. Ken Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of […]

Read more of this post… https://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/an-interview-with-kenneth-zeichner-relay-graduate-school-of-education/

Seattle Education

The reason that I use Lisa Delpit’s term “other people’s children” here is to underline the point that few if any Relay staff and advocates for the program in the policy community would accept a Relay teacher for their own children.

Ken Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado.

A former elementary teacher and longtime teacher educator in NY, Wisconsin, and Seattle, his work has focused on creating and implementing more democratic models of teacher preparation that engage the expertise of local communities, K-12 educators and university academics in preparing high quality professional teachers for everyone’s children.

He has also challenged the privatization of K-12 schools and teacher education by exposing the ways in which venture philanthropy has sought to…

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Take a Writing Class with Steve Martin

Take a Writing Class with Steve Martin
by Suddenly Jamie (@suddenlyjamie)
I’ve taken a lot of online classes, but I’ve never taken one taught by Steve Martin. So, when I learned about the upcoming Steve Martin Teaches Comedy from Masterclass, I was understandably intrigued.

It’s not that I’m itching to become a standup comic. I’m not. In fact, even just thinking about being on a stage and trying to make an audience laugh is enough to give me hives and push me pretty darn close to a panic attack. But, as a writer, I’ve always wanted to learn more about how to infuse my work with humor.

I mean, everyone loves to laugh, right? And right about now – https://nhwn.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/take-a-writing-class-with-steve-martin/

Live to Write - Write to Live

I’ve taken a lot of online classes, but I’ve never taken one taught by Steve Martin. So, when I learned about the upcoming Steve Martin Teaches Comedyfrom Masterclass, I was understandably intrigued.

It’s not that I’m itching to become a standup comic. I’m not. In fact, even just thinking about being on a stage and trying to make an audience laugh is enough to give me hives and push me pretty darn close to a panic attack. But, as a writer, I’ve always wanted to learn more about how to infuse my work with humor.

I mean, everyone loves to laugh, right? And right about now – based on how crazy the world has become – we could all definitely use a good chuckle if not a downright guffaw. Even in the best of times, stories that make me laugh always earn high marks in my book. And, more often than…

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Senator Peters sits with US Army Research Director, is Silent on Trump Proposed Military Budget when President addressed Congress

A few weeks ago, President Trump presented before a joint session of Congress his proposed budget for the US military. The proposed budget was a $54 billion increase from the previous year, which was roughly $600 billion.

There was not a great deal of resistance to this announcement from the Democrats, mostly because the Democratic Representatives and Senators are just as tied to the military industrial complex as are their Republican counterparts.

Take Michigan Senator Gary Peters, for example… https://griid.org/2017/03/13/senator-peters-sits-with-us-army-research-director-is-silent-on-trump-proposed-military-budget-when-president-addressed-congress/

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

A few weeks ago, President Trump presented before a joint session of Congress his proposed budget for the US military. The proposed budget was a $54 billion increase from the previous year, which was roughly $600 billion. 

There was not a great deal of resistance to this announcement from the Democrats, mostly because the Democratic Representatives and Senators are just as tied to the military industrial complex as are their Republican counterparts.

Take Michigan Senator Gary Peters, for example. Peters sits on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, just like his predecessor Carl Levin. And just like Carl Levin, Senator Peters is equally committed to protecting private military contractors, especially those based in Michigan. 

Just days before President Trump told a joint session of Congress that he plans on increasing the US military budget, Senator Peters was in Sterling Heights, Michigan, visiting the military contractor BAE Systems. 

In…

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It’s DeVossy

David R. Taylor

This is one of many parodies this teacher/musician has done about education. It is worth the laugh to go listen to them.

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When is it OK to Overthrow a Government & Can I Be Arrested for Answering That Question? (Let’s Find Out!) |

 Each year in the United States, the overthrow of the British regime is celebrated on the 4th of July and most people assume the revolt was basically good & necessary. The irony seems to be lost, however, that the rebels’ disobedience to their government is honored by singing hymns to the flag of another one & by pledges to […]

Source: When is it OK to Overthrow a Government & Can I Be Arrested for Answering That Question? (Let’s Find Out!) |