pic via J. Stephen Conn at flickr.com

April 2013:

The Republicans who control Nashville rushed through committee a measure to create a state charter school authorizer — a centralized government body that strips school decisions away from local boards.

Charter schools approved by the state charger authorizer would have to be funded by local taxpayers whether there was money available or not.

That didn’t quite make it, but for-profit Charter Schools won’t give up:

Beth Harwell, Tennessee Speaker of the House:

‘ It was wonderful to me that our first and most important priority was the quality of the charter schools that we would have in the state of Tennessee. I think I’m most impressed that we really achieved bipartisan support; both Democrats and Republicans see the good that can come from charter schools in this state.’

May 2013:

Yeah, about “that good”, how are Tennessee Charter Schools achieving it?

Students are leaving in large numbers at a particularly important time of the school year, and the consequences may have an impact on test scores.Charter schools are literally built on the idea that they will outperform public, zoned schools. They are popular because they promise and deliver results, but some new numbers are raising big questions about charter schools.

One of the first things a visitor sees when stepping into Kipp Academy is a graph that shows how Kipp is outperforming Metro schools in every subject.

However, Kipp Academy is also one of the leaders in another stat that is not something to crow about.

When it comes to the net loss of students this year, charter schools are the top eight losers of students.

In short Charter schools are “outperforming” public schools on test scores by dumping their underperforming students on public schools just as testing starts.

And then crowing about their awesome results.

Yeah, seems just unfair enough for talking points.

Trout Fishing In America — Proper Cup of Coffee.

What’s on your mind?

Just after 7pm PT, a central portion of the I-5 Skagit River bridge in Washington State collapsed dumping several cars in the water. People were seen sitting on top of the cars, on top of the bridge wreckage waiting for rescue.

Live stream reporting from KIRO 7.

Live stream reporting from KOMO 4.

Continuing updates here.

Technical Details of the ‘riveted steel truss bridge’ from uglybridges.com. “Evaluation: Structurally deficient” “This website highlights the “ugly” condition of our nation’s bridges thanks to years of neglect and deferred maintenance.”

Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.

From Peterr:

That “all of our bridges” quote ought to shame the Austerians. Right now,
money can be borrowed for pennies if governments want to do capital
projects, making repairs/replacements of bridges like these so much cheaper
than they would be when the economy is perking along. But that makes too
much sense . . .

8:51 pm PT: Fingers crossed, but no reported fatalities.

Pic

Pic

Various reports that a wide load truck hit it.

More after the jump…

(Cocktailhag is otherwise engaged this evening, unfortunately)

Tony Perkins

This is just pathetic. Apparently the Family Research Council is attempting to attach gay equality to the Department of Justice leak story:

When the Justice Department is done violating journalists’ First Amendment rights, it looks like they’ll move on to employees’. In a chilling memo to DOJ staff, the Obama administration is warning managers that they’d better start embracing homosexuality–or else. The email, which a Justice employee leaked to Liberty Counsel, is a scary reminder of how far this administration will go to crush free speech and expression in America.

In advance of June, the DOJ is priming its staff for a four-week in-your-face “gay pride” celebration that demands, not only the participation of–but affirmation by– all staff. Based on this new directive, “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Managers,” it’s no longer acceptable to be quiet or even neutral on homosexuality. In a not-so-veiled threat, the administration tells staff that when it comes to homosexuality and cross-dressing, “Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”
That’s absolutely outrageous. Even criminals have the right to remain silent! President Obama’s so-called Department of Justice is actually telling workers that there’s no place in the government for people with unspoken objections to homosexuality. In fact, writes NRO’s Ian Tuttle, “there is no longer a place even for private, unexpressed disapproval…”

Forget tolerance. The DOJ wants–and expects–vocal support for sexual deviance. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest list of “DO”s and “DON’T”s, which includes some eye-opening advice for staff leaders. “DO assume that LGBT employees and their allies are listening to what you’re saying” (sound ominous?) “and will read what you’re writing (whether in a casual email or in a formal document).” “DO attend LGBT events sponsored by DOJ Pride” and decorate your office accordingly. “DO display a symbol in your office (DOJ Pride sticker).” “DO use a transgender person’s chosen name and the pronoun that is consistent with the person’s self-identified gender.” “DO use inclusive words like ‘partner,’ ‘significant other,’ or ‘spouse’ rather than gender-specific terms.”

It’s hilarious how FRC claims that the brochure in question was “leaked.” Makes the entire situation sounds ominous doesn’t it? Don’t be fooled by FRC’s shuck-and-jive.  There are certain facts about the brochure that FRC omitted. According to Ed Brayton of Free Thought Blogs:

First of all, this is a pamphlet of “practical tips to help managers create a truly inclusive workplace climate.” It’s not a set of commandments delivered from Mt. Sinai. It wasn’t even sent out by DOJ officials, it was sent out by DOJ Pride, the Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and Their Allies.

In his post, Brayton was calling attention to the fact that another religious right spokesperson, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel, was distorting the brochure. Brayton especially called attention to the fact that Barber was cherry-picking portions of the pamphlet to make it seem more ominous.

Apparently FRC is doing the same thing.  No matter how FRC attempts to make the brochure (this one) sound like a dangerously forced directive on behalf of the DOJ, it’s really not.  The brochure informs DOJ employees of the simple fact that some of their fellow employees are lgbt and gives tips as to how to behave towards them.

And really, what’s wrong with that?

I think FRC’s last statement on the matter gives a key to the entire matter:

As FRC has said for years, this debate has never been about tolerance. It’s about forced acceptance. President Obama admitted as much when he praised the NBA’s Jason Collins. Read what he said when Collins announced he was gay: “The LGBT community deserves full equality, not just partial equality. Not just tolerance.”

On that score, I would say that FRC is partly right. Lgbt equality has never been about tolerance.  You tolerate your pets having accidents on the carpet. You tolerate traffic jams. You even tolerate the slow cashier who makes you wait in a grocery store. But no one has the right to think that they are so superior that they should tolerate a fellow human being merely attempting to live his or her life.

Nor is lgbt equality about forced acceptance. To a degree, it’s never been about acceptance but respect of a fellow human being. And with that respect comes the knowledge that your sexual orientation – gay, straight, or bisexual – does not put you on a pedestal where you have the patent to concepts like “family,” “morality,” or “love.”

FRC seems to think that those who believe as it does do in fact have a patent to those concepts. That’s all well and good if the organization wants to follow that delusion. However, FRC doesn’t have the right and will never have the right to force the lgbt or our allies to live under that same delusion.

David Koch

Amid concerns that Koch Industries could buy several major U.S. newspapers from Tribune Company, industrial billionaire David Koch was forced to step down as trustee of WNET, New York City’s largest public TV station, after the New Yorker revealed how WNET gave Koch inappropriate influence over its programming. Mr. Koch was floating a seven-figure donation over WNET’s leadership as the station aired a movie that portrayed him as a particularly greedy Manhattan resident.

Sure enough, WNET didn’t get David Koch’s hefty donation.

Last Thursday, David Koch submitted his resignation at a WNET Board of Trustees meeting, and Brad Johnson at Forecast the Facts* reports that Koch’s name was scrubbed from WNET’s website several days prior to the resignation. Koch Industries’ public relations website, KochFacts, released a preemptive response to the New Yorker article (which it has now urgently elaborated on), attempting to stifle New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer and the details of her newest piece. David Koch’s resignation as a WNET Trustee, coupled with telling quotes from WNET president Neal Shapiro and other sources, makes it clear that Koch had too much influence at the decreasingly-public TV station in New York.

The article is a fascinating culmination of two portions of the ongoing legacy of the Koch brothers: their desire to influence media, which is playing out with their company’s bid for the Tribune Company’s eight national daily newspapers, and their attempts to intimidate journalists and silence reporting they consider unfavorable.

Jane Mayer’s epic 2010 profile of the secretive billionaire brothers has left Charles and David Koch firmly positioned in the center stage of politics, and they have cursed her since. In repeated and increasingly desperate attempts to discredit Mayer and ease the impact of her reporting on Koch Industries’ terrible reputation, the company posted her face on the Koch “Facts” website and wrote letters urging the American Society of Magazine Editors to stop considering Mayer’s 2010 article for an award.

The Koch brothers’ attacks on Ms. Mayer provide more examples of how they use their connections to manipulate media (including in Mayer’s new article, which caught Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia in a complete lie).

Following her 2010 expose, Koch Industries was caught trying to fabricate a scandal to take Mayer down. Using the Daily Caller, founded by Koch’s billionaire political ally Foster Friess and run by Tucker Carlson, a senior fellow at the Koch-founded, Koch-funded and Koch-governed Cato Institute, the Kochs tried to get a story placed into the New York Post accusing Mayer of plagiarism. The Post dismissed the idea–and that’s saying something, given the lack of integrity at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, not to mention FOX News, the collapsed News of the World and other outlets the media mogul owns. (NOTE: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has also expressed interest in Tribune Company’s L.A. Times.)

Greenpeace remains concerned about how the Kochs have already used their media ties to promote denial of climate change science. Beyond the pressing issue of global warming, the implications of media manipulation from Koch Industries spans across issues from education to public employee unions to immigration to healthcare reform.

This is why Greenpeace is working with a growing coalition of unions, media transparency advocates, environmentalists, good government watchdogs and other organizations to oppose Tribune Company’s potential sale of its newspapers to Koch Industries, as well as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and any other politically-charged business interest whose history indicates they would manipulate reporting at Tribune’s papers for political and financial gain.

Click to here sign Greenpeace’s 32,000-strong petition to Tribune Company: Don’t Sell Your Newspapers to Koch Industries!

*Disclosure: Forecast the Facts is one of the groups Greenpeace is working with to oppose Koch Industries’ bid for Tribune Company.

Screen shot from White House video of Obama’s speech at the National Defense University

The speech by President Barack Obama, which touched upon perpetual war, his authority to carry out drone strikes, the efficacy of drones, closing Guantanamo Bay prison, adhering to the rule of law when fighting terrorism and even national security leaks was wide-ranging and bewildering. It was longer than the “State of the Union” address he gave this year.

A speech like this on his counterterrorism policies and civil liberties had not been given since his May 21, 2009, at the National Archives. In many ways, this was a repurposing of that speech with the inclusion of content intended to stifle criticism of the expansions of executive power he has embraced. Not responding to that criticism earlier and maintaining an excessive level of secrecy made it inevitable that his administration would have to cram all manner of talking points into a speech that would seemingly go on and on forever.

Obama, again, rejected the notion of perpetual war, saying,”We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.” He also said he intended to “engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing.” And, “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

Yet, as he seemed to admit America is on a path where it is engaged in perpetual war, he said in defense of this global war without end, “America’s actions are legal. We were attacked on 9/11. Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law, and international law, the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces. We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.”

It is essentially a public relations gambit, a recognition that critics are increasingly being considered credible so there must be a rebranding. That means the policies and operations could potentially remain the same, but the government will define what is being done as “persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks” and not some kind of “boundless global war.” It is no different from how the Justice Department has argued eliminating targets are not “assassinations” but a part of meting out “due process” because the Executive Branch applies multiple reviews before killing an alleged terrorist.

Obama stated, “Our operation in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden cannot be the norm.” In other words, the plot of Zero Dark Thirty can’t be the template for handling terrorists. He continued:

The Senate passed the measure in April on a 12 to 9 vote.

If the measure gets legislative approval again during 2015 session (Nevada’s legislature convenes in odd-numbered years), the question will be placed on the November, 2016 ballot.  The governor’s approval is not needed on constitutional resolutions.

The odds look good for re-approval by the legislature in 2015.  From RGJ.com:

Even the resolution’s most ardent opponents, such as the conservative Eagle Forum’s Janine Hansen …thinks passage in the 2015 Legislature is probable.

It will pass, unless there is some radical change in the Legislature and we get a majority of Republicans in one of the houses who are willing to vote against it,” said Hansen. “But that doesn’t seem likely to me.

As for Nevada voters, Freedom to Marry reports that “A February 2013 poll from the Retail Association of Nevada found that 54 percent of people in Nevada support removing the so-called Protection of Marriage provision from the Nevada Constitution, which prohibits marriages between same-sex couples in the state. Just 43 percent of those surveyed oppose removing the provision.”

Support for marriage equality will presumably continue to increase in Nevada along with the rest of the country between now and the 2016 general election.  As Assemblyman Elliott Anderson, who voted for SJR13, said in his remarks on the Assembly floor today, “The will of the voters is changing, as it has with me.”

American Citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed by a drone strike in Yemen solely on the authority of President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki never received a trial, was never indicted, nor given any opportunity to address the allegations against him. But today during President Obama’s extensive terrorism speech Mr. Al-Awlaki finally received his trial, a show trial.

President Obama proclaimed to the world:

I’ve insisted on strong oversight of all lethal action. After I took office, my Administration began briefing all strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan to the appropriate committees of Congress. Let me repeat that – not only did Congress authorize the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes. That includes the one instance when we targeted an American citizen: Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations for AQAP.

The Congressional authorization part is a little too cute. Obama is referencing the authorization of the use of military force of 2001 a law passed in the immediate aftermath (3 days) of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. That would be ten years before the Al-Awlaki killing. The second part, that Congress was “briefed”, is pretty meaningless. Not only did Congress not pass any enabling legislation they also do not have the authority to deny someone their constitutional rights.

Obama went on to present his case for firing missiles at the American:

Short of announcing his resignation and declaring a winner-take-all New President Steel Cage Deathmatch between Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Dr. Saint Jill Stein, nothing Obama said or explained or will do or won’t do is going to change certain people’s minds because everyone’s God is the the Only True God. And besides, as that old socialist Upton Sinclair once said:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it