[Those opposed to teaching about climate change and evolution] are making a pedagogical argument, that it is somehow good pedagogy, good critical thinking, for students to learn both. That it is somehow a good pedagogy for students to learn good science and bad science.

If you doubt that politics in Congress has become more partisan, consider this: For the first time ever, in the 111th Congress that convened during the first two years of the Obama presidency, the National Journal's vote ratings showed that the most conservative Democratic senator was to the left of the most liberal Republican. There is now no overlap ideologically at all between the parties. Only nine of the remaining small number of conservative House Democrats (now called "Blue Dogs") were to the right of the most liberal House Republican. That Republican, Mike Castle of Delaware, was dumped by his party in a primary as he ran for the Senate and is now out of Congress, as are the bulk of the Blue Dogs.

That brings us to the 112th Congress. House Republicans are adamant about refusing to compromise with the president, and are able in most instances to make good on the threat. When they are not able to maintain this unity, they are simply unwilling to bring up or pass measures that would lose significant GOP votes and require as many or more Democrats in support. This is a formula for gridlock, or worse. is the Republicans are simply declining to govern.

at the end of World War II, for every dollar Washington raised in taxes on individuals, it raised $1.50 in taxes on business profits. In contrast, today, for every dollar Washington gets in taxes on individuals, it gets 25 cents in taxes on business. Business and its allies successfully shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals.

Over the same period, the tax rates on the richest Americans fell from 91 percent in the 1950s and 1960s, and 70 percent in the 1970s to the current low rate of 35 percent. The richest Americans won that spectacular tax cut. Middle- and lower-income Americans won no such cuts, while paying a higher proportion of their income for Social Security that the rich were required to do.

In plain English, the last 50 years saw a massive shift of the burden of federal taxation from business to individuals and from rich individuals to everyone else.

Hat tip: Larry Ferlazzo, http://twitter.com/Larryferlazzo/status/117926300441780224

"We do not want to hate," they say, "we do not want to feel all of this feelings, we do not want to be victims anymore. We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?"

only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates

When will America clue in that disbelief in basic scientific principles is not a recipe for scientific advancement (or economic progress)?

times are tough and the critics are quick to jump to the fact that science, too, must be downsized.

But science is different. Science is the Engine of Prosperity.

Downsizing science is like eating your own seed corn. Politicians spend all their time arguing how to cut up the pie and devising all kinds of different ways to slice it up. My Attitude is: We Need a Bigger Pie. And a bigger pie, comes from science, the engine of prosperity. So, by slowly losing the edge in different areas, the US is making it difficult to generate the new technologies which will give us a bigger pie.

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

I don't understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

my test scores are not exemplary work. If I have done anything worthy of my students and school, I have accomplished it in the loud and quiet moments of connection between teaching, learning, and people in my classroom. I have pursued it by listening. I have apprehended it by letting go. I have felt it in helping some students outrace their circumstances into futures of their own making.

Within public education, I am at a disadvantage to those with higher pass rates and more dramatic gains because do not to measure the accomplishments that I consider to be exemplary. And that is the point of the system. We are different, we should be punished for it, we should remain silent, and we should do what we’re told. We must be made to understand. There are standards held by others against which we must be judged.

No one of any gender deserves to hear that message or to be coerced to live according to it, and that is why we must change what we do in our classrooms, schools, and society. It’s an individual decision to act, and we are free to make it and to accept and share the burden of consequences that come from it. We are capable defining, defending, and demonstrating our own successes so long as we strive to be excellent because excellence of all sorts is self-evident. If only the standard-bearers would bear some of that work, as well, we’d have a radically different school system strengthened by an embraced diversity of processes, products, and people.

We don't expect much of our politicians, but we do expect them to know if they've taken pictures of their own crotches and uploaded them to yfrog.

hat tip: John Nash! http://twitter.com/jnash

Our children face a devastating obesity crisis -- and yet some Washington lawmakers are calling even the most commonsense moves to ensure them a healthier diet a "classic nanny-state overreach."

Really? Let's look at what these simple, straightforward federal efforts actually do.

For instance, the first meaningful overhaul of school nutrition guidelines in 15 years would cut sodium in subsidized lunches by more than half, encourage more whole grains and serve low-fat milk. They also would limit kids to a single cup of starchy vegetables (read: French fries) per week. Is that terrible?

But that's not the only part of the Michelle Obama-backed healthy food movement that offends these regulation foes.

The very same politicians who have made a career of calling for a free and open marketplace of ideas want to limit the amount of information kids (and parents) can get about their food. Calorie counts on menus have been a proven boon for families who want to cut out hidden fat, sugar and salt from their diet -- but Republican lawmakers say that providing even this basic information on menus and at food stores is "back-door regulation."

I think we have taken empathy for granted, and thus to some extent overlooked it. Psychology as a science virtually ignored it for a century. Educators focusing on literacy and mathematics have also largely ignored it. We just assume empathy will develop in every child, come what may. We put little time, effort or money into nurturing it. Our politicians almost never mention it, despite the fact that they need it more than anyone. Until recently, neuroscientists hardly questioned what empathy is.

what we’re doing as a country is continuing to subsidize consumption – which is pensions, healthcare, all of these kinds of things – and we’re doing it not just in the budget but through very low interest rates.  We’re continuing to subsidize consumption while we’re starving investment.

This is exactly the opposite of what produces long-term growth. There is very strong historical data that suggests the way societies grow is by making large, long-term investments. That’s how China is growing today. That’s how we grew for most of our history. That’s how Germany is growing today.

It feels like in Washington, for political reasons, the only thing that people can agree on is to cut the investment part of the budget and no one dares touch the consumption part of the budget. The net effect is that we’re subsidizing consumption and starving investment, which is a recipe for failure.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing the reform law would drive up the deficit by $230 billion over the first decade and much more in later years.

For all his claims of fiscal rectitude, John Boehner, the House speaker, immediately dismissed the budget experts’ report as “their opinion.” In a particularly cynical move, Mr. Boehner and his new team have exempted the repeal bill from their own rule that any increase in spending be offset by cuts in other programs.

why has government employment grown over time? Because, um, we have a growing population. Here’s government employment as a share of the population:

Yes, government got bigger under those socialists Dwight Eisenhower, LBJ, and Nixon. Since then, however, there has been no trend relative to population.

we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service

the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.

In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud.

It’s when he talks about how he rose from his humble past — the son of a bar owner, one of 12 children who grew up in a small home with a single bathroom — that Boehner starts to weep.

“Making sure these kids have a shot at the American Dream like I did is very important,” he said, choking up, when asked on “60 Minutes” about his crying.

But a look at Boehner’s record during his two decades in Congress shows a man who has voted against nearly every boost for the working stiff. There’s no empathy for those with the longest shots at the American Dream in his voting pattern. Instead, we see a politician who is hard-hearted in his legislative treatment of the people now coping with the kind of economic conditions in which the Boehner family grew up.

Two prominent Republicans vowed Wednesday to vote against the $1.1 trillion spending bill, citing concerns over pork-laden pet projects, although millions of dollars of earmarks in the bill were requested by the two senators.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has requested 54 earmarks worth more than $170 million and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota has made 43 requests totaling more than $165 million, according to an analysis by Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com, which collected data from disclosures on Congressional websites.

When asked by Fox News to explain his earmarks, Cornyn said Wednesday, "I believe I can. But I'm not going to, because I'm going to vote against this bill. ... So I am for voting this bill down, even though it could arguably help some of my constituents."

ABC's Jonathan Karl asked Cornyn at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, "How do you have any credibility on this?" Cornyn replied, "because we're going to vote against the bill. ... This is the wrong way to do business."

Another reporter asked, "Sen. Thune, I was just looking at the list of earmark requests that you requested this year and it adds up to over a hundred million dollars." Thune responded by saying he supports the projects but doesn't support the bill.

Thune continued to blast Democrats for earmarks.

Nearly every time this country has expanded its social safety net or tried to guarantee civil rights, passionate opposition has followed.

...

The federal income tax, a senator from New York said a century ago, might mean the end of “our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom.” Social Security was actually a plan “to Sovietize America,” a previous head of the Chamber of Commerce said in 1935. The minimum wage and mandated overtime pay were steps “in the direction of Communism, Bolshevism, fascism and Nazism,” the National Association of Manufacturers charged in 1938.

After Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, 101 members of Congress signed a statement calling the ruling an instance of “naked judicial power” that would sow “chaos and confusion” and diminish American greatness. A decade later, The Wall Street Journal editorial board described civil rights marchers as “asking for trouble” and civil rights laws as being on “the outer edge of constitutionality, if not more.”

This year’s health care overhaul has now joined the list.

most economists—make that all economists—disagree with Shadegg. Give an unemployed person a dollar, and she tends to spend it, because she needs to. (By definition, she has no other source of income.) Give a rich person a dollar via a tax break, she tends to save it. (By definition, she has a lot of other assets.) Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, has found that $1 in unemployment benefits generates $1.61 in economic activity. (That's the second most-stimulative form of government spending, behind food stamps.) A dollar in tax cuts—not just to the rich, but to everyone—generates about 32 cents.