Teacher to students: aren’t Christians

the teacher told her students President Obama is not a Christian and “any parent who supports him is not a Christian.” She also challenged her students to “prove their Christianity.”
via Georgia teacher to students: If your parents voted for President Obama, they aren’t Christians.

Another red state lying to the Supreme Court

Another red state caught lying to the Supreme Court about health insurance exchanges.
The Supreme Court might have already held its vote on King v. Burwell, the case challenging federal tax credits to people buying Obamacare health insurance on the federal exchange because they live in states which did not create their own exchanges. The challengers posit that Congress intended it this way—that they wrote the law to explicitly exclude these millions of people from subsidies as incentive to states to create their own exchanges.

Lawmaker Discloses She Was Raped

I dare any one of you to judge me,” she added. “I dare you to walk in my shoes.”
Fedor’s disclosure is just the latest personal admission from a female lawmaker who has determined she cannot remain silent about her own experience while her colleagues debate issues of reproductive rights on the floor.
Earlier this month, Arizona State Rep. Victoria Steele (D) made a similar speech during a legislative debate over a measure that would make it harder for women to get insurance coverage for abortion services.
“This is health care.

Effort To Defund Family Planning Clinics Backfires

Thibodeau told ThinkProgress that, since Tipping’s and Savage’s blog posts were published, the organization has received a lot of positive notes from religious people expressing their support for the work of Maine Family Planning. “Thank you for the work you do and please pay no attention to the ‘Maine Christian Civic League.’ They know very little about God,” one message read.
“The sentiment that people aren’t interested in anti-women rhetoric and discrimination in the name of religion — that definitely came across here,” Thibodeau said.

California Groundwater Crisis Grows

Beneath California Crops, Groundwater Crisis Grows – NYTimes.com.
Farmers are drilling wells at a feverish pace and pumping billions of gallons of water from the ground, depleting a resource that was critically endangered even before the drought, now in its fourth year

College Tuition Costs So Much

The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much – NYTimes.com.
Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.
By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration.

Ted Cruz Isn’t an Idiot

Extracts from  Ted Cruz Isn’t an Idiot — He’s Delusional and That’s Far More Dangerous By Sophia A. McClennen / AlterNet April 1, 2015
for those who think like Cruz, there is virtually no amount of data, reality checks or facts that can persuade the deluded citizen to give up their false ideas. This is the mindset of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, and many on the far right. Nyhan and Reifler refer to this as “motivated reasoning.” What they find is that people who are attached to falsehoods perceive any correcting information as partisan and flawed. So conservatives don’t perceive science as information.