According to Jezebel.com, "Last night, David Letterman interviewed Tea Partier Pam Stout, who has some interesting ideas about Obama's "documentation," Glenn Beck, and, for a little blast from the past, weapons of mass destruction."

Democracy Matters sound like a group more people should know about.

Charlie Cavell, an 18 year old Wayne State Student from Detroit (originally from Ann Arbor), first told me about the group a few months ago at Franklin Wright Settlements on Detroit's Eastside at a Detroit Charter Commission meeting in the dead of winter. I recruited him to join YDA. He is now working with Jina Sawani on the Ann Arbor Young Dems. He started to pitch Democracy Matters.

Not very often do you see an 18 year old at local governmental meetings. My late mentor Marty Slobin headed the Northwest Detroit Teen Dems in 1960 at the age of 16 or so. I find it very interesting when folks that young are engaged in the political process at high levels. At 18, I was more interested in playing basketball.

His name was Floyd, but everybody called him Smoke. He was legendary--in his day the strongest man in town.

1965. Not yet sun-up, maybe 7:30. Foggy. Walking the couple of blocks from home to Bogue High School where I then teach English and journalism. Across the street from Elsie's Cafe comes the quavery voice.

"Bob...Bob!" Leaning against an old Chevy pickup, he waves. I cross over. Smoke is fighting for air.

"Bob. You mind...going.....Elsie's. Get me... packa Winstons?" I smoked then, too. Maybe that's why I obliged.

Not long after Smoke died, I watched my neighbor Vera come out, sit down on her front porch, choking and coughing, and slowly, sadly, suck in the smoke. Thin, gray as a ghost, she maybe got temporary relief. I dunno. They both died from tobacco addiction. But that wasn't on the death certificate, I'm sure.

As a high school sophomore, I remember how my grandfather Steve Stone lived his last few months with us before lung cancer got him. My mother was what then was called a "practical nurse" -- no degree but a big heart. Granddad had paid so many medical bills he was broke. He was proud, too. Didn't want us fussin' over him. We burned his mattress after he died. I don't know exactly why.

What's the big deal about returning your census form? Everything.

The past few days I've been glued to my netbook. My husband has looked on, perplexed, as I go from computer to cell phone back to my computer.

My mom, however, well she is ecstatic. It seems as if I've picked up one her personal attributes - curiosity.

What has my 3 year old begging me to get off the 'puter and play with her'?

The census. That's right, the census.

I went to dinner with one of the college students last night. Now that she's in college, we go to dinner every once in a while to talk and catch up. As she has continued in college, she has found that, unfortunately, most of her friends from high school did not. Though she keeps up with some of them, most have babies now and she doesn't feel like she has a lot of similar interests. I am so impressed with her determination to persevere on her own. She often feels like the lone rider on her trek to graduate from college.

I am in awe of her hard work. Not only does she commute an hour back and forth to Denton each day to attend school at UNT, she also works with her mom cleaning houses and mentoring her brothers and sister. She's the oldest. She wants to ensure her siblings move in the right direction as well so despite her exhaustion, she makes sure to help them with homework, talk to them about college, and help the oldest brother try to figure out what he wants to be and encourage him to find a direction after high school.

It may seem odd to review a film that is 50 years old; however, the fact that it remains on my mind may be a good enough reason. The first time I saw this film was 39 years ago, and I have been haunted ever since by the image of what may be the most remarkable dramatic/tragic performance in Alec Guinness’ entire remarkable career. I must say, before I really immerse myself in the review, that the first time I saw the film, I was largely in sympathy with Major (Acting Lieutenant Colonel) Jock Sinclair, as played by Alec Guinness. That may have been projection based upon my own military history and experience. The second time I saw the film, about twelve years ago, I was much more sympathetic to the character of Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow, as played by John Mills. Two years ago, when I ordered the film on DVD from NetFlix and viewed it again carefully, I saw the entire unwinding of the plot as an inevitability resulting from the personalities, styles, and histories of these two characters, plus the circumstances of the battalion and the time-frame.

But deserved nonetheless. Ted Olson, the conservative head lawyer for Bush in Bush v. Gore, is now standing up against the Constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which bans gay and lesbian marriage. Olson has joined forces with Gore's head lawyer, David Boies, to fight against Prop. 8. I applaud Olson for this; even though he may not want more praise from lefties like me, just now.

Olson's stand is courageous, and he is being denounced for it by many on the far right. They are calling him "traitor", "unprincipled", and worse. What the crazies who are taking over the Republican party seem not to understand is that by denouncing Olson for this stand they are denouncing one of the oldest and most principled wings of the Republican party, the one Reagan liked best and the one that is most popular with young Conservatives: the libertarian wing. The best Republican arguments against big government are libertarian, and Ron Paul, a libertarian, draws more young people to the Republican party than anyone else (except perhaps for the guys who make the show, "South Park"). As I see this happening, the political part of me is overjoyed to see the Republicans eating their own young and the human part of me is sad about their abuse of a man who doesn't deserve this abuse from them.

(Co-authored with Peter Dreier)

The New York Times hit ACORN with a one-two punch last weekend, making sure that the community organizing group -- flattened by attacks from the right and withdrawal of funding from liberal foundations -- stays knocked out. Both articles -- Ian Urbana's Saturday story, "Acorn on Brink of Bankruptcy, Officials Say" and public editor Clark Hoyt's Sunday column, "The Acorn Sting Revisited" -- reflect the paper's obsession with being so even-handed that the truth gets lost.

Both pieces reported conservative allegations against ACORN as if they were true, without seeking to verify them. Yet since 2008 the paper has consistently ignored ACORN's community organizing successes while focusing on its enemies' accusations, belying its reputation as a "liberal" newspaper

This reflects the Times' more general failure to cover grassroots organizing, except when groups engage in protest or otherwise disrupt business-as-usual.

Senator Chris Dodd (Dem. CT) has recently said that he plans to proceed to bring his own legislation to the Senate for to reform the financial oversight system. Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, has come to the conclusion that the Republican members of the Committee are not serious about changing the way the government regulates large banks, hedge funds and various other investment companies.

I absolutely LOVE being around kids...well, during certain moments. :) ...and today was one of those moments.

I went downstairs to the After-School Academy to get some footage of the mural the kids designed, drew, and are now painting. (I'll put it together in a post soon). As I stood watching three of the kids paint, one of the other kids stood beside me. Quite honestly, I wasn't paying him any attention whatsoever. I was focused on the mural painting for one, but I've also learned to ignore his antics at times when he decides to act out. So I guess I was unconsciously tuning him out.

While life distracted me, February and March offered a myriad of opportunities to talk about women’s issues.

International Women’s Day was observed on March 8th, a Colorado bill ending gender discrimination in health insurance rates moved into the Senate after passing the House with only 2 “no” votes, and Half the Sky, a national simulcast event, placed a well-deserved spotlight on heroes who are fighting abusive practices against women around the world.

It’s a nice way to shepherd in the spring. But distractions or no distractions, this post is late.

Well, better late than never.

Pres. Barack Obama: “[I] support the school board’s decision to dismiss the faculty and staff members.” New York Times, March 1, 2010.

Diane Ravitch, professor of education, New York University: "In choosing his education agenda, President Obama sided with the economists and the corporate-style reformers." Washington Post, Feb. 26, 2010.

I once “fired” myself from a teaching job. Actually, I quit the job, but if I had been the supervisor of the school, I would have fired myself. In Michigan in the ‘60s, a person who had completed his or her sophomore year of college could get a certificate to substitute teach. I did this for a year in Decatur, a small town a few miles from Kalamazoo. During the summer, a woman called to ask me to teach at a one-room country school. She said the school took students grades K-8 and the student population was low. Later I found out the school, which was not certified by the state board of education, was run by a bunch of rural parents who didn’t want to send their students to the Decatur schools.

Last November the Sunnyvale Art Gallery opened in Sunnyvale, California, at 251 W El Camino Real. It was a culmination of a year of hard work. The gallery is owned by the Kimm family and they have combined a gallery, a flower shop, a sandwich shop and an art supply store. Sue Kim, one of the owners, is an accomplished oil painter of portraits, and takes classes in San Francisco. She is also a member of the Sunnyvale Art Club, and allowed them to be a part of the gallery's first ever show, to celebrate the club's 50th year of existence. As can be seen in various reviews in Yelp the gallery and cafe have been enthusiastically received by the local populace. The gallery is a showcase for many local artists and art organizations in the Sunnyvale area, and represents a thriving local art scene in the Silicon Valley.

Whenever a news source or blog community claims to be a go-to source of information for African-American audiences, I take a quick look at the tabs or regular feature titles and I always find one major subject area lacking: Science.

According to Barrie Examiner, "In 2010, tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading infectious killers of women around the world, taking the lives of 1.8 million people per year. About 4.9 million lives have been saved since 2001 through the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria with help from donor countries like Canada. "

Population growth, the HIV epidemic, increasing poverty and rising levels of drug resistance will inevitably increase the burden of this disease in women. Women are at increased risk of progression to disease during their reproductive years. However, in most low-income countries, twice as many men are notified with tuberculosis as women, reports PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

I am not old enough to remember the first run of the TV police show, Dragnet. But it was still in healthy reruns (like Seinfeld and Friends are, today) when I was growing up, and I remember it well. I especially remember how Jack Webb, the star and lead Los Angeles police detective on the show, used to stop the irrelevant prattle of stereotypical '60s housewives and condescendingly demand, "Just the facts, Ma'am".

We no longer think of women as typically housewives, and we no longer think of women, housewives or not, as over-heated, gossipy fools who have to be constantly reminded to be relevant, like they were in Jack Webb's world. That's progress. But we have also given up something that we should have kept – the value of the ideal of "Just the Facts, Ma'am." Now we are lost in the equally foolish idea that there are no facts, only spin. The Texas schoolbook authorities have taken advantage of this new foolishness to add more right-wing spin to the already right-wing-spun history of our country that we teach our children. The result, I suspect, will not be as the Texas schoolbook authorities intend: it will not be more right-wing children; it will be more jaded, ignorant children.

Is that what Supreme Court Justice Thomas is indicating when he never asks questions at a hearing? Is it time to question the integrity of the court and lifetime appointment of the judges? Where do these judges come from? They usually come up through the ranks, starting from our local courts. I have an example of where they come from.

Last Saturday I volunteered to do a phone bank for the group Organizing for America to help in Barack Obama's efforts to pass his health care reform bill. These past few months I've grown passionate about getting this health care reform bill passed, as I've seen friends and family members lose jobs and struggle with their health care. A recent March 6, 2010 editorial of the New York Times makes a strong argument for the passing for the bill, noting how it'll help 30 million people who are at present uninsured. The same paper has a graphic that shows the 20 times since 1980 that the reconcilation process has been used, as the Democrats may use that tactic to avoid a possible Republican filibuster. To support Obama and the Democrats in their efforts to pass this bill, supporters of health care reform should contact their Senators and Representatives, to show that many voters in their area support such a measure. To contact your Senator or Congressman, you can click the links to find your Representative or your Senator.

According to CNN, "Basma al-Khateeb, of the Iraqi Women's Network, said it was vital for Iraqi legislators of both genders to defend the Iraqi "Law of Personal Status," which protects women and families, and limits the influence of religious courts."

"It's considered one of the most advanced family laws in the region. It's based on Sharia law, but takes the best (of it) for the benefit of women and family," she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on International Women's Day

Al-Khateeb said the 25 percent quota was a "double-edged sword" for women because political parties choose candidates who are not trained or outspoken, and who will do as they are told.