Judging

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Thursday June 22, 2023 · 7:59 AM PDT

2023/06/22 · 07:59

Gavel over flag. Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/es/@bermixstudio?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Bermix Studio</a> on Unsplash. — Gavel over flag. Bermix Studio image on Unsplash.

My late-night earworm yesterday made me realize something: Nancy Sinatra's lyrics are almost exactly perfect for the present moment if she’s addressing Trump. Just a few changes...

"These Courts are Made for Judging"
Lightly twisted lyrics by Sherman Dorn
Tune (and one complete verse because it's perfect) by Nancy Sinatra

You keep saying you got something for me
What you say is legal, but I digress
You've been criming where you shouldn't have been criming
And now you're getting ready to confess

[Chorus]
These courts are made for judging
And that's just what they'll do
One of these days these courts
Are gonna judge that crime of you

You keep lying when you ought to be truthing
You keep losing when you ought to not bet
You keep saming when you ought to be changing
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet

You keep playing where you shouldn't be playing
And you keep thinking that you'll never get burnt, hah
Justice found a brand new box of matches, yeah
What Jack Smith knows, you ain't had time to learn

Arizona's Guano Caucus

SDorn

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Saturday August 21, 2021 · 10:41 AM PDT

2021/08/21 · 10:41

[Photo credit: "Healthy Virginia big-eared bats" by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region is marked with CC PDM 1.0]

Guano Point sits 75 miles north of Kingman, Arizona, on the southern lip of the Western Grand Canyon, and on it perches the remnants of a tramway system, a launching point for failed dreams and a missing 99,000 tons of guano.

We’ll return in a bit to the missing guano.

SDorn

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Monday August 16, 2021 · 1:07 PM PDT

2021/08/16 · 13:07

“The corporate communist globalist satanic Uniparty is the faction our founders warned us about,” Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers tweeted August 4.

It’s the type of unhinged comment we now expect from Sen. Rogers, but it would also make a great first sentence for a spy thriller— okay, a hilariously-awful one.

Or take the grandstanding of state Senate President Karen Fann, August 3: “Build the case, set the trap, and boom the Maricopa lies will come back to haunt them.”

Not exactly brimming with clarity or insight into her twilight struggle against the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, but wow, you could imagine this spinning into the worst Philip Marlowe novel that Raymond Chandler never wrote.

Senators Rogers and Fann have an untapped skill as bad novelists, and I for one wish they’d entered these sentences into the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, that annual homage to “It was a dark and stormy night,” and which honors the worst first sentences of unwritten novels.

SDorn

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Wednesday October 08, 2014 · 7:10 PM PDT

2014/10/08 · 19:10

It's down to the wire in the Florida State Senate district between Judithanne McLauchlan (D-Parent, Teacher) and Jeff Brandes (R-"Mostly False"). I've known Judithanne for years, and I contributed to her campaign months ago. I moved out of the Tampa Area four months ago, and I'm supporting her, because she speaks the truth and has her opponent running scared.

Now it's your turn: you can use the Act Blue page for Judithanne I set up, or you can contribute on her campaign site.

SDorn

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Tuesday January 15, 2013 · 12:17 PM PST

2013/01/15 · 12:17

Today is the 84th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When he and other civil-rights leaders fought for equal schooling in the decades after World War 2, they never would have imagined the level of test preparation we see today, test preparation falsely justified in the name of civil rights. In the name of equal educational opportunity, Congress and former President George W. Bush created the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and in the past decade and more, school districts across the country have purchased test-prep booklets, mandated that teachers spend hours on narrowly-focused test preparation, and restricted access to the broader curriculum. Instead of supplementing the school day, test preparation has supplanted the general curriculum.

It is time we recognize that both the concrete resources and the time devoted to test preparation threaten the civil rights of students.

Poll

21 votes Show Results

Your initial response

21 votes Vote Now!

Your initial response

I'm signing!

8 votes

No one else has drafted a White House petition on accountability before??

0 votes

Test preparation is good, not bad

6 votes

Eh, the White House petition process is rigged

3 votes

I'm offended you put this up on MLK's actual birthday

1 vote

You didn't go far enough

3 votes

Clicky

0 votes

The outsourcing of almost everything in state departments of education

SDorn

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Tuesday October 30, 2012 · 5:34 PM PDT

2012/10/30 · 17:34

While Sandy is forcing us to ponder our reliance on those unionized, overpaid public employees known as first responders, a little discussion about outsourcing is in order.(1) Many years ago, the head of a state department's assessment bureau told me the bureau wrote no tests, though they were responsible for the state's many tests from K-12 to professional exams. Instead, the state let out contracts for every one of the tests, and this long-time civil servant explained that the real job of the bureau was contract management. There were some statisticians to keep the test publishers honest, some people who were very good at the language side of contracts, and a few overall gophers who could keep the big picture in mind and also explain the ability and limits of state tests to policymakers (i.e., the bureau head and a few others). But essentially the office had fewer than 10 people responsible for tests administered annually to many, many thousands of children and adults.

SDorn

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Friday October 05, 2012 · 4:34 PM PDT

2012/10/05 · 16:34

Interior Scene: A band of ragged high financiers is playing high-stakes poker and planning a conspiracy to raise huge wads of cash, fill the airwaves, and support one of their own in lying his way to the presidency.

Reg: He's bled us dry. He's taken everything we built, not just from us, from our finance friends and from our finance friends' finance friends.

Stan: And from our finance friends' finance friends' finance friends

Reg: Yes.

Stan: And from our finance friends' finance friends' finance friends' finance friends.

Reg: All right, Stan. Don't belabor the point. And what has he ever given us in return?

Poll

28 votes Show Results

Favorite Monty Python film?

28 votes Vote Now!

Favorite Monty Python film?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

15 votes

Monty Python and the Life of Brian

10 votes

The Meaning of Life

2 votes

And Now for Something Completely Different

1 vote

Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl

0 votes

Secret Policeman's Ball (any)

0 votes

Fake education news of 2012

SDorn

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Saturday December 31, 2011 · 6:37 PM PST

2011/12/31 · 18:37

I miss Howard Troxler, former columnist of the St. Pete Times who retired in June and moved out of the state. Troxler had a wonderful way of ending the year of always-biting columns, sometimes with fake carols and always with a fake year-in-review (see 2010 Part I and Part II). Taking Troxler's idea in a different direction, here is my tongue-in-cheek prediction of 2012's education news, week-by-week:

SDorn

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Saturday December 24, 2011 · 8:59 AM PST

2011/12/24 · 08:59

Kudos to Kevin Drum, who caught National Reporter blogger Shannen Coffin writing in a tripery^* Thursday for claiming that the White House had sent Bo to Hawaii and then flew him back just so President Obama could go shopping with the dog. Only three problems:

1. Hawaii has a quarantine for pets, so it would have been a fairly immense act of stupidity for the White House to attempt to fly Bo out there in the first place.
2. Bo didn't go.
3. Fala (la la la la la la la). At one level, thank you, Mr. Coffin, for this holiday ~~libel~~ gift by forgetting one of the great acts of political humor in the 20th century. At another level, ow (the humanity!), for forgetting.

SDorn

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Sunday April 10, 2011 · 6:00 AM PDT

2011/04/10 · 06:00

I wasn't intending to write about Planned Parenthood because so many others have written enough. And then an old friend of my wife wrote about her use of PP:

I have never been pregnant. I did have a uterine cyst that was cancerous removed before it turned dangerous. I did have a fibroid the size of a grapefruit that was removed... It was because of Planned Parenthood that I’m still alive to tell you about it.

Planned Parenthood is for saving the life of friends.

I am a Uterus-American, and So Are You

SDorn

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Thursday March 31, 2011 · 7:34 PM PDT

2011/03/31 · 19:34

Today, the Florida state House leaders told Rep. Scott Randolph to Talk to the Hand. No, no no -- they said that it was undecorous to mention body parts on the floor of the House.

Specifically, the forbidden word is uterus.

One wonders if this were some Through the Looking Glass version of the Groucho Marx talk show where a duck sinks to eye level if the player mentions the secret word, except that if you're a Democrat and mention the secret word, you're chastised by the Speaker of the House.

I have only one thing to say before explaining more (with apologies to Samantha Bee): I came from a uterus and am thus a Uterus-American.

SDorn

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Friday August 27, 2010 · 12:50 PM PDT

2010/08/27 · 12:50

It's the start of another school year, and evidently there was a sufficient threat to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to bring the Doctor openly to campus. But I'm not so sure he's going to succeed, because though there are some scurrilous rumors the attached recording came from the recent Google-Verizon talks, I suspect the reality is dangerous alien opposition to open source software development and net neutrality (wav file). Are they responding to the recent Copyright Office declarations on fair use?

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These B/o/o/t/s/ Courts Are Made For W/a/l/k/i/n/g/ Judging

Arizona's Guano Caucus

Bulwer Lytton of the Caliche

Will you join me in supporting Judithanne McLauchlan for the Florida State Senate?

Overdone test preparation threatens the civil rights of students

The outsourcing of almost everything in state departments of education

Romney Python and the Life of Mitt

Fake education news of 2012

Fala speech, waiting to be updated

One more personal story about Planned Parenthood

I am a Uterus-American, and So Are You

Galactic threats to higher education, net neutrality, and open source software