Did you see that some 900 Florida teachers are going to lose their jobs because they can’t pass the math section of the state exam? Doesn’t matter if math is irrelevant to the subject they teach or if they have excellent skill ratings in their field. The article I saw began with a drama teacher who built her school’s program from scratch, but even though she is experienced and popular, she’ll be out on the street. And this comes at a time when the dramatic arts are more and more profitable, as the entertainment industry expands into new forms.  Read More 

But last weekend was the 170th anniversary of the world’s first call for women’s rights. It was on July 19 and 20, 1848, and nearly in Canada, in the northern New York town of Seneca Falls. That was because Lucretia Coffin Mott of Philadelphia visited her sister, Martha Coffin Wright, who lived nearby. Seneca Falls was home to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom Mott had met eight years earlier, when they both were rejected as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. They had tea at the home of Jane Hunt, and joined by another Quaker woman, Mary Ann M’Clintock, these five housewives and mothers ended their day by calling for a discussion that would set the feminist agenda far into the future.  Read More 

It’s hard to cut through the multiple details of the investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 election, but you should know that all seventeen (yes, 17!) US intelligence agencies agree that this happened. These people, who are both members of the military services and civilian employees of Congressional mandated federal agencies, have been tried and tested over and over again, most of them under several presidential administrations. They know what they are doing.  Read More 

I’m considering writing another book on women’s right to vote. My last one devoted solely to that subject was in 1998, and doing one twenty years later sounds like a plan. Since then, I’ve become much more aware of how the battle for women’s rights really was (and remains, in the case of reproductive rights) a battle against so-called states’ rights. I want to emphasize the big differences between states when it comes to the female half of the population.  Read More 

If you think that Mexico is sending drug dealers and rapists, but also think that Mexicans are taking Americans’ jobs: what exactly is it that you do for a living?  Read More