laughingsquid:

It’s Still Legal In 20 States To Hit Students In Public Schools

Equally disturbing is this tidbit we came across: In 8 states, “positive depictions of homosexuals” are still outlawed in public schools. (Source: GLSEN)

(via jessbennett)

From David Graham: “They moved to the margins to appease their base during the primaries. Now that it’s the general election, the candidates are frantically finding their way back to the middle, tap-dancing for their new audience of swing voters.”

Even if they are acquitted, it’s clear their lives are forever altered—their names and faces international symbols of teen callousness. None completed school last year; Mulveyhill has already lost a football scholarship to college. One family has received death threats, prank calls, and a rock thrown through a second-story window—along with a stream of nasty unsigned letters delivered to their door. Some call for their daughter to be “raped and killed”; others hurl insults and racial slurs. “I don’t know if I can even describe what my family has been through,” says the mother of Sharon Velasquez, who agreed to speak exclusively to NEWSWEEK. “The cameras in our faces, the harassment, the letters—I’d come home and people would be in the parking lot waiting for me.

Jessica Bennett looks back at the students charged in connection with the suicide of 15-year-old South Hadley High School student Phoebe Prince. Schoolyard bullying can have tragic consequences, she writes. But should it be a crime?

theatlantic:

Tour the high-tech cannabis factory of tomorrow:

The video above is an exclusive look at what could be the country’s first official cannabis factory, a 60,000 sq. ft. facility in Oakland that would house 30,000 plants and could produce $50 million of cannabis per year. Part of a proposal by Gropech, a non-profit that promises to create hundreds of union jobs and reinvest profits in the Bay Area if given a permit by the Oakland City Council, the facility would supply medical dispensaries across the state in an attempt to bring transparency to the growing process.

[Curator’s Note: Upon first viewing this, I half expected an introduction by Dr. Pierre Chang of the Dharma Initiative. Namaste!]

The new growth market!

nprfreshair:

“I got picked on. I got mocked. I got a little scar on my chin when a bully turned my desk over in study hall, with me in it, and my face hit the floor. That was seventh grade. But you know what? It gets better.”

via NPR Arts Editor Trey Graham.

The latest genius of Dan Savage, editor of our little hometown alt-weekly, The Stranger. (We only learned recently what “the stranger” stands for. Sick.)

(via theweekmagazine)

The failure of the economics profession to address our deeper problems theoretically is mirrored by the failure of other sciences on a more practical level. To wit: America’s best minds are still heading to Wall Street to an unnerving, even pathological degree—further evidence that finance remains the dominant sector of the economy.

Michael Hirsh, in his final column for Newsweek, on why, with America in trouble, our economists are AWOL and our scientists are off “financial engineering”

From the Newsweek photo team: How we stood united after 9/11.

There’s only one problem with [House Minority Leader] Boehner’s message: so far, the things that Republicans have said they want to do won’t actually boost employment or reduce deficits. In fact, much the opposite. By combing through a variety of studies and projections from nonpartisan economic sources, we here at Gaggle headquarters have found that if Republicans were in charge from January 2009 onward—and if they were now given carte blanche to enact the proposals they want to—the projected 2010–2020 deficits would be larger than they are under Obama, and fewer people would probably be employed.

Andrew Romano, on why there’d be fewer jobs and bigger deficits if Republicans were in charge.

markcoatney:

kateoplis:

Katrina, a year later by Vincent Laforet

Hundreds of years ago, when I first started working at Time, I was taught that anniversary stories are some of the lowest forms of journalism around, and that Time would never stoop to them (clearly, that publication is in a much different place now). 

But for Katrina, I think it’s important to suspend this rule, because it really was a critical moment. If there is any real, fundamental danger to America (as opposed to all of Fox’s made-up stuff, that is), this is it: That the country will fail because its government does not provide even minimally competent services to its citizens. 

Look at Vince’s pictures—they’re fantastic; see NOLA’s really nice five year’s after coverage (and remember what an amazing, essential job that paper did in 2005); watch ABC’s livestream from there today. 

You can find Newsweek’s Katrina coverage here, and we second the plug for ABC’s livestream coverage from there, starting at 12:30 EST today.