Things I'm Thinking About, Sunday, December 29

A few short thoughts for today. Feel free to respond to them.

-During the 2014 Missouri legislative session, we are going to see the spectacle of leading Republican legislators fighting to save our schools from Common Core Standards- just to turn them over to Rex Sinquefield. We will see a battle to let our teachers teach a curriculum devised by our local schools, only to then hear legislators talk about how we need to get rid of bad teachers by eliminating tenure.

-Tomorrow I will start rerunning a few of the Turner Report posts about people who died during 2013, including some as famous as Stan Musial and others not so famous, but who made a difference.

-I will also conclude my review of the year 2013. I have been concentrating on stories that were featured on this blog either first or which appeared exclusively here.

-At some point, I plan to write about the situation in Kansas where the Board of Regents is trying to control what college and university professors can write in social media. The Joplin Globe had a column and a letter to the editor in its Forum section today. Former Globe investigative reporter Max McCoy who now works at a university notes the error of what the Regents' approach since public bodies cannot make rules restricting First Amendment rights at public institutions. Seeing McCoy's byline was a pleasant surprise. He is a reminder of a time when the Globe actually did investigative reporting. Unfortunately, a letter to the editor was printed from the insufferable and intellectually challenged Anson Burlingame, who, of course, supported what the Regents did, because in his beliefs, bosses are always right. The frequency with which Burlingame's nonsense appears in the Globe is a symbol of what the newspaper has become.

-The Turner Report has made another change in its appearance- one that readers have been requesting for a long time. The home page will no longer feature long posts, but will do what other blogs do and have a link where you can go to the rest of the story. It should make the home page easier to navigate. I would have done it sooner, but I just figured out how to do it today.

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