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Who Replaces Hastings?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 29, 2006 CommentIf you want to know whom Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi is considering to replace Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida as next term's chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, you need look no further than the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It's the only group that supported Democrats in a big way in the November elections yet hasn't been rewarded with leadership posts.
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Unspooling 'Unschooling'
Tweet Share on Facebook November 27, 2006 Comment (85)The Web is alive with unstructured structuralism. The latest wrinkle is "unschooling." Kids divine their own instructional curricula. If a 6-year-old wants to play with a box on top of her head for an hour, that is as qualitatively beneficial a learning experience as an hour of Latin, according to unschoolers–perhaps even more beneficial.
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The Marriage Initiative and Unwed Parents
Tweet Share on Facebook November 24, 2006 Comment (104)So it's official. America is becoming more like France in a way that few Americans would wish. Government health data revealed this week that 4 in 10 children were born out of wedlock last year. This figure was up slightly from 200, but way up from 1940, when, marriage expert and author Stephanie Koontz reports, the rate was 7.1 births per 1,000 unmarried women.
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Breastfeeding Protests: Nurse-Ins Begin
Tweet Share on Facebook November 22, 2006 Comment (16)Breastfeeding moms held nurse-in protests at airports across the country this week, to show opposition to Delta Airlines' ejection of a breastfeeding mother, her husband, and her baby from one of its planes this fall. The protest comes six months after the federal government launched an ad campaign urging new mothers to breastfeed or raise children's risk factors for all manner of undesirable health consequences.
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Building a Base to Nowhere
Tweet Share on Facebook November 20, 2006 Comment (21)The midterm elections take a decided turn to the left, and Sen. John McCain bolts right. Where is the logic here?
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Bush's Family-Planning Choice Thwarts the Electorate
Tweet Share on Facebook November 17, 2006 Comment (23)What part of "yes" do you not understand?
Buried in the election news coverage last week was a poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania showing that Americans want–yes, want–condom-inclusive, not abstinence-only, sex education for children in public schools.
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The Senate Women and the Middle Class
Tweet Share on Facebook November 15, 2006 Comment (22)Last night the women of the U.S. Senate met for the first time. All 16 (14 present and two new members) were supposed to be in attendance. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, were tied up on a military construction appropriation matter on the Senate floor and didn't make it. Sen.-elect Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, skipped freshman orientation entirely to make good on a promise to her family: She had pledged to take a family vacation as soon as the election was over to reward her kin for a year on the campaign trail. But the other 13 female senators were present and accounted for.
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Pelosi Lays Out Her Cards With Murtha Bet
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2006 CommentIt's a high-testosterone move for the first female speaker-elect. Yep, "Women have cojones, too!" could be the subtext under the headline, "Pelosi Endorses Murtha for Leader." Why? Murtha's medal-decorated military past enthuses the cockles of veterans and service persons alike. The Pennsylvania conservative Democrat's pro-gun, anti-choice voting record also helps draw centrist Republicans into the Democrats' camp, while wooing progressives with his vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.
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Pelosi's Ascension Signals Woman Power
Tweet Share on Facebook November 10, 2006 CommentTuesday's election results are more woman-friendly than even the most astute of Washington pundits has so far divined. All of a sudden, women are fashionable again in national politics.
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The Year of Women Leaders
Tweet Share on Facebook November 8, 2006 CommentAlong with the Democratic sweep in Congress came historic firsts for Democratic women in party leadership positions. I interviewed Democratic pollster Celinda Lake today and asked her whether '06 would turn out to be the year of women leaders in American politics, as '92 was the "Year of the Woman." She responded: "I think '06 is the year of the Democratic woman and the year of women in leadership. You have the first woman speaker, which is very exciting. You have the first woman head of the National Governors Association, Governor [Janet] Napolitano from Arizona. You have women in other races taking leadership positions. You have the highest record number of women in the Senate. You have the first woman Supreme Court justice in Alabama elected–and the only Democrat, I might add. You have just recently in the last year the first African-American woman head of the Georgia Supreme Court, so it's really women in the pipeline for a long time emerging into leadership positions, and that's very exciting."
