West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 401 (1791), was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland (1791) was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2, 1791 and decided on August 3, 1791. Collet v. Collet (1791) was the first appellate case docketed with the Court but was dropped before it could be heard. Supreme Court Reporter Alexander Dallas did not publish the justices' full opinions in West v. Barnes, which were published in various newspapers around the country at the time, but he published an abbreviated summary of the decisions.
The Court held that "Writs of error to remove causes to this court from inferior courts, can regularly issue only from the clerk's office of the court."
The Court ultimately decided the case on procedural grounds, holding that a writ of error (an appeal) must be issued within ten days by the Clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States as required by federal statute, and not by a lower court located closer to the plaintiff in Rhode Island. As a result of this case, Congress ultimately changed this procedure with the ninth section of the Judiciary Act of 1793 allowing circuit courts to issue these writs, thereby assisting citizens living far away from the capital.
This was one of the earliest potential cases of judicial review in the United States where the Court had the opportunity to overturn a Rhode Island state statute regarding lodging payment of a debt in paper currency in fulfillment of a contract. The court did not exercise judicial review in deference to the legislature. The court ultimately decided against William West, the petitioner, on procedural grounds.
William West was a farmer, anti-federalist leader, revolutionary war general, and judge from Scituate, Rhode Island. West owed a mortgage on his farm from a failed molasses deal in 1763 to the Jenckes family from Providence. West made payments on the mortgage for twenty years, and in 1785 asked the state for permission to conduct a lottery to help pay off the remainder. Due to his service during the Revolution, the state granted him permission. Much of the proceeds were paid in paper currency instead of gold or silver. West tendered payment in the paper currency as allowed by state statute by "lodging" the funds with a state judge to be collected within ten days.
David Leonard Barnes, an heir of Jenckes and well-known attorney and later federal judge, eventually brought suit in federal court based on diversity jurisdiction asserting that gold or silver payment was required and refusing the paper currency. Despite lack of formal training, West represented himself pro se in the circuit court in June 1791 before Chief Justice John Jay, Associate Justice William Cushing, and Henry Marchant. They rejected his arguments. West then attempted to appeal to the Supreme Court on a writ of error, attempting to comply with all statutory directions. West was unable to make the journey to Philadelphia to represent himself, so he engaged William Bradford, Jr., Pennsylvania's attorney general, to represent him. On appeal, Barnes focused on the procedural irregularities. Barnes asserted that the writ had been signed and sealed only by the clerk of the circuit court in Rhode Island instead of by the Supreme Court clerk, which he claimed as necessary. This was asserted despite the fact that West would have had to make an arduous journey in 1791 to Philadelphia within ten days to do so. West lost on this procedural issue and was eventually forced to relinquish his farm.
West, Plaintiff in error, v. Barnes et al.
On the first day of the term, Bradford presented to the court, a writ, purporting to be a writ of error, issued out of the office of the clerk of the circuit court for Rhode Island district, directed to that court, and commanding a return of the judgment and proceedings rendered by them in this cause: And thereupon he moved for a rule, that the defendant rejoin to the errors assigned in this cause.
THE COURT were unanimously of opinion, That writs of error to remove causes to this court from inferior courts, can regularly issue only from the clerk's office of the court.
Justice James Iredell was upset by the governing statute and wrote to President Washington to change the law which had required that only the clerk of the Supreme Court could issue writs of error. The Judicial Act of 1792 altered the law to prevent such hardships for future litigants.
Several months after the decision, on November 9, 1791, Barnes brought another suit of ejectment to eject West from the mortgaged farm. He filed suit in the Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island. Justice Jay, Justice Cushing and Judge Henry Marchant held the plea bad for a second time. They decided that William West lodged payment of his debt with a Rhode Island judge on September 16, and, therefore, Barnes had ten days to collect it according to the state statute. The Rhode Island "lodging" Act was, however, suspended on the 19th of that month therefore the ten-day period was not able to fully occur as only three days had passed and was thus not conformable to the statute. Barnes eventually won the ejectment case although he had difficulty ejecting West's family from the farm as West had sold the farm to a son-in-law. West's estate continued to be disputed after his death resulting in the First Circuit decision, West v. Randall in 1820.


In order to succeed online, your campaign should consider the seasonality of your service offering. Using data provided by Google about the finance industry as an example, our Head of Search, Kev Strong, shares his tips for leveraging these peaks in interest to maximise return on investment from your campaign.
Google's data shows search peaks on a month-by-month basis. For example, in January, search interest in mortgages, retiring and saving reach their peak, potentially as a result of people starting afresh in the New Year. However, as a business, you'll work on a different timescale.
You'll need to start preparations at least six months prior to the peak in search interest. Using this time to create optimised content and carry out some initial outreach will help to build your online presence for terms surrounding the services and products you want to push.
By doing the leg work early, your brand will be in a position to capitalise on search interest during the peak period. Fail to do this and you'll end up playing catch up in a time where you should be reaping the benefits.
As an additional boost to your seasonal targeting, you can leverage paid search to create targeted ads during these peaks. This helps generate more exposure for your content or website in the months where it matters most.
By planning in advance, you'll often be running multiple campaigns at one time. For example, in the finance industry, July is the peak month for search interest in travel rewards credit cards. In November, searches around credit card applications peak. This means six month preparations will often overlap. In these scenarios, you should create structured campaigns with clear end goals.
We have to stress the importance of mobile once again. In the finance industry, conversion rates are 58% higher on mobile platforms than they are on desktop. Mobile searches for financial terms which have seasonal peaks, like mortgages, credit cards, loans and life insurance, are growing 48% year on year.
What good is being seasonally aware if you're missing out on the mobile market? The finance industry is not the only industry where mobile is vital. The entire search landscape is dominated by mobile search, with 75% of adults accessing the web via mobile in 2015.


Newswise, February 15, 2017 - Older adults who suffer from arthritis need to keep moving to be functionally independent. But in an examination of a goal that is daunting for most of this aging population, a new Northwestern Medicine study found that performing even a third of the recommended activity is beneficial.
Federal guidelines suggest achieving 150 minutes of moderate activity per week to prevent premature death and serious illness, however only one in 10 older American adults with arthritis in their knees meet these guidelines.
Northwestern Medicine researchers wanted to determine a less overwhelming activity goal to get this population up and moving, and 45 minutes per week was that magic number.
"Even a little activity is better than none," said first author Dorothy Dunlop, professor of rheumatology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
"The federal guidelines are very important because the more you do, the better you'll feel and the greater the health benefits you'll receive," Dunlop said.
"We're looking for an older population who can be functionally independent," Dunlop said.
The research was supported in part by the NIH's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases under award numbers R01AR054155, P60AR064464, R21AR068500, and T32AR007611.
Newswise, February 3, 2017 — For decades, scientists have tried to halt cancer by blocking nutrients from reaching tumor cells, in essence starving tumor cells of the fuel needed to grow and proliferate. Such attempts often have disappointed because cancer cells are nimble, relying on numerous backup routes to continue growing.
Studying human cancer cells and mice implanted with patients' tumor samples, the researchers demonstrate that a double hit — knocking out the weak point and one of the tumor cells' backup routes — shows promise against many hard-to-treat cancers.
Though present in multiple cancer types, the weak point is particularly common in sarcomas — rare cancers of fat, muscle, bone, cartilage and connective tissues. Doctors treat sarcomas primarily with traditional surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but such treatments often are not effective.
"We have determined that this metabolic defect is present in 90 percent of sarcomas," said senior author Brian A. Van Tine, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine.
To grow and proliferate, tumor cells must have basic building materials. The researchers' strategy relies on the fact that the vast majority of sarcomas have lost the ability to manufacture their own arginine, a protein building block that cells need to make more of themselves.
Lacking this ability, the cells must harvest arginine from the surrounding environment. The supply of arginine in the blood is abundant, and cancer cells have no trouble scavenging it. But remove this environmental supply of arginine and the cells have a problem.
Unlike most cancer therapies, depleting arginine in the blood does not affect healthy cells. Normal cells don't rely on external sources of arginine because they don't have the cancer's metabolic defect.
They continue to make their own arginine, so there is no induced starvation in normal cells even when there is no arginine in the blood. Van Tine said this strategy is based on the properties of a tumor — it shuts down tumor metabolism specifically and nothing else.
In the case of sarcomas, this state slows or pauses cancer growth but does not kill the cell. During this period, tumor cells appear to be buying time to find yet another internal work-around.
"Cancer doesn't die when you halt its primary fuel supply," Van Tine said.
Van Tine and the study's first author, Jeff C. Kremer, a PhD student in Van Tine's lab, explained that when cancer cells with this metabolic defect are deprived of environmental arginine, they are forced to shift from a system that burns glucose to a system that burns a different fuel called glutamine.
They showed that adding a glutamine inhibitor to the arginine-depleting drug is lethal to the cells. Eliminating arginine from the blood also rewires serine biology, another backup fuel, so adding serine inhibitors also causes cell death.
This strategy could be applied beyond rare sarcoma tumors because the metabolic defect is often present in other cancers, including certain types of breast, colon, lung, brain and bone tumors, the researchers said.
The new study includes data showing similar anti-tumor responses in cell lines from these cancer types. Van Tine also pointed out that all of the drugs used in the study are either already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other conditions or in ongoing clinical trials investigating cancer drugs.
"We will start with a baseline trial testing the arginine-depleting drug against sarcomas with this defect, and then we can begin layering additional drugs on top of that therapy," Van Tine said.


text:
Kenyon Farrow
Writer. Journalist. Strategist.
About Kenyon Farrow
Kenyon's Events
Selected Writing
New Orleans: Army Corps Washed Away Accountability
Posted on January 31, 2008 by Kenyon Farrow
My good friend Davell Crawford (the Piano Prince of New Orleans) recently covered a classic Randy Newman song called Louisiana 1927 (you can hear it by going to his home page). The lyrics chronicle the Mississippi Flood of 1927, and in Newman's lyrics, he declares "They tryin' to wash us away." Davell re-writes a lyric originally about President Calvin Coolidge, and replaces him with George W. Bush.
Maybe they really are trying to wash "us" away again. It's interesting that yesterday, John Edwards chose New Orleans to announce the halting of his presidential bid, that a federal judge begrudgingly threw out a clas action suit by the people of New Orleans against the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Associated Press reported that "Judge Stanwood Duval said he was forced by law to hold the Corps immune even though the agency failed to 'cast a blind eye' in protecting New Orleans and 'squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system … which was known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations.' But, Duval said, 'it is not within the Court's power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States' power to address the failures of our laws and agencies.'"
What's so sinister is the ruling was based on a law written conspicuously after the 1927 flood–the Flood Control Act of 1928–which made the federal government immune from lawsuits when flood control projects like levees break.
I was in the 9th ward just a few weeks ago–the week leading into MLK Day. It was the first time I had been back since Spring of 2005, and I had lived in New Orleans for a year. The failures of the city, state and federal government are so egregious that it is difficult to imagine that they are in fact, failures, and not actually a contrived negligence. And the failure, conspiracy or negligence (you choose!) that caused the death and displacement in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina, is not so much about the weather. It's about the profound racism that forced hundreds of thousands of Black people into the conditions that would mean their certain demise just by virtue of being redlined for generations on the downside of a canal, or kept in substandard public housing. Or warehoused in Orleans Parish Prison.
I was accosted one night in the French Quarter during my trip 2 weeks ago by 2 unidentified plain clothes security officers who looked like professional wrestlers–and I know they were not the NOPD. I was accused of trying to rob my friends I was just a few feet behind on my bike. So for those of us who weren't washed away in the storm, or carted off to destinations all across the nation–the prison and the jailer awaits.
They tryin to wash us away–and absolve themselves of the responsibility.
Put Me on Blast:
Posted in activism, Culture, Navel-Gazing, News, Politics	| Tagged 9th ward, army corps of engineers, calvin coolidge, davell crawford, french quarter, george w. bush, hurricane katrina, John Edwards, judge stanwood duval, lousiana 1927, MLK, new orleans, new orleans police department, orleans parish prison, randy newman	| 2 Replies
In Memoriam: Regina Shavers
I just learned that longtime Black lesbian activist and Executive Director of Griot Circle, Regina Shavers, died of cancer yesterday.
Regina was another elder, like Bob Kohler, who I met when I was doing work as an adult ally with FIERCE! around 2001. If you are familiar with FIERCE!'s video "Fenced Out" Regina talks alot about what it was like to be a black lesbian in NYC in the 1950/60's. My favorite quote from her in that film, when asked by members what women would do if accosted by homophobes in the street she responded, "We kicked their fuckin ass!"
I was supposed to interview Regina for a book I am co-editing called "A New Queer Agenda" on issues of aging as a Black lesbian, but she has been really sick and we weren't able to connect in December as planned. I am deeply sorry we weren't able to complete this project, but there are many ways her work and legacy live on.
She wrote a piece for Colorlines in 2005 that is well worth reading, and here's some of that narrative:
"I grew up in Brooklyn. When I was in high school in the 1950s, I always knew I was a lesbian. I can't tell you when I first knew; I've always known. In high school, I met other lesbians. When we talked about being gay around other people, we always talked in code. African-American code is "one of the children," like "so and so is one of the children," or we'd say a person was "in the life." Of course, you have to realize, too, in those days that just wearing pants signified that you were gay or crazy. If you did anything that was out of the gender norm, everybody was aware of it immediately.
I was a gender bender. I wanted to wear pants. But my mother wanted a daughter who had little tea parties. I used to wear pinafores and Shirley Temple curls and little Mary Jane shoes. That's what my mother wanted, so any time I deviated from that she had a fit; nobody could understand it. One time I bought a pair of jeans, and I wore them home so she wouldn't make me take them back.
I used to hang out at the gay clubs in New York's West Village. At the bars, there certainly were older [lesbians], but I didn't think about older people. We had a fine life–and by that I mean we knew people in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens. You could go to two or three dances in one night. One of the things about being so closeted is that we were in a special club. And the special club had its own life."
There's a short biography you can also read of her from Google Books from the book The Many Faces of Gay: Activists Who Are Changing the Nation.
Also, a blog called The Butch Caucus has already posted a memorial to Regina. Here's a bio that Queers for Economic Justice, the organization for which I serve as Board Co-chair sent out about Regina:
REGINA SHAVERS founded the GRIOT Circle, "an intergenerational and culturally diverse community-based social service organization responsive to the realities of older lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, two-spirit and transgender people (LGBTST) of all colors."
Regina Shavers had a long history of community involvement and activism.
As co-chair of District Council 37 she advocates for workers' rights, and serves on the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Lesbian and Gay Rights Advisory Board. She played an active role in the Campaign for and Inclusive Family Policy, the citywide coalition that negotiated with Mayor David N. Dinkins to obtain Domestic Partner benefits for
New York City employees.
She also helped to found Pride At Work, a constituency group of the AFL-CIO that focuses on the rights and unionization of LGBT workers.
Regina was also the former Assistant Director of the NYC Department of Health's HIV Training Institute. Here, she created and implemented curricula for HIV prevention and treatment, including curricula specifically tailored towards older populations. Regina continued with her HIV/AIDS facilitation as a member of the New York Association on HIV Over Fifty (NYAHOF).
In 1995, Regina co-founded GRIOT Circle to combat the lack of community that she had observed amongst LGBT Elders, particularly those of color. She assumed the role of Executive Director of GRIOT in 2000.
Regina Shavers founded the GRIOT Circle as "an intergenerational and culturally diverse community-based social service organization responsive to the realities of older lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, two-spirit and transgender people (LGBTST) of all colors." The goal of GRIOT Circle is to maintain a safe space for elders, provide emotional support and quality programming which affirms
age, gender, racial, spiritual and ethnic origins for the over 50 LGBTST community in Brooklyn. GRIOT Circle provides educational and informational forums, referrals to social service providers, health and fitness programs, spiritual wellness, computer training, a friendly visitors program and social outreach. Volunteer members make reassurance telephone calls and visits to homebound, sick or hospitalized persons.
UPDATE: In honor of Regina V. Shavers there will be a Celebration of Life Service on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008. Services to be held at:
Liberation In Truth Unity Fellowship Church
608 Broad Street, @ Trinity & St. Philips Cathedral
Newark, New Jersey 07102 (PATH Train to Newark–Church is about a 7 min walk from Newark Penn Station).
Viewing will be from 11 AM until 12:30.
Celebration service will follow from 12:30 to 2 PM
Immediately there after the family invites you to join them in a repass to be held at 24 Rector Street.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made in the name of Regina Shavers to one of the following organizations;
Lavender Light, The Black and People of all Colors Lesbian and Gay Gospel Choir
70 –A Greenwich Street #315
Griot Circle, Inc.
25 Flatbush Avenue, 5th floor
Brooklyn, New York 11217-1101
Riverfront Plaza Station
Posted in activism, News, Politics	| Tagged activist, black lesbian, bob kohler, griot circle, regina shavers, west village	| 5 Replies
Obama-Clinton Showdown: The Lessons of South Carolina
Blogger Jonathan Stein over at Mother Jones beat me to the punch on this one, but that's one of the tragedies of having a full-time job and trying to blog at the same time. But in all the back patting or weeping (depending on who's side you're on) over the South Carolina primaries, Stein at MJ and I are asking the same question: Did the Clinton camp intentionally lose SC to "niggerize" Obama to cut white support from under him?
I definitely think it's a possibility. First off, the media has been referring to the SC primary as "the Black Primary" because it's a 30% Black state, and 50% of the voting Democrats in the state are of African descent. With the nation already thinking about what would happen in SC as representative of Black people, here's what occurred:
Hillary Clinton—in an attempt to pain Obama as some ragtag feel good community organizer and not presidential—used the analogy that while MLK mobilized people, it took LBJ to pass the Civil Rights Act. Black people took offense to that.
Bill Clinton appeared on radio to defend him, and called Obama's campaign a fantasy.
BET founder Bob Johnson went off on Obama when introducing Senator Clinton at a rally in SC—basically insinuating that Obama was getting high on coke in Chicago while Hillary was serving the Nation.
Then Bill Clinton performed less like the spouse of a candidate and more like a running mate (He even appeared on television to essentially deliver her concession speech after she lost), by appearing all over the place making comments about Obama and using verbiage to link him to Jesse Jackson.
The niggerization campaign in full effect. I think this turned a lot of Black people off to the Clintons, quite frankly, who overwhelmingly (81%) voted for Obama in South Carolina. Even though Obama had a great deal of support of the white voters under 30 years of age, the fact that he won in the Black primary became the story.
The Obama camp has known for some time that they simply cannot run him as a candidate who is concerned only about Black America if they want to have any real chance of winning. But was the Clinton strategy to force Obama off of his "above the political fray and above racial politics" message done to permanently smear his image with white and Latino voters to lessen his chance of winning the states where she is more competitive on Super Tuesday?
I think this bears some thinking about.
What may be problematic for her is the fact that the political establishment that has remained neutral so far may begin to shift to Obama's camp. Congressman James Clyburn of SC had some thinly veiled harsh words for the Clinton Campaign after Obama's win, saying about the Obama win: "'I'm not surprised at that at all…Because I really believe that in the last 48 hours the voters recoiled. They decided to reject the racial animus they seemed to be developing and I'm so pleased.'
This weekend (and today, Monday) it was announced that two Kennedy's–Caroline and Senator Ted–endorsed Obama. And most surprising, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison endorsed Obama today.
Where this strategy may perhaps get her a nomination at the summer DNC, it may hurt her chances in the fall. Black people, if they feel Clinton played dirty to shut down the chances of the first Black President to be elected, may turn on her and simply not vote in November. Will it then have been worth it?
For more interesting commentary on Obama's de-racialized campaign read an article from 2007 in In These Times from a person who knows him, and my good friend Kai Wright's new piece in The Root (a brand new "Black" online publication—owned by the Washington Post. Henry Louis Gates is Editor-in-Chief.
Posted in Media, News, Politics, Television, Theater	| Tagged Barack Obama, bill clinton, caroline kennedy, henry louis gates, Hillary Clinton, james clyburn, jesse jackson, jonathan stein, Kai Wright, ted kennedy, toni morrison	| Leave a reply
Non-Shock of The Week: Report Shows Bush & Crew Lied A Lot to Justify Iraq War
It may not come as a surprise to you, but the Bush Administration (including George W. himself) orchestrated a PR campaign full of lies and untruths to justify going to war in Iraq, according to a new report issued by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism.
Hadn't this already been determined? I mean, I knew they were lying from jump (they were talking after all, weren't they? That whole "Bush Lied" campaign is tired. We know that. And he doesn't give a fuck, nor do the people who continue to support him. Now what?), and story after story has shown that they knew they were bullshitting from the beginning. But oh well. I guess yet another study will hammer the point home. Here's what they found:
"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war."
Now, I think this probably deserved more attention in the news this week than it got. But really, is it a shocker?
Posted in activism, Media, News, Politics	| Tagged al quaeda, ari fleischer, bush lied, center for public integrity fund for independent journa, colin powell, condoleezza rice, dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, george w. bush, iraq, paul wolfowitz, saddam hussein, scott mcclellan	| 1 Reply
Supreme Court Ruling: No Recourse if The Cops Destroy or Steal Property
Heath Ledger was unfortunately found dead in his apartment in SoHo, NYC yesterday. Only 28 years old. Though I feel bad for his family's loss, this news will probably dominate the airwaves over the next several days, going head to head with the presidential election as the news of the week.
But don't sleep. NY Times reporter Linda Greenhouse just reported on a decision of the Supreme Court that may impact any of us who find ourselves subject to police investigation, search and seizure, arrest, prosecution and/or imprisonment.
The case revolved around, as Greenhouse reports "a Abdus-Shahid M. S. Ali, was being transferred from a federal prison in Atlanta to one in Inez, Ky., and left two duffle bags of personal property to be shipped. When he received the bags, religious articles, including two copies of the Koran, were missing. Valuing the missing items at $177, Mr. Ali filed suit, appealing to the Supreme Court after the federal appeals court in Atlanta had dismissed his case…"
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act, which gave citizens the right to sue the United States itself negligent actions of agents of the United States, but it has some exceptions. Mostly it seems to suggest that the exceptions are "based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government, exercising due care in the execution of a statute or regulation" or "based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty."
So if a customs agent has to break your vase to find the coke stashed in it, you cannot sue them for damages. But one could argue that in the case of Ali, the government was negligent, and it wasn't due their needing to "perform a discretionary function or duty."
Greenhouse reports that the main issue at hand in this case however is that the law also excludes "'any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer' will be immune from suit for 'any claim arising in respect of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty or the detention of any goods, merchandise or other property.'"
The current Supreme Court seemed to interpret that "any other law enforcement officer" to mean "no law enforcement officer" ever could be found to be negligent under this law–not just those involved in customs work, which basically renders the entire law a moot point by this logic (any lawyers out there, feel free to correct me on this.).
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his decision that the original law "could easily have written 'any other law enforcement officer acting in a customs or excise capacity'…We are not at liberty to rewrite the statute to reflect a meaning we deem more desirable."
Posted in activism, Media, News, Politics	| Tagged abdus-shahid M.S. Ali, Clarence Thomas, federal tort claims act, heath ledger, linda greenhouse, supreme court	| 1 Reply
Letter to the New York Times on HIV and Gay Youth Editorial
(originally published on www.preventionjustice.org)
Today the New York Times published a batch of letters responding to their editorial on rising HIV rates in young gay men. Since they didn't publish my letter written as CHAMP staff, I thought I'd do it here (This is why we love the Internet!):
The January 14th editorial, "HIV Rises in Young Gay Men," spent a lot of energy blaming 19-year olds, and ignored core issues that hamper effective prevention efforts.
A recent Journal of Adolescent Health study counted youth homelessness as a major factor in HIV risk. The New York City Council commissioned a 2007 report showing that one-third of all homeless youth in NYC were gay.
Congress continues to bankroll abstinence-only education programs in spite of the proven increase risk behavior they cause. Though the HIV epidemic grows worse in black and Latino communities, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) budget has remained stagnant for a decade.
We still have no national HIV prevention plan, 27 years into the epidemic.
Young gay men are not to blame for the profound failure of government to provide comprehensive HIV prevention—nor for the media's continued ignorance of the root causes of HIV.
Posted in Health, Media, News, Politics	| Tagged aids, black, CDC, champ, gay youth, HIV, latino	| 3 Replies
The Dirty Dozens: Race, Civil Rights and the Democrats
It's gettin hot in herr! The gloves are coming off, and people are now being forced to take sides. Senator Hillary Clinton has been trying to spin herself out of a whole she dug when she, at an attempt to dig at Senator Barack Obama, said that while he likes to compare himself to MLK, it took a president–Lyndon B. Johnson–to pass the Civil Rights Act.
The blacks are giving her hell over that comment, and on Sunday's "Meet the Press" she said that the Obama campaign was "deliberately distorting" her comments.
Well I saw the interview when it aired, and no, no one is distorting her comments. She said something really politically foolish trying to one-up Obama, and she got caught out there. I thought at the time that that statement was going to come back to haunt her.
But it doesn't end there. Saturday, Bob Johnson, founder of BET had the unmitigated gall to stand up in front of a crowd and act as the authority on Black people, and defend Clinton's record with Black people. Johnson said
"To me, as an African American, I am frankly insulted the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood; I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book — when they have been involved."
He later said he was not referring to Obama's admitted drug use. As black as the Clintons think they are, they are white enought to not realize how many Black people actually despise Bob Johnson. Many of us blame him for cutting BET news programming (and firing Tavis Smiley), and turning the channel into a video channel replete with images of violent black masculinites, hypersexualized black women, with a hefy dash of homophobia. In fact, THE SAME NIGHT he made these comments, Black folks were protesting outside the taping of a BET Awards show in DC.
Johnson is also the sleaze bag who moved the show Comic View from Los Angeles to Atlanta, allegedly in order to avoid paying unionized rates to comics appearing on the show. Not that I care about that modern day minstrel show, but it was still a low blow.
To make matters even worse, I just saw a debate on PBS' The New Hour between SCLC veteran Rev. Joseph C. Lowry (Team Obama) and Civil Rights vet Rep. John Lewis (Team Clinton). John Lewis had the nerve to defend Clinton on the basis that "The Clintons would never do anything to harm African-Americans." I am not sure if that's a direct quote, but it's definitely not far off. He said it twice.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US?
I can definitely understand why black people may not necessarily be in 100% Barack's camp, but I certainly cannot understand why some of us back Clinton over him–and completely uncritically.
But I said a few posts ago this election was going to help expose the tensions of the civil rights old guarde as they fall out of favor. Not because Black people are more conservative, but because they are now too entrenched in the machine to be effective as agitators. And their tacit support of the Clintons against a Black candidate generally more progressive than either Bill or Hillary, is quite telling. William Jelani Cobb has a great article in the Washington Post about this very issue.
Posted in activism, Media, News, Politics, Television, Theater	| Tagged Barack Obama, BET, bill clinton, black entertainment television, bob johnson, civil rights act, civil rights movement, comic view, Hillary Clinton, john lewis, joseph lowry, lbj, lyndon b johnson, martin luther king, MLK, Tavis Smiley, william jelani cobb	| 6 Replies

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Fabulous 1 level home situated in cozy community just 1 block from Clackamas High school. Open floor plan, neutral colors throughout. 2 bedrooms, but the bonus/office, just needs a closet to be 3rd bedroom. Kitchen has an eating bar, pantry, good storage, and all appliances included. The master suite has French doors, a spacious bathroom with double sinks, water closet plus walk closet. You'll love the jumbo light filled Living room with custom mantle, gas fireplace and ceiling fan. 1596 SF home plus 2 car garage with opener and private fenced back yard all on a corner lot! For more photos, virtual tour or information please go to my website. You won't want to miss this one!
Situated in an excellent location in one of Gresham's finest neighborhoods! 1803 SF of living in this flowing and open home!
Fabulous 4 bedroom, 2 ½ bathroom, 2 car garage nestled in a cul-de-sac in one of Gresham finest neighborhood. Big kitchen with jumbo island, xtra large pantry, laminate flooring & newer can lights. Spacious Living room with GORGEOUS beams and cozy fireplace. Bright, open floor plan with large, fully fenced private back yard with raised beds, above ground pool, shed and, hot tub, and year round usable 12 X 7 covered patio. Newer windows (about 10 years ago), exterior painted in the past year. Across the street from a soothing greenspace and close to schools.
Your in for a treat on this one!


A new Gravis Marketing Poll found Roy Moore (R) leading Doug Jones (D) by 4 points at 49-45, a considerable shift from their previous poll, which found Jones leading Moore by 4 points. It is worth noting that Gravis recently changed their model from +15 R to +23 R. Had the model not changed, the poll would have Jones +2.
On December 12, the people of Alabama will vote for their new Senator. This is a special election due to Jeff Sessions being appointed Attorney General. This race would not normally be close, but the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, was recently accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment by multiple women, saying that he made unwanted moves on them when they were teenagers. More news has since come out backing this up, including a piece stating that Roy Moore was banned from a mall for harassing little girls.
You can find the poll here.


A fire at a townhouse in a posh area of Brentwood caused the evacuation of nearly 40 area residents, and has been deemed arson by fire investigators who announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the arsonist. Emergency responders rushed to the blaze at 3:37 a.m. to find multi-unit dwelling engulfed in flames. The location was under construction at the time of the fire. Adjacent homes and apartment complexes were evacuated. Two of these, a home and an apartment, were virtually destroyed by the fire, which forced the relocation of families. As a result, the evacuees were eventually house at a nearby recreational facility, or found shelter with friends and family.
Almost 175 firefighters responded to the situation, which took an hour and a half to extinguish. Fortunately, there were no injuries or fatalities. However and as the photos below show, the fire caused complete devastation to the dwelling under construction. The structures were in the wood-frame stage of completion.
"We got up grabbed our daughter, basically got everything out, went down there to make sure embers weren't coming our way," he said. "Embers were everywhere. I mean I've never seen a firestorm like that before," said resident Chris Helin to KNBC about having to flee the inferno with his family.
"The amount of heat they put up was pretty extensive," LAFD Assistant Chief Scott Mottram told the station.
Unique Restoration responded quickly to the tragedy and helped residents find shelter. Although one of the people UR helped was without insurance, Unique Restoration helped her save her valuables with emergency packout and storage service.


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Israel's Passover Law À La Saudi Arabia and Iran
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by Penny Tucker
in Law
Oy, you bad human beings can't purchase chametz on Passover? Well, get it via your skulls – this is a Jewish state." That's more or less the smug response every person receives for complaining approximately the so-called chametz regulation, which prohibits the public display of chametz – leaven – on the market or consumption at some stage in Passover.
It's one of Israel's more twisted pieces of law, and it's basically approximately spiritual coercion. So, yes, "it lasts best per week," and there are places that violate the law. But the very truth that this sort of regulation exists is a problem.
When authorities representatives, for instance, the Tel Aviv municipal inspector, penalize agencies that sell chametz, as occurred this yr, the intention isn't only to maintain chametz out of sight in the course of Passover. "Chametz" is a code phrase, and this regulation is set a lot greater than chametz. It's a law that seeks to demonstrate the supremacy of faith in the public sphere.
Who really wants to devour chametz on Passover? A religious individual won't buy it, but alternatively, someone would not agree to adhere to the practice. So why do heretics like me need a special law that includes an exceptional to make it clear that my values and evaluations are of no fee in Israel?
The truth that the chametz law addresses such a seemingly marginal problem as Passover meals, not something like a ban on girls stepping foot outdoor the residence without ahead masking, as in Saudi Arabia and Iran, doesn't make it any less draconian. The principle at the back of both those legal guidelines – the Iranian and the Israeli ones – are equal.
Under the Israeli prison machine, the chametz law is massive. Religious laws are state regulation within the realm of own family members of the family. Even if you're an avowed secular man or woman, the state forces spiritual marriage legal guidelines on you as a formal member of a selected spiritual institution within the population registry. It has not anything to do with your beliefs or dreams. Are you registered as Jewish? Then you need to marry via the Rabbinate and in line with rabbinical law.
The chametz regulation extends this distortion into the financial realm. This is where the real bonanza lies, the large cash. The lifelong wish of every religious birthday party is to bypass a law that would allow religious courts to decide on property problems based totally on the laws of the Torah. After all, they view the country courts as "the courts of the Gentiles," and according to Jewish regulation, the general public existence of Jewish society as a whole must be a situation to the laws of the Torah.
As in every oppressive system, the "phrase of God" on this example supplied using legal interpreters is a cowl for the privilege loved using a certain organization on the fee of others. According to those judges, a female isn't identical to a man. A nonsecular man or woman is advanced to an earthly individual, and each person who isn't Jewish has no status. Thus, the distortions and injustices at the religious courts regarding the circle of relatives' problems become the legal basis in Israel in all spheres. This is precisely the aim of the chametz regulation: to enshrine in regulation the idea that nonsecular law comes before civil rights.
According to some distance-rightist Bezalel Smotrich, this is what it means to be a "Jewish nation," precisely like an "Islamic republic" – a theocracy that forces all its subjects to abide via religious law. In the emerging governing coalition, this approach may additionally win unprecedented electricity. But a Jewish nation shouldn't mean a spiritual kingdom. Instead, it's a kingdom where most of its citizens are Jewish consistent with their personal lights, and that they revel in complete non secular freedom: the freedom to live in line with their values, without country intervention or imposition.
This is what generations of Jews persecuted due to their origins were hoping for: to be a loose human being in our very own land. Here we need to be free. Here, Judaism blossoms to this freedom, which has been one of this rarity in Jewish history, and therefore this Jewish nation is a democracy. If it loses its democracy, if it ramps up the spiritual coercion, it will be a depressing state that embitters the lives of all its residents.
Penny Tucker
I'm not the typical corporate attorney. Instead, I write about things I'm passionate about—including law, finance, and politics. In addition to writing, I've taught a class on writing for lawyers and am a contributing editor for lawrenca.com. To learn more, check out my site: https://lawrenca.com/
Copyright © 2023 Lawrence All Rights Reserved .


Different methods of closure measurement and issues related to the identification of closure points are examined. Based on compliance curves obtained from crack mouth clip gauges and near-tip strain gauges, a systematic assessment of closure measurements has been made by a variety of non-subjective methods. Closure results obtained from compliance curves are also compared with direct crack tip observations. For results obtained on a commercial Al alloy, AA2024-T351 plate, it is shown that curve fitting methods based on a combination of linear and quadratic functions provide particularly sensitive and consistent closure measurements. The potential separation of plane stress and plane strain closure effects that arise in real, three-dimensional specimens is demonstrated via a combination of global compliance measurements and the use of side-grooved specimens.


Our client, a well-respected local Dealership Group, are recruiting a Car Sales Executive for their Dealership in Swindon.
This presents a fantastic opportunity for the right candidate. My client has requested applications from only experienced motor industry sales professionals. If you have Car Sales experience and you are looking to have your hard work rewarded with an excellent bonus scheme, then this position might be for you.
We would really like to talk to you if you feel you demonstrate the drive and dynamism to exceed sales targets and have the interpersonal skills to deliver excellent customer service leading to recommendations and referrals. The ability to follow a sales process whilst adding your personal flare and the determination to achieve every day.
Apply now for this Car Sales Executive Automotive job.


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Mur Murs
After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.
Mur Murs was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata in association with Ciné-Tamaris and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Film Foundation.
France, United States
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda
Blu-Ray Box Set
Agnès Varda in California
Bernard Auroux
Assisted by
Tom Taplin
Lee Alexander
Sabine Mamou
René de la Cruz
Fiddy
Los Illegals
Murals by
John Wehrle
Arthur Mortimer
Jane Golden
Kent Twichell
Richard Wyatt
Willie Herron
Harry Gamboa
Arno Jordan
Judy Baca
Cat Felix
Agnès Varda on Coming to California
The incredible Agnès Varda, now eighty-seven years old, stopped by the Criterion Collection office this past April to talk to us about the amazing, sometimes surreal experience of moving to California from France in the late 1960s and and again in t…
Sneak Peeks — Aug 11, 2015
Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California
The films Agnès Varda made while living on the West Coast of the United States are some of the most searching and challenging of her stellar career.
By Michael Koresky
Varda's LA Comes to Omaha
Agnès Varda's Mur Murs, a diverse and dynamic portrait of public art on the streets of Los Angeles, screens tonight at Omaha's Film Streams.
In Theaters — Mar 15, 2018
Agnès Varda Is Everywhere!
Agnès Varda keeps popping up in the most unexpected places.
Short Takes — Oct 9, 2015
Writer, Director
The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement's mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956's La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.
More Agnès Varda View All
Collector's Set
Cléo from 5 to 7
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Freedom Centers Economic Freedom Study: States With Stricter Lockdowns Didn't Red ...
Study: States With Stricter Lockdowns Didn't Reduce Covid But Did Hurt Americans More
By ALASDAIRE FLEITAS • The Federalist
TIM DENNELL / FLICKR
Two years ago, millions of Americans were summoned into lockdowns, throwing families into financial crises and kicking kids out of school. And it was counterproductive, finds a new study, not only not reducing Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths but inflicting additional harms such as millions of missed cancer screenings, increased suicide and anxiety, and ruining children's educational futures.
"The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero, which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so," says the National Bureau of Economic Research study out this month.
According to the study, a stricter lockdown in states was correlated with the worst Covid outcomes, exactly opposite of what the corporate media and public health establishment told Americans. Fittingly, these freedom-restricting states were mainly Democrat-run. In contrast, the Republican-governed states with shorter and looser lockdowns showed lower Covid mortality while reducing the harms lockdowns cause people.
The study found the worst outcomes were found in New Jersey, Washington DC, and New York state, and the best in Utah, Nebraska, and Vermont.
Due to ill-advised lockdowns, many young Americans were deprived of a consistent education for nearly two years. Even when Covid cases dropped, numerous leftist school boards across the country voted against in-person learning. The study found in-person learning to be safer than remote learning both for children's mental health and Covid prevention. This is because Covid poses a very low risk of danger to children, while lockdowns a high degree of risk.
"School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms," says the NBER study. "One study found that school closures at the end of the previous 2019-2020 school year are associated with 13.8 million years of life lost… The OECD estimates that learning losses from pandemic era school closures could cause a 3% decline in lifetime earnings, and that a loss of just one third of a year of learning has a long-term economic impact of $14 trillion."
According to a study published by Fair Health, during lockdowns children under the age of 18 showed an increase in anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, and intentions to self harm. Despite such evidence, Democrats refuse to take responsibility for damaging Americans' health and well-being.
The NBER study also notes that Florida, a state that reversed its lockdown early and faced years of media criticism for it, had better outcomes than many severely locked down states.
"Although sometimes criticized as having policies that were 'too open,' Florida proved to have average mortality while maintaining a high level of economic activity and 96 percent open schools," the study notes.
Even today, after dozens of studies finding similar results visible as early as April 2020, just one month into U.S. lockdowns, the Biden administration is still reluctant to officially waive Covid restrictions and give kids the childhoods they deserve. The administration recently renewed the face mask requirement for airplane travel and is keeping more Covid restrictions on the table.
Governments and employers also continue restricting economic activity and damaging public trust by mandating certain Covid treatments for people to participate fully in society.
For a party whose representatives cried for the children at the border, what about American children who were robbed of an education and locked inside for nearly two years?
Posted in Economic Freedom |
Tags: children, Covid-19, Economy, healthcare
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Biden Must Stop Choking US Economy


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by AHL PR
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League today announced that Binghamton Senators defenseman Guillaume Lepine has been suspended for three (3) games and forward Vincent Dunn has been suspended for one (1) game as a consequence of their actions in a game at Hershey on Oct. 29.
Lepine was suspended under the provisions of AHL Rule 40.4 after being assessed a game misconduct for physical abuse of an official (Category III). He will miss Binghamton's games Friday (Nov. 4) at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Saturday (Nov. 5) vs. Rochester and Sunday (Nov. 6) at Springfield.
Dunn was suspended under the provisions of AHL Rule 28.1 (supplementary discipline). He will miss Binghamton's game Friday (Nov. 4) at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Tagged: Binghamton Senators
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In addition to our in park activities, during the holiday periods we have a range of both indoor and outdoor activities planned including painting and crafts, outdoor games, movies and more.
We have a large range of self contained family accommodation, caravan/camping sites suitable for small or large families and groups. Check availability for your next holiday here.


Thai Adventure Rafting commissioned a website in 2003. The website served its purpose well for many years.
By tracking their performance, however, Thai Adventure Rafting realised that more and more potential customers were trying to access the site with mobile devices, but not passing the opening page.
It was important for Thai Adventure Rafting that the site should remain recognisable for returning customers, while presenting a cleaner, fresher design.
At the same time, the site should become accessible for mobile users.
A social presence should also be emphasised.


House evaluations are being held at Yara Center. Evaluations does not cost to attend, and is not mandatory. Evaluations are held to make sure that during the player draft the teams are matched up evenly.
Please come half an hour before your scheduled time to register.


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The Practice of Learning-focused Leadership - Learning-Focused Leadership and Leadership Support
The Wallace Foundation / Knowledge Center / The Practice of Learning-focused Leadership - Learning-Focused Leadership and Leadership Support
Learning-Focused Leadership and Leadership Support: Meaning and Practice in Urban Systems
Introduction: The Challenges of Learning-focused Leadership in Urban Schools and Districts
The Study of Leadership for Learning Improvement
The Practice of Learning-focused Leadership
Focusing on learning
Investing in instructional leadership
Reinventing leadership practice
Establishing new working relationships
Using evidence as a medium for leadership
Sources and Forms of Leadership Support
The Web of Support for Learning-focused Leadership Practice
Concluding Observations: New Work and Continuing Challenges
Methodological Notes
Click here to download the full report:
In these districts and schools, focusing leadership on the improvement of learning— everyone's learning—meant several things at once. First of all, almost by definition, the improvement of teaching and learning became the business of the school and district, and those exercising leadership in central office positions or within the schools were relentless in communicating this message. Second, to make this message more than a rhetorical exercise, they purposefully invested resources—all kinds of resources—not just money (and often not much money), but also time, materials, expertise, and even autonomy in this pursuit, with a special emphasis on instructional leadership as a primary target of investment. Third, they sought to reinvent leadership work practice so that teaching and learning improvement stayed at the center of everyone's attention and efforts. Fourth, they created new kinds of relationships within and between levels that resulted in better coordination of effort and attended to particular improvement needs which differed from school to school, teacher to teacher, or leader to leader. And finally, they made evidence of many kinds a medium of leadership work and a constant reference point in their interactions with teachers, each other, and stakeholders. Next we briefly describe these facets of leadership practice, highlighted in Figure 3 below, in light of what the study strands learned.
Figure 3. Central Practices of Learning-focused Leadership
1. Learning-focused leadership means a persistent, public focus at all levels of the educational system on improving the quality of instruction.
Not surprisingly, given the way we selected study sites, the districts and schools we studied made the improvement of teaching and learning a major emphasis, but the degree to which learning improvement goals were owned and internalized by educational leaders at various levels of the system was striking. In turn, these leaders projected a persistent, public focus on learning improvement, which reinforced the ownership of the message.
First of all, it should be understood that in an era of high-stakes accountability, actors throughout the system would be paying close attention to measures of student achievement and to the consequences that flow from high and low performance on these measures. But doing so can become an exercise in compliance and regulation, more than a matter of professional commitment and daily practice, and educators can easily lose sight of learning goals. Here are some of the manifestations we saw of leaders communicating and internalizing a focus on learning improvement at school and district levels:
District leaders were communicating clear expectations for learning improvement. School leaders, on their part, were internalizing these messages, though often giving additional meaning to desired learning improvements (e.g., as more than the test-score improvements called for by the system).
School leaders were making use of the district's (and state's) commitment to learning improvement as a lever for accomplishing improvement goals in the school. Specifically, these leaders leveraged district or state accountability requirements as a tool in their pursuit of the school's learning improvement agenda.
Learning improvement messages from both district and school were being further internalized in within-school accountability systems that held school staff jointly responsible for student learning.
Especially in the districts committed to central office transformation strategies, district reform initiatives were developing a different working culture across the central office (and often a different organization of units, roles, and work) that placed primary emphasis on improving teaching and learning in schools. On their part, district-level staff members in various positions were beginning to orient their daily work to this expectation.
In sum, across all levels in the sites we studied, it was clear that improving student learning was the main business of the school and district. School-based educators perceived the whole system, themselves included, to be about learning improvement. Recall the new third grade teacher with which this report began: Her understanding of the priorities for learning in her school, transmitted to her by her school leadership team and reinforced by district leaders' explicit expectations, was a natural consequence of a persistent, public focus on learning improvement.
2. Learning-focused leadership means investing in people and positions within and across schools whose primary work is instructional leadership.
A priority on learning improvement is one thing to assert, and another to enact. A central aspect of leaders' work at various levels of the systems we studied was decisions about staffing resources, as well as related resources (e.g., money, time, expertise), that put people in position to carry out instructional leadership work.
As they allocated staffing and other resources for learning improvement, leaders often thought of themselves as "investing" resources—that is, they took a longterm view of their efforts to support learning improvement and looked for returns on their investment over time. An elementary principal who had found a way to assign two certificated teachers to each of his kindergarten through second grade classrooms articulated this idea clearly:
A lot of people think I'm crazy and ask: How can you possibly afford it? It's a long-term investment. I really believe strongly that this is going to help those kids—that I don't have to have after-school programs and Saturday programs and test prep programs and this or that program for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, which is really not going to merit much gain….I think by making the investment in the early grades, I'm making an investment that's going to pay off in the long run, and I think I'll see it on the other end….
To facilitate investment in learning improvement, districts established "investment frameworks" that specified where initiative for improvement activity lay and the degree of flexibility, responsibility, and discretion that resided at each level of the system. School leaders like the one speaking above operated within a framework that emphasized school-level autonomy; yet even his counterparts in other districts, operating under more centralizing investment frameworks, were nonetheless thinking and acting with a long-term approach to resources.
A broader set of investment decisions, made at the central office level, directed staffing and other resources to learning improvement goals and to the task of building human capacity for instructional leadership. An especially common first step in this regard was to build a cadre of people engaged in instructional leadership within and also across schools. Here, some districts allocated a category of positions serving multiple schools—for example, the 42 "Model Teacher Leaders" in Atlanta, each of whom worked with a particular network of schools.
Alternatively, other districts invested more indirectly in instructional leadership by creating a "market" for cross-school instructional leadership support, as in the New York City/Empowerment Schools arrangement, where principals purchased the support services of a Network Team, experienced administrators on call to assist the school with instructional and operational matters. The net effect of this latter arrangement was to put in place a cadre of staff positioned to exercise instructional leadership across schools.
An underlying commitment to equity prompted district and school leaders on numerous occasions to make differential investments, allocating a proportionately greater—hence, an unequal—share of staffing or other resources to students, classrooms, schools, or other units that exhibited greater needs. These equity-focused investments were of different types, but regardless of type, they often generated a predictable "pushback" from internal or external stakeholders who saw their advantages eroding or somehow compromised. To manage the politics of this pushback, leaders often needed to go to great lengths, engaging in equity-focused political work that played out across a long-term timeframe.
The net effect of these investments was to put in place staff who engaged solely or centrally in instructional leadership work, some within a single school, others across schools. Two patterns were especially noteworthy.
The proliferation of individuals engaged in within-school instructional leadership. 9 Within schools, a striking number and variety of individuals exercised instructional leadership, in addition to the school principal or any assistant principals whose work was explicitly instructionally focused, under arrangements that allocated some portion of their assignment to leadership work. While titles varied (e.g., literacy, math, or technology coach; instructional liaison specialist; demonstration teacher; assessment coordinator or data specialist), as did the proportion of their assignment devoted to instructional leadership and classroom teaching or other duties, these "learning-focused teacher leaders" provided the bulk of the within-house professional development, offered one-on-one instructional coaching to classroom teachers, and engaged in various forms of work with evidence and inquiry related to the school's improvement goals. Typically more than one such person exercised instructional leadership within each school, and in the larger schools (e.g., elementary schools serving more than 1,000 students), eight or more individuals might comprise the school's instructional leadership cadre.
The dedication of specific central office staff, sometimes supplemented by staff from third-party organizations, to help school leaders strengthen their instructional leadership. Investment in a cross-school instructional leadership cadre took several forms. Under some arrangements, district central office staff (e.g., specialists from other units concerned with curriculum or professional development) and an external organization working with the central office (e.g., consultants with expertise in a particular subject area such as literacy) offered group-based professional development for school administrators, teacher leaders, or classroom teachers, alongside some individual instructional coaching of teachers, often in demonstration mode, so that other teachers might learn, too.
Alternatively, and especially in the three districts seeking to transform their central offices, the district invested in new central office positions dedicated to strengthening principals' instructional leadership though one-on-one partnership work with school principals or interaction with them in networked groups. In two of the three transforming districts we studied, this cadre of central office staff (who we collectively referred to as "Instructional Leadership Directors")10 was supplemented by a small team of administrators (such as Atlanta's Model Teacher Leaders, noted previously) who helped with the instructional leadership work.
3. Learning-focused leadership means reinventing leadership practice within schools and the central office.
The work of the instructional leadership cadre, both within and across schools, is often new, ambiguous, and difficult. It calls on a knowledge base and skill set that many educators, no matter how accomplished in teaching and administrative or support roles, have not fully developed or even conceived. In a fundamental sense, the school and district educators we studied had to reinvent their leadership practice, in varying degrees, to provide effective forms of instructional leadership. This process was most visible in the work of school-based teacher leaders and the central office administrators who interfaced most directly with schools and school principals, but it was also visible for many principals and other supervisory leaders, who came to a new understanding of what "instructional leadership" meant for their daily work.
Learning-focused teacher leaders. Teachers who came to exercise instructional leadership in schools were uniquely positioned for this work. Though some schools had a history of using content-area coaches, in few instances did a school staff have a template for understanding what the teacher leaders were supposed to do and where they fit in the organization. Operating in between the school principal and the classrooms, teacher leaders developed their leadership practice on several fronts.
First of all, they became part of an instructional leadership team, and therein figured out how their different strengths might complement those of other team members in pursuit of the school's learning improvement agenda. Then, in interaction with others in the school, they negotiated their middle ground position in which they often acted as a bridge between the classroom and the school's supervisory leaders (though they were not part of the supervisory process), or even between the classroom and the larger learning improvement agenda of the district. Finally, assuming they were able to establish a good working relationship with classroom teachers—not a foregone conclusion, as they often faced resistance initially— they engaged classroom teachers in identifying and addressing problems of instructional practice.
Principals and other school-based supervisory leaders. Working in collaboration with the teacher leaders, but in different ways, the school principal and other supervisory leaders (e.g., assistant principals who took on instructional support as a central part of their practice) faced often unfamiliar aspects of their jobs as well, even though they might have engaged in instructional leadership in the past. In this regard, their leadership practice was exercised in somewhat different ways from the teacher leaders, in several arenas.
To begin with, supervisory leaders in the school had to lay the groundwork for learning improvement by assembling a high-quality staff, establishing and articulating a school-wide learning improvement agenda, and building school-wide trust and a culture among school staff that emphasized the need to join forces, work in teams, and develop collaborative solutions to the challenges facing the school. Though they did connect individually with teachers in a variety of ways, the capacity of supervisory leaders to "reach" classroom practice was greatly augmented to the extent they could forge, and work through, a viable instructional leadership team, rather than as a collection of individuals who exercised instructional leadership without knowledge of, or coordination with, each others' efforts.
Central office staff who worked directly with school principals. Though not positioned in the school, the central office staff whose purpose was to help school principals improve their instructional leadership worked one-on-one with a small number of principals and with the same administrators in networked groups, while offering group-based assistance to these principals. Especially evident in the districts seeking to transform their central offices, the activities of these staff, in varying degrees, displayed leadership practices well established by theory and research in other sectors as likely to support professional learning, among them:11
Modeling ways of thinking and acting as an instructional leader, such as demonstrating how to have challenging conversations with teachers while reflecting on the demonstrations to help leaders see what was modeled and why.
Developing and using tools in one-on-one assistance relationships, such as teaching and learning frameworks or protocols that guide the use of data and evidence in instructional improvement.
Not all participants came ready to do this work, but regardless of their backgrounds, central office staff spent a great deal of time, individually and collectively, figuring out how to allocate and spend its time productively with school leaders.
Others in the system engaged in comparable efforts to discover or reinvent how their work could be oriented more specifically and directly toward the improvement of teaching and learning. Once again, in the districts emphasizing central office transformation, staff and units not involved in direct daily interaction with schools (e.g., the Human Resources department or units responsible for facilities) were mining the evidence emerging from the direct assistance relationships described previously, as well as from other sources, for insights into how they could improve their performance in relation to instructional improvement goals.
4. Learning-focused leadership means differentiated, responsive relationships within schools and between schools and the central office.
The new forms of leadership practice just described imply a pattern of connection among district, school, and classroom that differs from typical practice in large school districts in two respects. First, most of the districts we studied placed emphasis on differentiating their approach to particular schools and school leaders to maximize their ability to help each school leader improve his or her practice. Similarly, within schools, supervisory leaders were often seeking a more informal and tailored way of interacting with particular teachers or other school staff than would normally occur in supervisory relations. Second, the relationships within schools, and between them and the central office, were intended to be more twoway and more responsive than is often the case in school systems. This showed up in our sites in several ways.
More differentiated and responsive central office-school relationships. Most dramatically seen in districts committed to fundamental transformation of the central office, both the design and the practice of the relations between central office administrators and school principals featured a differentiated approach to each school's unique needs, interests, and challenges, combined with increased access to central office resources. In the Atlanta Public Schools transformation design, for example, the newly created School Reform Team (SRT) offered a streamlined and accessible main point of contact between a designated network of schools and other central office units. On its part, the SRT targeted particular and often different learning improvement needs within each of the schools in its network.
More responsive supervisor-teacher relationships inside the school. Within the school, the attempts by supervisory leaders to redefine supervision indicated a shift toward greater responsiveness. This shift moved the relationship between the teacher and their supervisors from the annual formal, summative exercise to a more elaborated relationship involving various formal and informal interactions, mostly more formative than summative, intended to generate conversations about instruction and also to keep supervisory leaders well informed about what was happening in classrooms.
5. Learning-focused leaders use evidence of many kinds as a main medium of leadership work and a constant reference point in their interaction with teachers, each other, and stakeholders.
Data of various kinds, such as assessments, environmental surveys, student work, counts of work completion or behavioral issues, occupied a prominent place in the leadership practice and working relationships described above. A series of intentional actions by leaders at all levels sought to make evidence about instruction, learning, leadership, or surrounding conditions a medium of conversation concerning learning improvement, as well as a device for improving instruction itself. Naturally enough, the test score data featured by state and district accountability systems occupied a central place in the data use story, but the districts and schools we studied went beyond this evidence source to develop a far richer form of evidence-informed practice.
To actively encourage teaching and leadership that was informed by evidence, the states and districts we studied invested heavily in data infrastructure, data literacy, and new forms of data and evidence. Resources for this purpose were invested in various ways, among them, to set up online assessment systems that facilitated user access to assessment results, establish district- and school-level positions to help users learn how to understand and use data sources, institute survey measures for capturing feedback on school climate or leadership work, and create observational protocols and other data-focused tools to guide instructional leadership efforts in the schools.
The work of central office administrators with school principals both facilitated the principals' use of evidence and, at the same time, became an evidence source for improving practice in other parts of the central office. In a straightforward way, the central office staff members who worked most directly with school principals to strengthen their instructional leadership were often in a good position to help school principals or others get smarter about what data might be saying about their schools' performance. A principal comments on how useful this could be:
There's also benefit to the data work that we did in our network meetings that I immediately took…straight to my staff and had really meaningful conversations about data, about the benchmark assessments, about line item analysis, about looking at this data and how to use this data to inform what we're doing and make decisions. And a lot of that is…easier to do as a result of the work that we're doing in network meetings. We do it anyway, but it just helps get other protocols and other systems where they're analyzing it and just approaching it differently with our staff. So I get professional development there.
This kind of teaching about evidence use also happened in the context of oneon- one assistance relationships, in relation to any problem of leadership practice that data potentially informed. At the same time that school leaders were gaining facility with data through these encounters, the resulting information about each school's progress, struggles, and improvement work provided the rest of the central office with an important feedback source that it would not otherwise have had.
On their part, principals made use of the data furnished to them by the districts (and the new learning about how to work with it) to both focus and anchor their improvement work. Furthermore, in many instances, they took the matter one step further, by creating within-school data systems that provided continual feedback loops to teachers, teacher leaders, and the school's supervisory leaders. A principal describes her version of such a system:
We are a data-driven school….The data are used to drive the instruction, to make sure that students who are not performing are receiving remediation in order to get to where they should be. Now [the facilitator] and [my instructional liaison specialist] look more at the "target tracker" and our "red alert" forms that are turned in weekly, which show student progress….They're assessment documents documenting where the children are, what interventions are being used to help move them, if they are performing [low], where they should be on certain standards….Red alerts alert us to see which students are having weaknesses, and as I stated, teachers are to provide interventions or strategies to help move them forward.
Not all schools created such elaborate data systems. In some instances, the "system" only consisted of a Scantron machine that enabled the school to get instant access to all the required assessments across the year, without having to wait for the sometimes lengthy processing by the district central office or outside vendors. But whatever the arrangement and routines, school principals tried in various ways to have data become a medium of school-based educators' interactions over issues of learning improvement. That happened throughout the schools we studied, sometimes approximating an inquiry cycle (in some instances guided by central office staff), but other times consisting of an attempt to interrogate the data for clues about how to improve teaching and learning.
Teacher leaders found data to be a particularly useful entry point into instructional conversations with teachers, who were often reluctant initially to accept or engage in a relationship with a person occupying a middle-ground position in the school. Teacher leaders often found they could redirect teachers' attention from a defensive posture or self-conscious worry about their inadequacies toward a problem-solving process that took specific student learning issues or hard-to-teach curricular topics as the starting point for conversation. Teacher leaders were also in a position to decipher assessment data results for teachers who didn't understand what the district data system was sending them.
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I am someone who LOVES to make New Years Resolutions. I love to write them down and really think about what I want to accomplish in the new year. Think about it, you have a completely blank slate.
Forget about the past and just think about what you want to become in this new chapter of your life. Of course my goals always revolve around money, family time, personal development and WEIGHT! I keep my resolution lists and looking back I always had that dreaded number on the scale I wanted to get back to and I just knew it would happen that year. Well I can tell you that this past year I hit that number. I have teetered a bit away from it recently but I know now I will hit it again. You know why, I realized how to take care of ME. Not to do a fad diet, take a magic pill, starve myself and only eat meat. I learned that I needed to get healthy from the inside out and only when that happened would I lose the weight and be able to keep it off for good. I have not deprived myself, have not given up favorite foods and am not a slave to the gym. I am living my life, just a healthier and realistic version of it. I learned that if I splurge on a big meal at Outback that the next day I will take a few more steps and make really good food choices.
As I prepare to make my goals for 2017 I will still have a goal associated with weight on that list. But this year it will not be a number on paper that will depress me when I do not achieve it. It will be this......"continue on my health journey". This means to me that I will continue with what I am doing, keep getting healthy. If the scale goes down or I lose another pant size hooray! But that will not determine if I was successful or not.
If you are ready to make 2017 YOUR year to be the healthiest shoot me a quick comment or email. Let me be your cheerleader along the way!


You can have your say anytime and anywhere. Whether that's at home, on the train, or at your local library. All you need is internet access and an email address. Scroll down to see projects you can have your say on.


It depends on age, amenities and location, however according to rentals.com they range from $880 - $1,250. The inventory on rentals.com is very low right now for rentals in Thornton, there may be others available from real estate agents and rental management companies. Summer is typically the time of year with the most leases ending, so there may be more selection at that time. With rental vacancy ratios very low and rents going up, if usually makes a lot of sense to buy instead of rent especially in the current market.
Maybe this is a stupid question but why would a realtor handle rentals? Is that normal? I've never heard of that (but I don't know anything about being a realtor!). And how would a person go about finding a rental through a realtor?


the other a BLACK SNOWFLAKE CASSEROLES OVEN-FREEZER SET IN BOX 50'S which realized just under $570 Canadian.
Both sets were in pristine mint in box condition, were in fact still in the boxes and had everything they originally came with, factors that are very important to collectors.
I would imagine these graphic dramatic patterns along with their relative rarity in terms of Pyrex factored in as well but these are definitely items you want to be keeping your eyes open for when you're cleaning out kitchen contents.
November 2014: Discussing valuable household items with CBC's Steven and Chris.


A visit to Seattle isn't complete without these destinations.
Chihuly's art fronts the Space Needle.
• For an unparalleled panorama of the Seattle's skyline, head to Kerry Park in the historic Queen Anne neighborhood, named for its iconic hill. This small green patch packs a big punch on clear days, when snowcapped Mount Rainier comes into view.
• If incredible machines make your heart soar, spend a day at the Museum of Flight, where you can gape at the remarkable aircraft and spacecraft on display, including the supersonic Concorde; a replica of the Fokker Dr.I, a famous World War I fighter plane; and an Apollo command module.
• Home to one of the nation's longest-running farmers' markets, Pike Place Market is where locals and visitors go to shop and nosh. You'll find the famous flying fish (mongers toss them around for entertainment), pillowy piroshkis, pungent teas, and produce galore from more than 500 vendors.
• Built for the 1962 world's fair, Seattle Center encompasses the city's greatest hits: the Space Needle, Chihuly Garden and Glass, and the EMP Museum. You can also hop on the monorail, see a chunk of the Berlin Wall in the food court, or make a splash at the domed International Fountain, its geysers blasting some 120 feet into the air.
For more on Seattle, read our Portland or Seattle? article.


Want to learn how to use macros in Microsoft Excel 2016 to speed up repetitive tasks? This tutorial will help you get off and running with Excel macros.
You'll need the Developer tab to record macros.
Open Excel and select "File" > "Options" > "Customize the Ribbon".
Under "Main Tabs", check the "Developer" box.
Provide a name for your macro. Give it a shortcut key if you wish. This will enable you to hold the CTRL key and press another key to launch the macro.
Choose where to store the macro.
Provide a description if desired.
Select "OK" when you're ready to start recording.
Perform the keystrokes and mouse clicks that you would like your macro to perform. Your steps will now be recorded.
When you're ready to stop recording, click off of the last cell, then select "Stop Recording".
If you have receive a spreadsheet or workbook file that contains the macros you wish to use, simply open the file in Excel. it will then be available to use from "Developer" > "Macros". Simply select the workbook in the "Macros in" section of the screen, choose the macro, then select "Run".
Navigate to the file you wish to import, then select "Open".
Select the "Developer" tab and choose "Macros".
Select the macro you wish to use, then select "Run".