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cheap airline ticket from sacramento to killeen texas today phone number 1-800-299-7264

The Same Toxic Christian Right Theology Supports Both the Online Bullying I Experienced and the Cruel Anti-Trans Policy in TX — And it’s Not Remotely Fringe

…n Right and the GOP—an assault that’s advancing to disturbing degrees in a number of Republican-controlled states, even if a court in Texas has stayed the investigation into the Does, for now. Apart from that context, I wouldn’t bother writing a column about an incident of online bullying, something I and every vocal marginalized social media user with any visibility, along with every journalist who covers controversial topics—especially if the jo…

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Art(ful) History in Texas

…the new language.  In addition to the issue of supplemental materials, the Texas Education Agency is now scrambling to complete its end-of-chapter tests, which are based on the new standards. Since the vote, church and state watchdog groups have been contemplating their next step. In the meantime, the Texas American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties organizations are urging members to contact publishers asking them to not kowtow to t…

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Texas Woman Opposes Divorce Citing ‘Blood Covenant’; Will Anti-Sharia Law Get in the Way?

…s. However, Shawn’s case may run into another, less obvious legal barrier: Texas’ “anti-sharia” law, which went into effect in 2017. Texas’s H.B. 45 (codified at § 22.0041 and § 22.022 of the Texas Government Code), states that “litigants in actions under the Family Code involving a marriage relationship… are protected against violations of constitutional rights and public policy in the application of foreign law.” The bill doesn’t explicitly refe…

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Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

…nfairness. We have put in our part—we went to the airport, we paid for our ticket, we spent our time, we stood in line—and then the flight was cancelled. So there’s a discrepancy between the inputs and the outputs, there’s a sense of injustice and unfairness—that’s why compensation is so important. That’s also why dissatisfied customers at restaurants want to get their dish for free, or get a free glass of wine, or a free dessert, because that bal…

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Court Rules Against Texas Education Employee Forced To Resign Over Forwarded Email

…inability to publicly speak out for or against a potential subject for the Texas curriculum would be construed or perceived as the State’s endorsement of a particular religion.” The full decision can be read here. Steve Schafersman of the Texas Citizens for Science, a bulldog on these issues, disagrees with the court’s decision. The National Center for Science Education’s coverage is here. Meanwhile, fast forward a few years, the Texas Board of Ed…

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Fundamentalist-Led Texas History Standards Get ‘D’ from Conservative Think Tank

…new social studies curriculum, The Thomas Fordham Institute has handed the Texas Board of Education a ‘D’ and a stern lecture.  But the far-right learning Christian fundamentalist board members, who rewrote the curriculum last year to create a version of American history in their own image, can’t honestly dismiss the study as the work of pointy-headed liberal elites. The Fordham Institute is a conservative think tank that advocates for school choi…

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Set to Privilege Christianity in Public Schools, Texas Sends a Message About Who is Welcome — And Who is Not

…tate more clearly, the message that state officials wish to communicate to Texas schoolchildren, which is that Texas is a state for White, heteronormative, conservative Christians. Texas, however, is much more religiously diverse than this message would suggest—and far more diverse than it was when I grew up there in the 1970s. According to the Pew Research Center, only 31% of adult Texans are evangelical Protestant, the constituency that would mo…

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A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

…We have an unprecedented access to cheap goods, yet we must recognize that cheap goods are cheaply made. I am not speaking of quality, I am speaking of cheap labor. We must recognize that through the act of shopping, whether it is for an article of clothing, a toy, a pint of strawberries, or even our morning cup of coffee, we participate in a global economy that values profit over people. Disposable goods are made by disposable people, faceless in…

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Corporations Have Consciences and Contraceptives Are Cheap: Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court

At oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties, Inc. v. Sebelius this morning, the Supreme Court justices spent a great deal of time questioning the lawyers in the case about whether corporations have a religious conscience, and whether Congress intended to protect it when enacting the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). What was most striking, though, was how all three female justices, Sonia So…

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Invited by Allah

…to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to the famou…

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