Tony Bennett is currently the Florida Education Commissioner. Before that, however, he had the same job in Indiana. He developed a no nonsense reputation supporting charter schools and vouchers and pledging to hold failing or substandard schools accountable. But when the Charter School run a Republican mega-donor, Christel DeHaan, came up with an embarasing grade of a C on Bennett’s A-F system, he and his scrambled to find a way to make that C turn into an A. Here’s the story.

As you saw, Anthony Weiner dropped like a stone in the latest Quinnipiac poll. He fell from a 1st place 26% to a 4th place 16%. But I wanted to flag what I think is the more interesting detail in the poll. Read More

So it turns out that Fox woman interviewing Reza Aslan is their religion correspondent!

Anthony Weiner’s 10-point drop in the latest poll of the New York mayor’s race bumps him from first place down to fourth.

You saw that jaw-dropping Fox interview with Reza Aslan. One little extra nugget on that: the interviewer, Lauren Green, isn’t just your average Fox News interviewer dingbat – she’s actually their ‘religion correspondent’. Now here’s Aslan commenting on just what he thought was going to happen when he showed up on Fox. Short version: he pretty much knew what to expect.

But flipping around Twitter a few moments ago, I noticed that the right-wing blogs are all giddy about supposedly catching Aslan misrepresenting his academic credentials. So they’ve got him, and all that. Read More

I’m a bit late to this. But man, if you haven’t seen this, this is beyond amazing. It’s an interview with Reza Aslan, a religion scholar, with expertise on the New Testament, who also happens to be a Muslim. But, well, he went on Fox News. I don’t know what else to say about this. You must watch this. It will … well, just watch. Read More

Good Sahil Kapur piece about why Capitol Hill Republicans, especially in the House, are not going to allow any rehabilitation of the Voting Rights Act. The political gains of allowing the formerly covered states to back to the same old ways of limiting minority and poor voting are simply too great. The head of the relevant House Committee, Chairman Trent Franks told reporters “I am just of the opinion today that we should do as the court said and that is to not focus on punishing the past but on building a better future.” Read More

An new study released by the Associated Press: “Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”

When I first read the headline of the piece, I thought the 4/5th part had been a typo.

Young Republican activist: “We don’t have to lose our principles. But we have to have a conversation on all these issues so we don’t leave Democrats to say we’re just old white men and racist, bigoted homophobes.”

Pope Francis: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis asked.