The measure would have required doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic

 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortions violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.

The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle.

Two Louisiana doctors and a medical clinic sued to get the law overturned. They said it would leave only one doctor at a single clinic to provide services for nearly 10,000 women who seek abortions in the state each year.

The challengers said the requirement was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. With the vote of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing any medical benefits. Kennedy was succeeded by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump, who was among the four dissenters Monday.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the Texas decision, also wrote Monday's ruling. The law poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and offers no significant health benefits "and therefore imposes an undue burden on a woman's constitutional right to choose to have an abortion."

Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. 

"The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Loui

The Center for Reproductive Rights said the burdens on access to abortions in Louisiana would have been even more restrictive than those in Texas, where about half of the state's abortion clinics were forced to close. It also said the law was unnecessary, because only a small fraction of women experience medical problems after abortions, and when they do, they seek treatment at hospitals near where they live, not ones near the medical clinic.

"As Republicans continue their assault nationally on Roe v. Wade, they are also fighting on a state by state basis," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "Louisiana's draconian abortion ban was a clear and intentional violation of the Constitution, explicitly designed to permanently destroy women's reproductive freedoms and dismantle their right to make their own decisions about their health, bodies and timing and size of their families."

Louisiana had defended the law, arguing that the requirement to have an association with a nearby hospital would provide a check on a doctor's credentials. But opponents said a hospital's decision about whether to grant admitting privileges had little to do with a doctor's competence and more to do with whether the doctor would admit a sufficient number of patients.

siana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

Can Art Classes Help Your Kid?

Researchers have been conducting researches for quite some time on the effect of art classes that is seen on the kids. It has been seen that future career growth and success is determined by the way the art education is imparted and it can also work as a ground work for basic lifestyle that the kid would follow. Art classes for kids Thornhill has seen to do wonders when it comes to has seen to do wonders when it comes to make the kid more creative, have a full blown knowledge of the world. These classes are also seen to give the children a means to become expressive and also strengthen their self-esteem.

Art lessons Vaughan has been seen to greatly help the children greatly in getting their creative edge out. It is observed that children have naturally deep curiosity when it comes to art and craft when they are introduced to it at a young age. It is a common misconception that people are born with the skill that is needed to excel in the field of art be it music, dancing, painting or any other form. This is not true that the skill is genetic, this is developed by sheer will power and encouragement. Art education also helps the children in expressing their desires and thoughts in a much nicer way.

Along with their creativity the children are also seen to have an increase in their concentration. When properly encouraged, children are seen to develop an uncanny focus for art and this is when you can be sure that they have developed their concentration to a much better level. Interest in the art forms also encourages the children to ignore the distractions and focus on the task at hand. It has been seen that pottery classes Woodbridge also helps in improving the coordination of the children who have enrolled in the art classes. As the child transfers the images of what he wants to achieve with the clay, his hand and eye coordination improves as they learn to work together. These classes develop this coordination as a fun activity in the beginning but as the time progresses, this eventually comes as a second nature for your kid. Painting classes Vaughan not only provides the children with a way to improve their skill but also gives them a platform where they can get the feel of what success tastes like.

Painting murals gives students empowering role in protest movement

I'm reading "Painting murals gives students empowering role in protest movement" (Wisconsin State Journal):

For Madison-area youths such as Nelson Lashley, who just turned 10, participating in the Black Lives Matter protest movement by painting murals on boards covering Downtown businesses was empowering.

“I’ve been feeling good that I am in the protest,” said Nelson, who will be a fifth-grader at Lowell Elementary School. “It’s kind of beautiful how you can show what you’re doing through a peaceful form like art.”

The murals were painted on plywood put up after windows were broken during protests following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Many still stand.

Nelson painted with his father, Yorel Lashley, who said the opportunity aligned with the messages he tries to instill through his Drum Power company, which teaches drumming but also strives to develop the whole person.

As a musician, Lashley liked the idea of trying something in the visual arts. The project also was personal.
 

Ask the schoolchildren to paint the murals "Black Life Matters" for downtown Madison.

 

     As murals were being painted at the end of the school year, SJ Hemmerich, art teacher at Randall Elementary School, created a slide presentation of them. Hemmerich then presented it to students and as a last assignment asked , “If you could design your own mural for (Black Lives Matter), what would it be?” Then Hemmerich got the idea of why not do it for real.

    Hemmerich, like other teachers, reached out to “Black and brown students” to get involved. Hemmerich got permission to work on one large mural and five panels located near each other. ... Hemmerich also sent an email out to art teachers in the Madison School District to recruit more help beyond Randall and wound up with more than 135 students and some staff members.

    “I am really passionate about social justice work,” Hemmerich said. “I thought it would be a really good way to get students involved.”...

    Monique Karlen, art teacher at La Follette High School, said she started by recruiting some of her students and then got other help from students from Middleton and East high schools...

The only mention of parents in the article is about one student who said that her parents worry about her participation in the protests, so the mural-painting is a good, safe alternative. But I don't think teachers should be recruiting children to engage in political activism — even if it's artistic — without first involving the parents and getting their consent. I don't think adults should put any sort of pressure on children to take a political position and to do political work — even if it's artwork. Teachers should not be exploiting their access to children for any political purpose. They are given access to our children for the purpose of education, and it is a solemn trust that should never be violated. 

 

Ask the schoolchildren to paint the murals "Black Life Matters" for downtown Madison

   

 I'm reading "Painting murals gives students empowering role in protest movement" (Wisconsin State Journal):

 As murals were being painted at the end of the school year, SJ Hemmerich, art teacher at Randall Elementary School, created a slide presentation of them. Hemmerich then presented it to students and as a last assignment asked , “If you could design your own mural for (Black Lives Matter), what would it be?” Then Hemmerich got the idea of why not do it for real.

    Hemmerich, like other teachers, reached out to “Black and brown students” to get involved. Hemmerich got permission to work on one large mural and five panels located near each other. ... Hemmerich also sent an email out to art teachers in the Madison School District to recruit more help beyond Randall and wound up with more than 135 students and some staff members.

    “I am really passionate about social justice work,” Hemmerich said. “I thought it would be a really good way to get students involved.”...

    Monique Karlen, art teacher at La Follette High School, said she started by recruiting some of her students and then got other help from students from Middleton and East high schools...

The only mention of parents in the article is about one student who said that her parents worry about her participation in the protests, so the mural-painting is a good, safe alternative. But I don't think teachers should be recruiting children to engage in political activism — even if it's artistic — without first involving the parents and getting their consent. I don't think adults should put any sort of pressure on children to take a political position and to do political work — even if it's artwork. Teachers should not be exploiting their access to children for any political purpose. They are given access to our children for the purpose of education, and it is a solemn trust that should never be violated.

Tips to Improve Academics of a Child

The learning capability varies from child to child. To enable kids to make conceptual changes in thinking, the teacher should make learning fun, building lectures in story formats. This will help them regain and recall the academic information increasing learning efficiency. Research shows that actively participating in your child's nurturing can boost the learning abilities rather than your own qualification or amount of money the family makes.

Create a positive impact on the child's academic performance by following the ways mentioned below:

Encourage and introduce your child to different learning styles:

Help your child become aware of different fundamental learning styles like Audio, Visual, Verbal, Logical, and Social. Guide him through his preferred learning style, it can be a dominant or a mixture of learning styles.

2. Focus on your child's interest:

If you want your child to ace in academics, help him explore various subjects and topics of his interest. If your child seems to be interested in football, take a personal interest in helping him learn football.

3. Make academics easier through game-based learning:

Games, when used as an educational tool, can turn to create new horizons for kids. It provides opportunities for the development of non-cognitive skills and deeper learnings. It provides motivation to kids for term-based learnings favourable in a classroom setting.

4. Focus on learning not performance:

Focus on learning will give your child the opportunity to solidify his learnings by putting it in his own words. Instead of being concerned about your child's performance and the result, make him understand that actual learning is more important than the test grades. This will boost the confidence and learning capabilities in your child.

5. Create a learning space at home:

Set up an environment more adaptable for concentration that is free from all distractions like loud music, TV noise, toys is important. Also, keeping them away from mobile phones, browsing the internet in this technological era while performing a particular task can help in child's concentration.

6. Celebrate Achievements:

It is important for kids to get proper recognition for strengthening the fundamentals of better learning capabilities. It is very important to recognize small-small achievements and celebrate them. This will act as a motivating factor for your child's learning.

7. Create an environment open for communication:

Encourage an environment where your child is comfortable expressing his likes and dislikes. Validate your child's opinion in a decision even if you disagree, this will create an environment that is open and free learning.

Go about making every day a learning day. This will motivate the child to explore the world around him creating new opportunities and connections. Also, make them understand that being their parents you are always up to learning new things, this will motivate them to find possibilities of learnings from all the new happenings around. Open gates for your child to learn and explore wherever they are may it be home or a classroom.

One of the Pioneers in this field is BRAINY - A division of Brain Child Learning which helps in Brain Training for Children in the age group of 6 to 16-years-old. They have a methodology of Training which Involves Meditation / Digitised Music - to open new neural pathways in the brain and Neurobic Exercises which help the mind stay agile and alert. The Blended training provides all round development of the brain with multiple benefits.

Since this program works on the Cognitive skills of Memory, Focus, Concentration and control of brain waves hence it helps in the academics of the child.

Why Should You Choose Daycare Castle Hill For Your Children

Taking care of the kids is one of the most difficult tasks for the working parents. Your children need your complete attention but at the same time, you cannot ignore the call of duty as well. In order to provide complete attention to the children, you may better plan to send them to the childcare units like daycare Castle Hill.

Why childcare units

The childcare units try to create the home like atmosphere for the kids. Usually, the children cannot get quickly settled at a place outside their home during the earlier stages of their lives. Therefore, the experts need to create the proper area to generate interests among the children. How will they do that? In order to make the children attracted to the daycare system, the experts in the childcare units need to make the place perfect for the kids. From a young age to the age of 12 years, the childcare process continues. It is easier for the childcare officials to take care of the bigger kids but younger ones are difficult to control. Here, most of the parents are cautious regarding taking care of the children between the age group of 6 weeks to 5 years. If you read the childcare toddler care blogs of daycare Granville, you will get the chance to learn how the experts take care of the little kids there in the units.

Can children properly get to sleep in the childcare?

Parents do not ask such a question all the times, but it is an important factor to notice. The kids need proper sleep and the childcare officials need to ensure that. The childcare officials of daycare Liverpool take care of the kids in a proper way and ensure that the younger ones get ample time to sleep. Sleeping, alongside many other tasks is a crucial matter for the perfect growth of the children. In order to grow up in a proper way, the children (aged 6 weeks to 5 years) need sleeping and the experts associated with childcare units, ensure that the kids get the enough sleep alongside timely feeding. At home, when the parents are away, childcare professionals take care of the kids and try to provide the best services to them.

What is better - nanny or childcare?

It is better not to hand over your kids to the nanny or a singular person at your household when you are not around. It is wise to send them into childcare units. In the units, there are more experts, who can control the kids in proper way. In fact, as a parent you can shed your tensions regarding the matters of taking care of your little ones. Therefore, sending children to daycare Liverpool will be wise rather than appointing nannies.

Finally, it is better to mention that as the kids centres in the Liverpool or Granville area can take better care for your children, it will be better for you to send your kids there. The experts of daycare Castle Hill will take care of their basic needs of the kids while they will get the chance to learn the basic lessons to be school ready.

Meaning of children’s human rights education

Children’s human rights education refers to education and educational practices in schools and educational institutions that are consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a form of education that takes seriously the view that children are bearers of human rights, that children are citizens in their own right, that schools and educational institutions are learning communities where children learn (or fail to learn) the values and practices of human rights and citizenship, and that educating children about their own basic human rights is a legal obligation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Meaning of children's human rights education

Children's rights education is education where the rights of the child, as described in the Convention, is taught and practiced in individual classrooms. But in its most developed form, children’s rights are taught and practiced in a systematic and comprehensive way across grade levels, across the school, and across school districts. With full-blown children’s rights education, children’s rights are not simply an addition to a particular subject or classroom. Rather, the rights of the child are incorporated into the school curricula, teaching practices, and teaching materials across subjects and grade levels and are the centerpiece of school mission statements, behavior codes, and school policies and practices.

Fully developed children’s rights education means that all members of the school community receive education on the rights of the child. The Convention serves as a values framework for the life and functioning of the school or educational institution and for efforts to promote a more positive school climate and school culture for learning.

A core belief in children’s rights education is that when children learn about their own basic human rights, this learning serves as an important foundation for their understanding and support of human rights more broadly.

STRATEGIES FOR HOMESCHOOLING GIFTED CHILDREN

Homeschooling high school can be challenging enough to undertake with normal high school kids, but throw in a student who is significantly advanced or gifted, and some parents might be tempted to call it quits! How can you keep up with a kid who’s studying statistics, anatomy and physiology, and Greek, and asking for more?! Both my sons were gifted, so I know how difficult this can be. Fortunately, there are some practical things you can do to make the process easier and more manageable.

HOMESCHOOLING GIFTED CHILDREN

The first strategy that I find useful is called “acceleration,” which means that you allow your children to work faster. This strategy requires you to let go of the whole parent-teach-the-student model, because your job is not just to teach your children; your job is to help your children learn how to teach themselves. Fortunately, there will be times when you realize your child already knows a subject, perhaps because they have learned it by osmosis, so you can spend less time on that subject.

At high school level, it’s important to remember that when your child finishes a standard curriculum, you can give them high school credit for it. You don’t have to make them sit in front of you as the teacher for 150 hours before you give them credit for a course. As soon as they’re done with a curriculum and know the material, go ahead and give them the high school credit. There’s no rule that requires them to spend 150 hours studying something in order to earn a credit.

You can also skip unnecessary activities in a curriculum. If your child doesn’t need the activities in order to learn the information, it’s okay to skip those, as long as they’re learning. It’s also okay to administer a pretest for a subject, and simply skip the information they already know, or you can work fast through a curriculum and find out what they know first, and then move ahead.

When you don’t use acceleration, and you work at the usual standard pace that children are used to, it can induce boredom. When people tell me they’re struggling with a lack of motivation in their teenagers, or their kids hate school or they’re bored, often it’s because their student is moving at too slow a pace.

Make sure to assess your child’s level first, and begin a curriculum at the point where they will actually learn new information. In this way, you allow them to learn at their own level, and remove those artificial barriers to how much they’re allowed to learn. The result will be a student who’s more interested in what they’re learning, and more motivated to pursue their studies.

Charter schools are the best way to wipe out educational disparity

Depending on who you read or listen to, charter schools are either a striking success or a “failed and damaging experiment” — or even just “fads.”

Such conflicting opinions have led to bitter controversies that have raged for years. But my new book, “Charter Schools and Their Enemies,” features hard facts about educational outcomes in more than a hundred individually identified New York City schools.

These schools are listed by name so that parents, officials and anyone interested in the education of children can make their own comparisons.

What all these particular schools have in common is that charter-school students and traditional public-school students are educated in the same buildings and take the same tests in mathematics and English every year. The results of these tests are listed for each of these schools, along with information on their students’ backgrounds.

Here are some basic facts:

In these buildings, 14 percent of traditional public-school classes had a majority of their students achieve a level defined as “proficient” in English for their grade level by the New York State Education Department.

Meanwhile, 65 percent of charter-school classes in those same buildings had a majority of their students achieve the “proficient“ level on the same test. That’s nearly a five-to-one disparity.

On the mathematics test, just 10 percent of the classes in these traditional public schools had a majority of their students achieve a “proficient” level. But 68 percent of charter-school classes in the same buildings had a majority of their students achieve a “proficient” level. That’s nearly a seven-to-one disparity.

No wonder most critics of charter schools, and defenders of traditional public schools, want to argue on the basis of rhetoric.

They don’t want to argue on the basis of facts about test results.

One common example of misleading rhetoric is an often-repeated statement that — nationwide — charter schools “as a whole“ do not perform any better than traditional public schools “as a whole.“

Chris Wallace Grills Mercedes Schlapp On Failed Tulsa Rally: 'You Guys Look Silly When You Deny Reality'

Fox News host Chris Wallace challenged Trump 2020 campaign spokesperson Mercedes Schlapp for making "campaign speeches" during an interview on Sunday.

On his Fox News Sunday program, Wallace noted that President Donald Trump's Tulsa rally on Saturday had been sparsely attended despite the fact that the president claimed nearly a million people had requested tickets.

"We all saw the pictures last night," Wallace explained. "The arena was no more than two-thirds full. And the outdoor rally was cancelled because there was no overflow crowd. What happened?"

"The key here is to understand," Schlapp replied, "there were factors involved, they were concerned about the protesters who were coming in."

"He talks about how he can fill an arena," Wallace said, referring to the president. "And he didn't fill an arena last night. You guys were so far off that you had planned an outdoor rally and there wasn't an overflow crowd."

"Protesters did not stop people from coming to that rally," he added. "The fact is, people did not show up."

Schlapp disagreed before attacking presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for holding virtual events during the ongoing pandemic.

"Mercedes, please don't filibuster," Wallace interrupted. "Frankly, it makes you guys look silly when you deny the reality of what happened."

"I don't know why you are saying that," Schlapp complained.

"There are empty seats there," Wallace replied. "At least a third, if not half of the rally was empty. You can't deny it."

"Joe Biden has been a failed politician that has done nothing but support failed institutions," Schlapp opined. "This is in contrast with President Trump who has a strong record and is rebuilding this economy."

DOJ SPOKESWOMAN: 'THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESERVE RESOLUTION' OF DURHAM INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIA PROBE

Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told "Hannity" Wednesday that "the American people deserve resolution" about exactly what happened in the early stages of the Russia investigation."[Connecticut U.S. Attorney] John Durham and his team have been thoroughly and meticulously working on their investigation for many months now, as the attorney referenced earlier this week ... " Kupec told host Sean Hannity.

"The American people deserve resolution as to what happened to President Trump, his campaign, and then, of course, subsequent to that as well. It's important for the American people. It's important for our system of justice. And it's important, certainly, for the media to accurately report and cover that as well. What that resolution looks like remains to be seen."

DURHAM MOVING 'FULL-THROTTLE' ON RUSSIA PROBE REVIEW

Last week, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein -- who oversaw the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller -- testified that he would not have signed a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant renewal application for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page had he known about since-revealed "significant errors" in in the document.

Mueller’s investigation yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election, though the question of whether Trump obstructed justice was left open in the final report.

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Kupec declined to comment on Rosenstein's testimony but assured Hannity that Durham was "is working as hard as ever."

"What happened to President Trump was one of the greatest political injustices in American history," she said, "and never should happen again."

Oklahoma Supreme Court allows Trump rally to proceed as planned; Tulsa mayor rescinds curfew

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Trump’s upcoming rally in Tulsa can go ahead as planned despite concerns about coronavirus -- just as Trump announced that a curfew in the city had been lifted for the rally.

“I just spoke to the highly respected Mayor of Tulsa, G.T. Bynum, who informed me there will be no curfew tonight or tomorrow for our many supporters attending the #MAGA Rally. Enjoy yourselves - thank you to Mayor Bynum!” the president tweeted.

TRUMP WARNS 'ANARCHISTS' NOT TO DISRUPT TULSA RALLY, AFTER THREAT PROMPTS EMERGENCY ORDER

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

I just spoke to the highly respected Mayor of Tulsa, G.T. Bynum, who informed me there will be no curfew tonight or tomorrow for our many supporters attending the #MAGA Rally. Enjoy yourselves - thank you to Mayor Bynum! @gtbynum

111K

2:09 AM - Jun 20, 2020

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45.9K people are talking about this

Bynum on Friday issued a statement and said he was "told the curfew is no longer necessary."

"Last night, I enacted a curfew at the request of Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin, following consultation with the United States Secret Service based on intelligence they had received,” he said in a news release, the Tulsa World reported. “Today, we were told the curfew is no longer necessary so I am rescinding it.”

Bynum, a Republican, had declared a civil emergency and announced a curfew near the arena where Trump plans to hold a campaign rally on Saturday.

Bynum, in his order, said “in the interest of national security” he would establish a “federal exclusion zone” in the vicinity of the rally. He cited “crowds in excess of 100,000” and opposition protests as well as recent “civil unrest” -- referring to protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd that in the early days escalated into looting and violence in some cities. Additionally, he had warned that he had information that organized groups known for violence were traveling to the city “for the purposes of causing unrest in and around the rally.”

"Is it me, or do we seem to have a problem with sculpture today? I don’t mean contemporary sculpture..."

"... whose fashionable stars (see Koons, Murakami et alia) pander to our appetite for spectacle and whatever’s new. I don’t mean ancient or even non-Western sculpture, either. I mean traditional European sculpture — celebrities like Bernini and Rodin aside — and American sculpture, too: the enormous universe of stuff we come across in churches and parks, at memorials and in museums like the Bode. The stuff Barnett Newman, the Abstract Expressionist painter, notoriously derided as objects we bump into when backing up to look at a painting.... [S]culpture skeptics from Leonardo through Hegel and Diderot have cultivated our prejudice against the medium. 'Carib art,' is how Baudelaire described sculpture, meaning that even the suavest, most sophisticated works of unearthly virtuosity by Enlightenment paragons like Canova and Thorvaldsen were tainted by the medium’s primitive, cultish origins. Racism notwithstanding, Baudelaire had a point. Sculpture does still bear something of the burden of its commemorative and didactic origins. It’s too literal, too direct, too steeped in religious ceremony and too complex for a historically amnesiac culture. We prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on flat surfaces, flickering in a movie theater or digitized on our laptops and smartphones, or painted on canvas. The marketplace ratifies our myopia, making headlines for megamillion-dollar sales of old master and Impressionist pictures but rarely for premodern sculptures...."

From an essay by Michael Kimmelman, published in the NYT in 2008, which I'm reading this morning because I blogged it at the time with my tag "sculpture" and I'm going through all my old posts with that tag looking for things that deserve my new tag "destruction of art."

The new tag is something I'd thought about creating for a very long time. I've been interested in violence directed at art much longer than I've been writing this blog — at least as far back as 1974 — but somehow my resistance to tag proliferation kept me from breaking this subtopic out of my generic topics "sculpture" and "art." There was also the "protest" tag. "Destruction of art" is (usually) a subtopic of that one too. But the pulling down of statues of Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key — last night in San Francisco — finally dragged me over the line.

Speaking of Junipero Serra, I remember Richard Serra and his "Tilted Arc." I was one of the workers of lower Manhattan in the 1980s who rankled at the hostility the artist expressed toward mere pedestrians. I've written about that a few times. The people in the plaza have feelings and interests and may richly resent the impositions of artist ego and elitist civic pride. Once art is in place, it demands admiration, and what happens? It might be ignored — that's what Kimmelman fretted about — and it might be attacked — the present-day rage.

I'd like to look up what the "sculpture skeptics" — Leonardo, Hegel, Diderot, Baudelaire, et al. — had to say. Oddly, they — at least some of them — expressed racism. The sculpture skeptics of today style themselves as anti-racists. But there's resonance in Kimmelman's summary of the skepticism:

Sculpture does still bear something of the burden of its commemorative and didactic origins. It’s too literal, too direct, too steeped in religious ceremony and too complex for a historically amnesiac culture. We prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on flat surfaces, flickering in a movie theater or digitized on our laptops and smartphones, or painted on canvas. 

We — some of us — prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on the flat surface of the embedded video on Twitter as protesters drag down another stately chunk of metal. 

"Is support for free speech correlated with intelligence?/3 studies on that question all point to the answer: yes!"

My son John blogs.

"Respect/Empower/Include."

Murals on the boarded up windows of State Street, photographed today, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Madisonians in shorts trudge past a mural of Barack and Michelle Obama that is painted on the boarded-up window of Which Wich Superior Sandwiches:



On the boarded-up window of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, a drooling troglodyte cop observes what might be a pile of burning doughnuts that give off smoke that reads — like a thought balloon — "Defund the Police":



A longer view of the side of the museum featuring an ironic "Right turn only" sign:



There's the notion that "being a revolutionary" has an element of being fun, loving, and beautiful:



There's the grievance that you can't play your music really loud without people calling the cops:



More Madisonians trudging along, this time past dripping letters that few will read, but I'm seeing "Tell the President/To prepare the bunker/When he flee/Because until we see/Justice you will/Never see peace!"



"Yes, we can!" the old President says, as a waiter sets up an outdoor café table.

"Of course they despise Washington. Notice the graffiti '1619' on the toppled statue...."

Of course they despise Washington. Notice the graffiti “1619” on the toppled statue. And the burnt flags. The NYT must be proud. They taught these people well. https://t.co/4JTPEv2KMd

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 19, 2020

In all my sunrise runs on this path, I'd never seen a deer before, and today, suddenly, up ahead, there were 2...

They kept disappearing then reappearing at a later point, and I kept getting my camera out, then putting it away, concluding that they were gone for good, and then, finally, I caught one...

"Bolton is extremely famous for his fervent hawkery, including on the Iraq war. If Trump bothered to do a cursory Google search on Bolton before appointing him..."

"... to the most powerful national security position in his administration, he’d have turned up headlines like 'John Bolton: No regrets about toppling Saddam.' Sadly, there was too much good stuff [on] television in the days leading up to Bolton’s nomination to do that search. Trump does not seem to realize how bad it makes him sound that he never bothered to ask what he later identified as the key question about the worldview of his own national security adviser."

From "Trump: I Didn’t Realize Bolton Supported Iraq War Until After I Hired Him" by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine). Chait is reading the WSJ interview in which Trump says:

He had a lot of policy disputes, he and I. And after the first month or so, you know, I asked him one question. I said, “So, do you think you did the right thing by going into Iraq?” He said, “Yes.” And that’s when I lost him. And that was early on. That’s when I lost him. But no, I disagreed with much of the stuff he said. He was one of many people. I liked listening to many people, and then doing whatever is the right thing to do.

You didn’t ask him about Iraq before you brought him into the White House? If he regretted that?

No, but it didn’t … I knew all about his policy on Iraq. But that didn’t matter, frankly. Because he made a terrible mistake. And so did everybody else involved in Iraq and the Middle East, frankly. I never thought it was the right thing to do. And I’ve been proven right. But when he told me he still thinks it was the right thing to do, and was unable to explain it to me, I said, “Explain that to me, because I don’t think you can.’ And he could not explain it to me. So I said, “Do you say that just to make yourself feel good? Or do you say that because you really believe it?” He said, “I really believe it.” I said, “Well, then you’ve lost me because it’s just wrong.”...

[W]hen I asked him the question, so John, you were one of the people that were really pushing hard to go into the Middle East, to go into Iraq. Would you do it again? He said, Yes. And that’s where I said this guy is crazy.... I was talking to him. I said, So was that a mistake? I said, and it’s okay to admit you made a mistake, although that’s a big one. That’s a beauty. And I said, Do you think it was a mistake? And he said, No, I think it was the right thing to do. And I said, You know, you can’t explain that. You just can’t explain it.

Why didn't Trump ask Bolton before he was hired whether in retrospect he still thinks it was the right decision to go into Iraq?  Chait's answer is that that Trump is impulsive and reckless: He just didn't "bother." A more charitable reading of Trump — and I'm not saying the President deserves charity, just trying to balance things a little — is that he'd formed the opinion that everyone knows now that the Iraq War was a mistake. Trump was and is very proud of his opposition to the Iraq War, his astute perception from the beginning that it was a mistake. But he lacked the astute perception to see that there were still some people who believed the war was a good idea and to notice he was hiring one of those people.

You know this morning when I saw this tweet of Trump's...

Bolton’s book, which is getting terrible reviews, is a compilation of lies and made up stories, all intended to make me look bad. Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction. Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

... I was going to snark You knew he was a snake.... you know Trump and that song lyric he's recited many times about the woman who takes in and nurtures a snake that ultimately bites and kills her?

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

But I guess Trump didn't know Bolton was a snake.

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

Yes, Trump said that.*

Yes, it's hyperbole. The "nobody" is outrageous and false. It gets your attention, and it increases the power of his fame-making machine, further inflating the importance of Juneteenth, and further connecting it to Trump, where it never belonged before.

__________________

*Link goes to Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine, quoting this WSJ interview. Chait:

... Trump has caused more people to become aware of Juneteenth, just as he has caused more people to become aware of the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, narcissistic personality disorder, “democratic backsliding,” the two-thirds threshold required for impeachment, and other concepts that had largely been excluded from daily news coverage. This has not been an era of progress. But it has been a time of enlightenment.

What's "democratic backsliding"? I don't remember hearing that phrase before. I see it has a Wikipedia entry:

In political science, democratic backsliding, also known as democratic erosion or de-democratization, is a gradual decline in the quality of democracy.... Political scientist Nancy Bermeo has written that blatant forms of democratic backsliding such as classic, open-ended coups d'état and election-day fraud have declined since the end of the Cold War, while more subtle and "vexing" forms of backsliding have increased. The latter forms of backsliding entail the debilitation of democratic institutions from within....

Beginning in 2017, political scientists identified the United States under President Donald Trump as being in danger of democratic backsliding. In a 2019 journal article, political scientists Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and others wrote that Trump's presidency presented a threat to the American democratic order because it simultaneously brought together three specific trends—"polarized two-party presidentialism; a polity fundamentally divided over membership and status in the political community, in ways structured by race and economic inequality; and the erosion of democratic norms"—for the first time in American history. Lieberman et al. noted that Trump has "repeatedly challenged the very legitimacy of the basic mechanics and norms of the American electoral process, invoking the specter of mass voter fraud, encouraging voter suppression, selectively attacking the Electoral College, and even threatening to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power" and noted that "Never in the modern era has a presidential candidate threatened to lock up his opponent; castigated people so publicly and repeatedly on the basis of their country of origin, religion, sex, disability, or military service record; or operated with no evident regard for facts or truth." In 2020, political scientists Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, wrote that "the Trump administration has consistently de-emphasized the importance of human rights and democracy in its rhetoric and while adopting language and tropes similar to those of right-wing, illiberal movements." Colley and Nexon cited Trump's praise of autocratic rulers, his echoing of ethno-nationalist rhetoric, his efforts to deligitmize journalism and journalists as "fake news" and his policies erecting new barriers to refugees and asylum-seekers as similar to politics "found in backsliding regimes."

The 2019 annual democracy report of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg found that the U.S. under Trump was among the world's liberal democracies experiencing "democratic erosion" (but not full-scale "democratic breakdown"). The report cited an increase in "polarization of society and disrespect in public deliberations" as well as Trump's attacks on the media and opposition and attempts to contain the judiciary and the legislation. The report concluded, however, that "American institutions appear to be withstanding these attempts to a significant degree," noting that Democrats had won a majority the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, which "seems to have reversed the trajectory of an increasingly unconstrained executive."