Republican idiocy

We'll start with a fresh debate about grading schools:

LindsayWagnerNC 10:25am via Web Langdon: I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it works that way. Teachers don't go to a school because of their score. #ncga #nced

Of course they do. Some of them, anyway. Nobody is going to walk into an occupation without at least trying to assess the difficulty of the job beforehand, and teachers are no different from the rest of us in that respect. A low grade for a school denotes a lot of challenges, and not all of them are in the classroom:

We don't need no stinking college graduates:

There are so many troubling things about Senate Bill 337, an N.C. charter school bill unveiled last week, that it’s hard to know where to start. But this item stands out like a sore thumb: The bill would remove the requirement that at least half of a charter school’s teaching staff be certified, or be college educated.

Well, most of them teach right out of the book anyway, so...wait a minute. We don't have enough money for new books, either. Well, as long as they check these new degreeless people out first before they put them in the class...wait a minute. We're not going to do that anymore, either:

E-mails from the edge:

A proposal to muzzle the Public Staff of the state Utilities Commission grew out of an email exchange between a staff attorney and noted climate change denier John Droz. The sponsor, Rep. George Cleveland, R-Onslow, a friend of Droz, didn’t mention that detail Wednesday in a hearing on the legislation.

Of course he didn't, because he knows Droz is several sandwiches shy of a picnic. It's not for certain when Droz wandered from the trail of reason into the land of make-believe where fossil fuels are renewable and Madison Avenue (for some reason) decided to trick us into believing that clean energy makes sense. But I'm pretty sure I know why Droz started tilting at windmills:

The opening salvo in interstate water wars was fired this week when the Georgia legislature voted to move the state's border to take over part of Tennessee. Sparking precedent for border battles of all sorts, Chapel Hill's city council responded by asking the state of Virginia to redraw its borders so that the university town could escape the clutches of Raleigh bigots.

"We're excited about the opportunity to be part of Virginia," said Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. "With Republicans ruling the roost in Raleigh, North Carolina basically sucks. Our deepest appreciation goes out to the people of Virginia for throwing us this lifeline."

We'll start out with a little brisk propaganda:

NCCivitas 4:19pm via TweetDeck While Wake Co. delegation meets #CivitasPoll finds 44% of NC voters support canceling #DixDeal, 33% oppose. #NCGA #NCPol

Of course, when you peel this rotton tomato, you better have some smelling salts handy:

In honor of Sunshine Week:

gwfrink3 11:40am via Web Violating open meetings law? RT @SarahOvaska @NCPolicyWatch reporter @LindsayWagnerNC kicked out of meeting of #NCGA members & schl supers

The only reason they would do that is because whatever they're planning to talk about is going to be couched in misleading terms which could be easily unraveled to expose their true intent. Not good.