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By Ashley Bean Thornton (This is Part 2 of a 3-part blog series about SB 763, a new law to allow Texas Public Schools to hire school chaplains.  Part 1 covers the nuts and bolts of what the new law says.  This post talks about what it means to be a chaplain. – ABT) One…

By Ashley Bean Thornton (Part 1 of a 3-part blog series about a new law to allow Texas Public Schools to hire school chaplains.  This post just covers the nuts and bolts of what the bill says and doesn’t say.) What does SB 763 say?  One of the bills passed in the Texas Legislative session…

By Ashley Bean Thornton You know how you never notice silver Nissans until you buy a silver Nissan, then you start noticing all the silver Nissans out there?   I am having that experience with the idea of “enemy.” I wrote a blog post a little while back about my “enemy” and now I have started…

By Ashley Bean Thornton I don’t use words like “enemy” frequently or lightly.   I feel bad about using it here.  Maybe it’s too extreme.  I go back and forth.  But while I go back and forth, organizations like the one that runs the Texas Scorecard are marching forward and, I believe, doing harm to the…

By Ashley Bean Thornton I squeezed in a little trip to Magnolia, TX, this weekend to see my Mom.  Mom is a die hard “Wheel of Fortune” fan, so naturally talk turned to Pat Sajak’s recently announced retirement and the fate of the show…would Ryan Seacrest be a worthy successor?  Will Vanna stay?   And eventually……

By Ashley Bean Thornton My own internal responses and practice when it comes to gendered language are not especially rational, well thought out or consistent.  There’s a tug-of-war between my desire to be taken seriously and treated respectfully, and a lifetime of linguistic habits and aural sensitivities that I absorbed being raised by Southerners in…

Cornel West campaign website: Cornel West for President (cornelwest24.org) By Ashley Bean Thornton My plan when I started this project was to summarize the opening campaign announcement speech from each of the 2024 presidential candidates. My goal has been to sift through the campaign rhetoric to pick out what they are saying about they actually plan…

Doug Burgum Campaign Website: Doug Burgum for America | Home By Ashley Bean Thornton I have been summarizing the opening campaign speeches from the presidential candidates to see if I can sift out what they actually plan to do.  In this post I summarize Doug Burgum’s announcement speech.   I have shortened, rearranged, and paraphrased quite…

Larry Elder Campaign website: Larry Elder for President 2024 – We’ve Got a Country to Save! by Ashley Bean Thornton I have been summarizing the opening campaign speeches from the presidential candidates. I have been trying to sift through the campaign rhetoric to pick out what they are saying about what they actually plan to do if they…

By Ashley Bean Thornton The United States Supreme Court recently reversed its stance on affirmative action, here’s an article that explains what happened: Supreme Court reverses affirmative action, gutting race-conscious admissions : NPR .    I am White.  Which has meant, among other things, that I don’t have to think much about race if I…