Monica Potts

While prospects for immigration reform this year seem uncertain, Arizona’s leaders aren’t the only ones who have decided to take immigration matters — largely on the “anti” side — into their own hands. A Dallas suburb is defending an ordinance preventing illegal immigrants from renting. A similar ordinance was struck down by a federal judge, […]

New York State has decided not to allow drilling for natural gas in the watersheds that provide the famously clean, unfiltered water to New York City and other downstate areas. The agreement is the result of a fight between the city and state after the state issued draft regulations last year, according to the Times. […]

Scott Roeder, who was convicted of killing Dr. George Tiller in January and has since been sentenced to life in prison, has filed a habeas corpus petition. In it, he says the judge’s sentence and $20 million bond shows a heightened disregard for the presumption of innocence and says prosecutors made libelous charges against him. […]

With increasing emphasis on teacher accountability (and with Race to the Top funds tying test performance to teacher pay), more and more cities are trying to come up with different methods for training teachers. A few weeks ago, The New York Times explored programs that may ultimately replace education schools. Today, NPR has a story […]

The National Coalition for Low Income Housing released its annual report on rental costs yesterday, and the outlook is pretty grim for most families. The average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is just under $1,000 a month, and a family would need to earn about $38,000 a year, or $18 an hour, to […]

A day after a news article appeared on how the food school kids eat is making them unfit for military service, Lesley Kinzel writes for Newsweek about how the culturally induced shame over her lifelong obesity made her less healthy, both emotionally and physically. I’m not too alarmed about the supposed threat to national security […]

Cities are cutting public-transportation services to help balance the budget, but according to The New York Times, no city has it worse than Atlanta. MARTA, it’s public transportation system, has no dedicated state funds and is paid for by a 1 percent sales tax in two counties in the Atlanta area. It’s also hamstrung by […]

Now that stimulus funding for education is running out in many states, most are preparing for this delayed financial pain to hit next year. Some schools are thinking of cutting teachers, which would increase class size. They’re also considering cutting school hours and even cutting school weeks down to four days. For a lot of […]

Not only is Wal-Mart at the top of the Fortune 500 list with $14 billion in profits last year, its top executives took home record pay as well. The Wal-Mart folks told Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Steve Painter that changes in federal reporting rules requiring them to include total compensation packages in executive pay figures artificially […]

A new Pew poll released today found that the number of Americans who are anti-government has risen since Obama took office. While Congress often frustrates the populace, faith in it is now at an all-time low. People have also become more distrustful of the federal government’s institutions, like the Department of Education. And they’re not […]