Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Last summer I went to the 50th anniversary of Special Olympics. By coincidence, Chicago’s annual Disability Pride Parade is taking place on the same day as the celebration at Soldier Field. The parade moves through the Loop, up Dearborn Street to Daley Plaza, with floats and dance routines and a diverse group of marchers in …
I am failing to update this blog! Sorry to the folks who follow me here. I’m working on building a new wordpress site that can be followed by rss AND connects to patreon. Stay tuned. Today’s piece: Trump is still trying to kill Medicaid.
Guns kill more people than cars for the first time since the CDC began tracking causes of death for Americans. Why? Cars have been regulated for safety, companies have invested in safety, individuals have been legally required to be safe, and both individuals and companies are legally liable. Guns … not so much. Thanks NRA!
First, Do No Harm. The doctors are paid a flat rate for each application file they review. How much they earn depends on how fast they work.Thrush, like many of the doctors who contract with the state, works very fast.In fiscal year 2018, he reviewed — on average — one case every 12 minutes.Thrush’s productivity …
What if Twitter was the happiest, most loving, supportive place on the Internet? It could be, I found out, if you join BTS, the Korean Supergroup, and their ARMY. From The Current “BTS fans, and there are millions on Twitter, kept coming by to tell me about Tata, to suggest I check the band, to …
Houses on stilts are a way to mitigate coastal climate change. But they aren’t accessible. When Superstorm Sandy flooded Liz Treston’s home on the South Shore of Long Island, she worried her wheelchair would prevent first responders from rescuing her. So Treston, a quadriplegic, wrote her Social Security number on her arm with a Sharpie, …
I had a weird year in terms of writing. It started off normal, then I had a mental health crisis, then I had a professional crisis (brought on by my own harmful actions), then I continued to be in mental health crisis and I stopped writing much, then I got help, then I started writing, …
New on anti-Semitic myths and the dangers they pose. From Thomas of Monmouth to David Icke’s lizard people, there’s a long history of people making up bizarre stories about Jews. Those stories, when allowed to proliferate, get us killed. To be extremely clear, this is all dangerous nonsense. There does seem to have been a boy …
New: Restraint in schools and the death of #MaxBenson. “It shouldn’t take the death of a teenage boy to stop overuse of restraint in schools. But, given how ingrained such practices are in our educational systems, and the 120,000 kids experiencing restraint or seclusion each year, I’m worried this one death won’t be enough.”
I am just finishing edits on my sixth piece on the death penalty in the last two years for Pacific Standard. Here’s what I’ve written: First the Supreme Court established a better standard for determining whether someone was intellectually disabled (and thus protected from execution) by overturning the “Lennie” standard. Because Texas asked juries to …