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Are you making sure your friends understand what’s at stake with judicial retention elections this year? “[T]he hardest fought statewide campaign might just involve four people you’ve never heard of. “For the first time ever there will be a coordinated effort to oust state Supreme Court justices. The bad blood between the state Supreme Court and conservatives in Kansas goes back ten years to when the justices ordered the state to pump more than $500 million dollars more into public education.” http://kcur.org/post/get-ready-raucous-kansas-supreme-court-retention-race...

We’ll have more information on education votes soon, but this is a helpful snapshot. Do you know how your legislator voted? Click here: http://www.mainstreamcoalition.org/how_did_your_legislators_vote...

“So to those who insist that judges be accountable to the people, you should ask: Should judges be accountable to politicians because they are unhappy with a court’s decision? Should judges be accountable to the ‘majority’? And if so, what happens to the rights of citizens who are not the most vocal, the most powerful or the most organized? And what happens to your rights when you are standing alone against the government? “When judges start thinking about what elected rulers and voters want, we stop being a government based on the rule of law. That is dangerous.”...

From the Twitterverse: we find this tweet from ALEC a succinct explanation of their tactic to push policy through the states where they can accomplish a lot more policy for a lot less money than it would take at the federal level. Their claim that 1/4 of state legislators are ALEC members is also a statement about their level of infiltration in state houses around the country, though we are well aware of their presence in Kansas. ALEC is not an education advocacy group; it is driven by a free-market, low-tax ideology and has an education task force...