Cross posted with permission from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

This may be the #1 hoax site on the web:  Martinlutherking.org. Certainly it is a site dangerous for children, because it cleverly purports to be an accurate history site, while selling voodoo history and racism.

A racist group bought the domain name (note the “.org” suffix), and they’ve managed to keep it.  The site features a drawing of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the first page.  The racist elements are subtle enough that unwary students and teachers may not recognize it for the hoax site it is.

It is both racist and hoax:  Note the link to a racist argument on “Why the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday should be repealed;”  note the link to a hoax page, “Black invention myths.”

Students, nothing on that site should be trusted. Teachers, warn students away from the site.  You may want to use that site as a model of what a bad site looks like, and the importance of weighing the credibility of any site found on the web.

Why do I even mention the racist, hoax site? Because it comes upi #3 on Google searches for “Martin Luther King.”  Clearly a lot of people are being hoodwinked into going to that site.  I’ve seen papers by high school students citing the site, with teachers unaware of the site’s ignoble provenance.

Update: The site is owned by Stormfront, a white supremicist organization.

Here are a few good sites on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; you can help things by clicking on each one of these sites, and by copying this list with links and posting it on your blog:

• Nobel Foundation site, biography of Dr. King for receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace
• King’s Nobel Prize Lecture
• Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute (King Institute) at Stanford University
• Lesson plans from the King Institute, on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Letter from Birmingham Jail, and more
• The King Center site; photo and video archive at the King Center
• Tribute, resources and links from the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library at the C. W. Post Campus, Long Island University
• Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

Cross posted with permission from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

It helps that it happened in a small Arizona town, in the desert, with a colorful name.  You cannot imagine such a thing happening in Yonkers, New York, nor in West Bend, Wisconsin.

A deadlocked election for the Cave Creek city council came down to a draw from a deck of cards, a poker deck carefully shuffled by a robed judge.

Cave Creek, Arizona, Judge George Preston, shuffles cards to breal a deadlock between Thomas McGuire, left, and Adam Trenk. New York Times photo by Joshua Trent

We get the story from The New York Times:

Adam Trenk and Thomas McGuire, both in blue jeans and open-collar shirts, strode nervously into Town Hall with their posses. There stood the town judge. He selected a deck of cards from a Stetson hat and shuffled it — having removed the jokers — six times.

Mr. McGuire, 64, a retired science teacher and two-term incumbent on the Town Council, selected a card, the six of hearts, drawing approving oos and aws from his supporters.

Mr. Trenk, 25, a law student and newcomer to town, stepped forward. He lifted a card — a king of hearts — and the crowd roared. Cave Creek had finally selected its newest Council member.

“It’s a hell of a way to win — or lose — an election,” Mr. McGuire said. Still, it was only fitting, Mr. McGuire and others here said, that a town of 5,000 that prides itself on, and sometimes fights over, preserving its horse trails, ranches and other emblems of the Old West would cut cards to decide things. A transplant of 10 years from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., north of New York City, Mr. McGuire said he knew things were different here when not long after arriving he walked into a bar and found a horse inside.

Marshall Trimble, a cowboy singer, folklorist and community college professor who serves as Arizona’s official historian, said, “We are pretty tied to our roots here, at least we like to think so.”

Hans Zinnser, in the venerable Rats, Lice and History,  relates the story of an eastern European town where such ties are broken by lice — the two candidates put their beards on a table, and a louse is placed between the men.  The man whose beard the louse chooses is the winner.

Of course, this makes it difficult for women to participate in government fully.

Cave Creek is a typical cowboy, American town.  Deadlocks in government can be resolved by a game of chance.

Government teachers, history teachers, go get this story and clip it – it’s a good bell ringer, if not a full lesson in democratic republican government.

So, as the state’s Constitution allows, a game of chance was called to break the deadlock. The two candidates agreed on a card game (alternatives from the past have included rolling dice and, on rare occasions, gunfights).

Mr. Trimble said a cutting of the cards or roll of the dice had decided ties a handful of times in Arizona local elections. Tie-breakers have also been tried in other states, including in recent years in Alaska and Minnesota, said Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for FairVote, a Washington group that monitors and advocates for fair elections.

Mr. Fidalgo said the group objected to random chance as the decider of election outcomes.

“Definitely not a democratic ideal, to say the least,” he said, suggesting, among other ideas, that the tied candidates engage in one more runoff.

That was ruled out here as too expensive, and besides, this was much more fun, as Mayor Vincent Francia made clear, clutching a microphone and serving as M.C.

“Originally we thought of settling this with a paintball fight but that involves skill, and skill is not allowed in this,” Mr. Francia said to laughter.

Did you ever think that the ability to shuffle a deck of cards would be a job skill for a judge?  There’s a reason law students play poker in the coffee lounge, and all weekend!

There’s more.  Go read the Times. This is also why the New York Times is a great paper, and why we cannot function without “mainstream media.”  Who else could have brought us the story?

More resources:

• Story from KPHO Channel 5 News, in Phoenix, with link to a great video (how can you capture the video for classroom use?)
• AZ Central (Arizona Republic) story on the council meeting – approval of a 128,000 square-foot WalMart store was on the first agenda after the card shuffle decision
• Story from ABC affliate, Channel 15
• Politico report
• “Mathematics of a tied election,” from Cox News, 2000
• Lahood Productions’ 2004 election coverage — story of a deck of cards deciding an election in New Mexico in 1998
• Gateway to state election codes, from the National Center for State Courts
• Arizona election code; provision for breaking a tie by lot

What?  You were stuck at the AP Calculus session last night and overslept this morning?  You missed the C-SPAN “cramming for the AP Government Exam” session?

It’s available on-line, in Adobe Flash video: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=285657-6

(Or, if that doesn’t work, try this link.)

I especially liked the statement that the preparation is the students’ jobs.

Examinations for AP Government and Politics will be given out at 8:00 a.m. NEXT MONDAY, May 4.

Please plan to be at the classroom, Room 238, by 7:15 a.m.  I’ll have a breakfast-style snack for you.

After we are all gathered, I’ll escort you to the testing room.

Be sure to read your review notes.  Check the previous few posts for sample tests.

Critical for taking the test:

1. Be absolutely certain to get a good night’s sleep before the test.  Go to bed early. Research shows you can add up to 10 points to your I.Q. test with a good night’s sleep.  Research shows that all students perform better with a good night’s sleep, on any kind  of a test.
2. Stay hydrated. If the rules allow you to take a bottle of water into the exam, do it.  If you start feeling sleepy, odds are high that you’re dehydrated.  Take a drink.
3. Cram early, not late.  Research shows that sleeping at least one night improves your memory of what you studied the day before.  But it also shows that sleeping two nights may be better.  My recommendation:  If you’re going to cram for the test, do it tonight (Friday) or tomorrow at the latest (Saturday).  Plan to be in bed and asleep early, on Sunday.  See recommendation #1.
4. Research shows that taking practice tests is among the best things you can do to learn the material well.
5. Include writing a full essay or two in your studying. Seriously, practice helps you make shorter, clearer sentences, in the active voice, packed with facts.  Edit the essays so you can spot your repeated errors, boring writing, and especially clichés that you want to strike out of your writing.
6. Remember to watch the C-SPAN “cramming for the AP government test” program on Saturday morning, 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. Central time (on “Washington Journal”). If you don’t get C-SPAN, ask someone who does get it to tape it or TIVO it for you.

What recommendations do you have?  Do you find it easiest to study in a group?  Get a group together!

See you Monday morning.  Good luck!

AP Central sent this message out to teachers on the mailing list, as a reminder for how seriously College Board takes security on the test:

“The College Board would like to remind members of electronic discussion groups that students cannot, under any circumstance, disclose multiple-choice questions to anyone (including their AP teachers). Students sign an agreement to this effect on exam day.

Teachers may review and discuss with their students the free-response questions posted on AP Central 48 hours after each exam administration.  (Note, however, that free-response questions that appear on the alternate forms of the exam are not disclosed and cannot be discussed.)

These policies help ensure the validity of AP Exam scores, and the College Board appreciates all the work you do to ensure that the AP Program’s standards and procedures for administering exams are maintained and followed.”

So, when I next see you and ask how you did on the exam, under no circumstances should you discuss the exact multiple choice questions with me.

And I’m not foolin’.

Actually, I had planned to ask those who take the test what we need to beef up next year to prepare students for the test, but only in a general sense.  Now I’m wondering whether I should ask even so general a question.  There is always so much more that could be done.

Here’s an on-line quiz:  Mrs. Thompson’s on-line AP Government quiz

(If you’re one of my students, will you let us know how well that works for you?  Make a note in comments.)

More resources:

• The College Board’s AP Government Prep site
• SparkNotes AP Government test prep (you’ll need to create a free account)
• Mr. Whitney’s on-line practice tests (by chapter of the book he uses)
• A pay site:  Peterson’s AP Government practice exams; access is good for three months for $19.95

Got other sites you’ve found?  Note them in comments, please.

Another on-line site, from a veteran teacher of AP Government.  Notice especially the practice tests.

From the Barron’s Guide folks, on-line AP Government and Politics vocabulary — promises of more features to come soon.  Free.

Also:

• Key Supreme Court cases with very brief descriptions (from U.S. History course, however)
• Important U.S. documents

Those wonks at C-SPAN probably know a thing or two about cramming for the AP Government and Politics exam — and so they plan to help out this year:

From: C-SPAN Classroom <educate@c-span.org>
Date: Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 9:08 AM
Subject: Cram for the Exam on C-SPAN
To: [A C-SPAN mailing list]

Dear C-SPAN Classroom member,

On May 4th, approximately 250,000 high school students will take the Advanced Placement U.S. Government exam.  For those of you preparing students for the exam and for any other interested members, C-SPAN would like to invite you and your students to “Cram for the Exam on C-SPAN” on Saturday, May 2nd, during the Washington Journal from 9:00 am to 10:00 am ET.  Two AP Government teachers from Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, IL, Daniel Larsen and Andrew Conneen, will join us as guests on the Washington Journal.  We encourage you and your students to call in to the program with any questions you may have about topics expected to appear on the AP exam.

Regards,

C-SPAN Classroom
www.c-spanclassroom.org

You can now follow C-SPAN Classroom on Twitter for daily programming updates and C-SPAN Classroom related announcements: <http://twitter.com/cspan_classroom>

Great idea, really.

Tip of the Liberty Cap to Billy Schulman at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, near my old home.

How can children get to their senior year and not know about Rachel Carson, DDT, or “environmentalism?”Comes Frontline on PBS this week.  Government and politics teachers, your students should watch and report.

FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: “Poisoned Waters” (120 minutes),
April 21st at 9pm on PBS (Check local listings)

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For years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith has reported from the corridors of power in Washington, on Wall Street, and overseas.  But these days, he’s worried about something that he’s found much closer to home — something mysterious that’s appeared in waters that he knows well:  frogs with six legs, male amphibians with ovaries, “dead zones” where nothing can live or grow.

What’s causing the trouble? Smith suspects the answers might lie close to home as well.

This Tuesday night, in a special two-hour FRONTLINE broadcast –”Poisoned Waters”– Smith takes a hard look at a new wave of pollution that’s imperiling the nation’s waterways, focusing on two of our most iconic:  the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound.  He also examines three decades of environmental regulation that are failing to meet this new threat, and have yet to clean up the ongoing mess of PCBs, the staggering waste from factory farms, and the fall-out from unchecked suburban sprawl.

“The environment has slipped off our radar screen because it’s not a hot crisis like the financial meltdown, war, or terrorism,” Smith says.  “But pollution is a ticking time bomb. It’s a chronic cancer that is slowly eating away the natural resources that are vital to our very lives.”

Among the most worrisome of the new contaminants are “endocrine disruptors,” chemical compounds found in common household products that mimic hormones in the human body and cause freakish mutations in frogs and amphibians.

“There are five million people being exposed to endocrine disruptors just in the Mid-Atlantic region,” a doctor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health tells Smith.  “And yet we don’t know precisely how many of them are going to develop premature breast cancer, going to have problems with reproduction, going to have all kinds of congenital anomalies of the male genitalia that are happening at a broad low level so that they don’t raise the alarm in the general public.”

Can new models of “smart growth” and regulation reverse decades of damage?  Are the most real and lasting changes likely to come from the top down, given an already overstretched Obama administration?  Or will the greatest reasons for hope come from the bottom up, through the action of a growing number of grassroots groups trying to effect environmental change?

Join us for the broadcast this Tuesday night.  Online, you can watch “Poisoned Waters” again, find out how safe your drinking water is,  and  learn how you can get involved.

Ken Dornstein
Senior Editor

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Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support  of PBS viewers. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation. Major funding for Poisoned Waters is provided by The Seattle Foundation, The Russell Family Foundation, The Wallace Genetic Foundation, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment, The Merrill Family Foundation, The Abell Foundation, The Bullitt Foundation, the Park Foundation, and The Rauch Foundation.  Additional funding is provided by The Town Creek Foundation, The Clayton Baker Trust, The Lockhart Vaughan Foundation, The Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, The Chesapeake Bay Trust, Louisa and Robert Duemling, Robert and Phyllis Hennigson, Robert Lundeen, The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, The Prince Charitable Trusts, Ron and Kathy McDowell, Valerie and Bill Anders, Bruce and Marty Coffey, The Foundation for Puget Sound, Janet Ketcham, Win Rhodes, The Robert C. and Nani S. Warren Foundation, Jim and Kathy Youngren, Vinton and Amelia Sommerville and Laura Lundgren.

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FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of the WGBH Educational Foundation.

See a preview, and read more, here.  Another preview below.  You can watch the entire program online after April 21.

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