Check out our slate of Daily Kos-endorsed candidates

What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …

• The “next Einstein” could come from Africa, by Sher Watts Spooner
• How to elect more and better Democrats? Run them, by Mark E Andersen
• This week shows, again, just how different the two parties are—even on economic issues, by Ian Reifowitz 
• The reality of rape: “I will find you,” by Susan Grigsby
• Casting and color. Hamilton and Broadway history, by Denise Oliver Velez
• Will the Democratic primary implode like the Republican primary, by Egberto Willies
• What Trump said about punishing women who seek abortions was just part of the GOP’s actual agenda, by Laurence Lewis
• The GOP’s other convention battle: The 14th Amendment, by Jon Perr

I always liked the word “penultimate.” Maybe just because it seems even better than ultimate, maybe because it somehow makes me think of Uther Pendragon, maybe because it’s just so much nicer than “next to the last.”

This is your penultimate episode of On Whetsday.

Originally, when i was slicing this thing up, I had thought there would be twelve episodes, so this would be your, hmm, penpenultimate episode? But then I crammed some pretty long bits together, and some days were shorter than others and… it’s also possible I screwed up and kind of didn’t get things in on time and mangled the schedule. Anyway, we’re almost done.

Which is why it’s a good thing that I can finally make this announcement. The book is out! You—yes, you—can hie over to yon virtual megastore and make a purchase of On Whetsday right now. Go on, I’ll wait.

If we all hurry over there and buy one right now, there will be world peace, your guy / gal will surely win her / his next primary and save the nation, and the Mauritius dodo will make a miraculous recovery. Plus I will be able to pay my water bill, which we all agree is a Good Thing. 

Come down to the end of the diary and I’ll even show you some pictures. But you might want to read the story first. It’s kind of the point.

…

Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue) appears twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Here is the most recent previous Green Spotlight. More than 24,905 environmentally oriented stories have been rescued to appear in this series since 2006. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.

OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES 

DocDawg writes—Bad science, worse politics: North Carolina's coal ash-poisoned water and the effort to cover it up: “Coal — about 1 billion tons of it a year — still powers a third of all electricity generation in the U.S., in the process creating 200 billion pounds of toxic coal ash annually. Coal-burning power plants like those operated by North Carolina’s Duke Energy (America’s largest electric utility) mix that ash with water, pump the slop (brimming with lead, mercury, arsenic, and cancer-causing chromium-6) into unlined ponds beside the state’s major rivers...and forget about it. But in the aftermath of North Carolina’s 2014 Dan River disaster, when a drainage pipe failure spilled 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan, the state legislature passed into law without Republican Gov. McCrory’s signature the Coal Ash Management Act (CAMA), mandating the closure and remediation of all of Duke Energy’s 14 coal ash dumps across the state. The law empowers state regulators to decide, on a case-by-case basis, how soon each of those sites must be closed (ranging from 5 to 15 years from now), and with what degree of cleanup (ranging from just throwing a bit of dirt over the top of the mess, to excavating and moving it inland to dry, lined, closely-monitored landfills — the latter a multi-billion dollar proposition). Regulators will base those decisions primarily on scientific data, produced by Duke Energy itself, regarding the degree of hazard to public health each individual site presents. But those regulators — political appointees of Gov. McCrory at the Dept. of Environmental Quality — are, like McCrory himself, ex-Duke Energy executives and are ‘business-friendly’ in the extreme.”

Carl Sagan and other science writers had long speculated what it would be like if scientists were accorded the same fame that rock stars enjoy. Here are some examples!

Last December, Starmus announced that this year it will present a new award, the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, to people in three categories (science, art and film) … Who’s who within the Starmus community? It’s a large, prestigious group that includes Col. Chris Hadfield, the veteran astronaut famed for his performance of “Space Oddity” aboard the International Space Station in 2013 while he was serving as commander. Also in the lineup is Brian May, most widely known as the lead guitarist for the legendary rock band Queen, but also for his success in astrophysics. These are just two of the “rock stars” that may pop up the next time you press “play” in your music collection. They, like so many others, are living testimonies to the fact that astronomy and art are not isolated pursuits but are built to resonate with one another.

• I keep hearing that oil prices are set to rise again. I guess we’ll see …

• My old friend PZ Myers dissects an Intelligent Design Creationist with precision. IDC often boils down to if something looks designed, that’s evidence it must be, and if it doesn’t look designed, well, that’s just the way the designer made that particular item. Not much there that can be tested.

• It’s always encouraging to see a billionaire squarely standing in the reality based community. But Elon Musk says the new Tesla Model 3 is just the beginning, and some are speculating what comes next will be revolutionary indeed:

The new Mobileye technology is said to permit machine learning while a car is in motion. Advanced sensors allow it to follow a road even if there are no shoulders, curbs, or sidewalks that mark its boundaries. It can detect different road surfaces, navigate when there are no road markings, and recognize more that 1,000 road signs and pavement markings in common usage throughout the world.

• Speaking of Musk, below the fold, SpaceX sticks a vertical landing of a Falcon 9 lower stage on a floating barge!

Arizona Republicans have instituted a new policy to protect themselves from potentially dangerous American reporters. Now, by order of the House speaker, reporters seeking access to the House floor will have to submit to background checks so that Speaker David Gowan can be sure they're not hardened criminals in disguise. Which is quite the coincidence, given that Speaker David Gowan has had a particular issue with a particular reporter recently.

The new policy goes as far as to list specific offenses, including misdemeanor ones like trespassing, which automatically disqualify a reporter from being on the House floor for up to 10 years. That’s significant because misdemeanor trespass is an offense that Arizona Capitol Times reporter Hank Stephenson was convicted of following a bar fight a couple years ago.

Early this year, Stephenson wrote a piece scrutinizing Gowan’s use of a state vehicle during a 19-day period last October during which he logged nearly 4,800 miles of windshield time. Some of the events he traveled to were related to his congressional campaign, and using a state vehicle for that purpose is unlawful. Gowan has since reimbursed the state more than $12,000, and his is office is now under investigation by Arizona’s Attorney General for misuse of public resources.

Yes, what are the odds that the only House reporter who seems to be disqualified by these new, very specific rules is the one whose reporting cost David Gowan $12,000 worth of free state vehicle time. It is uncanny, and so forth, and so on.

To their credit, state reporters are refusing to go along with the "background" checks, because there doesn't seem to be anyone in the state who really believes this is about anything other than David Gowan being peeved that reporters caught him doing something blatantly illegal. Republican governance at work, everybody. Golf claps all around for this one.

Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Wyoming caucus Saturday in advance of next week's primary in New York. From the NYT:

With 96 percent of precincts reporting, The Associated Press declared Mr. Sanders the winner with 56 percent of the vote.

With just 14 delegates up for grab in Wyoming, the victory trims only a little from Hillary Clinton’s 219-delegate lead. But coming after Mr. Sanders’s recent big victories in Washington State, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii and Wisconsin, it was more evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses among white and liberal voters as the race moves to major primaries in New York and elsewhere in the Northeast.

It may not quite be true that everything important is learned in kindergarten, but the effects of early education are powerful and lasting. Multiple studies have shown that while getting an early boost doesn’t guarantee success, starting off from the back row is an almost certain route to failure. And it looks like what happens before kindergarten may be even more vital. A new report from the Center for American Progress details just how important it is to get children up to speed as soon as possible.

Compared to their white peers, African American and Hispanic children are anywhere from 9 to 10 months behind in math and 7 to 12 months behind in reading when they enter kindergarten. These achievement gaps are concerning: Math and reading abilities at kindergarten entry are powerful predictors of later school success, and children who enter kindergarten already behind are unlikely to catch up. Moreover, in the past 50 years, minimal progress has been made toward reducing these achievement gaps.

Note the phrase “kindergarten entry.” The predictive point of how well you’re going to do on the traditional K-12 track? The skills you demonstrate before K even begins. So, is this just a measure of innate ability? Nope.

... evidence suggests that a high-quality UPK program would significantly reduce achievement gaps at kindergarten entry. Based on the average effect that two large-scale, highly effective programs in different parts of the country had on participating children’s achievement scores, it is estimated that high-quality UPK would reduce the achievement gap at kindergarten entry in math 45 percent for African American children and 78 percent for Hispanic children, while essentially closing the entire gap in reading for both groups. 

While there are sweeping changes to our society that could issues of inequality, there’s one simple change that can have a surprisingly large effect. Just make sure that kids get early, high-quality, education. When these results are translated to lower drop out rates and greater opportunity, it may be one of the best bargains available. The complete report is available to download.

In 2002, 13-year-old Ronnie Swain told authorities that he had also been victim of sexual abuse. He accused his adopted mother, Lorinda Swain, of performing oral sex on him every morning. Swain was arrested, charged, and convicted of four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. She was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.

Soon after she was convicted, though, Ronnie recanted his testimony. He said he made up the sexual molestation allegations so that he would not get in trouble for inappropriately touching his three-year-old niece. From Deadline Detroit:

For years, according to David Moran, the co-director of the Innocence Clinic at the Ann Arbor law school, Swain’s legal team has been trying to get the Calhoun County prosecutor to meet with Ronald Swain and hear from him why he lied at trial and why he’s urging the courts to do the right thing now.

“He’s passed polygraphs, gone to the police, gone to the press, gone to lawyers, gone to the public and said it just did not happen,” Moran says. “We want the prosecutor to just meet with him.”

The prosecutor, however, has always refused. 

Since her conviction, Swain has filed countless appeals and motions for relief and fought repeatedly to get a new trial. In 2009, her request was finally granted by the trial court, who granted defendant’s motion for relief from judgment and set aside her four convictions. The Court of Appeals reversed. The trial court then again granted the motion based on newly discovered evidence, the interests of justice, and defendant's actual innocence. The appellate court reversed again.

At The Progressive Pulse of North Carolina, Billy Ball writes—New study shows growing gap in school funding between wealthy and poor counties:

A new study shows the gap in school funding between North Carolina’s wealthiest and poorest counties continues to grow.

The report, published Tuesday by the Public School Forum of N.C., an education policy group in Raleigh, shows that in 2013-2014 (the  most recent data available in the report) the state’s ten highest spending counties doled out an average of $57,497 more per classroom than the ten lowest-spending counties.

That number marks an increase of $739 over the previous year, and it’s 36 percent higher than the gap reported ten years ago in the state. The Public School Forum also points out the startling fact that Orange County alone spends about the same amount of the bottom six counties combined.

From the Forum’s statement:

“The trend lines are clear – our poorest counties continue to fall further behind our wealthier counties in terms of resources available to their local schools,” said Forum President and Executive Director Keith Poston. “Even though the ten poorest counties taxed themselves at nearly double the rate of the ten wealthiest counties, the revenue they could generate was substantially lower.” [...]

The report also includes one startling graph that shows how, in 2013-2014, school systems in affluent Orange County dished out more than $4,000 per student, the most of any school system in North Carolina. Compare that to places like Swain County, a relatively low-wealth county in western North Carolina that spent just $383 per student.

Democrats in Wyoming will hold their presidential caucus today starting at 1 PM ET. You can use this thread to chat about results when they come in.

Results: Wyoming

When North Carolina lawmakers passed a law last week targeting transgender individuals for discrimination in the most private of settings—the bathroom—an obituary of Charlotte’s Blake Brockington, an 18-year-old trans man, surfaced anew on Facebook. Brockington had committed suicide and I, seemingly like many others, immediately imagined that he had done so in response to the state’s heinous new law, which specifically bans trans citizens from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender.

But the reality was even worse than what I initially suspected. Brockington had taken his own life one year to the day before the state’s GOP lawmakers rushed a bill through their chambers and enacted it within hours—the cruelest of dedications on the anniversary of the young man’s tragic death.

Brockington was no wall flower. A year before he took his life, he had been elected Homecoming King of East Mecklenburg High School, an achievement he had felt compelled to seek for the sake of other trans youth. Brockington told qnotes that winning the title would give him the chance to raise awareness about the issue.

“I honestly feel like this is something I have to do,” Brockington said, noting few other transgender male students have had the opportunity.

He was the first known openly trans homecoming king in Charlotte and potentially statewide. In pictures of that triumphant moment, Brockington struts around, exuding royalty in his plush red robe with crown to match and flashing a youthful grin at the camera. He was ecstatic.

“I hope this makes everybody know that they can be themselves regardless of what anybody else says,” he added. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”