FEBRUARY 17, 2014


NEWS CLIPS FOR THE DAY


Are Americans as polarized as their politicians? – CBS
By Rebecca Kaplan CBS News February 17, 2014

For much of February, Americans will unite around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. When the two weeks of international competition wraps up, they’ll have an opportunity to get back to fighting about the best way to ensure a future for the country they just cheered for, with the midterm elections coming up this fall.

 But while division in Washington has been par for the course during President Obama’s second term, how true is that for the rest of the country? Jim DeMint, a former conservative senator from South Carolina and current president of the Heritage Foundation, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that the deepest divides are in Washington.

“Frankly people are less interested in the label of Republican and Democrat and they're tired of that, but they will unite around some principles that will give us a stronger economy, a strong society, a strong America. And those are the things we want to talk about,” DeMint said of the work his organization is doing. “America's not nearly as divided as it looks like they are in Washington.”

Of course, DeMint was one of the Senate’s most conservative lawmakers and now runs a think tank that has taken a distinctly rightward turn under his leadership. Before talking about how Democrats and Republicans eschew labels, he said, “A lot of us as conservatives don’t feel like we are well represented in Washington right now. And I think a lot of Americans, regardless of political labels, feel the same way.”

DeMint is right that Americans feel disconnected from the increasingly partisan lawmakers that drive the agenda in Washington. A CBS News poll taken after the shutdown found that 76 percent of Americans don’t think they have much say in what their government does, which is the highest number recorded since the question was first asked in 1990. That number was higher among Republicans (87 percent) than Democrats (68 percent), with independents falling right in the middle (77 percent). If too many people feel like they have no say, that will lead to lower voting rates – which tends to leave only the most partisan voters casting ballots.

At the same time, as people feel less able to affect change, the number of independents has been steadily creeping upward. A Gallup poll that has studied voter preferences for the last 25 years showed that a record number of Americans – 42 percent – self-identified as political independents in early January, with Republican identification dropping more quickly than Democratic identification.

These numbers would suggest that midterm voters will reward candidates who advocate for a more centrist approach and prize deal-making over the kind of ideological purity contest that has marked so much of recent politics, including the 2012 Republican primary.

And on the surface, it may seem that way in Congress as well: lawmakers moved to increase the U.S. borrowing authority last week, passing a bill that has been the subject of bitter partisan fights during President Obama’s tenure with far less fanfare than usual. Republicans, seeing no clear strategy that the majority of lawmakers supported and looking to avoid a repeat of the government shutdown last year, let the Democrats take the lead and lift the debt ceiling. The leadership in both parties abandoned their usual fights and voted in favor of the bill.

But it wasn’t that cut-and-dried. Instead of walking into a fight that could have ended disastrously, Republicans left the policy points on the table and opted for a political victory of spending. The rank-and-file members let their leadership take the tough votes and stuck to their guns – perhaps because outside conservative groups like DeMint's Heritage Foundation were telling them it was a bad strategy.

It was a quiet resolution to a fight that has gone to the brink in the past, but it wasn’t pretty, especially for Republican leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who are facing primary challenges from the right back in their home states – a sign that the Republican infighting that has ensconced the party won’t end anytime soon.

If Americans are fed up with hyper-partisanship, they aren’t showing it at the voting booth, at least at the state level. A full three-quarters of states – 37 out of 50 – are under unified party control (where Republicans or Democrats control both the governor's office and the legislature), which leads to big partisan victories, like a growing number of states legalizing gay marriage or restricting abortion rights. And it turns out independents aren’t all that independent, after all – just one third of them see both parties as too extreme, according to an August 2013 CBS News poll. Instead, they tend to see one party as too extreme.

Among partisans, those numbers are staggering: 69 percent of both Democratic and Republican voters think the other party’s representation in Congress is too extreme. It’s no wonder bipartisanship in Washington is viewed with suspicion, as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida – a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate – learned the hard way when his work on the Senate immigration bill was met with plummeting poll numbers. In an April 2013 Quinnipiac poll, 19 percent of Republicans or those who leaned Republican picked him as the candidate they would vote for in a GOP primary. By January 14, that number had dropped to just 8 percent.

The midterms are still nine months away, and the primaries could provide some answers about whether Americans are looking to shake up the political system again, which seems likely to lead to even more gridlock, or stick with the current system and its known dysfunction. 

But until then, we can ponder DeMint's suggestion that Americans are less divided than Washington. If by divided, he means polarized, polling shows America is actually becoming more polarized. If it means that there are more self-identifying as independent, even then, polling shows independents shun one party as too extreme. As it turns out, contrary to DeMint's point, Congress may very well simply be a reflection of a divided America. 




I have always been registered as a Democrat and I agree with 99.9% of the things they espouse, but on some public order issues such as heavy penalties for the crimes of rape, incest, torture or murder I agree with the more conservative voters, in that I don't think a rapist should be out of jail in less than 20 years on parole. I am more like a Democrat in that I think he, as a partially mentally deranged person, should get therapy while in prison to make him think about his life and become remorseful for his acts. I think prisoners are still humans with souls, and can become more worthy of dying in peace. I still don't think sexual predators can be trusted ever again to be safe members of society, and should be hospitalized in an asylum until death if their prison term runs out. There are some prisoners who, in the past, I have been glad to see that they were executed, either because they can't be trusted or because their crime was so severe that they deserve death.

When thinking about more ordinary issues of governance, I want to see our representatives work with each other across the party lines, because this gridlock that we've been having is destructive to the process of making laws that benefit society, as evidenced by the recent government shutdown. There needs to be enough party loyalty to produce a majority in an important vote, but a healthy amount of flexibility. I am unaware, most often, of what political party my personal friends believe in unless I ask them directly, because I don't usually argue politics with people, and I find that Republicans are just as personable and interesting in most cases as Democrats.

It doesn't help my party any to argue, and those heated interpersonal discussions are really uncomfortable to me. I think what I think, but I don't want to debate about it. I just want to keep up with the issues for my emotional and mental satisfaction, vote in elections and write my representatives occasionally. I am finding doing this blog very stimulating, and I can tell by my statistics on the Blogger site that I have a small but fairly reliable audience around the world, even as far away as Russia and Indonesia, so somebody finds it interesting. I believe in learning for the sake of learning, and continuing to grow as I age, so I am enjoying this daily activity. I hope others will enjoy it, too.





Chelsea Clinton hails "incredible progress" on gay rights – CBS
AP February 16, 2014

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton said Sunday that the gay-rights cause made "incredible progress" on political and legal fronts in 2013, but progress should not be mistaken for success.

Clinton called lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues "the unfinished business of the 21st century" in an address at a national conference in Las Vegas where actress Ellen Page came out as gay days earlier in an emotional speech that's stirred a social media outpouring.

Clinton urged a crowd of 600 professionals who work with children to become more sensitive to the needs of LGBT youth, saying the deck is stacked against them because of bullying, rejection and other harassment.

"I've often been asked why issues of equality are so important to me. Frankly, I don't know why they ask that question," Clinton said. "This is about the premise and promise of our country. (It's) always marching forward to a more perfect union. I was raised in a family where inertia is not an option."

The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign Foundation's inaugural conference, which was designed to promote the safety and welfare of LGBT youth, honored Magic Johnson and his wife, Cookie, former 'N Sync singer Lance Bass and writer Robin McHaelen for their support of gay rights.

The Johnsons' son, E.J., who accepted the award on their behalf, praised his parents for giving him unconditional love after he revealed that he was gay.
During the three-day conference that ended Sunday, Betty DeGeneres, mother of Ellen DeGeneres, stressed the importance of parents in giving support to LGBT children, and Candace Gingrich, the openly gay half-sister of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, served as a moderator for a panel discussion about LGBT youth issues.

On Friday, Page, 26, whose role as a pregnant teenager in the 2007 film "Juno" won the hearts of moviegoers and earned her an Oscar nomination, came out as gay at the conference, saying, "I feel a personal obligation and social responsibility" and that she was "tired of lying by omission."

Clinton praised both Page and Jason Collins, the NBA player who announced he was gay after last season.
"Now others have followed his (Collins') courageous example, and I hope later on this year, we'll be cheering for the first openly gay player in the NFL," Clinton said, referring to Missouri All-American Michael Sam, who came out this month.

She noted how 17 states and Washington, D.C., recognize same-sex marriage and how the U.S. Justice Department recently instructed all of its employees to give lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers.
"With all the incredible progress we had in 2013, it's easy to think progress marks success," she said. "We certainly shouldn't take anything away from the historic victories in 2013 ... But we should not mistake progress for success. We need to continue to push for progress in communities, states and the country."

The conference, which was held in partnership with the National Education Association and American Counseling Association, drew teachers, counselors, coaches, social workers, health professionals and others who work with children.

A report issued in conjunction with the conference focused on youth who identify themselves as transgender or express their gender in nonconventional ways. It found that such youth feel even more marginalized and challenged at school and require more attention, said Ellen Kahn of the Human Rights Campaign.




Chelsea Clinton is married, so presumably she is not gay herself, but has simply taken on the cause of youth who are conflicted about their sexuality. It is one of the main issues that causes bullying by peers, which is getting much more professional attention now than when I was in high school. Teachers seemed to feel in those days that bullying was relatively harmless, and just a passing phase. I must say, I don't think bullying was a big problem when I was young, but there was less questioning of the status quo in general then, at least in the south, and teachers were less prone to intervene among students. They also hesitated to bring the school into controversies, preferring to cover such things up.

There were also very few teenagers who were “out” about being gay then, and there was a greater emphasis on outer signs of sexuality, such as being active in sports and getting married. Of course, our high school principal was talked about by the student body, partly because he was often antagonistic to the students and partly because he was slightly effeminate. I did know one girl well through the band who came out to me because she was interested in me. She was from the orphanage and was very ambivalent about her father who had abused her. I just told her gently that I was not gay, and she accepted that.

I'm glad to see people helping gay students because they do often feel conflicted about their identity, which is a cause of poor mental health. They aren't likely to be able to change their sexual preferences, so I am for societal acceptance of their differences, and support for them in their life endeavors. I have known at least a dozen gay people during my life well enough to discuss things with them, and have found them to be “moral,” honest and intelligent, in fact not “different” from the norm except in that way. I'm glad to see Chelsea taking stands on issues, because she has undoubtedly inherited a very bright mind and an interest in society's ways. Maybe she will go into politics some day.




­ U.N. Report Details North Korea's 'Crimes Against Humanity' – NPR
by Mark Memmott
February 17, 2014
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"Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed" by the leaders of North Korea against their own people, the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights declared Monday in a report that goes on to accuse that nation's communist regime of "crimes against humanity."

According to U.N. investigators, "the gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world." They conclude, for example, that "hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished" in prison camps over the past five decades.

The High Commissioner's report calls on the U.N. Security Council to "refer the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court."

"The United Nations must ensure that those most responsible for the crimes against humanity committed in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are held accountable," the report concludes.

But as NPR's Anthony Kuhn tells our Newscast Desk, few observers believe the report will change much inside North Korea, where the leadership denies any wrongdoing.
The commission says it based its conclusions on "first-hand testimony" from victims, witnesses and experts. Its investigators "conducted more than 240 confidential interviews with victims and other witnesses." In language that supports what the outside world has believed for decades, the report reaches the following conclusions:
— Indoctrination. The North Korean government "operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the supreme leader (Suryong), effectively to the exclusion of any thought independent of official ideology and state propaganda."

— Isolation. "Systems of indoctrination and discrimination on the basis of social class are reinforced and safeguarded by a policy of isolating citizens from contact with each other and with the outside world, violating all aspects of the right to freedom of movement."

— Starvation. "The commission found evidence of systematic, widespread and grave violations of the right to food in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. While acknowledging the impact of factors beyond state control over the food situation, the commission finds that decisions, actions and omissions by the state and its leadership caused the death of at least hundreds of thousands of people and inflicted permanent physical and psychological injuries on those who survived."

— Torture. "The use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, especially in cases involving political crimes. Starvation and other inhumane conditions of detention are deliberately imposed on suspects to increase the pressure on them to confess and to incriminate other persons."

— Prison Camps. "Persons who are found to have engaged in major political crimes are 'disappeared,' without trial or judicial order, to political prison camps (kwanliso). There, they are incarcerated and held incommunicado. ... In the political prison camps of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide. The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades."

— Executions. "As a matter of state policy, the authorities carry out executions, with or without trial, publicly or secretly, in response to political and other crimes that are often not among the most serious crimes. The policy of regularly carrying out public executions serves to instil fear in the general population."

— Disappearances. "Well over 200,000 persons, including children, who were brought from other countries to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea may have become victims of enforced disappearance, as defined in the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance."

— It's Ongoing. "Crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation. The commission further finds that crimes against humanity are ongoing in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place."




It's good for the UN to make this statement, but I hope they will do something to enforce measures against North Korea, at least financial sanctions. They are too large, powerful and populous a nation for military measures to work against them without a declaration of outright war. China will probably support them in any such conflict. Still, maybe there will be some progress.




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A Push To Boost Computer Science Learning, Even At An Early Age – NPR
by Eric Westervelt
February 17, 2014
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A handful of nonprofit and for-profit groups are working to address what they see as a national education crisis: Too few of America's K-12 public schools actually teach computer science basics and fewer still offer it for credit.

It's projected that in the next decade there will be about 1 million more U.S. jobs in the tech sector than computer science graduates to fill them. And it's estimated that only about 10 percent of K-12 schools teach computer science.
So some in the education technology sector, an industry worth some $8 billion a year and growing, are stepping in.

At a Silicon Valley hotel recently, venture capitalists and interested parties heard funding pitches and watched demonstrations from 13 ed-tech start-ups backed by an incubator called Imagine K-12. One of them is Kodable, which aims to teach kids five years and younger the fundamentals of programming through a game where you guide a Pac-Man-esque fuzz ball.

"As soon as you can start learning [coding] you should, because the earlier you start learning something, the better you'll be at it later in life," says Grechen Huebner, the co-founder of Kodable. She's working two computer screens to demonstrate how the game works in the hotel lobby.

"Kids have to drag and drop symbols to get their fuzzy character to go through a maze so they learn about conditions, loops and functions and even debugging," Huebner says.
So should kids who've barely shed their pull-up diapers really learn to code? Huebner thinks it's vital. "We have kids as young as two using it. Five is just kinda the sweet spot."

My daughter's behind, I think. She's four and she hasn't started coding. Bad parent.
Even if kids aren't offered game-based computer science concepts in pre-K, there is growing consensus students should get exposed to basic computer science concepts early. Kodable and other startups hope to make a profit filling this enormous void in American public education.

"Ninety percent of schools just don't even teach it. So if you're a parent and your school doesn't even offer this class, your kids aren't going to have the preparation they need for 21st century," says Hadi Partovi, co-founder of the nonprofit Code.org. "Just like we teach how electricity works and biology basics they should also know how the Internet works and how apps work. Schools need to add this to the curriculum."

Through his "Hour of Code" initiative, Partovi is working to get kids, parents and schools interested computer science curriculum.

This Board Game Aims To Teach Preschoolers How To Code
Third graders at a public elementary school in Baltimore recently took part in a game-based Hour of Code to start to try to learn the very basics of coding even though they don't realize it. "So you're moving three blocks and then you press start," one third grader says. Gretchen LeGrand with the nonprofit Code in the Schools is trying to bring computer science fundamentals to underserved, low-income kids in Baltimore. She says it's a huge challenge in a district with few resources.

"The computers are old or outdated. We either can't install the software we want to use to teach computer programming or the connection's slow." She's had to adapt to teaching about coding without a computer or what more teachers are calling teaching CS unplugged.

Partovi says teaching computer science is not about esoteric knowledge for computer geeks or filling jobs at Google or Microsoft. Most of these jobs are not with big high tech companies. It's about training a globally competitive workforce and keeping most every sector of the U.S. economy thriving.

"Our future lawyers and doctors and politicians and businessmen — the folks in the other jobs — need to have a little bit of a background about how the world around them works," Partovi says. "It's all around us, and every industry gets impacted by it."

According to a study by the largest U.S. computing society, only 14 states have adopted secondary school standards for computer science. At the same time, there's been a sharp decline in the last five years in the number of introductory and advanced placement (AP) computer science classes offered in U.S. secondary schools.

Ironically, that decline comes just as states tout improvements to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curricula. And several groups and corporations have voiced deep concern that the new Common Core state standards promote no significant computer science content in either math or science.

There are some bright spots: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Broward County, Fla., have all recently boosted their commitments to expanding computer science offerings. But there's a long way to go, says Chris Stephenson who directs the Computer Science Teachers Association. She says a big problem is profound confusion about just what computer science is. Too many parents and administrators conflate gaming and basic point-and-click literacy with computer science — the principles and practices of computing and coding.

"I've had administrators actually say to me in all good intention, 'I know kids are learning computer science in my schools because there are computers in the schools.' And that is just not true," Stephenson says.

"I think that they just don't understand that having access to a computer isn't the same as learning computer science any more than having a Bunsen burner in the cupboard is the same as learning chemistry," she says. "There's a scientific discipline here you can't just learn by playing around with the technology."

Informational Divide
The "guesstimate" is that only five to 10 percent of schools teach computer science, based largely on data on students who take the AP test in computer science annually. The real percentage may be lower. Nobody tracks the figures nationally.

Some sobering stats from last year's AP data:
In Mississippi, Montana and Wyoming, no girls took the computer science exam.
In 11 states, no black students took it.
In eight states, no Hispanics took it.
In 17 states, fewer than 100 students took it.
"It's crazy small. I mean it would be absurd if it weren't so scary; that's how terrifying it is," Stephenson says.

So never mind the hardware-based digital divide, there's a growing digital information divide. Computer science education, it seems, is now privileged knowledge accessible mostly by affluent kids.

"The people that are most likely to succeed have access to it and other kids do not, and we really need to look at those facts and figures and be horrified by them," Stephenson says.

She says the Hour of Code — which has reached millions of students around the world — is a terrific start. But until more public schools offer computer science — for credit — she says the knowledge gap will only continue to widen.


https://www.edsurge.com/imagine-k12

Imagine K12 is an accelerator (or incubator) program exclusively for education technology companies focused on serving the kindergarten through high school education community. It was started in 2011 by three long-time entrepreneurs who were keen to contribute to education: Alan Louie, Tim Brady and Geoff Ralston. Every year, the incubator picks approximately 20 startups to "incubator," or help launch. The program prefers teams with technical cofounders. 




I am a proponent of high schools teaching solid coursework that prepares students directly for jobs, even without four year college courses. Too few of the high school students are really going to go to college right after high school. They can't read or do math at their grade level, so how can they succeed at college coursework? When I was going through there were courses such as “shop” and business courses for those who didn't plan to go to college. I think that's a good thing. Things like medical technology are being taught to some students here in Jacksonville – there was a student who rode the bus with me and she talked about it – at a high school level technical school which is separate from the other high schools in the area. Those students can be more likely to get a medical job out of high school, or get an AA degree at a community college.

There's no reason not to teach computer science, too, although starting first grade kids off with it doesn't sound too practical to me. Too many of those kids can't sit still in class yet or keep their mind on any one thing for more than 15 minutes. Still a little self-teaching program like Kodable couldn't hurt, and might really do a lot of good. I don't think computer science basics is something that can't be learned at the high school level just as well as in early childhood, and I doubt that most students will want to go on to do computer science professionally as adults, because it is too narrow and technical a field. Many people will still be liberal arts or pure science people just by their personalities and intellectual abilities. I don't think high school should be too narrow in its preparation of students for life, because there is so much basic learning they need to do before they specialize.




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What Honest Abe's Appetite Tells Us About His Life – NPR
by NPR Staff
February 17, 2014
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Most people know Abraham Lincoln for his achievements as president. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation and held the nation together through the trauma of the Civil War. His Gettysburg Address is one of the best known in American history.
But what you might not know is that Lincoln cooked.

From his childhood to his days in the White House, food played an integral part in shaping Lincoln's life, food historian Rae Katherine Eighmey tells Tell Me More's Michel Martin.

Eighmey's new book, Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen: A Culinary View of Lincoln's Life and Times, looks at our 16th president's life through the extraordinary stories of what he ate, cooked and served, along with recipes modified for the modern kitchen.
"By looking at his life through the foods that he ate or may have eaten, or was exposed to, you're able to build a picture of him as a human man and as a family man," she says.

What piqued Eighmey's interest was a simple tale of Lincoln putting on a blue apron after a day's work at his law office and helping his wife cook dinner. From there, Eighmey investigated stories of him cooking for the family after his mother died, cooking for his brothers as they journeyed down to New Orleans on a flatboat and of how the famous Mary Todd Lincoln white almond cake came to be. (Note: Modern recipes for the dessert are far easier than the original.)

Lincoln's cooking skills, says Eighmey, were part and parcel of the survival skills he needed during his hardscrabble upbringing. "Like any pioneering child, you live in a one-room log cabin, you are essentially raised in the kitchen. When Lincoln's mother died [when he was 9], he and his sister had to take over taking care of themselves and their father."

One culinary moment that Eighmey says particularly captures Lincoln's personality involved Sen. Stephen Douglas and some gingerbread man cookies.

During one of their famous debates — which helped catapult Lincoln into the national spotlight and eventually, the presidency — Lincoln grew tired of the constant false praises from Douglas. So, to make him stop, Lincoln told a story from his childhood.
He talked about how he once shared gingerbread cookies his mother made with a neighboring boy, who then told him that "there's nobody who likes gingerbread as much as I do, and nobody who gets as little as I do."

"So Lincoln was contrasting that to how he doesn't get much flattery, and here Douglas was heaping it on him, you know, falsely," Eighmey says.
But the story doesn't just end there. In a way, Eighmey is also a detective, analyzing the stories to unravel recipes that Lincoln and his family likely used back in the 1800s.

For the gingerbread story, Eighmey says, the clues were Lincoln's description of the cookies: that they were made from sorghum flour and ginger, and that he could stuff them in his pocket, which meant that the cookies were sturdy in texture. Using that as the starting point, she sifted through old cookbooks to find the closest recipe that fit those elements.

After Lincoln died, Eighmey says, many mourning Americans began to "savor his life through food," giving rise to recipes in his honor such as "the Lincoln cake." There are several different cake recipes with this name from that era, she says. (Her book includes one for a large, lightly fruited cake.)

So what do you eat if you want to honor Lincoln's life this President's Day? Well, Eighmey suggest apples, which were his favorite food, and corn cakes.

Read an excerpt of Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen
"He was said to have eaten those as fast as two women could prepare them," she says.




It surprised me that any man in 1865 would be a cook, but after all, he had to learn it as a survival skill as a child. He must have been a more comfortable husband to his wife than so many, especially in that generation, were. He has always inspired me to keep learning on my own. He was largely self-taught, and “read the law” to learn it. He didn't go to college. His mind must have been formidable. And through it all he managed to be “honest Abe,” without financial or family scandals. I think he has justly been honored as perhaps our greatest president.

The recent movie about his life with his wife and the process behind the 13th Amendment was really a great production, I thought. His relationship with black people was less than perfect, in that he seemed to be unclear about what to do about them now that they were freed, but then it wasn't destined to be his job, since he was assassinated too soon after they were freed. The country is still working on the problem of racial differences, but there has been great progress since I was young, and the position of the law on most issues is in place now, largely thanks to Lincoln. The rest of the credit goes to Martin Luther King and Lyndon Baines Johnson. I'm glad to have lived through it all and seen the changes.