Salon.com > Laura Deurmyer

The Year in Sanity: “Dude, you have no Quran”

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:30:00 +0000

Sometimes, I don't give my fellow West Texans enough credit. Sure, there are many people here who are unthinking followers of hurtful, hateful right-wing dogma. However, West Texas is also home to a hilariously effective foiling of an attempt to carry out the vile Quran-burning set off by Florida preacher Terry Jones.

With the simple declaration "Dude, you have no Quran," Jacob Isom stopped a radical "Christian" group from burning the Muslim holy book in an Amarillo Texas Park.

Simple, direct common-sense action. Non-violent, casual, calm. Problem solved.

My son’s kindergarten is a toy gun battlefield

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Here in Texas, guns are an integral part of life. Many children have parents who hunt. People living out on ranches need a shotgun leaning in the mud room to take care of that rattler waiting on the front porch. And 200,000 Texans and counting have a concealed carry hand gun permit.

Our son is six; in the past few years I’ve seen him make a play gun out of his finger, a stick, a plastic grabber toy and, once, by chewing a peanut butter sandwich into a gun shape. We've also given him a couple of prop guns for imagination play – a pirate blunderbuss that goes with his pirate costume and a play rifle that stays in the closet unless Daddy can play with him.

We don't let our son point guns – not even toy guns – at people. If he plays with his "rifle" (which looks fairly realistic), it's with Dad, in a way that will teach him good gun safety habits. We want to shape his respect for guns in advance of the day when he might learn to handle a real gun.

My gun stance is basically this: I am not anti-gun, I am anti-shooting people.

Why Johnny can’t be deducted

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:25:00 +0000

The going rate for a kid in the United States is $4,600 and change to families making $110,000 or less in 2009 . At least that's what my tax prep computer program is telling me. (A $3,650 dependent deduction plus a $1,000 child tax credit.) So the mightier your uterus, the bigger your tax break. My uterus is weak and puny and has produced only one child. But my husband and I foster-parent in our hometown of Lubbock, Texas, and one of the ways the government compensates foster parents is by allowing us to claim tax deductions and credits for our charges as though they had popped out of our own baby-makers. Or so we thought.

So, I set about doing our taxes to include the little boy who spent a little more than half the year with us in 2009. No big deal, right? Wrong.

According to our case worker, the only time you get to claim a foster child as a dependent is when the state has forcibly wrenched the child away from his or her natural family. Voluntary placement kids are still deductible by their natural parent(s). (Those who want to read the specifics of the law can at IRS.gov.)