To quickly expand on the previous post, permit me an analogy to illustrate the absurdity of Arne Duncan’s education program: A rich man walks into a homeless shelter with a 20 pound turkey and announces that the homeless person who performs the most amusing trick will be awarded the turkey. The states are so strapped for cash right now, they will do just about anything to make a buck. Ent... [More]

Unsightly “‘We received many strong proposals from states all across America, but two applications stood out above all others: Delaware and Tennessee,’ Duncan said in announcing the winners. ‘Both states have statewide buy-in for comprehensive plans to reform their schools. They have written new laws to support their policies. And they have demonstrated the courage, capacit... [More]

My Body My Campus “It showed we are ready to stop at nothing to get justice”, said student Julia Shindel. So this is what students call justice in the modern age. Instead of sitting around watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force and drinking their bong water all day, they actually have to get in the car and drive across the street to buy rubbers before they sleep with their over-fed girlfriends. The hor... [More]

Baby Killers! Let’s take these absurdities down one by one: “It was an impressive turnout for a quickly organized protest—but coverage of the event soon was dominated by reports that some demonstrators had hurled racial and homophobic epithets at Democratic lawmakers as they entered the Capitol.” Hmmm… Random radicals – ever present at any protest – shout raci... [More]

The Ides fall a week late this year. Julius Caesar’s death marked the end of the Roman Republic. The massive economic power grab that yesterday’s health care vote represents may well herald the death of another. So perhaps the labels cavalierly assigned to this vote – landmark, historic, momentous, seminal – are ironically appropriate. Just as the Roman Senators believed... [More]

Deficit of Trust

Roger Cohen “Community — a stable job, shared national experience, extended family, labor unions — has vanished or eroded. In its place have come a frenzied individualism, solipsistic screen-gazing, the disembodied pleasures of social networking and the à-la-carte life as defined by 600 TV channels and a gazillion blogs. Feelings of anxiety and inadequacy grow in the lonely chamber of self-a... [More]

Why? “Tiger has to take ownership of what he has done. He must get his personal life in order. I think that’s what he’s trying to do. And when he comes back he has to show some humility to the public,” Tom Watson said before the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this month. “I would come out and I would do an interview with somebody and say, ‘You know what? I screwe... [More]

Give me your land or I will bench press your village! “‘If you visited the land prior to this allocation, you would have found that there were at the most one or two small huts’ on the land, he said. ‘The people who were on the land now have an equivalent plot of agricultural land where they can continue their farming. . . . The community will be enhanced by this.’... [More]

Contempt “‘To use racist arguments to try to bait black people to get them to be anti-abortion is just disgusting,’ said Guy-Sheftall, who teaches women’s history and feminist thought at the historically black women’s college. ‘These one-issue approaches that are not about saving the black family or black children, it’s just a big distraction,’ she s... [More]