Wow, if you thought that White House officials were getting bad intelligence during the first term, just take a look at Scott McClellan’s recent answer to a question about some folks with offending bumper stickers who were booted from a Bush event:
Let’s keep the recent child-porn arrest of a Boy Scouts employee in perspective. In his job, he did not have day-to-day contact with minors and none of the photos on his computer were of Boy Scouts.
But there is a part of this story that fits into an increasingly familiar pattern. Take a look at this outtake from a Daily News article on the matter:
Just five months ago, he wrote a letter to a legal magazine blasting opponents of the boy scouts’ ban on gay scout leaders.
“Some intolerant elements in our society want to force scouting to abandon its values and to become fundamentally different,” he wrote.
You don’t need to be a PhD in psychology to be able to pick up on the repeated connections between organizationally mandated sexual repression and hate and horrific desires and acts by those who cling to these company lines.
The politicians and media may not want to pick up on these connections, but I guarantee you that the cops have.
Jay Mathews offers up this very interesting take on research done to assess the effectiveness of the KIPP (knowledge is power program) charter schools.
Pay close attention to his discussion of the parental role in getting kids enrollled in a challenging charter school in the first place. If a kid has a parent with that much on the ball then I can promise you that the kid is nowhere near the bottom of the at-risk population.
Mathews sums up the debate with this:
The point is, if we can’t get the less motivated parents to come to KIPP, isn’t it time to consider bringing KIPP, or programs like KIPP, to them? If their neighborhood school challenges their children in the same way, and requires all parents at least sign the homework, they are going to have much more difficulty keeping their kids from getting the good education they deserve.
Bingo. We need to get the kids on the bottom and pull them up, not to simply skim the cream off of the at-risk population thereby leaving the worst schools even worse than they were before.
Anyone who argues that school choice – or using public funds for private schools – is the whole answer for the kids with the longest uphill battles is ignoring the fact that the kids at the bottom usually can’t count on their parent to make the right choices or even any choices at all.
And anyone who argues that there are no programatic changes that can make a significant dent in a hopeless problem might want to visit a KIPP school.
Hey, why are all the students at Harvard so unhappy? A recent survey indicates that Harvard students have a much lower level of satisfaction than their peers at other top schools.
The only thing I can come up with is the fact that Souper Salad closed and Grendel’s sure ain’t what it used to be.
It’s won’t come as much of surprise that we are more divided than ever:
Political polarization intensified during the 2004 elections, continuing a trend that has defined voting behavior for most of the past decade and that has left the two major parties increasingly homogenized and partisan. Only 59 of the 435 congressional districts went in different directions in presidential and House elections last year, according to newly released data from the political analysis firm Polidata. In the remaining districts, voters either backed both President Bush and the Republican House candidate or John F. Kerry and the Democratic House candidate.
The findings came as no surprise to election experts but as confirmation of patterns that now appear ingrained in American politics. In 2000, there were 86 such “split-ticket” districts, and in 1992 and 1996, there were more than 100 such districts.
So which side is winning and which side is losing? That answer shouldn’t come as much of surprise either. The haves are winning and those that have less are losing. You can call it the great divide. We’re divided and it’s great for big corporations with well-lubed lobbying groups.
Much more on this later.
