I don’t know where this originated, but it’s going around on e-mail.
This is a lot more important than Cambodia, with the FMA and all.
Archive for August, 2004
Now to make a broader point about the interview, it was fawning and biased, and it bothered me.
Should I, or anyone, take this seriously? We should. And those who say we shouldn’t are being disingenuous.
The Daily Show is comedy. But why do people watch it? (And I do watch it and often like it.)
If we just wanted comedy, we could watch those old movies where monkeys dress in suits, smoke cigars and generally act like people. I love those movies.
But people want more than comedy. They want the real world, but through a filter — a less pompous filter than they’ll get from Aaron Brown and a less annoying filter than they’ll get from Bill O’Reilly.
In a lot of ways, a comedy show can tell the truth about what’s happening in the world in a way that a news show can’t. When the world is ridiculous, news anchors have to remain solemn, reporting the most audacious lies and preposterous spin as entirely reasonable — or at least plausible.
On the other hand, The Daily Show can run a montage of pictures of George Tenet looking vaguely like this:
as it did recently, and it’s quite a bit more revealing than 50 serious news segments on “What the 9/11 Commission Report Means” — at least to the average citizen.
That’s why, as the much-noted Pew survey found, about one-fifth of young people get their political news from comedy shows like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live.
It is entertainment. But it’s only entertainment because it purports to cut through the My-Life-thick layer of obfuscation that covers the news to get at a deeper, and funnier, level of truth.
The Daily Show, however, when it’s convenient, pretends that it doesn’t take itself seriously, and so no one can criticize it.
But then, sometimes, like yesterday, the executive producer of the show, Ben Karlin, will come out and say something like this to MSNBC:
“All of us [on ‘The Daily Show’] are just blown away by the turn the campaign has taken,” Karlin said. “We cannot believe that this is what is being talked about at this juncture. It’s so astounding to us. We are trying to work through our amazement and to conduct a meaningful conversation absent of incredulity, because [the interview] is not going to go anywhere if you just say, ‘What the [expletive] is going on?’ “
Karlin said he will nonetheless suggest that that be the first question Stewart puts to Kerry tonight.
“If you just want to pinpoint the success of the Republican Party and Bush, this is a perfect case study,” Karlin continued, “because George W. Bush has put a moratorium on talk about his behavior under the age of 40 and everyone [in the press] is abiding by it. ‘Were you or were you not an alcoholic or did you just have a drinking problem?,’ ‘Were you or were you not a drug abuser?’ Meanwhile they’re debating whether [Kerry’s war] wounds drew blood or were they superficial, or occurred in the same day, or whether he shot a guy wearing a toga. . . . How is that possible?”
Now, that’s all well and good. I’m pretty well inclined to agree with him (except to note that John Kerry is the one who decided long ago to make this campaign about Vietnam — no matter how puzzling a decision that was.)
But don’t turn around then and say that The Daily Show doesn’t take itself seriously. No one who has watched the show in the last few months could miss that it considers a large part of its mission nowadays to attack the Bush campaign and to defend John Kerry.
That’s their right. That’s their prerogative. But when comedy takes sides, when it takes itself as seriously as the Ted Koppels and the Tom Brokaws (speaking of monkeys in suits), when it turns into advocacy, something else happens: It stops being funny.
And the problem of less funniness in the world is something I take quite, quite seriously.
Just watched John Kerry on “The Daily Show.”
Most human Kerry quote: “You’d be amazed at the number of people who want to introduce themselves to you in the men’s room… It’s the most bizarre part of this entire thing.”
Least human: “Would that it were.” (In response to the question: “Is it true that every time I use ketchup, your wife gets a nickel?”)
Remember when the president signed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill into law despite the fact that he clearly thought it was unconstitutional? Wasn’t that weird???
Especially since he had long since defeated Sen. John McCain for the Republican nomination and was now, in fact, you know, the president.
Anyway… President Bush had some interesting things to say about McCain-Feingold at the time:
Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns…
I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.
I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election.
Now that’s the Bush I love. But, wait, who’s this guy:
Asked on Monday about one of the anti-Kerry advertisements [from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth], financed largely by Texas supporters of Mr. Bush, the president said that he wanted to stop “all of them.'’
“That means that ad, every other ad,'’ he said.
Huh?
Mr. Bush put his remarks about the advertisement by the Swift boat group in the context of his previous calls for a ban on advertisements from third-party groups known as 527’s, using large, unlimited donations. Only when pressed by reporters whether he specifically meant the commercial from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, did he say “all of them.'’
“I don’t think we ought to have 527’s,'’ Mr. Bush said, referring to independent political groups that are running advertisements on both sides of the political spectrum. “I can’t be more plain about it and I wish — I hope my opponents join me in saying — condemning these activities of 527’s. I think they are bad for the system.'’
So, banning 527s from running ads with soft money would expand “individual freedom to participate in elections”?
I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this W.affle, and I’m sure it’s nuanced.
Waffle, noun: a light crisp battercake baked in a waffle iron
W.affle, verb: what President Bush does when he forgets he’s supposed to have principles
Periodically, in order to combat the storyline that Kerry is a flip-flopping, French-loving, medal-grubbing, wine-chugging, coifed mama’s-boy, his supporters try to come up with examples of times Bush has “flip-flopped.”
This is a hilarious game that the Republican and Democratic parties can play for literally newscycles on end, and the main benefit is that neither side risks appearing hypocritical.
For example, take this thigh-slapper put out by the Democratic National Committee:
8. Bush Flip-Flops on Hybrid Automobiles
Bush Flip: Bush Mocked Gore’s Tax Credit for Hybrid Cars
“‘How many of you own hybrid electric gasoline engine vehicles? If you look under there, you’ll see that’s one of the criteria necessary to receive tax relief. So when he talks about targeted tax relief that’s pretty darn targeted,’ Bush told the Arlington Heights rally, drawing laughs.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 10/29/00]Bush Flop: Bush Supported Investing in Hybrid Cars
In his State of the Union speech, Bush said, “Tonight I am proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. … Join me in this important innovation, to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.” [White House, “President Delivers ‘State of the Union,’” 1/28/03]
Triple snap! They nailed him! I think…
But anyway, there is a more important class of flip-flop, the kind where — out of nowhere and for no discernable reason at all (save my most favoritest type of reason: the crass political reason) — Bush suddenly decides to sell his theoretically conservative principles down the river.
This is called a W.affle, and will be chronicled herein.
Spam, for whatever reason, is something I enjoy greatly. I got a spam for this site, Christian Debt Helpers, with just a wonderful slogan: “A Christian-Themed Approach to Debt Elimination.”
Note, that’s not “Christian,” “Christian-based” or even “Christian-esque.” It’s just Christian-themed.
Like the Anglican church.
Welcome, Eduwonk readers! Sit right down, and pull up a bookmark!
Chartergate is petering out, but it’s not totally petered. The invaluable Mike Antonucci, of the Education Intelligence Agency (a sort of one-man CIA that focuses on teachers unions instead of terrorist networks), pens a dispatch picking apart all the ways the AFT has just (accidentally) accepted a whole bunch of conservatives’ arguments about education policy.
(For those just getting acquainted with Chartergate, the American Federation of Teachers put out a bogus study last week — swallowed hook, line and sinker by The New York Times — claiming that charter schools are falling behind traditional public schools. What the AFT neglected to mention was that the gap they found disappears when you take into account that charter schools take more poor, minority students than other schools.)
Anyway, the points the AFT has conceded, according to Antonucci, are as follows (just the bullets):
* Judging schools by a single standardized test score is now OK…
* Enrolling large numbers of minority students is no excuse for poor performance…
* Inexperienced teachers are no excuse for poor performance…
* High teacher turnover is no excuse for poor performance…
* Poor teacher compensation is no excuse for poor performance…
* Low funding is no excuse for poor performance…
This should be fun. Paging Daniel Okrent.
I have one thing to say to the folks over at Life After Capitalism (about which my friend Jacob Gershman had an excellent story in The New York Sun on Friday): Tylenol Cool Caplets.
Workers’ paradise? Hardly — if your pain medication doesn’t even have a fresh, minty taste to help it go down just - that - much - easier.
For all the talk of corporations “manipulating” hapless consumers and swindling them out of their money, it’s worth remembering just how thoroughly corporations grovel each and every day to shave just one extra penny off of their prices — to add just one more bell to their latest whistle — to make sure that you give them, and not their competitors, your consumer dollar.
Otherwise, would the McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals division of Johnson & Johnson have “hired dozens of ‘Tylenol Cool Caps Girls’ to wear revealing outfits while they distribute samples in hot spots like Times Square and Miami Beach”?
Not - bloody - likely.
Life After Capitalism? More like, Life After Tylenol Cool Caps Girls.
Count me out.
Though most life-long New Yorkers I know are horrified by this, Times Square has always been my favorite spot in New York City — in no small part because it’s where I lived for a few months when I moved up here (it was a small student housing building that’s since been demolished to make way for the new Times HQ).
And also because it’s a (literally) shining and shimmering monument to the free market.
So, here are a few pictures I took of it recently.
All this time I thought I was a self-hating Jew, and now I’m just an anti-Semite!
– Krusty the Clown
Dads who hate Clinton and NASCAR? The New York Sun’s Karen Schwartz expounds “Grouchy Dads”:
Grouchy Dads voted for Clinton — at least in 1992 — and were genuinely excited by his optimistic progressivism. They did not stop thinking about tomorrow. But once tomorrow came, the worm began to turn. Grouchy Dads didn’t really care about gays in the military, but they were all steamed up about the “arrogance” of the first lady’s health care task force and its resulting plan.
Monica broke the camel’s back. Grouchy Dads across the land became irate. They were upstanding, successful professional men, men who, like Clinton, had risen to the ranks of the upper-middle class meritocratically, through intelligence and education. They prided themselves on the lives they’d lived, and the president’s tawdry behavior made them indignant. Monica could’ve been one of their daughters!
…
When it comes to Grouchy Dads, Bush’s genius is the fact that, though technically a Baby Boomer, he certainly never seemed like one.
Probably won’t swing any blue states, but hey.
This is a great column by George Will on a Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin who is worried — rightly — that ads for the car dealership he founded, which bares his name, will fall afoul of McCain-Feingold this season.
Thesis graf:
A core principle of an open society is that, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, freedom is the silence of the laws — what is not forbidden is permitted. However, because of the complexities and vagaries of McCain-Feingold and the rest of the government’s metastasizing regulations of political activity, prudent participants in politics must assume that everything is forbidden until government gives permission.
Preach it, Brother Will.
Campaign-finance reformers consistently deny that legitimate political discourse will suffer from attempts to ban what they consider to be “illegitimate” political discourse (based on who spends how much on it).
Those with utter contempt for the reformers — such as me — have consistently pointed out that the exercise of trying to divide between legitimate and illegitimate political discourse, in and of itself, will have a chilling effect on speech.
Why? At least in part because legitimate discourse will be attacked as illegitimate, simply so that one side can intimidate and maybe even silence the other.
The Republicans are by no means innocent on this front. Earlier this year, the chairman of the Republican National Committee sent out a letter to TV stations, advising them that they ought not run ads for Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” since such ads might be construed as campaign ads under McCain-Feingold (a point, as I explain in this column, that is — unfortunately — entirely reasonable).
Now, John Kerry, who has been rattled by the effective Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, has decided to attack the ads on process (claiming that they fall afoul of McCain-Feingold) as opposed to spending his time, you know, responding to the content of the ads.
Now, I haven’t followed every twist and turn of these Vietnam claims, but, as Mickey Kaus said: “If freedom of speech means anything it means that a group of citizens can get together to bring up this sort of charge against a presidential candidate, subject to the laws of libel.”
It’s easy for such simple truths to get lost in the fog of reform.
In a disturbing case out of Vermont, the right of Americans to spend whatever they want (and have) to get elected to public office is being challenged.
Supreme Court rulings, so far, have upheld this right as fundamental to the First Amendment. But, given its recent show of respect for the Bill of Rights in the McCain-Feingold case, one has to wonder just how a fight like this might turn out should it reach the High Court.
It would be nice if everyone could remember that spending and speaking are the same thing when it costs money to get your message out by TV, radio, pamphlet, direct mail, canvasing, phone bank or any other method.
Hillel Halkin, one of the most thoughtful commentators on Israel around (and a Gore-rooter in 2000), has written an excellent column in The New York Sun evaluating just what a John Kerry presidency might mean for Israel.
His verdict:
President Bush has turned out to be the most pro-Israel president in American history — and under far from conducive circumstances. Whereas Mr. Clinton backed a Jewish state that was, during most of his term, actively engaged in the peace process and in good standing in the world, Mr. Bush has stood behind a country reduced to semi-pariah status by a frighteningly successful world propaganda campaign against it.
…
The crucial question is how much less pro-Israel a Kerry presidency would be — and here there is really no knowing. Campaign statements and party platforms are not useful prognosticators. Moreover, even taken at face value, the Democratic Party’s Israel plank is not entirely reassuring. While it opposes both the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and a full Israeli withdrawal to the disadvantageous 1967 borders, it entirely omits to mention the disputed security fence — a not so subtle hint that Israel cannot expect to get Mr. Kerry’s support for the fence — in the past criticized by him for being “provocative and counter-productive” — as it has gotten Mr. Bush’s.
It would certainly not be good for Israel if a Kerry administration reverted to the Clinton administration’s attitude of viewing dictatorial Arab leaders in Damascus and Ramallah as fit negotiating partners for Israel whose needs and objectives count for as much as Jerusalem’s. And it would be even worse if those left-liberal forces in the Democratic Party that view Israel as do countries like France or Spain were to exert an influence over American foreign policy in the Middle East.
A Kerry administration might not necessarily be bad for Israel, but it could be. A second Bush administration would be better for Israel if it improved its relations with Europe, but it will be good even if it doesn’t. The conclusion? A bird in the Bush is worth two in the wrong Democratic hands.
Halkin does add, however, the point — easy to forget over here in America — that poor relations with Europe are no small matter in Israel. As they say, read the whole thing.
Would somebody please remind me again just why we have to live in a democracy? Sometimes I wonder, like when I read stories like this, from Newsday:
Reacting to the death of a 3-year-old Queens boy who choked on popcorn, a state senator from Brooklyn said yesterday that he will introduce legislation requiring warning labels on all foods that could be hazardous to young children.
Not that you didn’t see that coming. Here’s more:
“This unfortunate accident spotlighted something we should focus on,” Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) said in announcing his proposal to require warning labels on foods that could choke children under 4 years of age.
…
“That little label could save a life,” he said.
He said the warning would be based on common choking foods identified by the American Academy of Pediatrics as dangerous to children under 4: hot dogs; nuts and seeds; chunks of meat or cheese; whole grapes; hard, gooey or sticky candy; popcorn; chunks of peanut butter; raw vegetables; raisins and chewing gum.
Kruger said the bill would also require theaters, ballparks and other venues to place warnings on food containers.
I truly look forward to the day when “whole grapes” come with warning labels.
Democracy really is the worst form of government … with all the usual caveats.
Not Chartergate
Published by August 19th, 2004 in Misc. Education and Misc. Self Promotion. 0 CommentsWell, kind of Chartergate.
My most recent piece on education for The Post urges NYC to close more failing schools, as Chicago is doing, and replace them with charters:
New York City has just shy of 500 public schools designated as failing under federal law. These schools contain roughly 500,000 students.
How many of those schools will be shut down on account of their failure to perform? A spokesperson for the city Department of Education says just 12 high schools are in the process of being “reorganized.”
That’s 2 percent.
Do only 2 percent of ad firms that can’t sell a can of soda go out of business? Do only 2 percent of supermarkets that can’t keep their shoppers happy close their doors? Do only 2 percent of doctors who kill a patient on the operating table get sued?
…
There’s a better way to go about things. Chicago is showing that it is possible — even in a big city with a powerful teachers union — to demand and enforce accountability.
Click here for the whole thing.
Okay, the last post on this for a while…
But, here’s The Post’s response to the NYT/AFT story.
And here’s Chester Finn (the Times’ token conservative quoted in the original story) on The Post’s op-ed page, taking the Times to task and making it pretty clear that he was quoted quite selectively.
And, as one might expect, Eduwonk’s got plenty more links to responses from around the nation.
Does anyone else feel a Daniel Okrent column coming on?
(Also, I would respond to this editorial that the Times wrote based on its own bogus story, but what’s left to respond to?)
A nice piece in The Wall Street Journal, by William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, says that:
Indeed, if the AFT believes these findings, it must also concede that religious schools excel. According to the same NAEP data from which the AFT study is taken, religious schools outperformed the public schools nationwide by nine points, a gap that is as large as the public school-charter school difference AFT is trumpeting.
Click here to read the rest (subscription required).
A couple more quick notes on the Times charter story from Tuesday.
1) The Times actually has the gall to write this:
The [AFT] has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools.
Puh-leeeeeeeez. The AFT “historically” supported charters, in a very different form, when Albert Shanker was in charge. Since the modern charter school movement took hold in the early 1990s, the AFT and the National Education Association have clawed at charters like rabid mountain lions. Charter schools tend not to be unionized. Non-unionized teachers tend not to pay dues to either the AFT or the NEA — it’s as simple as that.
2) The Times in Tuesday’s story, and in a weak follow up on Wednesday, referred to charters as “often” and “sometimes” “run by private companies.” Now, maybe this is extra-paranoid, but “companies” is an odd way to describe the many non-profit foundations that run charter schools — these folks put the “non” in non-profit. But the word “companies” makes people think of sleazebags trying to turn a buck off educating kids (which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, in my opinion, but still…).
On Tuesday, The New York Times ran an extremely troubling lead story, claiming that charter schools lag behind traditional public schools in national test data. The piece was troubling not because of what it said about charter schools, but because of its extraordinarily biased presentation, which bordered on deliberate deception.
First off, it’s important to understand that the story was fed to the Times by the American Federation of Teachers (something not made clear in the article until the 10th paragraph, after the jump), a union intensely hostile to charter schools. Given that, one would expect the Times to put the “study” conducted by the AFT — based on raw federal data — through the ringer.
Instead, the Times chose to accept the AFT’s report at face value. Of the few experts asked to comment, one was from the AFT itself, and two were from Columbia University Teachers College (absolutely amazing given the close relationship between the unions and the teachers colleges — the twin gatekeepers of the teaching profession). Needless to say, none of these folks had much kind to say about charters.
A couple of charter supporters, Chester Finn of the Fordham Foundation (who made only a tepid comment) and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform (who was given only a perfunctory comment), were quoted for good measure, but their quotes were drowned out by the “neutral” news voice sneering that charters were “once hailed as a kind of free-market solution” and now were prompting “growing concern.”
Okay, so now to the substance. More on that later, but, for now, let me just point to the none-too-conservative Eduwonk (he works for the Progressive Policy Institute, for God’s sake):
Most importantly, though, when one controls the data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools…
Is this important? Yes, since charters in this sample disproportionately serve minority students by an almost 2-1 margin compared to traditional public schools.
The Times story doesn’t acknowledge this anywhere, even though it’s in the AFT’s report (be it somewhat buried), on pages 10 and 11. A chart accompanying the Times story even implies that there is a difference when race is factored in — failing to alert readers to the fact that the numbers it has provided are not statistically significant.
So, to be clear, if black students in charters perform about as well as black students in regular public schools, and the same holds for Hispanics, and the same holds for whites (as it does in both cases), then there is clearly no gap. The only “gap,” as it were, is in the populations charter schools serve — i.e. the absolute most desperate kids, who have sought options outside of the traditional public schools.
There is nothing surprising in the data the AFT analyzed to anyone familiar with what it is that charter schools actually do.
Are charter schools doing as well as they should be doing? Absolutely not. Being on par with traditional public schools is not enough. But they’re not lagging. They’re on the right track, and there are a lot of promising things happening in them.
An Arabic version of “Star Search,” called “Superstar,” has a contestant this year who is a 28-year-old singer from the West Bank. According to The Jerusalem Post:
Huge screens will be placed in the main squares in Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Gaza City to encourage the people to support Ammar Hassan…
The Palestinians are planning huge celebrations if their representative wins.
Let me guess: There will be guns fired into the air.
poor.
Click here to read my latest, a review of a collection of essays on Social Security put together by the Cato Institute:
John Kerry, for one, has actually pledged to do nothing about Social Security. In his acceptance speech, he said, “As President, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits.” Elsewhere, he’s pledged not to raise Social Security taxes and not to raise the retirement age.
Since that takes all the reform options off the table, one might wonder what exactly it is that Kerry does plan to do about Social Security. According to his Web site: “grow the economy.” Brilliant.
To read Kerry’s do-nothing pledge on Social Security for yourself, scroll to the bottom of this page.
An Iranian judo champion, it seems, is dropping out of the Olympics so as not to compete against an Israeli and give weight to the crazy idea that Israel exists. I’m glad the Iranian president said this and not me:
“The move by the Iranian world judo champion [Arash Miresmaeili] in protest to the massacre of Palestinian people by the Zionist regime will be recorded in the history of Iranian glories,” Khatami said, as reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency.
I’d hate to imply that Iran’s “glories” might be limited to, well, hating Israel.
But actually, there’s less (or more) to the protest excuse than meets the eye, according to the lastest news reports:
Officially, Miraesmaeili was listed as a non-starter because he weighed in above the 66 kilogram-limit for his class.
Ouch. Nailed by the “no fatties” rule.
This recent book review in The New York Post, by Newt Gingrich (of Larry Kramer’s “The People Themselves”), embodies a particularly nasty trend of thought taking root in conservative circles today. So enthralled with decrying our liberal courts have conservatives become that they would like, basically, to throw out the entire idea of judicial review, as embodied in the case of Marbury v. Madison.
Specifically, a number of bills have been proposed by congressmen to limit the authority of the Supreme Court to rule on specific hot-button issues: the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, gay marriage, school prayer, etc.
The idea is that Congress could pass, and the president could sign, legislation stripping the courts of the power to hear these cases. There’s a slight problem, though. It’s called Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution. It reads (in relevant part):
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.
While Congress could perhaps strip the lower courts of the authority to hear certain classes of cases — since those courts are created by Congress — it has no power to alter the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, as laid out in the Constitution.
Another idea that regularly makes the rounds, however, is that the Constitution could be amended to allow Congress (with a supermajority) and the president to override Supreme Court decisions that they find distasteful.
While a constitutional amendment, by definition, cannot be unconstitutional, there are specific reasons our founding fathers created no such mechanism. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 81, lays out the case quite nicely.
Defending the proposed Constitution, Hamilton writes:
In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration, which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect, than may be claimed by the courts of every state. I admit however, that the constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of the convention; but from the general theory of a limited constitution.
And specifically addressing why Congress cannot be allowed to judge whether its own laws are in accordance with the Constitution, Hamilton writes:
From a body which had had even a partial agency in passing bad laws, we could rarely expect a disposition to temper and moderate them in the application. The same spirit, which had operated in making them, would be too apt to operate in interpreting them: Still less could it be expected, that men who had infringed the constitution, in the character of legislators, would be disposed to repair the breach, in the character of judges… The pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice. The habit of being continually marshalled on opposite sides, will be too apt to stifle the voice both of law and of equity.
(Pestilential, what a great word — you never see it. The whole essay is beautiful and well worth reading if this topic catches your interest.)
Does this mean that the Supreme Court holds dictatorial power to interpret the law as it sees fit (under the guise of upholding the Constitution), in contravention of the will of the American people as embodied in the national Legislature and Executive?
Of course not. Every justice on the Supreme Court is nominated by an elected president and confirmed by an elected Senate. When the courts stray too far from the people’s will, there will be political pressure to change the type of justice being installed.
The founders, perhaps, knew a little bit better what they were up to than do the malcontents assailing the Court today.
In Friday’s New York Sun, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is quoted in support of keeping poor kids trapped in atrocious schools.
You see, under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, school districts with failing schools (NYC has 400+ of them out of 1,200 schools total) are supposed to let kids transfer out of the failing schools and into non-failing ones. But the city doesn’t want to let too many kids transfer, since this will upset parents in the middle class neighborhoods where the poorer kids would end up transferring to.
So now, local politicians have fired off dueling letters. Earlier this week Eva Moskowitz, chairperson of the City Council’s education committee, sent a letter to Rod Paige, the federal education secretary, asking him to enforce NCLB and make New York grant kids transfers.
Weiner, however, pleads in his own letter that: “With roughly half the city’s schools already at or near capacity, and most of the schools with space part of innovative efforts to keep class sizes down, the transfer policy creates the potential for a system wide disaster if more students begin to utilize the program.” (Remember: “small classes” is always code for “teachers unions padding their membership.”)
Weiner also writes that allowing kids to transfer out of failing schools is “not a solution to failing schools” but a “surrender.”
And here, Weiner is right. NCLB isn’t about saving schools, IT’S ABOUT SAVING KIDS!!! It’s not “No School Left Behind.”
It’s well past time to raise the white flag on failing schools and start giving families a choice.
When we talk about reforming education we are (or at least should be) talking about saving kids from having their futures compromised by a substandard education. Whether we save these kids by giving them access to better public schools, charter schools, parochial schools — it shouldn’t matter so long as the kids are getting a good education.
So, remember, when a politician shows more concern for the “schools” than he or she does for the kids, it’s because the “schools” (i.e. teachers unions) give a lot of money and manpower to political campaigns. And poor kids don’t.
This article from Fox News reports on an anti-abortion group, Wisconsin Right to Life, which is airing radio and TV ads against Sen. Russ Feingold (of McCain-Feingold/campaign-finance-reform fame), who is on the ballot this September for a primary election.
The Feingold campaign’s response? WRTL’s ads will soon be illegal, since they are a banned form of “electioneering” under McCain-Feingold that isn’t allowed to run too near an election.
WRTL insists that its ads are simply designed to let Wisconsin voters know who they have to lobby if they are unhappy with Wisconsin’s senators blocking confirmation votes on President Bush’s judicial nominees.
Reasonably enough, Feingold’s people are pointing out that WRTL’s position is a lie — the group wants to see Feingold go down like a ton of bricks.
So, in one way, Feingold is right: WRTL’s ads are clearly intended to influence the election.
In a much more important way, however, Feingold is wrong: Why the hell shouldn’t WRTL be allowed to try to influence an election!?
Maybe McCain, Feingold and the lesser five of the Supreme Court should never have repealed the First Amendment in the first place.
But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
– James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Have you heard about the new, more sensitive, War on Terror?
So, Emily and I went to Connecticut last weekend. We went for a short hike in the woods near my mother’s house, where I took a few pictures.
Some pictures from our excursion in the Steep Rock nature preserve can be viewed here. (Or by clicking on the photo gallery listed to the right.)
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