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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	3/8/2010 3:46:26 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Hat tip to greenspirit & Oeconomicus: A shocking supplement to the Civic knowledge test posted earlier [this post is in reply to it].... Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the “knowledge gap” for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly. americancivicliteracy.org

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	3/9/2010 3:40:59 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Who Writes Your Kids’ Textbooks? by: Shannon Bream March 9, 2010 - 12:04 PM As the Texas textbook debate begins in earnest, odds are most American parents likely have no idea how their children's books are actually crafted. The 15 members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will make key decisions about curriculum - what's in, what's out - and textbook publishers will write books to match those standards. That's because Texas is one of the largest textbook buyers in the world. Dr. Frank Wang, one-time president of Saxon Publishing, says the process of producing a textbook has changed a great deal over the years. Historians and authors are increasingly being replaced by a collage of freelance writers, hoping to quickly churn out a project that will match up with curriculum standards. "The process has evolved from art to engineering," Wang says. He adds that it's become more of an "assembly line" system, rather than a carefully crafted "work of art." Gilbert T. Sewall, Director of the American Textbook Council, believes textbooks that end up in classrooms around the country have been steadily getting worse. "There's no doubt that identity politics have contributed to the decline of textbook quality over the last twenty years," says Sewall. He warns that vocal groups from gender activists to nutritionists have "demanded" their way into curriculum, simply by being the most vocal. Sewall says an editor at a top publishing company told him years ago that the squeaky wheel gets the attention and, "What was true then is even more true today." In Sewall's estimation what he calls "the Christian right" has been most persuasive in recent battles in Texas. liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	3/9/2010 4:12:14 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Hollywood Values in the Classroom By John Peeples American Thinker Suzy Amis Cameron, spouse of Avatar director James Cameron, has co-founded a new school, Muse Elementary, in greater Los Angeles. Maureen Harrington of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Ms. Cameron for details concerning the school. We learn that for students at the pre-K through fourth-grade school, <<< every class begins with "an intention," which can be anything from finishing writing their journal entry to being kind to others or walking with quiet feet inside. Even the littlest kids pick up the intention stone, say their desire for that class and put the stone into a jar of water. >>> Thus, we begin to see the precepts of a 1960s hippie commune foisted upon innocent 21st-century children. <<< At Muse, children are free to design and direct their own plays, gather in a kind of tribal counsel to celebrate birthdays and roam the bucolic acreage studying puddle water, collecting bees and rock hunting -- all in the name of education. >>> Interestingly, Ms. Cameron initially home-schooled her first child (from an earlier marriage) but then sent her second away from home for kindergarten. This avenue of education proved unacceptable when the child started <<< coming home from school parties with a green tongue and red dye running down her shirt. But the M&Ms were the final straw. At preschool, Claire learned to count with the candies and then ate them. Amis Cameron, who's been eating organically since she was pregnant with Jasper, was appalled. >>> Unable to find a school for her brood (an environmentally unconscionable four kids) that followed righteous menus and tolerant fictions, Ms. Cameron teamed with her sister to found Muse, a school that would offer a proper education not only to their own children, but to the rest of the public who understood and appreciated their enlightened version of how the world ought to be. <<< [T]he women commissioned an early childhood curriculum based on the principles of Reggio Emilia, which advocates a mutual respect between teacher and student and a curriculum accommodating the interests of each child. Healthy living, responsibility for the Earth and others.... >>> Is there any continuity between Avatar and Muse Elementary? <<< "In the last five years," says Amis Cameron, "Jim went off to create a world -- this huge utopian world of Pandora. And I was creating a smaller world at the same time. There is connectivity between Pandora and Muse in that way -- building a world to your specifications and values." >>> How so? <<< "Muse teaches children to be responsible citizens for the 21st century, to celebrate diversity and to live with respect for each other and the Earth. 'Avatar' reflects the same philosophy." >>> There seems to be no need for spirituality beyond "Earthism" -- though, presumably, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and (maybe) Judaism and Christianity will be tolerated for diversity's sake. Of the forty-five students currently enrolled at Muse, 30%-40% receive financial aid (guess it's hard to make a precise calculation with so many students). The school costs $21,000.00 per year because, besides maintaining charming mud puddles, students go on field trips to learn from experts in "ecology and American Indian tradition" and must also support "an organic garden and a chef who cooks organic lunches and snacks." Even though Avatar has grossed more than 2.5 billion dollars since its release, the school must look beyond the founder's means to assist needy toddlers in need of educational salvation. Hence, "the staff does a lot of grant writing." (Are these grants solicited from the bankrupt state of California, or the bankrupt U.S. government?) The foundations and goals of Muse and Avatar are the same: <<< If you understand from an early age that you belong to a larger global community ... you will have the knowledge and courage to stand up for those who are different than you. You will naturally have an interest in learning wisdom from other cultures. >>> Because it's obvious that the people of America don't know squat. Popular media. Academia. One can only assume that the Camerons will soon underwrite climate research while they run for public office on the Union Ticket. Meanwhile, their kids -- and ours -- will troop down this road of good "intentions." I think I'll look for another jar for my kids to use for their "intention stone." americanthinker.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	3/17/2010 2:36:14 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Video: Children perform "Symphony of Hope" set to Barack Obama narrative beltway-confidential 03/16/10 12:49 PM EDT Remember the school children singing mmm mmm mmm? See the latest tribute to our president in the "Symphony of Hope" performed by the Midwest Artists Association. Watch clips on YouTube here Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	5/4/2010 1:39:55 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

May Day, May Day By Robin of Berkeley American Thinker I've never been big on holidays. Growing up Jewish, my family didn't celebrate Christmas or Easter. And being secular, we didn't do much for the Jewish holidays, either. Since arriving in Berkeley decades ago, one of the few holidays I've enjoyed is May Day, also known as International Workers' Day. As you can imagine, IWD is a popular day around these parts. In fact, it's an official city holiday. Along with Malcolm X's Birthday, Indigenous People's Day, and International Women's Day, the school kiddies and the city rank-and-file get the day off. Even some popular places, like Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, close in observance. I considered it a great honor to celebrate May Day, which represents all things Marxist. My deep and exhaustive knowledge of Communism was limited to the movies -- for instance, The Motorcycle Diaries and Reds. Warren Beattie and Diane Keaton appeared so courageous and passionate in Reds, and the guy playing Che was hecka hot. Anyway, Hollywood wouldn't mislead us, would they? Consequently, I was deeply disturbed when the Soviets failed and the former Republics embraced the big and bad capitalism. Luckily, I could still wax rhapsodic about Cuba and dream of someday visiting that utopia. Since I'm playing True Confessions here: I even drove my car out of my way to fill up with Citgo, the gasoline from Venezuela. What can I say? I was an idiot. Locally, I did my part for all oppressed workers by being a union activist. When I worked at a large hospital chain, I was pivotal in starting a six-hundred-plus-member union. Yes, it was SEIU. I didn't know, wasn't told, (and didn't take the time to find out) that Marxism was a very bad thing -- that, in fact, hundreds of millions died thanks to it. The first time I heard of this was weeks into recovery from liberalism. Having heard something vaguely about conservative Talk Radio, I happened upon Michael Savage's radio show. I was stopped dead in my tracks when he described the Gulags, forced shock treatment, mass starvation, and other horrors of the Soviet Union. And then I actually started reading and educating myself. My beloved Cuba and Venezuela were run by thugs who oppressed people a zillion times more than any capitalist country. The workers weren't living in paradise, enjoying long siestas. Marxism, in fact, created serf-like conditions, with the very few, and the government, stealing the nation's wealth. Of course, had I actually been paying attention all these years, I would have seen all the cracks in the Left's ideology. Earth to Robin: Why would all these people be getting into dangerous, shark-infested waters to come to the U.S. if something wasn't rotten in Havana? I also denied what I saw around me when I worked for the government. For instance, at one agency in which I worked, managers were hogtied from ever disciplining or firing bad workers. And when I say bad, I don't mean the person who runs late or gets a little edgy. I'm talking about the secretary who had a three-martini lunch and, upon return, punched a coworker. She was just transferred somewhere else, with her new department kept in the dark like we were. Or the social worker who would get families more money than they deserved and then pocket the rest. While a manager made a valiant attempt to get rid of him, the last I heard, she was gone, and the dude still working there. I could go on and on...but you know the deal. You've been to the DMV or the Post Office or your local Social Security office. Which brings me to today's May Day celebration -- a unique one, because the Left is now showcasing illegal aliens. While at one point I would have vehemently defended their "right" to be here, no more. Now I wonder why we should be welcoming with open arms people who are doing something illegal. Don't we have enough deceitful people in this country without importing more? The Left plans to use the day to demonstrate the worth and value of illegals. To do this, both illegals and legals have threatened violent protests. There's nothing like ransacking stores and setting cars on fire to win over the country's hearts and minds! I know what I'll be doing on International Workers' Day. First, I'm going to stay the heck away from Berkeley. Then I'm going to relax after a busy week of work. Finally, I'm going to raise a glass to that most endangered of species: the taxpaying, working stiff who breaks his or her butt each day to bring home the bacon. This day is for you. And my celebration won't even require riots in the streets. A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	5/6/2010 11:51:39 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Hat tip to Tim Fowler: Open Letter to Prof. Barry Popkin by Don Boudreaux on May 5, 2010 @ CAFE HAYEC in Food and Drink, Man of System, Nanny State 5 May 2010 Prof. Barry Popkin Department of Nutrition University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 Dear Prof. Popkin: A segment on WJLA-TV’s 11:00pm newscast yesterday featured you endorsing a tax on pizza. You justified such a tax on grounds that Americans today eat too much “junk food.” Believing Americans to be too dimwitted or lacking in self-control to choose for themselves what to eat, you obviously also believe that college professors possess the moral authority to propose that government dictate the contents of other people’s diets. So the rules of civil society, as you see them, are apparently these: If Professor divines that Person isn’t acting in Person’s own best interests, government should obstruct Person’s efforts to live as he or she wishes and prod Person to live instead according to how Professor wants Person to live. I, too, can play by these rules. I propose that all articles and books advocating that government intrude into people’s private choices be taxed at very high rates. Socially irresponsible producers of such “junk” scholarship churn out far too much of it. As a result, unsuspecting Americans consume harmfully large quantities of this scholarship – scholarship made appealing only because its producers cram it with sweet and superficially gratifying expressions of noble goals. These empty intellectual ‘calories’ trick our brains – which evolved in an environment that lacked today’s superabundant access to junk scholarship – into craving larger and larger, even super-sized, portions of such junk. The tax I propose would reduce Americans’ consumption of this mentally debilitating, university-processed junk that serves only to inflate its producers’ egos and consulting fees while it makes the rest of us intellectually flabby and clogs our neural pathways with notions that are toxic to each individual who reads it and to the entire body-politic. As a nation, we have a duty to prevent our fellow citizens from mindlessly ruining their minds – for when any one mind is damaged by the consumption of junk scholarship, the rest of us are harmed by the resulting obesity of the state. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	5/12/2010 1:34:00 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Arizona Governor Signs Bill Targeting Ethnic Studies Program Associated Press Phoenix - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program on Tuesday, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure. State schools chief Tom Horne pushed the measure for years, saying the program in a Tucson school district promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites. The measure prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group. It also prohibits classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government. Tucson Unified School District officials say their program does not promote resentment, and they believe it would comply with the new law. The district program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group. For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors. About 1,500 students at six high schools are enrolled. Elementary and middle school students also are exposed to the ethnic studies curriculum. The measure concerned six UN human rights experts, who released a statement earlier Tuesday expressing concern about the measure because they believe all people have the right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage. Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman didn't directly address the UN criticism, but said Brewer supports the bill's goal. "The governor believes ... public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people," Senseman said. Brewer's signature on the bill comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration -- a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. Brewer said profiling would not be tolerated. Sean Arce, director of the district's Mexican-American Studies program in Tucson, said last month students perform better in school if they see in the curriculum people who look like them. The district is 56 percent Hispanic, with nearly 31,000 Latino students. "It's a highly engaging program that we have, and it's unfortunate that the state Legislature would go so far as to censor these classes," Arce said. Arce could not immediately be reached after Brewer signed the bill late Tuesday. The law doesn't prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn't promote ethnic solidarity or resentment. Horne, the schools chief who wrote the law, said he believes the district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said. "The function of the public schools is to take students of different backgrounds and to teach them to treat each other as individuals," Horne said last month. A Republican running for attorney general, Horne has been trying to restrict the program ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta in 2006 told students that "Republicans hate Latinos." .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	5/15/2010 4:18:01 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Arizona didn’t ban ‘ethnic studies,’ it banned anti-American racial chauvinism By: David Freddoso Online Opinion Editor 05/14/10 12:06 PM EDT You may have heard that Arizona has banned “ethnic studies” in public school classrooms beginning in January 2011. Except that it’s not true. Here are the relevant excerpts from the law creating the ban: <<< A school district or charter school in this state shall not include in its program of instruction any courses or classes that include any of the following: 1. Promote the overthrow of the United States government. 2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people. 3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. 4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of people as individuals. >>> I suppose you could define these things as “ethnic studies,” and in that case, Arizona has banned them — and good for them. But assuming you don’t submit to this abuse of the English language, read on: <<< This section shall not be construed to restrict or prohibit… (3.) Courses or classes that include the history of any ethnic group and that are open to all students, unless the course or class violates subsection A. (4) Courses or classes that include the discussion of controversial aspects of history. (5) Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to restrict or prohibit the instruction of the Holocaust, any other instance of genocide, or the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race or class. >>> So this is not an attempt to whitewash any history of oppression or keep discussions of ethnicity out of education. It’s an attempt to prevent students from becoming mush-heads who cannot read or write because their classroom time was taken up by brainwashing sessions by left-wing racial grievance-mongers. If you think that’s just a bogey-man, here’s an example. Surely there are better ways to teach children about the worst chapters in our nation’s history of race relations than to force-feed them the sort of leftist drivel ably described here by ABC News 9 in Tucson, and to incite them to participate in walk-outs and street protests: <<< One of the textbooks that TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) uses in its ethnic studies program is Chicano!, by F. Arturo Rosales. The book teaches the history of racism and oppression in the United States directed against the Mexican, Mexican-American, and Hispanic populations. As the name implies, a large portion of the textbook is devoted to the Chicano movement that sprang up to fight social injustice and to push for civil rights. There are some similarities between the Chicano movement tactics that the book documents and the tactics some TUSD students have practicing recently. The cover of the book features graphic art of protesters with their fists in the air. Pages 248, 249 and 253 feature photographs of Chicano movement members with raised fists. The photograph on page 253 shows a student with a raised fist sitting in a classroom with other students; the text on that page makes the point that Chicano studies programs in the Southwest are “the most visible vestige” of the Chicano movement. A review of KGUN9 News footage over the past week shows many TUSD students raising their fists in the same fashion as those shown in the textbook. Page 185 shows a picture of students walking out of school as part of a protest. Such student walkouts have been a major component of recent protests in Tucson against the ethnic studies restrictions and against Arizona’s controversial immigration crackdown. And then there is the brown beret issue. Pages 193 and 199 of the textbook show pictures of demonstrators wearing brown berets. The book acknowledges a link to Che Guevara as an inspiration for the berets. Interestingly, the textbook does not explain who Guevara was. Guevara was a Marxist revolutionary leader and a major figure in the Cuba’s communist revolution, revered by some as an inspiration to the downtrodden, but reviled by others as a ruthless killer who bragged about personally shooting defectors. >>> Children imitate what they learn in class. In 2007, the article notes, one class turned its back and raised the fist-salute when a Republican schools administrator came as a guest speaker. That’s what kids are learning in Tucson. The very idea of putting an entire textbook on Chicanoism into a curriculum for schoolchildren is already insane, but the content makes it much worse. Taxpayer money is going to condition children as professional agitators and to keep a long-moribund, irrelevant (especially to new immigrants) and divisive political movement alive. Tucson’s educational statistics suggest that their school district is doing some things right, but this isn’t one of them. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/4/2010 12:14:26 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

America: Supremely unconcerned By: Julie Mason Examiner White House Correspondent 06/02/10 2:27 PM EDT (ap photo) But they can name the last 10 winners of American Idol Yikes: Nearly two-thirds of Americans were unable to name a single member of the Supreme Court, according to a new poll by FindLaw.com, and only 35 percent were able to dig around and come up with one. Somewhat intriguingly, Clarence Thomas is the most well-known. Wonder why? Nineteen percent of those who could name one justice came up with Thomas. Chief Justice John Roberts found purchase with 16 percent, and Sonio Sotomayor was the name plucked from the air by 15 percent. Only one percent of Americans could name all nine. Notes Findlaw.com: <<< In addition, many Americans think that retired justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter are still active members of the Supreme Court. O'Connor and Souter retired from the Court in 2006 and 2009, respectively. >>> It's OK, though -- a Findlaw analyst says the results aren't really surprising, since the justices are rarely on tv. (Blog makes shifty-eye, resists painful forehead-slapping) Next up: Who can name all the Cabinet members? Anyone? And you are? (white house photo) Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/5/2010 5:17:52 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Standardizing Mediocrity By: Lindsey Burke National Review Online If the Obama administration has its way, change could be afoot for your local K-12 curriculum. Through its “Race to the Top” program, the administration is using federal grant money to coax states into adopting the “common core” standards developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. In addition, while President Obama probably won’t be able to push a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind through Congress before this session ends, the administration’s “blueprint” for the law would cut off access to $14.5 billion in federal funding for states that fail to adopt these “common standards.” Proponents claim that national standards would improve the American education system. They are wrong. Here’s why. Misconception #1: National standards would make American students more competitive with their international peers. The relationship between standards and academic achievement is unclear. While it’s true that many of the countries that outperform the U.S. on international tests have national standards, so do most of the countries that score lower than the U.S. Even when it comes to state standards, the relationship between academic performance and the quality of those standards is not consistent. Misconception #2: National standards are necessary so parents can understand how their children compare with other children across the country. The information parents need is already available. State tests let parents know how well their children have mastered the curriculum. The National Assessment of Educational Progress and other standardized tests compare students’ performance nationally, exposing any “dumbing down” of state tests. Policies should require clear reporting of this data to parents, which in too many states is not standard practice. Misconception #3: National standards are necessary because of the variance in the quality of state standards. Some states do have higher standards than others. But the same pressures that drive down state standards would likely plague national standards -- and if national standards were defined down, they would undercut states with higher standards, such as Massachusetts. This would let the goal of uniformity trump the pursuit of excellence. The push for national standards and tests, moreover, distracts us from a more fundamental debate about the real problems in American education. These problems are rooted in a misalignment of power that favors teachers’ unions and distant policymakers over students and parents. The mission of teachers’ unions is to protect the job security, salaries, and benefits of their millions of dues-paying members. National policymakers’ political agenda holds sway over states and school districts because federal funding can be withheld. Parents, of course, can’t engage in collective bargaining with, or withhold funding from, a failing school system. Yet parents are the adults with the most at stake in their children’s academic success. National standards and tests wouldn’t fix this misalignment and would keep us from enacting the real reforms that are needed in public schools to put more power in parents’ hands. Again, that begins with clear reporting of data to parents. But all of the information in the world is meaningless to parents unless they can act on it and choose the school that best meets the needs of their child. Providing genuine educational options and choice holds schools accountable to parents. National standards wouldn’t improve academic achievement. They would merely strengthen federal control over education. -- Lindsey Burke is an education-policy analyst, and Jennifer A. Marshall is director of domestic-policy studies, at the Heritage Foundation. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/11/2010 8:44:47 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Wanting to Abolish the Department of Education Is Not Radical By: Mona Charen National Review Online Newly minted Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle is a kook: That’s what Sen. Harry Reid’s people are telling reporters. ABC, CNN, and other outlets seem to agree, noting that Mrs. Angle wants to shutter the federal Department of Education, get the U.S. out of the U.N., phase out Social Security, and eliminate the IRS. We haven’t yet heard her explanations of these positions -- many of which can be justified in the proper context. It’s certainly possible that she is a little eccentric (that prison massage program doesn’t pass the smell test). But this much is certain: It is not kooky to favor the elimination of the Department of Education. That this proposal is routinely labeled “extremist” is a reminder of the one-way ratchet that operates in government. Enshrine something in a federal agency, and it becomes sacrosanct. Democrats cheerlead for federal programs because they are the party of government, and Republicans quietly go along because they’re afraid. But if Republicans know how to argue for smaller government -- as Gov. Chris Christie is demonstrating in New Jersey -- they need not be intimidated. There are hundreds of federal programs that could be eliminated tomorrow with only the happiest consequences for the nation. And yes, the whole Department of Education could be scrapped. It vacuums up money and produces....what exactly? As recently as 1996, the Republican party platform declared, “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education.” Ah, bright hopes of youth. The Department of Education was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers’ unions by Pres. Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsement). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, DE’s original budget, in 1980, was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars), and it employed 450 people. By 2000, it had increased to $34.1 billion, and by 2007 it had more than doubled to $73 billion. The budget request for fiscal 2011 is $77.8 billion, and the department employs 4,800. All of this spending has done nothing to improve American education. Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat. Comparing educational achievement with per-pupil spending among states also calls into question the value of increasing expenditures. While high-spending Massachusetts had the nation’s highest proficiency scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, low-spending Idaho did very well, too. South Dakota ranks 42nd in per-pupil expenditures but eighth in math performance and ninth in reading. The District of Columbia, meanwhile, with the nation’s highest per-pupil expenditures ($15,511 in 2007), scores dead last in achievement. Like the WIC program, which was originally aimed at low-income pregnant and nursing women and babies but has expanded to cover 50 percent of American infants, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was designed to aid low-income and minority populations in 1965, but has since morphed into the No Child Left Behind law, which affects every student in the country. The Education Department has done more than waste money. Busy bureaucrats have created reams of paperwork for teachers and administrators, pushed dubious curricula, such as bilingual education, and adopted manifold extra-educational missions. The department’s website lists hundreds of programs that bear little to no relation to schooling, including the “Spinal Cord Injuries Model Systems Program,” the “Small Business Innovation Research Program,” “Protection and Advocacy of Individual Rights,” the “Predominantly Black Institutions Program,” “Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners,” “Institute for International Public Policy,” “Grants to States to Improve Management of Drug and Violence Prevention Programs,” “Grants to Reduce Alcohol Abuse,” and the “Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program,” to name just a handful. No one checks. There is no accountability. There are no consequences for failure, except perhaps requests for even greater funding next year. The Department of Education is a great, burbling vat of waste, and it is not extremist to say so. -- Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/11/2010 9:27:48 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Priorities in a Nanny State Chuck Asay from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/16/2010 1:22:18 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Keeping Up with the University of Stupid By Mary Grabar American Thinker Not many people will see Arkansas as a fortress against the barbarism that is threatening to bring this nation down. This kind of barbarism is often displayed by college students -- and not with old-fashioned Animal House hijinks, but by Obama zombies who celebrated in front of the White House by tauntingly singing the old Beatles "Good-bye" song and waving the Soviet flag. Today's college students have also graduated to high-level anti-Semitism, inquisitions about fellow students' attitudes on such things as gay marriage, and a belief in confiscating private property to redistribute wealth. All this is done after childhoods spent being pampered and flattered while being put into little groups to discuss such problems as global warming -- after watching a former vice president narrate a film about the coming environmental apocalypse. Very few people knew that the University of Arkansas was a holdout, maintaining hearty general education requirements for the past fifty years. ACTA (American Council of Trustees and Alumni) recently awarded the university a rare A on its report card on general education requirements. It praised the university for a healthy 66-hour general education requirement that included math, science, foreign languages, literature, and philosophy. ACTA is not a fashionable group in academic circles. They provide donors and trustees information about what goes on behind the ivy-covered walls, where faculty, indoctrinated by the 1960s radicals, devise classes, determine requirements, and plot to keep out critics. In May, ACTA president Anne Neal wrote two letters to the trustees and an editorial in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette deploring the dumbing down of the curriculum. But according to John Ed Anthony, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the fact that a student at the University of Arkansas will be able to substitute Gender Studies for Introduction to Philosophy and graduate with only college algebra, eight hours in science (which could include "Chemistry in the Modern World"), no literature classes, and no foreign language does not mean that the curriculum is being dumbed down. Anthony, in a letter to Neal, states that such changes are overdue because...the core curriculum has not changed in fifty years! He describes the university's ambition as twofold: "to bring the university's core curriculum in line with peer institutions across the nation, and to empower faculty at the departmental level to determine what their students need to be successful." The passage of Arkansas's Act 182, which makes it easier for students to transfer from community colleges, "expedited a process that was already underway and very much needed." Chancellor G. David Gearhart, in his editorial published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in response to Neal's, echoed Anthony's call to "empower" faculty, saying, "Faculty must be the driving force on setting the new requirements." That might explain why Intro to Gender Studies will count as a class to fulfill the six hours required in Fine Arts/Humanities, and why someone earning a bachelor of arts degree no longer is required to the take the sophomore-level philosophy class previously required. At some colleges, such classes in gender oppression are required as standalone classes or are the focus of other mandated classes, like "American Gender History." The love of wisdom is being replaced by the love of grievances. Of course, to the newly minted Ph.D.s in such fields, Intro to Gender Studies is more important than those old-fashioned subjects like philosophy, math, science, and foreign languages. They are carrying out Woodstock nation's poet-warriors' battle cry: "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Western civilization's got to go!" The old subjects are deemed guilty of "Eurocentrism." They encourage linear thinking. They are remnants of the old patriarchy that values logic and skills. Capitalists think those abilities are worth much more than the circular, emotive (illogical) thinking used in gender studies. Philosophy, math, science, literature, and foreign languages do not encourage students to become social activists and community organizers. They encourage students to study the structure of language, learn the philosophical and literary heritage of the West, weigh evidence, solve problems, innovate, express ideas logically, and seek truth. Gearhart's response to Neal's op-ed demonstrates the rampant institutional decay of higher education. He charged that ACTA's criteria for curriculum "lie outside generally accepted academic norms," noting that ACTA "issued less favorable letter grades of 'D' and 'F' to the following institutions: Vanderbilt, Harvard, University of California-Berkley, and the University of Virginia." He sniffed, "In light of Ms. Neal's column, it appears we are now in danger of joining the ranks of these institutions." Then he offered, "If so, we are prepared to be judged by the company we keep." The company the University of Arkansas will keep will be Henry Louis "Beer Summit" Gates at Harvard; Kelly Oliver, philosophy and women's studies professor at Vanderbilt, whose latest book deals with "animal studies"; Michael Mann, former professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, now at the University of Pennsylvania, implicated in Climategate; and all those partaking in the proud tradition of radicalism at Berkley, from the "free [profanity] speech movement" in the 1960s to protests for continued largesse from taxpayers. When students aren't even exposed to dialogues on justice and love or the Socratic method, how can they think in a truly "critical" way about "hope" and "change"? If the idea of evidence and truth is dispensed with in favor of perspective (such as that of women or any number of groups), how can students recognize the origins of "spreading the wealth"? Does anybody care if they don't know that there is no such language as "Austrian" or that a pop star president can't get a simple phrase right in the language he says Americans should be teaching their children? Or if the vice president talks about President Roosevelt addressing the American people on television? Doing a Google search doesn't help if you can't distinguish between sources, or if your grade depends on attitude, and not academics. Chancellor Gearhart wrote, "We are committed to increasing the number of degree holders in the state of Arkansas." Arkansas is in forty-ninth place in terms of percentage of citizens holding college degrees. And under a system of federal aid that follows bodies in classroom seats, it's to administrators' benefit to make it easy for students to enroll and graduate. President Obama, in (of course) asking for more spending on education, recently announced his of goal making the U.S. the country with the highest percentage of college graduates by 2020. Gee, I wonder why. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/18/2010 4:16:12 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Oh Come On! By: Jonah Goldberg The Corner The stories are so familiar it makes no need to go into specifics. The experts of the helping professions want to tell you what to eat, what to drink, how to drive, how to talk, how to think. Sometimes they have a point, and as the father of a young child, I'm perfectly willing to concede that cliques and whatnot can be unhealthy or mean. But this really goes to 11. Now the experts are saying that having a best friend is bad for you. From the New York Times: <<< But increasingly, some educators and other professionals who work with children are asking a question that might surprise their parents: Should a child really have a best friend? Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying. “I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.” >>> The Anchoress nails it (and she has a clip from Meatballs, which she defames as a "silly" movie when it is in fact one of the most awesome things Canada has ever produced): <<< This isn’t about what’s good for the children; it is about being better able to control adults by stripping from them any training in intimacy and interpersonal trust. Don’t let two people get together and separate themselves from the pack, or they might do something subversive, like…think differently. This move against “best friends” is ultimately about preventing individuals from nurturing and expanding their individuality. It is about training our future adults to be unable to exist outside of the pack, the collective. The schools want you to think this is about potential bullying and the sadness of some children feeling “excluded.” But that is not what this is about. As a kid I was the target of “the pack;” I know more than I care to about schoolyard bullies, and I can tell you that the best antidote to them was having a good friend. One good friend who shares your interests and ideas and sense of humor can erase the negative effects of the conform-or-die “pack” with which one cannot identify, “the pack” that cannot comprehend why one would not wish to join them and will not tolerate resistance. Meatballs is a very silly movie with a very important, kind (and apparently subversive) core message: if you can make one good friend, you’re doing very well. That group identities have certain undeniable values, but our intimate relationships are what keep us grounded, and help us to discover and more completely be who we are. >>> .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/23/2010 10:48:17 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The Latest Thievery: Best Friends By: Jonah Goldberg National Review Online There’s a great moment in the 1993 movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Ben Kingsley plays a coach for a seven-year-old chess prodigy named Josh. Kingsley wants the boy to stop playing chess in the park and devote himself completely to Kingsley’s tutelage. Josh’s mother doesn’t like the idea, because she’s a jealous guardian of her son’s childhood. “Not playing in the park would kill him. He loves it.” Kingsley complains that her decision “just makes my job harder.” “Then your job’s harder,” she responds. As the father of a seven-year-old myself, I think of that scene all the time -- most recently, when I read a profoundly depressing story in the New York Times about how “some educators and other professionals who work with children” don’t think kids should have best friends. “I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults -- teachers and counselors -- we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at a St. Louis day school. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.” “Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.” As a result of this thinking, best friends are broken up. Buddies are put on separate teams, assigned to different classes, etc. It’s not quite the sort of thing cult leaders and North Korean prison guards do, but in principle it’s not too far off either. The response from across the ideological spectrum on the Web has mostly been outrage and disgust. Among the objections: Why ban successful, positive relationships in an effort to wean out negative ones? Why value the superficial over the meaningful? Why lie to kids that they can be friends with everyone? What about the damage to shy and introverted kids who particularly benefit from having a kindred spirit? All good points, but it is a bizarre symptom of our hyper-rationalist age that people are forced to articulate why best friends are valuable to kids. For the record, I think removing best friends from childhood is a barbarous and inhumane act, akin to amputating a limb from an athlete. You can still have a childhood without a best friend, just as you can still be an athlete without a leg. But why would you voluntarily make someone’s life so much harder? Having someone with whom you can share the joys and discoveries of early life is a gateway into not just adulthood, but humanity. The most offensive part of this whole enterprise is that it is aimed at making life easier for administrators, not better for kids. The social life of childhood is frustrating and unwieldy for educators, so they respond by making childhood less complicated. Indeed, it’s worth noting that the psychologists the New York Times spoke to oppose the practice. In his 1998 book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale political scientist James C. Scott documents how over time states of all kinds -- democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, et al. -- try to make their populations more “legible.” What Scott means by this is that for governments to help or control people, they must first organize them in a way convenient to planners. For instance, in many societies, last names are an invention of the state, so governments can distinguish citizens more clearly. Scott documents all sorts of massive state failures that ignored human nature and common sense. The war on best friends strikes me as a perfect retail example of this wholesale line of thinking. There’s a lot of kindling here for a big culture-war conflagration. Many conservatives, myself included, see the building blocks of Brave New World Nanny-Statism (not to mention a perfect example of mission creep in American education). But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Liberals believe in having best friends, too. And conservatives understand that educators should try to decrease bullying and blunt the sharp edges of cliques. Administrators are free to complain that best friends make their jobs harder. And we, as a society, should simply respond, “Then your job’s harder.” -- Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	6/24/2010 10:17:02 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama's Washington: What Hath Harvard Wrought! By Stuart Schwartz American Thinker It is time to put together an intervention. Form a new group, call it "Idiots Anonymous," and open it to anyone in the Obama administration with a diploma from an elite university. If you have an Ivy League degree, you get to attend meetings at no charge. And if you're from Harvard...well, you're large and in charge of the meetings. Of course, don't expect the meetings to accomplish much. Generally, self-anointed smart people succeed largely in making themselves comfortable at the expense of what the BP chairman recently described as "small people." Witness the White House entertainment budget and growth in government salaries. The people who tell you how smart they are talk and eat, talk and meet, talk and travel, talk and party...you get the picture. They do not do. Doing is for "small" people; transformation is for brilliant people. Meanwhile, we small people have our lives turned upside-down when others transform based on what elite-stamped smart people think. This is what happens when hubris is institutionalized and self-styled elites -- what David Brooks of the New York Times calls the "educated class" -- achieve critical mass in government, as they have in Obama's Washington. Barack Oabama specifically set out to "fundamentally transform" the United States, using what William Kristol of the Weekly Standard describes as "the government schemes of pointy-headed intellectuals" to re-engineer a nation he views as foundationally flawed. The results have been predictable for anyone whose head does not come to a needle-sharp point. Record unemployment, a bloated federal government paralyzed by bureaucracy (Reuters headline: "Bureaucracy frustrates U.S. Gulf oil spill efforts"), and debt spiraling out of control even as those constitutionally charged with budgetary responsibilities do nothing. It is time to adapt the biblical words with which that dead white guy, Samuel Morse, kicked off a new age of telecommunication in the nineteenth century after inventing the telegraph: "What hath God wrought?" What hath Harvard wrought? For starters, jaw-dropping incompetence on such a scale that the future well-being of nearly every "small person" outside of Washington is threatened. Average citizens, taxpayers, seniors, the vast middle class are all threatened by the schemes and designs emanating from the elite thinkers peopling Obama Washington. What hath Harvard wrought? Not much good. A Harvard Law School classmate of the president leads the Federal Communications Commission effort to control media available to the average citizen. The narrowly passed ObamaCare bill was engineered by a team from the Harvard School of Public Health with the expressed purpose of putting government in charge of individual health care choices. They were assisted by medical ethics consultants from Princeton who -- if you take away the academic doublespeak -- do not believe that individuals should be allowed to give birth to handicapped children. And the Harvard doctor nominated to head Medicare flatly wants to ration health care for seniors so as to achieve "social justice" for other, more valued citizens. Too old to be of value, he says with a shake of his pointy head. Individuals from Harvard, the Ivy League, and other elite universities -- both state and private -- are at the core of the Obama transformation. They were hailed by our media elites as fellow travelers in brilliance. David Broder of the Washington Post had his Dominican maid give an extra spritz of Windex to the glass covering his University of Chicago diploma and then told us he is "struck at how lucky this country is...that the president-elect of the United States is a super-smart person like Barack Obama." On the conservative side, Christopher Buckley looked at the Yale diploma on the wall of his award-winning Georgetown "writer's shed and garden" (what hath my Mexican gardener wrought!) and assured us that Obama and company have the brains to provide us with the best United States ever because "[a]s for his intellect, he's a Harvard man..." But the answers the smart people from the great universities offer are strikingly similar to the systems and solutions underlying nearly every failure in every sphere of human endeavor. Ivy League-educated administration officials offer us warmed-over Chinese and Soviet communism, which resulted in the murder of more than 100 million. They are pushing us into the centralized health care model drawn from some of the world's worst medical care. And their economic prescriptions have underlined some of the most soul-numbing poverty the world has seen. What has Harvard wrought? Perhaps it is time to rethink our notion of "smart" -- both in education and the world outside. Perhaps the small people (also known as dumb people) are the smart people...and the smart people are the dumb people. When you see the wreckage that is Washington, the lack of respect for individuals, the rejection of constitutional principles that have produced unparalleled freedom and prosperity -- "he's a Harvard man" takes on new meaning. Let us examine that meaning. Samuel Morse studied electricity at Yale, which ignited in him a passion to do something. He invented the telegraph and created Morse code, thereby touching off a communication revolution that fueled generations of prosperity. The Yale environment of the early nineteenth century did not push him into thinking about how to control the use of the telegraph in order to redistribute justice, nor urge him to construct complex bureaucracies to limit access to the telegraph for Yale-defined community purposes. Rather, Yale did what so many media-branded lower-tier universities do today: excite in him a passion for learning so as to do and the analytical ability to get things done. The places that graduate "small" people (dummies according to our elite media and educators) may, in fact, be where many of our truly smart people are educated. This makes University of Idaho, West Virginia University, and Liberty University (had to throw that in), to name a few, the new Ivy League, producing students better-prepared to build on American exceptionalism. Smart people may, in fact, be the ones without the pointy heads. No great thoughts, no radical theories to remake society and our relationships. Just belief in the God-given rights and talents of individuals who, through the collectivity of individual decisions, are smart enough to come up with evidence-based solutions. What hath Harvard wrought? Too much I-know-better-than-you over-thinking, for one thing. There comes a time when doing trumps thinking. To use an example from the global warming debate, there comes a time when even a Harvard man or woman should recognize cow flatulence for what it is: excess gas. Not the severe environmental threat that the great minds at Cornell University seem to think; nor evidence of global warming, as Harvard-trained Al Gore and various Obama officials claim; and not even a metaphor for human mating rituals, as at least one deep thinker on the faculty of University of California, Berkeley appears to suggest. Maybe it is time for the president and his Ivy League transformers to understand what Sigmund Freud, who did not attend Harvard, understood so long ago: Sometimes a fart is just a fart. Stuart Schwartz, a former retail and media executive, is on the faculty at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	7/11/2010 8:06:22 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Catholic persecution at U of I By: David Freddoso Online Opinion Editor 07/10/10 9:35 AM EDT If you’re asked to teach classes about Catholicism, one would expect you’d be free to talk about stuff like Catholic teachings. Nope, sorry: <<< URBANA — The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church’s teaching that homosexual sex is immoral. The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, said his firing violates his academic freedom. He also lost his job at an on-campus Catholic center. Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam. >>> The e-mail in question discussed the differences between consequentialist moral thought (the idea that an act’s morality can be determined by its consequences) and morality based in natural law, which depends only on the acts themselves. It’s pretty hard to discuss morality without having this discussion. The email offered homosexuality and other sexual behaviors that are against church teaching (everything from the use of contraception in marriage to sex with children) as examples of things that a consequentialist might approve of under the right circumstances, whereas a Catholic cannot approve under any circumstances. Unfortunately, this conversation about the class’s subject matter is verboten. Someone who apparently doesn’t even take the class or understand the subject matter decided to report this academic conversation to the campus gestapo. This is what we call the Dictatorship of Moral Relativism. We live in America, where only Islam receives such deference. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	7/14/2010 12:56:12 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Colleges and high schools aren’t preparing students for workplace By: J.P. Freire Associate Commentary Editor 07/12/10 2:55 PM EDT Jobs are hard to come by, but as they do become more available, employers are having a hard time filling positions with qualified candidates. The problem? Lack of math skills. It seems that everyone makes out well from high school and college, except those who must pay for and attend them. Remember all those college administrators and high school teachers who talk about ethnic and cultural studies, and all those other education fashions conservatives love to riff on? Turns out they don’t make a lick of difference to employers’ bottom line. From the New York Times: <<< Plenty of people are applying for the jobs. The problem, the companies say, is a mismatch between the kind of skilled workers needed and the ranks of the unemployed. Economists expect that Friday’s government employment report will show that manufacturers continued adding jobs last month, although the overall picture is likely to be bleak. With the government dismissing Census workers, more jobs might have been cut than added in June. >>> That’s not the embarrassing part, though. The embarrassing part comes down to how, for all the government’s carping about getting more people into college, our workers know less and less coming out of even high school, a government monopoly where teachers unions have been running the asylum for years. What, do you think that the applicants these manufacturers are rejecting are coming out of private schools? The unions make out just fine with near-permanent jobs from which their members can’t be fired. The students? Not so much: <<< The Obama administration has advocated further stimulus measures, which the Senate rejected, and has allocated more money for training. Still, officials say more robust job creation is the real solution. But a number of manufacturers say that even if demand surges, they will never bring back many of the lower-skilled jobs, and that training is not yet delivering the skilled employees they need. >>> You know what’s a good place to consider job training? High school, which is currently center stage for news-of-the-day fights over which textbooks to use or whether certain American flag-embroidered t-shirts are inappropriate. It makes sense when you think that all of this is preparation for college — which is less about job training now, and more a seminar in political orthodoxy. (Here are the Boston Phoenix’s Muzzle awards, which highlight prohibitions of freedom of speech, if you need an example. Or go to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and look at their speech code database.) Oh but don’t worry about the enforcement of political orthodoxy — the kids aren’t listening. In fact, they’re not even studying: <<< …[N]ew research, conducted by two California economics professors, shows that over the past five decades, the number of hours that the average college student studies each week has been steadily dropping. According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours. The decline, Babcock and Marks found, infects students of all demographics. No matter the student’s major, gender, or race, no matter the size of the school or the quality of the SAT scores of the people enrolled there, the results are the same: Students of all ability levels are studying less. >>> So what if they want to live a little and study less? Our students are better at multitasking these days, right? So they can do more with less! Except Georgetown University’s one-year pricetag for a single student is $40,000. Just what is that $40,000 for? Check the mission statement on the main “about” page: <<< Today, Georgetown is a major international research university that embodies its founding principles in the diversity of our students, faculty, and staff, our commitment to justice and the common good, our intellectual openness, and our international character. >>> So there you go. We structure our high schools to churn out as many eager candidates for college on the false pretense it’ll help you get a job. That way you can pay your $40,000 to become a face in a school’s diversity pledge, and to tie yourself to the faculty’s “commitment to justice and the common good,” whatever that means relative to the academic fashions of the day. Oh, by the way, that school’s president, John DeGioia, earns a salary just under $1 million, as the Examiner’s own Emily Babay reported last week. (Let’s remind everyone that Georgetown is a non-profit institution.) So I guess all this does make sure somebody gets a high-paying job — it’s just not you or your kids. It’s the high school teachers union and the high-rolling university president. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	7/29/2010 2:28:21 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Chicago School Refuses to Host Rove, Welcomes Obama Appointee By Stephen Clark FoxNews.com Published July 28, 2010 A private university in Chicago that refuses to host former senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, arguing that welcoming a "political" speaker ahead of the midterm elections could threaten its tax-exempt status, has added an Obama administration appointee to address the student body. Loyola University Chicago is hosting Eboo Patel, an Obama appointee to the White House interfaith council, next month, calling into question the school's rationale for rejecting Rove's appearance. "The news that Eboo Patel, an appointee of the Obama administration, will be allowed to speak at Loyola University Chicago, while Karl Rove was essentially barred, is further proof that the (university) administration either has zero understanding of tax law or is unabashedly biased," said Evan Gassman, a spokesman for Young America's Foundation, a conservative outreach group that was sponsoring the Rove speech. University spokesman Steve Christensen told FoxNews.com that the topic of Patel's speech does not have a political motive, which would violate current speaker policy. "Our university considers its on-campus speakers on a case-by-case basis, and very carefully," he said. "Dr. Patel's speech on Aug. 27 will focus on the importance of interfaith leadership and transformative education, two topics that are directly associated with the university's mission. This is a very different lecture than what was proposed by our College Republicans, who informed the university in their proposal that they are inviting Karl Rove 'to speak in October 2010 to speak about the upcoming elections and their impact on public policy.'" The university previously argued that the timing of Rove's appearance for the upcoming school year could imperil its 501(c )(3) tax status. "The timing of this event is problematic given the campaign cycle," Kimberly A. Moore, director of student affairs and Greek affairs, told students in an e-mail. "Loyola has to maintain impartiality in order to protect our tax-exempt status." Adam Kissel of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education told FoxNews.com that the school appears to be applying a "double standard." "We often see rules applied strangely as a proxy for the real issue that a particular administrator or the whole institution doesn't want the lecture to happen and a pretext is developed to keep the speaker off of campus," Kissel said. "We see that time after time." Rove, a Fox News contributor who gained prominence as the architect of former President George W. Bush's successful campaign strategies in 2000 and 2004, is not working on any campaign this season. The school has offered to host Rove after the midterm election on Nov. 2, but the conservative group said Rove would not be able to speak then because of his busy schedule. Conservative students point out that the school has hosted partisan speakers on election years before. In September 2004, the school hosted Howard Dean, who ran for president that year. A couple of weeks after his speech, political activist Ralph Nader, who also ran for president that year, spoke on campus -- a speech that was advertised as a campaign event in which donations were solicited. Patel, whom Obama appointed last year to his advisory council of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, will discuss interfaith leadership and transformative education, according to the school's provost who is sponsoring the speech. Patel was named by Harvard's Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch. "It is very disconcerting to see Loyola not live up to the standards of academic freedom that they frequently preach about," said Sean Vera, the student who tried to bring Rove to the campus. "I never expected Loyola would prevent the free exchange of ideas and they would do so in such a partisan manner," he said. But the university said times have changed. "In recent years, the IRS has become increasingly more scrutinizing over not-for-profit universities and their tax-exempt status as it relates to political or potentially political speakers invited to come on campus," Christensen said. "With that in mind, our university has become more cautious in its decision-making." Kissel, of FIRE, called that a "false argument." "It does not threaten the school's 501(c )(3) status to permit a student group to bring even a politician to campus while the politician is in office," he said. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	9/21/2010 11:53:58 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Prof calls fellow academics ‘sanctimonious bigots’ By: Barbara Hollingsworth Local Opinion Editor 09/18/10 4:35 PM EDT If the Left acknowledged sin, hypocrisy would be one of the most unforgiveable. But that’s exactly what hundreds of university faculty members – many in women’s and gender studies departments – were found guilty of during a recent experiment devised by a University of Illinois economics professor. Prof. Fred Gottheil told Front Page Magazine that he compiled a list of 675 email addresses from 900 signatures on a 2009 petition authored by Dr. David Lloyd, professor of English at the University of Southern California, urging the U.S. to abandon its ally, Israel. Prof. Gottheil discovered that six of the signers, who hailed from more than 150 college campuses, were members of his own faculty. “Would these same 900 sign onto a statement expressing concern about human rights violations in the Muslim Middle East, such as honor killing, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and violence against gays and lesbians?” he wondered. “I felt it was worth a try.” The results? “Almost non existent,” he told Front Page editor Jamie Glazov. Only 27 of the 675 “self-described social-justice seeking academics” agreed to sign Gottheil’s Statement of Concern – less than 5 percent of the total who had publicly called for the censure of Israel for human rights violations. The refusal of women’s studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it “trump[s] their professional interests,” leading them into a “ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making,” Prof. Gottheil added. “The academic Left may be just a little more sophisticated [than the non-academic Left] in their loathing of Israel, but scratch the surface and it’s all the same…It turns out that with all their professing of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart.” Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	9/29/2010 9:01:57 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

'nuff said Chuck Asay from Creators Syndicate creators.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33366)	10/13/2010 10:38:25 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

We Don't Need No (Leftist) Education By Robin of Berkeley American Thinker We don't need no education We don't need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave those kids alone. . . All in all, you're just a Nother brick in the wall - Pink Floyd, "We Don't Need No Education" David Horowitz is one of those rare people who change lives. I know, because he changed mine. When I started snapping out of my Leftist trance three years ago, I had nowhere to turn. I didn't have the foggiest idea why thugs were surrounding Obama. Weren't the progressives the good guys? I turned to my local Borders bookstore for some answers. There I found the writings of David Horowitz, to which I could immediately relate. Like me, Horowitz was a Jew from New York who was hoodwinked by radicalism. But that's where the similarities stopped. My parents were JFK-type liberals who loved this country. Horowitz was a red diaper baby. Horowitz is also many years my senior. While he was a fiery radical during the '60s, I was (blessedly) too young to participate in those violent and misogynistic times. I came of age during the comparatively mellow feminist revolution. A leader in the civil rights movement, Horowitz plotted revolution with such notorious characters as the Black Panthers' Huey P. Newton. Horowitz implored college students at rallies to burn down buildings. My only illicit action was plastering This Degrades Women stickers onto billboards in Manhattan subway stations. Horowitz also woke up and got a clue decades before me. Since then, he has made it his life's mission to expose the Left's extreme agenda. Like a modern-day prophet, Horowitz forecast that a Shadow Party, masterminded by George Soros, would seize control over the Democratic Party. Tragically, Horowitz's predictions have come true with the (s)election of Obama. One of Horowitz's burning passions is restoring sanity to our schools. For years, he's launched a a virtual one-man campaign to expose the extreme left-wing bias among university professors. Horowitz figured out early on what the radicals were doing: earning their Ph.D.s, infiltrating the universities, and brainwashing students into radical ideology. With tenure-for-life academic positions, the radicals then brought like-minded professors into the fold and shut out conservatives. The militants wanted to start the indoctrination as early as possible. Professors of education began training new public school teachers to produce the littlest of foot soldiers. It's no coincidence that FOB (Friend of Barack) Bill Ayers is a retired professor of education. In Reforming Our Universities, his newest book, Horowitz details his lone-wolf struggle to restore intellectual freedom to our universities. In Reforming, Horowitz offers an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students and faculty who hold divergent points of view. Intrepid and resolute, Horowitz has given innumerable talks over the years at colleges across the country. In the process, he's been screamed at, threatened, shouted over, drowned out, and even mooned. And it's not just conservative guest speakers such as Horowitz who are censured on college campuses, according to Reforming. In a particularly damning illustration, Horowitz recounts how liberal luminary Alan Dershowitz has to tape his Harvard lectures on date rape lest he face accusations from the feminist Thought Police. Another professor, a national expert on date rape, refuses to even teach the topic anymore. Ironically, political correctness deprives young law students of vital information to prosecute rape. Of course, college students face swift retribution should they deviate from the progressive party line. Conservative students may be shunned, publicly humiliated, and punished with low grades. The radical professors, while holding themselves up as holier than thou, have no qualms about throwing their weight around and abusing their power. It's no wonder that the radicals try to suppress free speech and intimidate dissidents. Progressivism is a house of cards. Remove one card, and the whole charade comes tumbling down. If professors, for instance, exposed radical Islam's enslavement of women, young people would reject the Left, with its ties to Islam (a topic Horowitz covered in his book, Unholy Alliance). Our youth may not embrace socialism if they learn that millions were snuffed out under Communist regimes. If students figured out that the progressives were destroying their American dreams, the Left would lose an entire generation. So the progressives maintain their choke-hold over the young by gagging speech and intimidating the truth-tellers such as Horowitz. And yet, through it all, amidst the insults and the slander, the anti-Semitism and the invective, Horowitz just keeps on going, like a modern-day Paul Revere. Just as I was writing this article, I learned that Horowitz was appearing in my neck of the woods. Horowitz gave a speech on academic freedom at the Law School at the University of California, at Berkeley. Talk about penetrating the belly of the beast! Yet David Horowitz doesn't appear the least bit deterred by the cruelty lobbed his way. Horowitz is a warrior, a real man, not the feminized kind that our universities spawn. He sticks his neck out for women treated as subhuman under radical Islam, and for college students, who are pressured and bullied. He's an unwavering, tenacious voice of sanity in the academic asylum. A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a licensed psychotherapist in Berkeley. You can reach her through her blog: www.robinofberkeley.com. .