You’ve got your five-star hotels, four-star generals and three-star restaurants. Then there’s Texas, your Lone Star state — and it’s no wonder. Here, from the Houston Chronicle by way of Think Progress, is the latest evidence Texas doesn’t deserve the one star it’s got. The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies [...]
Posts under ‘Education’
Teen abstinence pledges made to be broken
It’s not surprising that teenagers who pledge abstinence from sex before marriage are no more likely to actually refrain than those who don’t pledge, as findings of a new study make clear. “Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins [...]
The Sun Truck — help get this show on the road
What do a semi truck, a 64-square-foot array of flat-screen TVs, the sun and curious young people and their folks have in common? Plenty, if friend Jeff Shaumeyer and his science education project, Ars Hermeneutica, can attract the support necessary to put them all together. Ars Hermeneutica is dedicated to generating greater interest in science [...]
Reading assignment might save Bush’s bacon
Our inside-the-beltway mole, who wants to be known only as Cheep Throat, has given us the back story behind President Bush’s sudden decision this week regarding the National Security Administration domestic spying program. After years of violating statutory law and the Constitution, Bush is leaving oversight of NSA domestic surveillance to the FISA court.
Cheep tells us it all goes back a few weeks, to when Bush was having his first meeting with the personal lawyer he hired to replace his yes ma’am and one time Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers.
Fifty years later, ‘Victory at Sea’ still a winner
Fifty years ago, we would get in front of the TV every week without fail to watch the best of the World War II documentaries, “Victory at Sea.†It was a stunning, enthralling, rousing patriotic tour de force, excellently produced, written and narrated. And the musical score was superb.
Tonight, after all these years, we watched a half-hour segment on a local PBS station. It was about the pivotal year 1942, about the battle for Guadalcanal, and it still had the power to make our spine tingle. . .
Pogo was right, the enemy is us
We’ve often wondered during the past 30 years how and why so many people would vote against their own longterm best interest. Sure, movie star charisma and perceived straight-shooterism count for some of it, but still . . .
Here we are in 2006 with a failed president who couldn’t cope with a hurricane but takes it on himself to compromise our rights and freedoms in his grandly proclaimed, open-ended terror war. We have a Congress that has shirked its responsibilities to the point of criminal negligence. Our troops are stuck in a deadly, unnecessary quagmire that’s cost us 2,703 soldiers’ lives and a half a half trillion dollars, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the middle class is being ground down, our economy is being hollowed out and ours is the biggest debtor nation in the universe, beating whichever country is second by a colossal margin.
Then, here comes another in an expanding series of clues.
“Today’s college students are failing to graduate with a knowledge of and appreciation for America’s history and institutions, a new report says. Warning of a ‘coming crisis in American citizenship,’ it blames U.S. colleges and universities for neglecting to prepare students for their civic responsibilities. . .”
Ignorance led way to condition our condition is in
The U.S. is in a sorry situation, with high taxes, record-high energy costs, the federal deficit and national debt at all-time highs, and a trade deficit so high it’s frightening.
. . . How can all this bad stuff and more be happening without people rioting in the streets, withholding tax payments and doing whatever else they can think of to protest nonviolently?
We found a strong clue in a column by Walter E. Williams, who is a professor of economics at George Mason University . . .
How do we end up with clueless leaders? Here’s a clue
It took a whole lot of Americans five years to get President George W. Bush’s number, and decide Republicans in Congress are also bad news. This, despite the fact poll after poll going back to 2000 has shown a clear majority were not with Bush or the GOP on most substantive issues. A new survey taken by a museum provides insight into what’s likely responsible for this self-abusing disconnect.
Spirit of Taliban alive and well in Italy
Bonci says she was sacked because church authorities think she’s too attractive and that in her private life wears attire that’s too sexy.
