No, your kids are not going to be taught exclusively by extraordinary teachers. Neither were you and neither was I.
By definition, most of our teachers are ordinary.
In all the rush (this week especially) to find and exalt the "best" teachers, we tend to forget this. But really...
(6) Comments | Posted July 14, 2011 | 10:43 PM
Looked at straight ahead, John Boehner's faith-based tax cuts are as nutty as creationism. There is simply no evidence to back his belief.
And yet -- if you turn Boehner's dubious proposition on its head, there may actually be a reasonable corporate tax break hidden in his upside down canvas.
...(35) Comments | Posted December 20, 2010 | 11:17 AM
Barack Obama hates me. He doesn't much like my wife or mother, either.
Unfortunately, it's nothing personal.
Our problem is that we are part of the one group that really seems to piss the President off -- social justice liberals with an immediate tradition that stretches from the Depression through...
(7) Comments | Posted November 29, 2010 | 11:30 AM
Before we cut social security, decimate union health plans, or force workers to postpone retirement long past the onset of arthritis, can we at least have real tax reform that addresses the reality of early 21st century America?
Let's tax corporations and extremely wealthy individuals based on whether or not...
(19) Comments | Posted October 13, 2010 | 2:23 PM
Absent from both the New York Times and the Daily News reports of Paladino's anti-gay rant in a Borough Park synagogue was the second piece of sexual discrimination involved in that speech: it was given after a meeting from which female journalists were excluded. By building a newsworthy event around...
(7) Comments | Posted February 8, 2010 | 4:05 PM
Precisely because it has put free speech and reproductive rights in conflict, CBS's airing of the Focus on the Family ad should not be forgotten. If it is, both speech and women shall suffer.
At this point, many of us want to throw up our hands and wish...
(0) Comments | Posted September 8, 2009 | 4:55 PM
Just as it is possible to have anti-Semitism in countries in which there are Jews, so, we now know, it is possible to have McCarthyism in a post-Communist world.
Van Jones signed a petition. President Obama is attempting to indoctrinate school children with socialism.
Not only are the...
(8) Comments | Posted August 19, 2009 | 5:58 PM
Why is it universally accepted that we provide all our citizens a college education but "socialist" to universally provide health care? Why hasn't UMass, the "public option," driven its immediate neighbors Amherst and Hampshire out of business with its lower tuition?
Before abandoning the notion of a "public option" in...
(0) Comments | Posted April 20, 2009 | 1:21 PM
When reading the torture memos, keep in mind that Jay Bybee sits, right now, on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This means that the man who deliberately and unashamedly created the legal cover for American torture deals with significant Constitutional issues on a daily basis. The 9th Circuit...
(4) Comments | Posted April 17, 2009 | 2:53 PM
For those of us born shortly after World War II, the first great moral question we asked ourselves was "if you had been German, what would you have done?" By the time we were in our late teens and early twenties, the question was no longer theoretical. Our country was...
(1) Comments | Posted April 6, 2009 | 4:27 PM
Baseball season has just begun: I am already heartbroken. Not because of an early loss but rather because the new New York stadiums have diminished not only the game but its place within our culture.
Until very recently, going to the ballpark was a great democratizer. It really didn't matter...
(1) Comments | Posted January 29, 2009 | 10:06 PM
The Republican Party needs a new image: may I suggest the Squawking Parrot? In times of prosperity, it screamed, "Tax cuts." When the budget was balanced, it screamed, "Tax cuts." And now, in the face of economic catastrophe, it still screams, "Tax cuts."
As House Republicans demonstrated this past...
(9) Comments | Posted January 29, 2009 | 5:33 PM
A recent poll suggests that concern for the environment is taking a back seat to concerns about the economy. No surprise there. But it does mean that various proposals for a gas tax surcharge could easily meet furious resistance that could all too easily become divisive.
Taxing gas is like...
(1) Comments | Posted December 26, 2008 | 9:17 AM
Given that there is little to no chance that Barack Obama will disinvite Rick Warren from delivering the invocation at his inauguration, let me make a simple request: instead of having Warren deliver the invocation let him deliver an invocation. Let Obama really allow a diversity of views to be...
(7) Comments | Posted December 9, 2008 | 10:51 PM
It's a short-term solution but it's the only immediate solution I can see to the current mess created by Rod Blagojevich.
Illinois now faces the awful prospect of either having an appointed Senator who will be greeted with immediate suspicion (if, of course, the Senate allows such a person to...
(4) Comments | Posted December 2, 2008 | 4:16 PM
If there is any clarity emerging out of the mess that was once the "Big Three," it's that health care and management are two primary causes of the industry's collapse. In both cases, however, the need for a government bailout may provide hidden opportunities.
Management first: After their shameful Congressional...
(29) Comments | Posted March 21, 2007 | 9:39 PM
With Alberto Gonzales enjoying the kind of full-fledged support from President Bush which Eagleton enjoyed from McGovern, it's time for Democrats to think about an independent prosecutor who can look into possible criminal conduct in both the Justice Department and among the White House staff.
There will only be a...
(24) Comments | Posted March 19, 2007 | 2:54 PM
We know the least of what the President knew and the latest he could have known it.
While we have yet to fully discover who conceived the plan to fire the U.S. Attorneys, who nurtured the plan, and who finalized the list, there is no question as to who executed...
(11) Comments | Posted March 15, 2007 | 5:21 PM
The US Attorney scandal could be the big one - the one which finally brings down the miserable reign of George the Terrible. Yes, I know - he should have been impeached for lying to Congress when he started the Iraq war. But he wasn't and he won't be. Obstruction...
(29) Comments | Posted November 10, 2006 | 2:33 PM
Language counts. A lot.
Nothing undermined the central position of the Democrat Party more than allowing "liberal" to become a dirty word. (Those of us who were active in the New Left have to shoulder a lot of blame on this; we made it an epithet a long time before...

(1) Comments | Posted May 8, 2012 | 11:24 AM