Liberal Condescension to the Right

University of Virginia professor has an essay in Sunday's Washington Post about how liberals tend to denigrate and disregard conservative ideas. He summarizes four approaches that liberals take to conservative ideas.

First, there is the "vast right-wing conspiracy" sort of accusation that portrays a few conservative organizations and leaders as engaged in a giant plot to obfuscate and confuse hoi polloi. Evil plotters such as Karl Rove manipulate the public and the press to achieve an ill-gotten victory.

Or perhaps the problems with conservatives is the second line approach that Alexander discusses: the "What's the Matter with Kansas" attitude. In this analysis, the common herd are being led by appeals to their social and cultural opinions to ignore what would be good for them economically. In this view, the dumb sheep in places like Kansas and Ohio will vote for a Republican because of their fear of gays or blacks and ignore all the good that the Democrat could do for them by enacting more economical redistributionist policies that would help those poor crackers. Holding such a view of the masses makes it easier for liberals to ignore them when they come out to townhalls or vote against Democrats.

And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama backed away from their tenor but insisted that "I said something that everybody knows is true."

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters' underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or "tea party" gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

The third view is stuck forever in the early 1970s and the glory days of hating Nixon. In this view, conservatives are even more despicably manipulating white public opinion by subtly appealing to their racial bigotry. It is the comfort of this view that leads liberals today to see all opposition to Obama's policies as deeply rooted in racism.

The fourth type of liberal condescension that Alexander identifies is the smug self-satisfaction that many liberals have for believing that they are the only ones who pay attention to actual science while conservatives are just anti-intellectual religious nuts. The reason that liberals might have trouble communicating their manifest superiority to the masses is because they're just too darn smart and intellectual and that doesn't translate well into political slogans.

As Alexander concludes, this liberal condescension can have dangerous ramifications if it allows liberals to ignore the actual conservative arguments and evidence of the failure of so many liberal policies.

Starting in the 1960s, the original neoconservative critics such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed distress about the breakdown of inner-city families, only to be maligned as racist and ignored for decades -- until appalling statistics forced critics to recognize their views as relevant. Long-standing conservative concerns over the perils of long-term welfare dependency were similarly villainized as insincere and mean-spirited -- until public opinion insisted they be addressed by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress in the 1996 welfare reform law. But in the meantime, welfare policies that discouraged work, marriage and the development of skills remained in place, with devastating effects.

Ignoring conservative cautions and insights is no less costly today. Some observers have decried an anti-intellectual strain in contemporary conservatism, detected in George W. Bush's aw-shucks style, Sarah Palin's college-hopping and the occasional conservative campaigns against egghead intellectuals. But alongside that, the fact is that conservative-leaning scholars, economists, jurists and legal theorists have never produced as much detailed analysis and commentary on American life and policy as they do today.

Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend. Democrats have been busy expanding, enacting or proposing major state interventions in financial markets, energy and health care. Supporters of such efforts want to ensure that key decisions will be made in the public interest and be informed, for example, by sound science, the best new medical research or prudent standards of private-sector competition. But public-choice economists have long warned that when decisions are made in large, centralized government programs, political priorities almost always trump other goals.

Of course, if you regard your ideological opponents as manipulative, evil, racist yahoos, it's going to be hard to sit down and understand their research and policy proposals. Admitting that a conservative idea might be motivated by a serious study of what has succeeded and failed in the past would mean acknowledging that conservatives might be motivated by something other than despicable and ignorant emotionalism. President Obama claims that he wants to get beyond such partisan name-calling and engage with his Republican opponents. But to do so, he'll have to get beyond his own almost knee-jerk condescension towards conservatives.

Perhaps liberals reading their Washington Post this weekend will see a bit of themselves in Alexander's essay. The first step to healing is recognition of the problem.

Cruising the Web

An expert on John Maynard Keynes explains all that the Obama administration got wrong in their attempts to apply Keynesianism to today's economic situation.

Two and a half months after the Climategate emails were leaked, still no one knows who leaked the files. Or perhaps the files were just sitting unprotected in cyberspace and someone found them and distributed them. They still don't know.

Mark Tapscott explains how Obama's budget proposal would hurt small business owners.

As Pat Moynihan might have explained to the President, Obama's budget plans will also adversely affect New York state.

Mark Steyn has some fun tracing back the melting credibility of the IPCC. A lot is to be learned by tracing back the sources from their footnotes.

When the peasants revolt

Charles Krauthammer reveals how liberals regard the great unwashed: dumb and misguided by evil conservatives who manipulate their anger.

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.

You see, liberals good: conservatives despicable.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.

For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism.

Cruising the Web

Now that Senator Brown has been sworn in, Joe Biden thinks it is time to increase the number necessary to vote cloture on a filibuster. Coincidence? You decide.

John Conyers thinks that there should be some sort of affirmative action on American officials providing disaster relief for Haiti.

One of the benefits of replacing Senator Kennedy in mid-term is that Senator Brown gets to take over Kennedy's plush, large office.

Megan McArdle explains why teachers unions oppose merit pay. It's in their very nature.

George Neumayr exposes the emptiness of Obama's push for Paygo rules.

The Democrats had a nice staged public event with the President. They were instructed not to raise health care in front of the cameras. And they obediently complied so that Obama wouldn't have to make definite statements on what he wants on health care in front of C-Span cameras. Then when he left, they all said what they really felt. And Democrats are upset that Obama isn't providing much leadership on what form the health care bill should take and has basically shelved their participation in the intra-Democratic debate since the Massachusetts election. And these senators are angry, especially Al Franken who is gaining the reputation for being a particularly nasty guy.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Alex Brill explain how the Democrats' health care bill would raise the effective marginal tax rate on the lower and middle class.

Steve Chapman explains why last year's fiscal stimulus didn't add jobs. As he points out money spent by government on make-work temporary jobs is money that is not available to the private sector creating more permanent jobs.

The Raleigh News and Observer covers the plans that North Carolina has developed for the state's history curriculum that I ranted about yesterday. Authorities claim that getting American history in bits and pieces from fifth grade on up is preferable to spending a year in high school with a coherent study of history from our nation's founding to the present. People are not pleased with the idea. It must be more of those peasants revolting. The DPI official keeps citing what "students" are telling her that they don't know enough about. I'd like to see that survey. I bet I could come up with a huge list of what students claim they don't know enough about.

Eric Holder doesn't have time to answer questions that Republicans have sent him about his policies on fighting terrorism, but he does have time to sit down for an admiring profile in the New Yorker magazine. He's impressed with how tough he is.

Clarence Thomas says that he doesn't attend the president's State of the Union address because it has gotten to be unpleasantly partisan and doesn't like the Supreme Court becoming a part of that. That was quite descriptive of this year's address.

Democrats are now reassessing their "Big Bang" approach to government. It's now too late for them to transform their image and they're beginning to understand the cliff that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid had them dive off.

What happens when you tax the rich?

What happens when a state decides that the way to improve their budget finances is to tax the rich? Now we know. A study has shown a remarkable outmigration of wealthy inhabitants from New Jersey to other states with less confiscatory tax policies.

More than $70 billion in wealth left New Jersey between 2004 and 2008 as affluent residents moved elsewhere, according to a report released Wednesday that marks a swift reversal of fortune for a state once considered the nation’s wealthiest.

Conducted by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, the report found wealthy households in New Jersey were leaving for other states — mainly Florida, Pennsylvania and New York — at a faster rate than they were being replaced.

“The wealth is not being replaced,” said John Havens, who directed the study. “It’s above and beyond the general trend that is affecting the rest of the northeast.”

This was not always the case. The study – the first on interstate wealth migration in the country — noted the state actually saw an influx of $98 billion in the five years preceding 2004. The exodus of wealth, then, local experts and economists concluded, was a reaction to a series of changes in the state’s tax structure — including increases in the income, sales, property and “millionaire” taxes.

Politicians seem to forget that the wealthy are the most mobile people in the country.

The report was commissioned by the state Chamber of Commerce and the Community Foundation of New Jersey to study the effects of wealth migration on charitable giving after executives noticed more affluent philanthropists were moving away. Wealth includes assets such as real estate, stocks, bonds, 401ks, mutual funds and vehicles.

But economists say there are many other implications for the state’s financial health.

Wealthy residents are a key driver for everything from job creation and consumer spending to the real estate market and the state budget, said Jim Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. In New Jersey, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay more than 40 percent of the state’s income tax, he said.

“That’s probably why we have these massive income shortfalls in the state budget, especially this year,” he said.

Until the tax structure is improved, he said, “we’ll probably see a continuation of the trend, until there are no more high-wealth individuals left.”

People respond to incentives as well as disincentives. If only other state policymakers would understand this basic principle.

Eric Holder's post hoc terrorism policies

Jan Crawford of CBS News asks the question of whether Eric Holder's five-page single-spaced letter explaining why he chose not to detain Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant was motivated by politics or policy. For weeks the administration has been telling us that they got enough information from the aspiring bomber in that 50-minute interview. Now suddenly they tell us that Abdulmutallab started talking last week and so that justifies the choices they made. They glide over what information was lost in the five weeks between the bombing attempt and his change of heart on talking to authorities. And they seem to think that making this very public announcement that they have received "actionable" intelligence is not how intelligence-gathering should be conducted.

But Holder's defense is not convincing. As Crawford writes,

Aware of needed damage control, the White House and Attorney General are now taking the position that, legally, it was “highly questionable” whether they could have detained the terror suspect and continued to question him without a lawyer, even if they wanted to. Holder, in his letter to the Senators, said that legal authority “is far from clear.”

Many legal experts, however, agree the law is, in fact, pretty clear: It’s not that highly questionable at all. Under existing law, the Obama Administration had the authority to detain and question Abdulmutallab more extensively. And it chose not to.

If the Obama Administration wants to make a policy decision to treat al Qaeda operatives as common criminals and not as enemy combatants, that’s a position it could take—and some advocate they should. They’ve argued that giving rights to these terrorists, for example, will enhance our standing in the world and deter future terrorist acts.

But those are policy arguments and policy decisions, and they have consequences. They should stand or fall on the merits. They aren’t required by law.

To argue, instead, that the law essentially tied has their hands—that the law all but required this course of action in Detroit--ignores the cases that have been decided.

And what it also does, as Crawford warns, is set a precedent that will become the model if we should be so lucky to catch another terrorist before he is successful at killing Americans.

And there’s a danger in that. Whether or not the Obama Administration made the right call on Christmas Day, it’s a problem to see top officials now make incomplete or misleading legal arguments to justify their decision after the fact.

Insisting it was “highly questionable” under the law to detain suspects like Abdulmutallab reminds me of the economic theory of path dependence. Decisions in the future could well be limited by what’s decided today. You get on a path, and you can’t change course.

Today’s legal argument that it was “far from clear” they could continue interrogating Abudulmutallab, even if they wanted to, could set this administration down a fixed path on the most pressing issues facing this nation, based in no small measure on old-fashioned damage control.

There is clear legal basis to detain al Qaeda combatants. Congress expressly authorized force against “nations, organizations, or persons” who carried out the 9/11 attacks, and two Presidents have made it clear this is a war. Federal courts have either endorsed or not questioned the government’s authority to detain al Qaeda members and actual combatants in wartime.

As Gregory Katsas, an assistant attorney general in the Bush Administration pointed out to me, Abdulmutallab is an actual combatant. He’s not some money guy or a facilitator. He tried to blow up a plane with nearly 300 people on board. And he’s not a U.S. citizen. Sure, he’s being held in this country, Katsas notes, but so were three enemy combatants during the Bush Administration—Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Ali Salah Al Marri--and courts have said those detentions were lawful.

And while it’s true that a New York-based federal appeals court said the government had no authority to detain Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in the United States, the Supreme Court specifically rejected that rationale in another case involving Hamdi. A separate, Richmond-based federal appeals court later upheld his detention in the military process.

Bottom line: the government prevailed in every case involving enemy combatants being held in this country.

And while it’s true, as Holder points out, that a federal judge could someday say that a non-U.S. citizen like Abdulmutallab had a right to a lawyer, even in the military process, the Supreme Court has never ruled those rights kick in immediately or at the same time as in the criminal process. At a minimum, they could have gotten days longer to question him by putting him on the military track.

And, as Crawford points out, it's downright funny to see the Obama administration which loves to differentiate itself from the Bush administration defend itself by saying that Richard Reid was Mirandized. Of course, that was in the early days before military tribunals for terrorists were set up. And many conservatives weren't pleased with how Reid was treated. And Reid was a different sort of terrorist than Abdulmutallab. No one alleges that Reid was anything more than a lone actor, but Abdulmutallab admitted straight up that he was trained in an Al Qaeda camp. He had information right then about where and how and with whom he trained. Now, we're supposed to be happy that five weeks later he's giving us some information that we can act on?

Thomas Joscelyn points to this prevarication in Holder's letter where Holder says that no agency objected to his decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab.

While those other departments were informed, according to Holder, this evidently doesn't include the senior-most members of those departments -- per their congressional testimony. Senior officials including DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have testified that they were not informed of the decision. If they were informed, which is unlikely, then they lied before Congress. If they weren't informed, which is likely, then this means those departments have serious communication problems because such an important decision was never communicated up the chain. In other words, assuming Holder is right, then why weren’t the senior-most officials in those departments informed?

And lots of people are finding places where Obama and Holder both denied that they believed in Mirandizing terrorists.

Stephen Hayes points to more lunacy from Holder.

"Some have argued that had Abdulmutallab been declared an enemy combatant, the government could have held him indefinitely without providing him access to an attorney. But the government's legal authority to do so is far from clear," according to Holder. He also writes that the law and FBI policy require providing "Miranda warnings prior to any custodial interrogation conducted inside the United States," unless a "public safety" exception is permitted. (To make his point on a public safety exception, Holder uses the example of someone who has committed an armed offense that compels authorities to ask about the location of the gun.) Holder further argues that "there is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists captured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney."

Follow that logic. If Holder is correct, the FBI could pick up al Qaeda's chief of operations in, say, Tampa, Florida, and unless he met the criteria for a public safety exception (i.e. had a gun), the FBI would be required to Mirandize him immediately and give him a lawyer. So someone with detailed and intimate knowledge of al Qaeda -- its leaders, its finances, its recruitment, its training and, yes, its future operations -- would be told he has the right to remain silent and provided counsel.

Holder seems to understand that this is a problem. So his letter seeks to reassure: "While in some cases defense counsel may advise their clients to remain silent, there are situations in which they properly and wisely encourage cooperation because it is in their client's best interest, given the substantial sentences they might face."

Thank goodness.

It's no wonder that Holder couldn't answer Lindsey Graham's question at a hearing last fall about whether the U.S. government would be required to Mirandize Osama bin Laden if he were captured. Holder's answer: "That all depends." Because if bin Laden were apprehended in the United States -- to take the logic to absurd lengths -- the FBI would read him his rights and get him a lawyer.

So what about Obama's words to 60 Minutes last spring. "Do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter-- down the block?"
The president said: "Of course not." His attorney general says: "Yes."

Does having Eric Holder direct our efforts to protect our nation from terrorism give you any confidence at all?

History by Dummies

Designing history curriculum shouldn't be all that difficult, but my state, North Carolina, is always tinkering with it trying to make it better, more "relevant." And they almost always end up messing it up. It's as if the people who work at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) don't have enough to do, so they sit around and draw up plans just to aggravate people. And now they've come up with a doozy to rejigger the high school history curriculum.

Like many states, we teach U.S. history in 11th grade. In 9th grade we do world history. The teachers scramble to cover from ancient times to modern. Since there is no end-of-course (EOC) test, the course ends up being whatever the teacher most enjoys teaching. In the 10th grade the curriculum covers civics and economics. About five or six years ago, there were complaints that the American history teachers didn't have enough time to teach from colonial times to modern. So, DPI stuck the colonial period through the Constitutional Convention into the 10th grade curriculum which has become a crazy quilt of subjects requiring the teacher to speed through all the required topics.

But those busy bees at DPI needed to do something else to justify their jobs. So they've come up with an even bigger proposal to aggravate everyone involved. The current proposal on the table would be to switch the 9th grade curriculum from being world history to be something called "Global Studies." American history in 11th grade would start in 1877 with the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. Then they'd try to crowd the history from Washington through Reconstruction into the 10th grade. This is their myopic logic.

Under the proposed change, all ninth graders wouldn't study world history. Instead, they''ll have to take a course called Global Studies focusing on the modern issues like the environment.

Tenth graders will still get Civics and Economics, while the junior year U.S. history class would start in 1877. State officials say events prior to that year will be taught before high school and also incorporated into the sophomore year Civics class.

Education officials acknowledge this is a big change but believe it will allow them to connect with a standard of teaching based on a new national initiative called called Common Core which emphasizes standards to help prepare students with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and careers and to be prepared to compete globally.

"The whole notion of the common core is fewer, clearer and more in depth standards. So that our students remember what's important," Garland said.

Basically, they're trying to dilute the entire history curriculum so they can teach some of these gauzy topics that presumably would help students to "compete globally." That's just horse puckey! Students need to learn the content of history in order to have a better understanding of how we got to be where we are today. The geniuses at North Carolina DPI think that it's enough that students cover American history in elementary and middle school so that should take care of what they need to know. History shouldn't be chopped up in little bits where they get a bit of American history in 5th grade. A bit more in 8th grade and another few chunks in 10th grade, and then jump into the Gilded Age in 11th grade. What students need is a coherent, in-depth study of the flow of American history. Studying the colonial era helps to set up current issues such as American attitudes towards religion, the law, civil rights, political participation, government, etc. Knowing that background helps students to understand why the colonists wanted to revolt against England and how slavery became an integral part of our nation's economy. Studying the early years of the United States sets up students' understanding of political parties and the increasing democratization of our politics. They learn about how and why America expanded across the continent and our relationship with Native American tribes and Mexico. They need to study those years in depth in order to understand how the nation came to a fight a great civil war. And they need to study Reconstruction in order to understand our nation's troubled civil rights history.

All that plus so much more is what we cover in the first semester of American history. And that is going to be scrapped to parachute the kids into history beginning in 1877. And don't feed me that garbage about learning the earlier history elementary and middle school. I teach at a charter school that draws from five or six different North Carolina counties so I get students from a wide variety of middle schools. And they come into high school history with such a wide variance in what they learned already. Since there is no EOC test on social studies in middle school, the teachers end up teaching what they want. Eighth grade curriculum is supposed to focus on North Carolina history and the official curriculum has the kids learn about topics such as the Revolution or the Civil War as they affect North Carolina. Some kids have a very minimal understanding of the big picture because their teacher used textbooks and focused on North Carolina that the students barely realized what was going on in the rest of the country. When I taught 8th grade, I just pushed the standard curriculum out the window and taught U.S. history with occasional references to North Carolina whenever it was relevant. But I was in the minority. And there is already a full curriculum in 10th grade to cover civics and economics plus a smattering of colonial and revolutionary history. And now they want to add in the same material that takes up a semester in 11th grade? What a recipe for teaching everything more poorly! The class will cover a hodge podge of material and the students will end up learning just a little bit about a wide variety of unconnected topics.

And they'll never get the wide sweep of world history if what they're going to focus on is "global studies," whatever that is supposed to be. But I don't have much confidence when it seems that they're going to throw out the history part of the curriculum to make more time for teaching about the environment. As if they don't get enough about the environment in all their other classes.

This is all part of a much larger movement called "Core Standards" for states to adopt a national curriculum devised by the education specialists for the nation. President Obama supports this movement. The focus is on some ill-defined ideal of "21st skills." When you hear educators talk about the importance of skills, what they're really talking about is taking the content out of the curriculum. Content becomes secondary to the skill set that they think people will need in the 21st century. For example, here is a report from a meeting of such education specialists, called Partnership for the 21st Century Skills or P21 about their goals for education.

The audience was comprised largely of NEA staff and representatives of DC’s alphabet soup of education associations. The question at hand was not whether the 21st century skills agenda was the right one for America’s schoolchildren, but rather how quickly more students can get signed on.For those who are concerned, as we are, that P21’s approach to learning will fail students because it does not integrate the teaching of skills with the acquisition of content knowledge, there was much said at the NEA to worry you. Paige Kuni explained that in the “search, cut, and paste environment” students live in today, they only need to know “enough of the most crucial information.” She didn’t say who decides when enough is enough or what P21 considers crucial. Is it enough earth science to know that the earth is round? Enough literature to have heard of Shakespeare? Enough history to know that we once fought a civil war because the North and South disagreed about something?

John Wilson said that with P21 “students create the learning environment with their peers and their projects” and the “teacher becomes the facilitator.” Ken Kay is more selective in his choice of words but the upshot of his comments fall in line with the others: Skills are what is most important while content is optional. In their remarks, none of the panelists mentioned science, geography, foreign languages, history, literature, art, civics—the list goes on and on.

What this translates into is the students doing projects which often involve a lot of class discussion as students give their opinions about material they don't know all that much about. And they do a lot of artwork. But the students remain amazingly free of any knowledge of whatever the content is supposed to be. I've encountered schools that pride themselves on teaching skills, not content. They're quite proud that their students don't learn the standard curriculum but that they do lots and lots of projects. Now prepare for states across the nation to follow that pattern.

Fortunately, there are some people fighting back against this dope-ification of our education system. They call their group the Common Core and they're fighting to keep content as a part of our education.

But a small group of outspoken education scholars is challenging that assumption, saying the push for 21st-century skills is taking a dangerous bite out of precious classroom time that could be better spent learning deep, essential content. For the first time since the P21 push began seven years ago, they're pushing back. In a forum here last week sponsored by Common Core, a non-profit group that promotes "a full core curriculum," they squared off with education consultant Ken Kay, co-founder of the P21 movement.

"It's an ineffectual use of school time," says E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and author of a series of books on what students should learn year-by-year in school. He calls the P21 movement "a fragmented approach with uncertain cognitive goals" that could most profoundly hurt disadvantaged children: At home, he says, they don't get as much background as middle-class students in history, science, literature and the like.

Core Knowledge holds that an explicit, grade-by-grade "core of common learning" is necessary for a good education. So, for instance, when fifth-graders learn about Galileo's role in astronomy, they study Italian history and geography as well.

Kay calls criticisms by Hirsch and others "a sideshow that distracts people from the issue at hand: that our kids need world-class skills and world-class content."

Kay notes that virtually all of the industrialized countries the USA is competing with "are pursuing both content and skills."

His seven-year effort has earned enviable support — not only from lawmakers and policy wonks but also from a wide range of corporate backers. His non-profit board of directors boasts members from Intel, Apple, Dell, Adobe, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems, among others, and recent IRS filings show more than $1 million in revenue.

In November, a Massachusetts task force concluded that straight academic content "is no longer enough" to help students compete: It urged state education commissioner Mitchell Chester to add 21st-century skills to curriculum guides and teacher training. That drew a rebuke from The Boston Globe, which editorialized last week that it's "not clear that the approach can be implemented without de-emphasizing academic content."

At its heart, say Hirsch and others, the conflict is about what should happen in a school day: Do kids learn to think by reading great literature, doing difficult math and learning history, philosophy and science? Or can they tackle those subjects on their own if schools simply teach them to problem-solve, communicate, use technology and think creatively?

If you pursue the latter, says University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, the rich content you're after inevitably "falls by the wayside." While kids may enjoy working together on projects, for instance, the amount of knowledge they get often ends up being shallow. Furthermore, he says, research shows that many teachers find it difficult to actually teach children to think creatively or collaborate. In the end, they rarely get better at the very skills that P21 advocates.

I'm with Diane Ravitch who prefers 19th century skills. Fortunately, none of these changes would affect me because I teach Advanced Placement U.S. History and, for now, the curriculum, as determined by College Board, and that is supposed to parallel an introductory course in college. For now, that is a standard course of study from pre-Columbian America through to the present. Of course, give these enemies of teaching content a few more years and who knows what the colleges will be teaching?

My personal experience is that kids love learning American history. They can find the relevancy in what happened in the 16th or 18th centuries. They're fascinated with the story of why and how our Founders decided to rebel and create our nation. They love seeing the connections between political battles of the 18th century and those today. And they need that sweep of history to understand trends such as the expansion of our country, the growth of our federal government, racial relations, and our political parties. As they go through the chronological path, trends become clear to them. They're not so myopic that they can only care about recent history. It takes a really dull teacher to make stories like Andrew Jackson's presidency or the Civil War boring to students. Why mess with the most interesting subject kids have in school?

For those of you in North Carolina, this proposal is still in the planning stage. The leader at DPI, Rebecca Garland, says that they are encouraging public comments.

North Carolina officials are quick to emphasize that the proposal is just that--a proposal. And they are encouraging feedback from teachers and the public about the plan.

Well, here is the website with their phone numbers. I don't see an email address, but feel free to call up Ms. Garland and let her know what you think of these proposed changes. Then call your legislators and let them know that you don't approve of these changes in the curriculum.

My secret hope is that the dire financial problems that North Carolina is facing will stop this wholesale change. It's very expensive to revamp curriculum. There will have to be new textbooks. And right now there are EOC tests for 10th and 11th grade history classes. I heard once, about 10 years ago, that it cost a million dollars to develop and field test a new EOC test. That might be enough of a hurdle that DPI just won't be able to afford enacting their grand new plans. But don't be too sure what politicians will do once they can talk some blather about providing students with those very special "21st century skills."

Cruising the Web

If Obama is so worried about foreigners donating to political campaigns after the Citizens United decision, perhaps he should clean out his own stables first. He had to return quite a few donations from citizens of foreign countries in his 2008 campaign.

Brian Riedl describes how Obama misdiagnosed the source of our budget deficits. Our rising deficits, particularly those forecast by his recently released budget, are not due to "not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program," as Obama argued in his State of the Union. Instead, our real problem comes from ever-expanding mandatory spending that is eating up our budget.

David Rivkin and Mark Thiessen compare how Abdulmutallab was treated when captured and another captured bomber, Ahmed Ghailani, who was involved in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. In Ghalilani's trial, the same Department of Justice that Mirandized Abdulmutallab argued in federal court that it was unnecessary to Mirandize captured terrorists because it is more important to get intelligence from them first.

Another day, another revelation of the scummy behavior of the climate scientists at East Anglia in trying to cover up inconvenient results from research into climate science.

Keith Hennessey outlines the dangers from having the federal government take up such a large and growing percentage of the nation's economy.

The Washington Post looks into the rise of conservatives over the past year and discovers a real scoop - conservatives, neanderthals that they are, know how to use new media. I mean they have blackberrys and websites. What next will conservatives discover?

Mark Tapscott points out that, despite Obama's words in the State of the Union about "making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development," he wasn't really talking about actually doing more offshore drilling since his budget anticipates much reduced income from rents from offshore sites. Apparently, when Obama talked about "tough choices" he meant choosing not to drill.

More Clintonian rhetoric from Obama's SOTU: you might have thought his words claiming that his administration had "excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."meant that he wasn't employing lobbyists in his own administration, but that would be just wrong. As Timothy Carney reports that, actually, he's also hired lobbyists in his administration. It all depends on your definition of "excluded" is. For Obama, it doesn't mean "not hired."

It's good that Abdulmutallab started cooperating last week with investigators and giving them actionable intelligence as FBI chief Mueller told the Senate yesterday. However, that doesn't obviate the fact that we lost about a month's worth of intelligence-gathering by not interrogating him right away and having to wait a month to get that information. And we've yet to discover what exactly the administration is using to negotiate with the aspiring bomber. They claim that negotiations are ongoing, but that no plea bargain is imminent. Whether one is possible is still not clear.

And Dana Perino and Bill Burck wonder why the administration would publicly report that he is cooperating? Isn't that the sort of classified information better kept secret while we pursue leads? Could it be that they stated this publicly simply to try to silence critics of how the Department of Justice treated this case from the get go?

Reid Wilson reports that a lot of vulnerable Democratic congressmen started polling their districts in the last quarter of 2009. And the DNC spent a lot of polling in December alone. Hmmm, think these guys are feeling the heat? Moe Lane has the particulars on those Democrats who are feeling nervous. Meanwhile, John Hawkins profiles the 10 best opportunities for GOP Senate pickups this fall.

John Stossel notes how one window-making company has gotten lots of notice from both Obama and Biden. And it's gotten a lot of stimulus funds and publicity from MSNBC. What makes this one company so special?

Of all the window companies in America, maybe it's a coincidence that the one which gets presidential and vice presidential attention and a special tax credit is one whose company executives give thousands of dollars to the Obama campaign and where the policy officer spends nights at home with the Energy Department's weatherization boss.

Do we really need financial advice from Barack Obama?

President Obama seems to have a real problem with the tourist industry, particularly the industry that is the backbone of the business in Las Vegas. For the second time he has told crowds that they shouldn't go to Las Vegas.

President Barack Obama took another dig at Las Vegas at his New Hampshire town hall Tuesday after similar remarks got him into hot water last year.

Obama said that people should not "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas" during a tough recession. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman called for Obama to apologize after he made comparable comments last February.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," he said at the forum." You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college."

Last year, he'd passed on a similar message targeted at businesses in tough times telling them not to go blow money in Las Vegas.

First of all, do people in tough times really need the President of the United States to tell them to tighten their belts? Are we all so dependent on the government now that we need to look to the president for money management advice?

And why should he single out the state of his very strongest ally in the Senate? Does Harry Reid really need this? With his own ratings in the outhouse, particularly after having carried water for the administration's priorities this past year, this is how Obama repays him - by bashing the major industry of his state, a state that has been suffering deeply in the recession?

And do other states that rely on tourism such as Florida or Louisiana really need the President to travel around telling people not to take expensive trips to their locales?

In addition, in an era when the federal government is bailing out businesses such as GM who have not managed their money well, when state governments are piling up deficits because of the pensions that they have promised public employees, and the President just proposed a budget with the biggest deficits in history, is the head of the federal government really the one who should be giving us financial advice?

And as Cassy Fiano points out, these politicians who head up our government today are not the ones to be lecturing people on how to spend their hard-earned money.

On top of all this idiocy, these digs at Las Vegas absolutely reek of hypocrisy. Obama has turned the White House into some kind of night club, hosting weekly parties for celebrities and DC insiders. He jets back and forth to Copenhagen on the taxpayers’ dime. He takes his wife and family out to Broadway shows and and concerts. He uses taxpayer dollars to fly to New York for dinner and a play, for Chrissakes. And other Democrats are no better. Nancy Pelosi is the best example, as she’s apparently been using the Air Force as a personal chaffeur for herself and her family. Not too long ago, the House Appropriations Committee was ordering another round of Gulfstream jets for politicians to use. There was an 11-day trip a group of politicians took to New Zealand “to study climate change”, featuring fireworks, snorkeling, reef dives, and a trip to the South Pole. It ended with a stay in a luxury hotel in Hawaii. The government wastes money in a million different ways, yet Obama wants to lecture us about how to spend money responsibly? This from the man who has quadrupled our deficit in just one year?

Building a budget based on imaginiary numbers

Figuring out a budget for the country would be a lot easier if we could just make up stuff and insert those imaginary numbers into the budget as assumptions on income. Apparently, the Obama budgetmeisters have latched on to this method of writing a budget. Buried in their budget are assumptions about how much revenue the government will gain from cap-and-trade provisions even though few expect such a bill to be passed this year. They're also figuring in $100 billion of supposed savings that we'd get in the next ten years if the health care bill passed. They're nothing if not optimistic.

In any event, the $100 billion toward deficit reduction is only one of several items in President Obama’s budget that the White House says will cut down the nation’s budget imbalance, but which very likely might not happen.

There is another $630 billion in additional deficit-cutting measures that is by no means a certainty, depending on whether Congress passes Obama’s proposals into law.

The reduction of itemized deductions for charitable giving, for those making $250,000 or more, would bring in $291 billion over the next decade. But Obama proposed that a year ago and the idea went nowhere, because of opposition in the Congress.

A tax on banks that received money from the $700 billion TARP bailout would bring in $90 billion. But that idea also faces a fight in Congress. And even then, the Obama administration has already extended TARP beyond its original expiration date at the end of 2009 and could do so again in October, when most of the $700 billion is scheduled to go toward debt reduction.

And a freeze on spending for non-discretionary, non-defense spending – about 17 percent of the budget – would yield $250 billion in savings. But Democrats in Congress want the military to be included in the freeze, and could pose a problem for the White House if the president refuses to budge.

Those four items alone – health care reform, reduced itemized deductions for charitable giving by wealthy Americans, the bank tax, and the spending freeze – amount to $730 billion in deficit reductions over the next decade that are highly uncertain.

Here's a prediction that you can take to the bank. The spending increases in the Obama budget will be approved and many of the cuts in spending will be replaced. And the imaginary amounts in deficit reduction will remain mostly hypothetical.

Rethinking another bad Obama decision

Steny Hoyer says that the administration is rethinking its decision to move Gitmo detainees to Illinois.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he agrees that the Obama administration should reassess the plan to move terrorist suspects from the Cuba military base to Thomson Correctional Facility in the state’s northwest corner.

“I think the administration realizes that this is a difficult issue,” Hoyer said, speaking at his weekly meeting with Capitol Hill reporters. “And I think that they are assessing where they are and where they think we ought to be, and I think that’s appropriate and I look forward to discussing it with them.”

Of course, this could just be Steny Hoyer hoping that they'd rethink such a decision. It sure would be a quick way to save a couple hundred million dollars which is what is being budgeted to pay for the purchase and upgrade of the Illinois facility. And this is when we already have a facility that was built at great expense to house and try detainees. But because Obama thinks that somehow the world will think better of us if the detainees are held in Illinois rather than Cuba, we have to reinvent the wheel. No wonder Hoyer would like to see this decision rethought.

You know some other politicians who would be happy if the Obama administration rethought this decision? All Democrats running for office in Illinois this year. As it stands now, this issue will be a gift for all Illinois Republicans.

How cool would this be?

A researcher found a previously unknown draft of the Constitution written in James Wilson's own handwriting.

"This was the kind of moment historians dream about," said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

"This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution's history," she said of her find in November. "It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling."

As other researchers "realized what was happening, there was a sort of hushed awe that settled over the reading room," Toler said. "One of them said the hair on her arms stood on end."

Can you imagine being the one to find those papers? It would be a moment to treasure all one's life.

More DNC money down the rat hole

After Ben Nelson's poll numbers in Nebraska plummeted, the DNC spent about a half a million dollars to air ads in Nebraska defending Nelson. Just what the DNC needed to be spending money on in December 2009 - money for a senator not up until 2012. But with poll numbers like this a couple of years out, Nelson has to be worried. But it does seem a rather screwy allocation of funds for the DNC on the eve of a tough election year.

Here's one tax increase that won't get through Congress

Jennifer Rubin points out that one of the tax increases in Obama's budget is decreasing the deduction that wealthy people can take for their charitable deductions. Who do they think makes some of the biggest deductions?

I predict that charitable organizations (i.e. special interests in Obama-speak) will work their magic on Congress and such an increase will never make it into the final product. Congressmen will realize that doing something to limit contributions to charities is just not going to fly in the middle of an economic downturn.

We need more Tim Tebows

Sports columnist, Sally Jenkins, scores a touchdown with this column chastising the ninnies at NOW or, as she calls them, "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" and "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time" for making a huge stink over Tim and Pam Tebow's ad celebrating the decision she made to have him despite the advice of doctors to have an abortion. Whether you agree with the Tebows' pro-life stance, and Jenkins doesn't, she is absolutely right that we would have a lower need for abortions if more young men took Tim Tebow as their role model.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

In this era of Tiger Woods revelations, feminists should be thrilled that there is a famous and popular young athlete who displays so much respect for women and their choices. But the increasingly out-of-touch women at NOW are so incensed that he and his mother would want to share their story that, with their silly protests, instead amplified his message way beyond one thirty-second spot. Now, that is dumb.

Retracing the mistakes of the past

Amity Shlaes sees strong echoes in Obama's anti-business rhetoric with the move that FDR took in his second term that led to the so-called Roosevelt Recession in 1937-38. When the recovery and unemployment rates were sluggish, FDR shifted to bashing business and the rich and urging legislation that would increase taxes and regulations on the rich. The result was that businessmen slowed down investing and hiring.

The result of it all was the Depression within the Depression of 1937 and 1938, when industrial production plummeted and unemployment climbed back into the higher teens. Even John Maynard Keynes chided FDR for his attitude about businessmen: "It is a mistake to think they are more immoral than politicians."

Among themselves, the New Dealers acknowledged failure. FDR's second Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, eventually determined that the problem was lack of what he labeled "business confidence."

Does any of that sound familiar when you listen to President Obama talk about the wealthy? As Walter Jacobson points out, Obama's budget is counting on raising $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade by raising taxes on couples earning over $250,000 and individuals earning over $200,000. As Jacobson reminds us, projections of revenue raised by taxing the rich always fall short. The wealthy shift their income or find some other way to decrease their tax burden. Governments never gain as much from those taxes as projected.

Add in the Obama budget's rosy scenarios on economic growth and how he's anticipating savings from health care proposals and cap-and-trade bills that seem to have little likelihood of passing, and whatever scary chart of future deficits that you happen to be looking at, you can safely assume that they will be much worse. And the differences won't be made up by badmouthing the very people who help build the economy.

UPDATE: As Chris Edwards points out, you can't trust any president's predictions on spending over a decade. They're always wrong.

Afternoon Cruising the Web

Michael Barone notes that, as scientists tackle the probability that there is more involved in climate change than just carbon dioxide, it might behoove policy makers to slow down before making massive economic changes based on faulty science.

While we're on the topic of faulty science, it is amusing, and appalling, to read of how the head of the IPCC is twisting the truth about how he came to insert the unsubstantiated assertion about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers into his supposedly scientifically authoritative report and ignored questions about his fakery.

Remember when every criticism of the government by Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean had the media shaking its head in distress? Well, now they're criticizing Obama about how clueless he is about how the whole intelligence gathering business works. We're not talking about a slow learning curve, but a willing ignorance that shows no sign of dissipating.

Former Director of the CIA Michael Hayden excoriated the Obama administration's choices on intelligence. it has been one dogma-laden choice after another with no concern for the impact on our intelligence-gathering capability. In one year, the administration has hollowed out our capabilities to learn about those who want to kill Americans.

Peggy Noonan captured the essential contradiction in Obama's SOTU address. He told us how broken Washington is and how everyone is just interested in the next election. Then he urges us to turn more of our lives and national economy over to that broken place.


Howard Kurtz notes that Obama's clay feet are starting to show up on Jon Stewart's Daily Show as the comic points some gentle fun at Obama. Of course, it's nothing like the daily zinging of Bush's administration, but it's one more sign that the curtain has been pulled back from the supposed wizardry of the Obamanians. (How many metaphors can I crowd into one paragraph?) And, as Jennifer Rubin points out, the major media may now follow Stewart's opening. If Obama is actually, gasp, worthy of humor, perhaps there is something they can find to critique in his administration.

Byron York catches Frank Rich calling John McCain unpatriotic despite all the times Rich has railed against Republicans supposedly challenging the patriotism of Democrats.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady describes how Hugo Chavez, having destroyed his nation's economy, is now proceeding to crack down on all criticisms and protests. I wonder how his willing useful idiots such as Danny Glover and Sean Penn feel about the wonders of Chavismo now.

The idea of strengthening the economy and fighting pollution with the construction of high-speed railways always seemed like a mirage. Wendell Cox exposes how absolutely silly the whole idea is. Why spend hundreds of millions of federal and state money to build railways that will shave maybe 10 or 15 minutes off travel time not counting the problem that, once you arrive at your destination, you'll still need to rent a car to travel around. As he points out, the problems with traffic congestion are within cities, not between cities.

For something light, check out this portrait gallery of the least appropriate Playmobil kits. There is something charmingly non-PC in these kits that my daughter wishes that I'd bought them when they were little.

Phyllis Chesler has an intriguing photo-essay over at PJM depicting the graduating class at Cairo University from 1959 to 2004. What is striking is how, over the decades, they've gone from no women wearing the hijab to every woman wearing the hijab. It's a pictorial display of how culture has changed in the past 50 years in Egypt. (Link via Mark Steyn)

Democratic Finger-Pointing

You know things are getting bad when everyone starts pointing fingers of blame. Stu Rothenberg outlines the various criticisms he's been hearing from Democrats on the Hill about their precarious economic picture for this fall. Some blame Rahm Emanuel. Others blame David Axelrod. And they're not convinced that Dave Plouffe holds the magic wand to make things all better. And they're quite ticked at Nancy Pelosi. However, as Rothenberg points out, Obama is the straw that stirs the drink. The bucks stop there or whatever overused metaphor you prefer.

It’s up to the White House to set the national agenda, and he ought to know when he’s an asset to his party and when he’s becoming a problem for them.

Yes, any president’s priority is enacting his agenda, not re-electing some Democratic Congressman from Alabama. But the White House won’t help its legislative agenda by its arrogance — by telling Members that the president can do no wrong and that it’s their duty to follow the Obama agenda.

That’s especially true if following his agenda means they will have to jump off a cliff this year while the president will have two more years, after November, to save himself politically.

As Fouad Ajami writes today, the Obama spell has been broken and people have come to realize that Obama is not the magical semi-deity who will come to Washington and make everything in the world better. And once the rose-colored glasses have been removed, it's hard to recover that initial fervor.

A historical hallmark of "isms" and charismatic movements is to dig deeper when they falter—to insist that the "thing" itself, whether it be Peronism, or socialism, etc., had not been tried but that the leader had been undone by forces that hemmed him in.

It is true to this history that countless voices on the left now want Obama to be Obama. The economic stimulus, the true believers say, had not gone astray, it only needed to be larger; the popular revolt against ObamaCare would subside if and when a new system was put in place.

There had been that magical moment—the campaign of 2008—and the true believers want to return to it. But reality is merciless. The spell is broken.

At some point people will realize that the fault lies as much at Obama's feet as it does at the feet of his political minions.

UPDATE: And it's not just Stu Rothenberg who is noticing the Democratic in-fighting. Associated Press had an article wondering whether Obama has the chops to elect Democrats.

This is not from The Onion

Life must be hard for the satirists at The Onion when real life contains so much idiocy. Newsbusters links to this story from the Air Force Academy. In a marvelous display of the government's toleration of all religions, the Air Force is constructing a circle so that Wiccans and Druids in the Air Force can have a place to gather and worship.

The Air Force Academy chapel will add a worship area for followers of Earth-centered religions during a dedication ceremony, which is tentatively scheduled to be held at the circle March 10.

The circle, located atop the hill overlooking the Cadet Chapel and Visitor Center, will be the latest addition to a collection of worship areas that includes Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist sacred spaces.

ech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, NCO in charge of the Academy's Astronautics laboratories, worked with the chapel to create the official worship area for both cadets and other servicemembers in the Colorado Springs area who practice Earth-centered spirituality.

"Feel free to check the site out, but treat it as you would any other religious structure," he said.

The stones that now form the inner and outer rings of the circle once sat near the Visitor Center, where the chance of erosion made the rocks a safety hazard. The 10th Civil Engineer Squadron moved the rocks to the top of the hill in spring and early summer. Once finished, the circle will also include materials from a smaller circle that Sergeant Longcrier briefly set up in Jacks Valley.

"We used the (Jacks Valley) circle during Basic Cadet Training, and it was great," he said. However, the new circle offers significant advantages.

"The circle that we secured in December is much bigger, better and closer to the cadet area," he explained. "This will allow cadets to use the circle anytime they feel the need."

I'm so glad that they don't have that old inferior set of stone rings and now have an up-to-date worship circle.

I wonder how many Pagans the Air Force Academy has. Somehow, the overlap between desiring to serve the country through service in the Air Force and desiring to serve the Earth by worshiping in Druid rites doesn't seem like it would be that large. But perhaps that is just my old-fashioned intolerance showing.

Cruising the Web

Rich Lowry persuasively argues that Eric Holder is an even worse Cabinet appointee than Janet Napolitano. Sadly, but these weak links have too much influence in how our government is supposedly protecting us from terrorists.

Mark Steyn takes a look at the sexual prose of the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, or, as Steyn describes him, "the cricket-loving climate-profiteering Nobel Peace Prize-winner with a carbon footprint almost as big as Al Gore's." Apparently, the septuagenarian has written a racy novel. The mind boggles. But Steyn has some fun with it. As will many more, I'm sure.

David Axelrod is either dishonest or a fool. Take your pick. He is still trying to maintain the fiction that we didn't miss out on any valuable intelligence by Mirandizing Abdulmutallab.

If you haven read Mark Thiessen's column in the Washington Post explaining how Nancy Pelosi was able to get one CIA top secret program stopped and thus was clearly lying when she tried to explain why she never spoke up against waterboarding when she was on the House Intelligence Committee, give it a good read. It will give you one more reason to agree with Jack Cafferty that Nancy Pelosi is just "a horrible woman."

Tom Harkin says that the Democratic negotiators from the House and Senate had reached an agreement on a health care compromise that both chambers would agree to before the election of Scott Brown. But then Brown was elected, and they just dropped it. However, President Obama told the House GOP that they were still trying to cut out some of the, as he called them, "stray cats and dogs" in the plan that they were still working on eliminating. So either, as Big Government points out, they had reached an agreement that would have left those various provisions in or they were still negotiating to try to pass a plan that didn't have those sections that Obama expressed concern over.

Is there no part of life in America that those in Washington will not stick their noses into? Sports Illustrated reports that Senator Hatch of Utah had written President Obama asking for his help in getting rid of the BCS system for college football. Obama has long expressed an interest in getting rid of the BCS and his Justice Department is now looking into the issue. No matter how you feel about the BCS, no one can think that college football's championship would be improved by having either Congress or the President involved in tinkering with it. Just what we need is for every senator angry that his home team, like Hatch's Utah, doesn't have an automatic bid to one of the top bowl games, to be filing complaints with the Justice Department.

Floyd Abrams is one of the most prominent defenders of the First Amendment in the country today. Few other legal analysts have his credentials. He explains to James Taranto why the Supreme Court made absolutely the correct decisions in the Citizens United case. He tells of how the ACLU considered reversing its longtime support for lifting restrictions on political advertising in reaction to the decision, but how Abrams argued that they shouldn't go back on their standard policy just because they don't like the corporations who might be advertising. He also argues that, if media corporations are allowed to voice their opinions before an election, there should be no limits on other sorts of corporations.

And, for your viewing pleasure, SNL's take on Obama's State of the Union.