Alyssa Sturgeon had me at “metaphors.” I teach college students to appreciate analogy. Sometimes it’s like yanking out a molar with rubber hose. Alyssa gets analogy. She’s in fourth grade. She wrote a letter to thet editor of the Vero Beach Press Journal to wonder how the state could have flunked…
DetailsTwo disasters blackened the blast-furnace summer of 2011 in Texas. Against one, man was defenseless: the duo of drought and fire. The first took almost half a billion trees. The later, nearly 4,000 homes. It was horrific, but only marginally worse than what the Legislature did to Texas schools. That disaster was…
DetailsThese days you just don’t know what story line to believe. Take the box-office hit that portrays Abraham Lincoln’s role as a vampire killer. I don’t know. That doesn’t match any of my previous reading. Then we have the narrative from Mitt Romney — job creator, economic prince on a white steed. It…
DetailsSomewhere in pledging allegiance to trickle-down schemes, buying warfare on credit, and putting the interests of millionaires ahead of our own, a lot of us forgot what government does. Here’s what we forgot: More than transporting us, lighting our streets and making our taps flow, government invests in human potential. …
DetailsFORT COLLINS, Colo. — We watched the fireworks. Then we watched the fire. It continues to singe our eyelashes. Last Wednesday, the pyro bombs weren't gunpowder-made but thunderheads popping off in the night. We watched them in our driveways, wondering which would bring rain. Instead … . Though the stormfront flung hail…
Details“The race may be a referendum on Mr. Obama, as Republicans want, or, as Democrats prefer, a choice between a president nursing the economy back to health and a challenger who represents the failed policies that caused the crisis in the first place.” Bingo. The New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman…
DetailsDiscrimination is a losing proposition. It may win in the short term, yes. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, however, “The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.” King’s words are most pertinent because of the scintillating statement made by the NAACP recently in supporting gay marriage, a few days after…
DetailsSo odd for Greg Abbott to parse words. The Texas attorney general said he didn’t call Planned Parenthood a terrorist group. He just said the law should treat it like one. Regardless, the Fifth Circuit Court dismissed the comparison and put the kibosh on a destructive law that would do nothing but impede women’s…
DetailsTime magazine recently had a jointly inspiring and confused commentary on what’s wrong with education. The thing on which we’ll focus here is what’s inspiring. In the meantime, we need to dispel some confusion. Time’s Joe Klein makes an impassioned statement on behalf of vocational education, which scandalously has shrunk from the scene in public schools in…
DetailsA funny thing about that dreaded “sense of entitlement” deemed so pervasive today: Those who complain the most about it often have the least reason to complain. This is true whether the topic is food stamps, affirmative action, or any number of means of helping those on society's margins. For every…
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