Politics and other nightmares

It's a funny old world when a mere entertainer understands the Constitution better than a supposedly smart leader like the mayor of New York:

Suppose this will be used by opponents of school choice to argue that the voucher program is a bad idea?

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Private Indiana schools that accepted students from low- to middle-income families using state-funded vouchers last year experienced a fall in their passing rates on the state's ISTEP test this year, a newspaper's analysis of test scores shows.

Can someone explain the contradictory evidence? On the one hand we have this:

The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

And this:

President Obama's "You didn't build that" speech has been so throughly hashed over now that it might eventually be seen as the defining moment in the presidential campaign. The speech and Mitt Romney's reaction to it draw about as clear a bright line between the candidates' positions and overall approach as can be drawn. I think Charles Krauthammer has done the best job of explaining what that line is:

Haven't had a "juxtaposition of the day" for a while, so let's do one with pictures.

"The strange times we live in" department:

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Smoking anything other than medically-prescribed marijuana at San Francisco street fairs, festivals and other outdoor events held on city property would be banned under new legislation before the Board of Supervisors.

How should we define the middle class? By ignoring President Obama and Mitt Romney for starters:

Holy cow, what a shock  -- John Roberts is more popular among liberals than among conservatives:

Amen!

Both parties have equally participated in abandoning the limited role of the federal government," says Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), whose new book, The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting Our Economy, argues that Republicans and Democrats together have brought the U.S. to the brink of fiscal calamity.

A tale of two cities. Indianapolis: