Not the usual snideness about Earth Day today, just a point that the Us vs. the Earth mantra got old a long time ago. This guy, who thinks it's time to dump Earth Day, captures my sentiments pretty well:
I don't worry about the earth. I'm pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I'm very certain the earth doesn't worry about us.
Dispatches from the education front. In West Virginia, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations takes root. School officials in Marshall County may stop requiring students to complete their homework:
You know the president's $100 million in budget cuts was a silly, insulting-our-intelligence move when even The Associated Press piles on:
Chris Hiatt is the president of something called CDCPTR -- Citizens of Delaware County for Property Tax Repeal. He now faces a misdemeanor charge after being indicted by a grand jury for:
knowingly making "an expenditure for the purpose of financing communications expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate through a newspaper, without the required disclaimer and without noting whether the candidates had authorized the communication."
Hallelujah! I have nothing to worry about now, since Sen. John Kerry has my back:
Senator John F. Kerry will hold hearings in Washington next week on the financial problems facing the newspaper industry, as dwindling advertising dollars push many US papers to the brink of closure.
[. . .]
I can't quite make myself believe this is the tragedy the speaker says it is:
MUNCIE -- Not all of the Midwest's small cities will survive globalization, according to the keynote speaker at the sixth annual Small Cities Conference late last week.
They won't exactly disappear, said Richard Longworth, a former foreign correspondent for The Chicago Tribune and United Press International.
This is a joke, right? We all just woke up in the middle of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch:
President Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days, according to a senior administration official.
I believe in limited government, so I may be a rightwing terrorist, and I have the certificate to prove it! If you want your own certificate, go to reasononline, and take the short quiz yourself.
The idea that an originalist such as Clarence Thomas doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights is nothing short of preposterous, yet that's what The Journal Gazette tries to sell. In a short editorial today, the JG says that remarks made by Thomas at a March 31 event dedicated to the Bill of Rights suggested "that he was anything but supportive." What remarks were so scary? These:
The announcement of President Obama's high-speed rail initiative has given new energy to people in this area who've long dreamed of transforming Indiana and the Miwest with that mode of transportation. We should be careful to take all the hype with several grains of salt. Such rail lines are unlikely to take many cars off the road -- they're more likely to replace for-profit commuter airlines. And they aren't likely to be as environmentally friendly as advertised.
