Former Fort Wayne educator Eugene White is shaking things up in Indianapolis:
INDIANAPOLIS - From 180 days a year in school to 210? That is what IPS Superintendent Eugene White thinks middle school students need. As he expected, White's idea is meeting immediate controversy.
IPS middle schools were closed Wednesday so that teachers could get some extra training. Middle school students will get an extra six weeks of classroom instruction each year, if White's idea becomes a reality.
I think I've said more than once that, because of the Constitution's full faith and credit clause, the gay-marriage issue is certain to be decided by the Supreme Court. So now it starts:
Rhode Island should recognize state employees' gay marriages that are performed in neighboring Massachusetts and extend benefits to their partners, the state's attorney general said in an opinion released Wednesday.
What is the preantepenultimate word in this sentence?
Hint: "Penultimate" does not mean "ultimate, only more so."
This article by the governor of Maryland contains a lot of the usual reasons to be against the death penalty, which are wrong for the usual reasons. The death penalty is not actually a deterrent, he says, and executing someone is a lot costlier than just keeping them in prison for life.
If newspapers are to make a comeback and compete with the online world, it will probably be with hard-hitting, incisive journalism like this: What's in your fridge? The feature is just what you'd think. The paper asks people what's in their refrigerators and shares the information with readers. Today's guest is Quinn Buckner, whose fridge includes peanut butter, ketchup, mustard and the usual eggs and also -- sit down for this! -- strawberry sorbet and -- gasp!
It's official. Tom Henry is the Democrats' major candidate for mayor.
Thank God Barack Obama has one white parent and is clean and articulate and was raised in Hawaii far from the mean streets of America. That means he is white enough for people like me, who want to seem colorblind but have never had anybody but a white man to vote for and, really, do we want to hear rap music from the Rose Garden and start seeing White House recipes for fried chicken?
Most people who hear about this story will probably go, "Aww, that's so cute!"
GOVERNMENT CAMP, Ore. - Thanks to a high-tech electronic gadget and a big warm dog named Velvet, three climbers rescued after a harrowing fall and a night in the wind and cold high on Mount Hood are expected to be fine.
[. . .]
Come on, 'fess up. Haven't there been times when you wished you'd had this much guts?
Fed up with spending too many weekends going to weddings, an Argentine couple took out a paid announcement on the social pages of a major newspaper expressing their desire for some social neglect.
Adolfo Caballero, 66, told a La Nacion reporter the flood of invitations came from the children of his dozens of cousins, friends from his club, and clients of his law firm.
Here's another case of a student journalist feeling abused for not being given First Amendment rights:
But what control can
Parents are funny. I don't have a middle name, and neither do my brother and sister. My father didn't believe in them -- don't ask me why -- and put his foot down. This caused no end of consternation when I was growing up, in a part of the country where it's practically illegal to have only two names. And filling out forms remains a chore to this day -- do I use NMI (no middle initial) or NMN (no middle name)?
Iraq isn't just bad. It isn't just another Vietnam debacle. Good lord -- it's the worst thing ever!
"This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
I want to ask if Democratic rhetoric could get any more excessive, but I already kbow the answer.
"Mideast summit ends with little real progress" -- boy, there's a headline we've hardly ever seen in our lives, eh?
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but this basketball player sounds like a real -- well, you know:
In a spat over a cat and her kittens, Carolina Panthers punter Jason Baker, Carmel, is slated for court Wednesday.
The Indiana native is hoping to wrest $2,000 -- and 8 percent interest -- from a former Carmel neighbor for kitty-cat damages to his home's crawl space.
State Rep. Mike Bennett hasn't abandoned his quest to punish motorists who settle into the left lane and force faster drivers to go around them. The Bradenton Republican has re-introduced a bill this year that was vetoed last year by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.
It targets drivers who don't move over "once they realize that traffic behind them is overtaking them at a high rate of speed," Bennett wrote in a column sent to newspapers several weeks ago.
A report on research by Indiana university notes the "tide of of Latino immigrants" in Indiana: "Hispanic enrollment in state schools doubled from 1998 to 2005. During that same period, the percentage of Latino students who tested as 'Limited English Proficient' nearly quadrupled. The Mexican population in Indiana is growing faster than that of any U.S.
After 10 years, The Journal Gazette editorial page says it was wrong and reverses its opinion, but its reason for doing so isn't exactly clear to me:
Indiana might not lose its very soul if it breaks up the state high school boys and girls basketball tournaments. But it would lose at least as much as it would gain by going to tournaments based on school enrollments.”
Happy President's Day. It's the lamest excuse for a three-day weekend there is, but editorial columns have to be filled, and a holiday is always good for 600 or 700 words. Remembering the value of leadership? We're at a point in history in which roughly 40 percent of the people will hate everything a president stands for, although President Bush has been exceeding that. Whoever the next president is, of whichever party, will be in for a rough four years.
Magazines are following newspapers, TV networks, newspapers and all the rest of the "legacy media" in the wrong direction:
"What's hurting magazines the most is the loss of readers of its printed pages to the Internet," said magazine analyst Martin Walker.
"The titles with the strongest performances are the fashion and beauty titles whose pages can been seen only on their printed versions, not on the Internet," said Walker.
