Please check out Charles Pierce's take on Carvill and Begala here: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10923
Yahoo is reporting that the Florida Bar is concerned that Floridians can't identify the three branches of government or the concept of checks and balances, and wants to increase the number of students taking Civics classes in the state. I have no problem with that - when I was a junior high student in Hillsborough County, Fla, we took a semester of civics, a semester of economics, and a full year of U.S. History. If anything, the civics and economics curricula should be expanded to a full year each. The question is what gets dropped in order to accommodate those needs.
It's hard to argue that civics, economics, U.S. History, and World History shouldn't have a greater role in secondary education - they are the basis for any reasonable understanding of the world, and in my personal opinion should take precedence over elective items like sociology and psychology, which might be interesting for students, but aren't exactly necessary for creating good citizens.
Creatign good citizens is, after all, one of the goals of our elementary and secondary schools. Note that I'm not talking good "patriots" here, but good "citizens". The difference being that a good citizen is capable of, and willing to, responsibly carry out their duties as Americans. That means voting on the issues, not on ads. It means understanding who their representatives are, and what kind of job they are doing. It means becoming productive members of society. I would hope that the qualities that make good citizens would also produce patriots; real patriots, not jingoistic nationalists like the President and his supporters think we should be, but people who believe in the ideals of our nation, and are prepared to work toward them.
Our schools are not producing these types of citizens, as shown by the past several elections, and by the national and state polls the Florida Bar finds alarming. The fact that the people of Florida don't understand basic civics is why the President is able to argue that he is above the law, that he can ignore Congress, and that people who disagree with his policies are irresponsible. This lack of understanding is why people are not more outraged at the NSA's wiretapping efforts, which began before Septeber 11, 2001, not in response to the attacks on that date. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml
I've been spending some of the break from school reading. The most recent item;s are listed here. Notice the difference? One was really fun, while the other was alternately perplexing and irritating. Either way, I highly recommend both of them.
"History on Trial" features the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, who seems to think that a degree in literature gives her an approriate background to determine national History teaching standards. "kitchen Confidential" is a very different look at the restaurant business. There are definitely places (and things) you won't be sampling after reading it.
This will be the last LibrayThing update for awhile.
My catalog on LibraryThing is now at 915 books. H and I still have two or three boxes of books to go, along with a bunch of miscellaneous items that seem to be materializing out of thin air. this doesn't count new books ordered for school, pleasure reading, etc...
I sort of feel obsessed with the whole endeavor, which makes it a good thig that it is coming to an end for the forseeable future. Once I started, I couldn't stop working on entering new books until school kicked up again. I suppose that I could enter the comics I have have stuffed up in the comics, but that seems a bit excessive at the moment, and I have other projects to move on to.
The projects, in no particular order, are:
1. Start back to school at FSU (right now I'm "in" my Information Policy class.)
2. Prepare to start teaching again - I'm adding some primary source work and tightening up the Discussion Rubric for my classes. I also need to modify the schedule and syllabus to refelect the new semester.
3. Clean the basement. It would be nice to actually find things down there.
4. Stain our new headboard, which can;t be done until the basement is clean.
5. Clean the garage (sense a theme, yet).
6. Try to actually do some writing on my research.
7. Apply for a tenure track position at HCC in Tampa (its worth a shot).
Since the Bush Administration called the leak of the NSA's domestic spying program, I've been meaning to write about it. The whole issue seems to beg for comment - spying on Americans without even FISA warrants, claiming that the President had the power to ignore laws and Constituional restrictions, investigating the leak itself, and the concept that leaking is somehow more shameful than defiling the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
A lot has been written about these topics, as well as the Imperial Presidency, President Bush's insistence that he can simply get around laws he disagrees with by writing his interpretation of them on the bills he signs, similarities between President's Bush and Nixon, the importance of Supreme Court nominee Alito's work in justifying the President's spying and unalloyed grabs for power, etc...
What bothers me, though, is that we've not heard much about this characterization of the leak as "shameful" compared to any of the President's actions. How is it shameful to alert the citizens of the United States that their government is quietly spying on them in violation of both its laws and its founding principles? Why is it not shameful to lie in order to lead the nation to war? Why is it not shameful to resort to racist attacks on political opponents, as the Presidents supporters did against John McCain in the 2000 primary in South Carolina? Why is it not shameful to bomb Iraq into rubble, and then refuse to rebuild it? Why is it not shameful that over 2,000 Americans and uncounted thousands of Iraqis have died in this unnecessary war? Why is it not shameful to abandon the citizens of the Gulf Coast to their fates during hurricane season? Why is it not shameful for Republican politicians to launder money, accept bribes, and engage in other illegal activities with lobbyists?
I fail to see how leaking the Bush Administrations patently illegal domestic spying program is more shameful than any of the above activities, and those are just the low hanging fruit.