Posted 5/18/2002 09:06:41 AM by Edward Driscoll
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: It's not just for American students anymore! UPDATE: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has more on this, including some of my comments and links to articles on American flag-phobia. Click here to read it.

Posted 5/17/2002 10:47:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANTI-SEMITISM MUCH NASTIER IN EUROPE THAN AT SFSU, according to Howard Fienberg's Kesher Talk blog. Which is really saying something, when you read this.

Posted 5/17/2002 10:39:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHERE WERE TEACHERS LIKE THIS WHEN I WENT TO SCHOOL?? Matt Drudge links to an astonishing article about a 29 year old band instructor who is accused of showing pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, and has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor. More grist for the Tom Wolfe education novel, which could probably write itself.

A band instructor at Beyer High School in Modesto could face felony charges on allegations that she showed pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, the Modesto Police Department said Thursday. Deidra Ann Brauns, 29, already has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, department spokeswoman Gina McWilliam said. Those charges, both misdemeanors, were made Tuesday. The Stanislaus County district attorney's office will decide whether to pursue felony charges on providing pornography to a minor. There have been no reports of sexual activity between the teacher and her students, but Brauns provided students with alcohol and pornographic videos in her home on several occasions, McWilliam said.

Meanwhile, in other Bay Area news, Happy Fun Pundit has news of a 13 year old child who could go up the river for eight years for an errant spitball....

Posted 5/17/2002 09:10:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEWSPAPER WARS: InstaPundit has been touting an alternative to the L.A. Times headed up by professional journalists and frequent bloggers Matt Welch and Ken Layne and backed by former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan. Earlier today, he linked with an article by Joel Kotkin, which appears in The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles. Kotkin does a great job of explaining just how of touch newspapers have gotten with the bulk of their readers, and why the combination of the Web, cable TV and the Internet (especially blogs: The New York Sun (content not yet online) grew out of Ira Stoll's SmarterTimes.com psuedo-blog) may help to right the balance (pun definitely intended). Kotkin says:

In the dark days of the early 1990s the Times’ increasingly reflexive pro-Third World, racially obsessed and often almost hysterically pro-labor politics colored its coverage of local events. A generally "progressive" tilt became so entrenched as to not even be noticeable to editors and reporters themselves. The paper’s perceived tilt against Israel may have its roots in these attitudes, as leftist opinion has turned against the Jewish state. Since the recent takeover of the Times by the Chicago-based Tribune Co., the political bias seems to have somewhat eased, and at least a patina of professionalism has made something of a welcome comeback. Yet, the paper all too often seems still inhabited by the spirit of Coffeyism — pandering to various constituencies made up of presumed "victims" of color, while often seemingly contemptuous of the values of middle-class suburbanites, who make up the bulk of the readers. Added to this problem are those brought on by having a great newspaper now owned by out-of-state interests and run by editors with often little firsthand knowledge of the admittedly complex, often difficult to fathom, megalopolis of Los Angeles.

I remember in the late '80s and early '90s, watching the Philadelphia Daily News make a similar transformation from a decent tabloid-sized newspaper to the exact style of pandering that Kotkin describes. I don't mind a moderately left-leaning newspaper, but reading rococo Marxist bias more at home in a typical Village Voice-wannabe alternative newsweekly masquerading as objective news isn't my idea of a good time--or objective news, for that matter. (Oh wait, objectivity is largely jettisoned by postmodernism and political correctness. Sorry, I've got to get with the program here!)

Posted 5/17/2002 07:58:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE IMPERIAL NETWORK: Mat Honan has created a one stop shopping list of Star Wars Episode II blog reviews. (Found via Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker. Which gives me an excuse to say a cool phrase like...Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker.) Meanwhile, over on NRO's The Corner, they've found an essay which probably would have been titled "An Empire, Not a Rebellion", had Obi-Wan Buchanan written it.

Posted 5/17/2002 03:32:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
IN 1997, TOM CORRIGAN, SFSU'S PRESIDENT, SAID "San Francisco State is considered the most anti-Semitic campus in the nation". Doesn't look like they've improved their reputation any. (Quote via InstaPundit.)

Posted 5/17/2002 03:05:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUTER SPACE: I wasn't planning to turn this into all Star Wars day here on the ol' blog. But Jonah Goldberg makes a pretty convincing case that Cynthia McKinney's brain is off somewhere in a galaxy far, far away....

Posted 5/17/2002 09:49:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
THAT'S IT, IT'S RUINED: Well, not really. The Star Wars films have always had huge plot holes in them if you thought about them for a second. My current favorite is, in the first (1977) one, the Rebel Base is on a moon orbiting a gas giant--a planet, like Jupiter, made up largely of hydrogen. The Death Star can blow up planets. Just blow up the friggin' gas giant, and you'll take out the Rebel Base! (But of course, that would have eliminated the need for the bitchin' X-Wings and Tie Fighters battle in the Death Star trench, arguably the single coolest scene in the film--and certainly the best edited.) Daniel Frank, an LA comedian whose nom de blog is (ala the great Groucho), Captain Spaulding, has found another. (found via VodkaPundit)

Posted 5/16/2002 11:55:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST BUSH before and after 9/11. Jonah Goldberg does in his The Washington Times column, and yearns for the pre-9/11 version:

Much of the country has grown to love President Bush since Sept. 11, giving him the highest and most sustained approval ratings of any president since polling began. Good for him. Me, I liked the pre-9/11 Bush better.

Read his column to find out why.

Posted 5/16/2002 11:42:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE STAR WARS: The Digital Bits has news on when to expect both Attack of the Clones and the original trilogy on DVD. (The Phantom Menace has of course been out for some time.)

Posted 5/16/2002 11:23:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
NYU, POST 9/11: Jeffrey Sackmann, a recent graduate of NYU on his way to obtaining a Ph.D in English Literature at UW-Madison has started a blog to focus on education and social issues ("but the blog may drift far afield") called The Confidence Man. In one of his first posts, he looks at the state of patrotism on NYU, which sounds much better than it does at several Bay Area colleges. Sackmann says:

9/11 didn't change my values or ambitions, but mine weren't typical of a college senior to begin with. It has been entertaining chatting with friends who would be better fits for Berkeley: after 9/11, they found themselves in a disapproved minority. They did not handle it well, though they eventually receded into a smug, shrill corner.

Posted 5/16/2002 10:54:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
ATTACK OF THE CLONES: Well, I saw Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones today (and there’s a very good chance you have as well. This review is mostly for the three people in my audience who haven’t seen it yet.) Here’s my verdict: It’s a technical knockout. But… The original 1977-1983 Star Wars trilogy, as well as lots of other science fiction films made since, tend to feature great special effects combined with reasonably conventional set pieces. The result is that it’s obvious when the big orgiastic mind-expanding special effects blowout scenes arrive, we’re knocked out because they work in contrast to the set pieces. (Spider-Man, one of only a handful of Hollywood blockbusters since the original Star Wars to emerge with its humanity intact, is a good example of that principle in action.) Part of the problem with both Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace is that they’re so bursting with amazing images, impossible camera angles and compositions filled to bursting with movement, those images become a bit old hat. You can only be knocked out so many times that your brain stops thinking of them as amazing effects, and you start thinking “OK, this is how this corner of the universe works. This is what it looks like. This is how its technology works.” We get that it looks amazing. (By the way, I’m really going to try to see the film digitally projected. The digital photography certainly looked impressive translated into 35mm film, however. I doubt most people are even aware when watching this that it wasn’t “filmed on film”.) So get on with the story. And Episode II does a better job of getting on with the story than The Phantom Menace. The pacing is much tighter, the humor is held much more in check, Jar-Jar is onscreen for a relatively bearable amount of time—less than five minutes. (He does prove why everybody hated him though: he’s so naive and gullible, he unwittingly sells out the entire galaxy.) As you’ve probably read by now, Yoda does get to open up a little green can of whoop-ass. The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer when he struck little digitally animated Muppet-style kung fu poses. I actually thought he was far more effective leading the troops into battle—he’s definitely got a Napoleon complex, and it suits him well. As usual with just about anything George Lucas directs (American Graffiti being the obvious exception), there’s lots of wooden acting and cringe-inducing dialogue. (There's also an unbelievably hokey scene with the two love-smitten leads rolling in a hill that recalls another 20th Century Fox blockbuster from the past.) But there are also several far more emotionally satisfying scenes than The Phantom Menace. Hayden Christensen is a far far more tolerable future Darth Vader than the dreadful Jake Lloyd, one of the worst child actors of recent memory. Natalie Portman as Senator Amidala earns her place among previous Lucas action babes Carrie Fisher and Karen Allen, as someone who can be sexy, feminine and still open up her own can of whoop-ass. And Christopher Lee does his usual best as a classy villain. But these actors have to struggle to overcome a script full of arch dialogue, and have their performances judged by a man who has demonstrated what happens when the auteur theory is taken to its ultimate extreme. Lucas is a brilliant editor, concept creator, and producer. But he’s his own worst enemy as a writer and judge of performances. And given the amount of money he’s made for 20th Century Fox (Robert Altman basically owed him his career in the late 1970s, according to Peter Biskind’s book, Easy Riders/Raging Bulls.), there’s nobody to tell him “no”, or tell him that while the Emperor does have clothes, he might want someone else to tailor them. So go see it—and see if you find yourself initially dazzled, but slowly worn down by a film that in terms of technique, just may be too amazing for its own good. (By the way, Lucas has his work cut out for him for Episode III: In order to setup the real first Star Wars film, all of these characters are going to die, be banished to interstellar equivalents of Siberia, or become evil incarnate. This could be the first Hollywood big-budget film with a downer of an ending since 1970.)

Posted 5/16/2002 10:27:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
ALL SPORTS TEAMS EVERYWHERE SHOULD CHANGE THEIR NAMES, lest they offend someone. That's Steve Den Beste's humorous take at people who have far more time and (especially in the case of California and PETA) money on their hands.

Posted 5/16/2002 09:59:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ROOTS OF ANTI-AMERICANISM: Found via InstaPundit, this essay by Brent Stephen, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition is an excellent primer into the roots of anti-Americanism--and Stephen makes an excellent case for its frequent paring with anti-Semitism. Stephen writes that:

at root, anti-Americanism is not a political platform. Anti-Americanism is a neurosis, both personal and cultural. It is a close cousin of anti-Semitism, and it is a cover for anti-Semitism. It is a mixture of a sense of betrayal, of envy, of exaggerated expectations born to collapse into cynicism, of a self-deception that turns, as it so often does, personal failure into political rage, and of what Friedrich Nietzsche rightly identified as the spirit of resentiment. It will remain with us, just as anti-Semitism will remain with us, so long as Americans and Jews exist on this earth, and it will have to be combatted if Americans and Jews are to remain on this earth.

It's quite good--do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Posted 5/16/2002 08:38:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Click here for the winner of the Arizona Department of Transportation's "Not My Job Award".

Posted 5/16/2002 01:21:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE, have we got an Apple for you! (Found via Andrew Sullivan.)

Posted 5/16/2002 12:01:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHOMSKY WATCH: Brent Bozell on Bozell's News Column -- 05/16/2002 -- The Washington Post and Noam Chomsky. where he writes that just after September 11th,

a very impolite cynic could have spoiled the moment by stating that all this rallying around our flag and our fellow Americans would eventually evaporate. The cynic would maintain that as memories faded, our resolve to fight the terrorist enemy would fade along with it, and the media elite would return to seeing America not as a beacon of freedom and democratic values, but as an arrogant cancer on the planet. That cynic would be I-told-you-so’ing today. He could skip through the streets handing out copies of a Washington Post article on Noam Chomsky, a radical crank whose day job is linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Post headline prepares the reader for a rare treat at the feet of a daring and different thinker: "An Eminence with No Shades of Gray." What does Chomsky have that caused the Post to sound this note of distinction, this declaration of lofty superiority? In one endeavor Chomsky stands nearly unrivaled. He hates the United States of America with a fiendish passion. He has no shades of gray when it comes to declaring that it is our country that is the primary state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and September 11 is a small piece of comeuppance.

Posted 5/16/2002 12:13:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
"KICK ASS": Sgt. Stryker reviews Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones. I plan to see it today. I'll try and post my thoughts as soon as possible.

Posted 5/15/2002 05:18:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
WOW. Christopher Cross, on his X Factor blog says that California "is so unbelievably screwed", and has the numbers to back it up. Bill Simon, are you listening?

Posted 5/15/2002 05:06:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
TONY BLAIR WATCH: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has a couple of items on, as he calls him, the "Vice-President of the USA, President of the UK, Prime Minister of the UK". Start here, then scroll down to the next item. I especially like the "I am not Bush's poodle" quote. Down boy!

Posted 5/15/2002 04:20:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
BAY AREA PEACE LOVE AND DIVERSITY WATCH. Israel News via InstaPundit:

After being surrounded by a mob of students shouting, "Hitler didn't finish the job," and "Get out or we'll kill you," pro-Israel students at San Francisco State University are finally finding an ally against hate. The university president is so fed-up with the hate-filled atmosphere on the Bay Area campus that he has asked the local district attorney's office to help bring pro-Palestinian hate-mongers to justice. The May 7 incident received widespread press attention after an e-mail was circulated by Prof. Laurie Zoloth, director of the Jewish studies program at SFSU, describing the virulence of the anti-Semitic rhetoric and the campus's seeming inability to halt such occurrences. More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents, including graffiti, vandalism, hate speech, and violence have occurred on US campuses since January, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

UPDATE: Here's Glenn Reynolds' take on the issue, from his Fox News column.

Posted 5/15/2002 01:10:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
DAVID BROCK UPDATE: Matt Drudge has a preview of a story "set to be published in the East Bay Express, a weekly newspaper", that refutes "Key portions of David Brock's college remembrances from his best-selling confessional memoir Blinded By The Right". (For an introduction to who David Brock is, and the astonishing twists and turns of his career, see Byron York's retrospective on the American Spectator magazine and this essay by Jonah Goldberg.)

Posted 5/15/2002 11:27:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE '69 JETS: Found this week in fairly short succession on Yahoo's NFL pages, here are two updates to the 1969 New York Jets, who defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, one of the great upsets in sports history. Joe Namath at age 58, is living in pain. Samuel Thaw Walton Jr., the starting right tackle was found dead this week at age 59.

Posted 5/15/2002 11:19:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
ASPARAGIRL has a plan "to secretly undermine patriarchal oppression" in the Middle East. UPDATE: I have a feeling Steve Den Beste would agree.

Posted 5/15/2002 11:14:24 AM by Edward Driscoll
GIVE THIS ONE TO THE KID. George Stephanopoulos gets one right! Found on the Media Research Center's Web site:

on Monday’s Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos relayed how he learned that books people want to read are not so readily available as CNN claimed so Cubans set up secret libraries in their homes with books they’ve obtained from tourists. One woman told Stephanopoulos the book 1984 is the most popular “because many people see similarities with the life they live in Cuba." That prompted Stephanopoulos to note that her fear matched reality since “shortly after we left” the woman’s house “her phone line was cut.”

MRC noted that "compared to the reporting [about Cuba] on CBS, NBC and, especially, CNN, George Stephanopoulos is a cold warrior."

Posted 5/15/2002 10:53:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
"A SILENT KILL". Byron York says that another Bush-appointed judge could be dead in the water in the Senate. National Review and assorted bloggers and Web sites have been writing about this stuff for months. I wonder if it will be an issue for either party come November elections?

Posted 5/15/2002 08:51:53 AM by Edward Driscoll
BLOG WARS, EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE PLUMBERS: Both InstaPundit and James Lileks have had recent plumbing problems at their blogging HQs. Coincidence? Of course. But hey, you guys don't have earthquakes to deal with!

Posted 5/15/2002 08:37:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
"GANGS OF NEW YORK": There's trouble on the set of Martin Scorsese's new film, "Gangs of New York", according to Matt Drudge, who has a sneak preview of a July Esquire article. Here's a sample:

The picture had been shooting for three months and the end was not in sight. With the price tag shooting past $90 million, the budget was busted. It was Weinstein's urgent wish that Scorsese should get on with it. So he gave Scorsese, the devout Catholic, a lovely gold Star of David, and exhorted, "Think like a Jew!" "I'm trying," Scorsese replied. But whatever Weinstein had in mind--if he meant that Scorsese should speed it up, cut the script, save a buck -- none of that was on the director's agenda. Now, with the picture still not quite finished, Scorsese admits that he was so enraptured that he indulged his greed. "It's my kind of provoking the danger," he explains. "They would say, 'You have to finish,' and I'd think, 'Well, can I go a little bit further?'"

By the way, if you think the tip jar on this site is bad, wait until you read about Scorsese's "jar of ears"...

Posted 5/14/2002 07:11:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
DARWIN AWARD NOMINEE: This photo, of an extremely overloaded car parked in front of a Home Depot, has probably made the rounds up and down on the Internet. But if you haven't seen it yet, it's a riot. And Snopes.com says it's true--and has proof.

Posted 5/14/2002 06:40:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
ATHLETES AS WUSSES. Right after 9/11, when it was obvious that whenever airline flights resumed, they'd be at their safest, both due to airlines and (especially) passenger concerns, a number of NFL superstars expressed their fears about flying. I remember Vinny Testaverde of (ironically) the New York Jets, but there were several others. Here's the latest, running back Ricky Watters, who's debating continuing his career after being released by the Seahawks. But here's the kicker, from ESPN.com:

One factor in his decision-making is it has been difficult for Watters to fly on commercial airlines after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks on the United States. Colts halfback Edgerrin James has also been a less frequent air traveler since them. At least six teams have shown an interest in signing Watters, but trying to get him to make a visit hasn't been easy. At one point, he asked for a private jet to take him to a team. It wasn't because he was trying to be extreme in demands. The reason for the concerns is flying on a commercial airline in an age of terrorism and high security.

Ricky, you may be an incredible athlete on the field, but you're a wuss in real life.

Posted 5/14/2002 06:32:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
"HAM-HANDED" is the word the Internet Movie Database to describe the entertainment industry's efforts to halt digital piracy--and they're right. Here's the full blurb, from their Movie & TV News page:

Focusing renewed attention on the entertainment industry's ham-handed efforts to halt digital piracy, Apple Computer has issued instructions on how to eject a protected CD from its popular iMac machines if it locks up the computer. The Campaign for Digital Rights reported last week that several protected CDs, including Celine Dion's new A New Day Has Come, will lock iMacs and prevent them from being restarted. Meanwhile, today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times reported that a group of Hollywood studios, technology companies and consumer-electronics manufacturers wants to place "electronic locks" on all over-the-air TV programs that would prevent them from being recorded onto blank DVDs.

Posted 5/14/2002 04:38:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEE, HOW COULD YOU TELL? AP headline reads, "Carter Makes Live Speech in Cuba"

Posted 5/14/2002 12:36:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
UNDERCOVER PHOTOGRAPHER: There's a National Review article online about Carolyn Cole, a Los Angeles Times staff photographer who on May 2 joined a group of "peace activists" who had clandestinely entered Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, in solidarity with the Palestinian militants holding dozens of civilians and clergymen hostage. Andrew Breitbart, the NRO author, says "Upon her arrival inside the holy site, Cole took on the dual role of photographer and reporter for the Times, offering first-person accounts from within the church." He later adds:

Unfortunately, Cole doesn't have Stockholm Syndrome — she wasn't so much a hostage as an enthusiastic volunteer. Something you can't say about the priests, who were never asked if they wanted to be holed up in the church for 39 days. As talk-radio host and author Hugh Hewitt noted, "Nowhere in the entire article, not even a single phrase, mentions that these priests are hostages. Their captors are described in glowing and even gentle detail. There is nothing of reporting about this at all. It is, quite simply, propaganda." But this isn't the first time Cole has stepped over a professional line in her career. In April 2000 — at the height of the Elián Gonzalez affair — Cole was arrested on felony charges of "throwing deadly missiles" at police during protests in Little Havana, apparently in an effort to stir up her subjects and thereby generate "better" news.

Posted 5/14/2002 12:08:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
RUFFINI ON ED RENDELL, former mayor of Philadelphia for much of the 1990s (I lived and worked across the Delaware during much of his tenure in office) and likely Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. Ruffini, who studied campaigns and elections in a course taught by him has some insightful comments about him.

Posted 5/13/2002 11:03:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELLLLLL...THAT WAS INTERESTING! The Bay Area just had a 5.2 on the Richter scale earthquake. For my wife and I, it felt like a short, slight rolling feeling, followed quickly by a longer rolling motion. The whole thing was over in about 30 seconds, with no obvious damage to our, or our neighbor's houses. The local news of course, is probably still covering it. As my wife said to me, they treat an earthquake that causes little or no damage, and no deaths with about the same coverage a snow storm back east would get that cripples traffic, kills people, and closes schools. The last earthquake I felt here was about two years ago, on a Sunday while my wife, "Group Captain Lionel Mandrake" (on his first "tour of duty" in the Bay Area) and I were at a local theater watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". I always refer to that as "the movie that had everything": screaming toddlers, loud adult patrons, cell phones ringing, and in the middle of it all, a 3.0 earthquake--which was more of a quick THUMP than this rolling quake. Speaking of snowstorms and earthquakes, here's Virginia Postrel's take on them--and interestingly enough, how they influence how California and Boston do business.

Posted 5/13/2002 08:20:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
ZERO TOLERANCE, MEET SGT. STRYKER, who fortunately is still blogging on his Beers Across America site.

Posted 5/13/2002 04:29:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM: Jonah Goldberg says we need it. I think he's right. Read the whole thing, including this excerpt:

It's an old fable that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist. Today, the prevailing elite has pulled off a similar trick. It has convinced the world that only the ignorant, the unlearned, and the unsophisticated believe there are capital-T Truths; worthwhile standards for merit, beauty, or art; and bright-line distinctions between right and wrong. They've done all of this, mind you, while preserving their own privileged status for making such pronouncements — like a politician who champions campaign-finance "reform" just so long as it ensures his own incumbency. In this sense, they are more snobs than elites, because they spend so much time trying to assure the world that conservatives are fakers — "pseudo-intellectuals" and "pretend-journalists" — in order to keep them out of their clubhouses.

Posted 5/13/2002 01:13:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE eMACHINE/INSTAPUNDIT CONNECTION: Glenn Reynolds tells all here. I retired my main eMachine last year for a custom-built Windows 2000 1-gig processor powered monster. Nice to know his is still going strong.

Posted 5/13/2002 12:33:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
METAL STORM: No, it's not Ozzy Osbourne's opening act. It's a possible replacement system for the Crusader.

Posted 5/13/2002 11:31:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE FUTURE OF TODAY'S STUDENTS: Eve Kayden ponders a question that I've been wondering about lately: what happens to today's college students when they graduate, having been exposed to anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and other toxic ideas? In 1977, when Woody Allen joked in Annie Hall (Roger Ebert's Great Movie this week, by the way). that "Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college.", I was a kid who thought "What could be bad about college?" Now I know. UPDATE 1: This article in The American Prowler, suggests that there may be a glimmer of hope. UPDATE 2: Or not.

Posted 5/13/2002 11:13:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
BLOCKING GRADUATION: Linking to an article in the LA Times, Dave Kopel in National Review Online's The Corner reports on eight high schools in San Fernando Valley, California, which are refusing to allow seniors to participate in graduation ceremonies "unless they file proof with the school that they are going on to college, entering the military, getting a job, or entering vocational training." Kopel adds:

Of course none of these future plans have a legitimate connection to whether the students have completed the high-school course of study. Forbidding a graduation ceremony for students who plan to travel, get married, take time off and think about the future -- or engage in any other lawful activity -- is typical of the growing and inappropriate personal intrusiveness of American government high schools. Someone tell the control freaks in the administration to Celebrate Diversity.

Posted 5/13/2002 11:07:31 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE AMERICAN PROSPECT IS "OFF ITS ROCKER", according to InstaPundit.Com.

Posted 5/13/2002 11:05:04 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS RELISH HEINZ FIELD. Its stadium revenues are a true condiment to the organization, as it allows them to pay out bigger bonuses to its talent, thus allowing the Steelers to ketchup with the rest of the league. It's mustard reading at ESPN.com.

Posted 5/12/2002 04:11:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANOTHER FUNDRAISING SCANDAL for Gray Davis, according to InstaPundit.Com.

Posted 5/12/2002 03:55:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
WITH CARTER MEETING CASTRO IN COMMUNIST CUBA, Andrew Stuttaford makes a good point:

CNN is describing Jimmy Carter's visit to Castro as an attempt to "mediate" between the US and Cuba. Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn't a former president want to represent his country, not mediate between it and some third party?