I did a critique as well as a defense of the ACLU for TLP not too long ago, but another aspect of the ACLU’s approach to defending civil liberties seemed worthy of analysis. Here goes. On my Facebook feed this evening, I found this snibbet: Every student deserves the opportunity to attend school and learn [...]

The NYT has a story today about a student racking up a crushing amount of student debt to earn a degree at NYU, blaming everyone except the student for allowing her to build up that debt. Of course, I have some serious blame for the lenders too, when I realize exactly what they were investing [...]

Howard Zinn passed at the beginning of this year, and I will admit part of me was saddened at his passing. My mother owned his People’s History of the United States, and my fellow students at college seemed to adore his work. My best friend is a Zinn fanatic, bringing him up nearly every time [...]

From his blog at Fox Business Network, John Stossel has this on government schools: It’s absurd that powerful Americans consider it normal that they must move their residence or manipulate politicians to get their kids into a good school No one has do that to buy an iphone, or a good restaurant meal In every [...]

From Reason.tv:

Imagine a private school where students sat in a math class for weeks misbehaving and learning nothing. Imagine that school gets on TV news because the administrators suspended the young lady who blew the whistle by taking a cell phone video and giving it to her mom who confronted them. Do you think that school [...]

This is one of my all-time favorites. To truly appreciate the message, one needs to see the video (below). Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall, Part II The Wall (1979) By Roger Waters We don’t need no education We dont need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids [...]

Kevin Drum recounts a tale of a specific charter school that has had excellent results. He unwittingly makes a good argument for school choice: In a nutshell, this story explains pretty well why I like charter schools [snip] So I say: fine. If there are some parents who want their kids to go to schools [...]

From the “Not The Onion” files comes a tale that I can’t even believe, much less figure out how to respond to. Is this really what the Boy Scouts are becoming? The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in [...]

I’ve written in the past about the case of Savanna Redding, a now 19 year-old woman who, when she was thirteen years old was strip-searched by officials at her Arizona school who were convinced that she was concealing a banned substance; Advil. As it turned out, Savanna had no drugs on her, but the strip [...]

This is the amount a jury awarded the America hating professor, Ward Churchill in his civil rights lawsuit against The University of Colorado. Despite charges of academic misconduct “deliberate and repeated plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication” Churchill and his legal team turned his dismissal from CU into a First Amendment free speech issue. Maybe I don’t [...]

The Washington Post takes the Democrats to task for playing political games with the District of Columbia’s school voucher program: REP. DAVID R. Obey (Wis.) and other congressional Democrats should spare us their phony concern about the children participating in the District’s school voucher program. If they cared for the future of these students, they [...]

College enrollment has been booming. Schools have not only been adding new seats to existing programs but also adding new programs. And, unlike the free-market process where the supply of a good is expanding dramatically, the price of these seats has been increasing dramatically – much faster than the CPI. The increased attendance at increased [...]

Eric Arthur Blair famously said “The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.“. In this he was referring (among other things) to the tendency of those on the left to call anything which restricted their tendencies or desires in any way fascists; which in such usage [...]

…is brought to you by the letter “E” “E” for education, that is.  While education isn’t one of my hot-topic items, two interesting articles arrived in my inbox around the same time this morning.  First of all, Garry Reed identifies a key problem: Last September the state of Maine gave their kiddos a lasting lesson. [...]

During the recent presidential election, I found myself unfortunately defending Barack Obama from charges that were absurdely false (ex. Obama’s a foreigner, Obama’s a Muslim, Obama’s a terrorist) than demonstrating how absolutely terrible an Obama presidency would be for country and for individual liberty. Fortunately, Obama is demonstrating through his policy proposals how dangerous he [...]

One aspect common to totalitarian regimes is the forced loyalty oath. Nazi Germany, for example, forced all pastors, civil servants and soldiers to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. In the Soviet Union, in Communist China, and numerous other nations, the state demanded that people swear loyalty to the government as a condition [...]

California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure aiming to outlaw same sex marriage, passed on a very close vote. Prop 8’s supporters* pushed a campaign of fear, misinformation, and a complete distortion of the meaning of individual liberty. This campaign commercial is typical of the intolerance and hysteria being promoted from the “yes” campaign. Argument #1: [...]

It just goes to show you… A government’s promise is worth about what you’d expect: U.S. states have not lived up to their commitment to devote a major portion of their huge legal settlement with the tobacco industry a decade ago on anti-smoking efforts, health advocacy groups said on Tuesday. In the 10 years since [...]

Cont’d from Part 1 What motivates these very nice people to be such tyrants? Some will vote in ignorance of the issue* and others out of a sense of ‘social justice.’ Very few will intentionally vote to take liberty or property from a fellow citizen; most will vote to do so out of a well [...]