After months of wrangling, and highlighted by several days of acrimonious debate and political stupidity, the Texas State Board of Education passed a new set of curriculum standards yesterday. There are… um… some problems. The standard for studying the Age of Enlightenment, for example, will no longer include Thomas Jefferson. Lucky young Texans will instead include the philosophical contributions of Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. (Eh?) From a liveblog at Texas Freedom Network: 9:45...

I spent a couple of fruitless hours this morning searching for a small square pillow that Adorable Child had when she was small. I never did find it, so I guess it’s been tossed (not surprising, since the last time I saw it, it was fraying and stained from many years’ use). This, though, is what set off the fruitless hunt (from ABC via memeorandum): A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel’s...

One of the charges often made these days is that the American dream is lost — that unlike generations that have come before us, we and/or our children will not see an increase in the standard of living or quality of life. Every time I come across one of these assertions (and they come from all over the political spectrum, depending upon context or specific policy issue), I wonder the same thing: what is it that people expect? Now, I’m not talking about the federal debt, and whether our...

In light of some recent discussions here at TMV about various entitlement programs — particularly Social Security — CNN Money has a timely article out: The percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43% in 2010 from 39% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey. That excludes the value of primary homes and defined-benefit pension plans. The primary “value of one’s primary home”...

Oh lovely. Here’s a fine complication for those folks who question some of the global warming assertions: Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools. [...] For mainstream scientists, there is no credible challenge to evolutionary theory. They oppose the teaching of alternative views like intelligent...

We’re in a buyer’s market across the board. If you’re ready to spend money on a home, you’re a hot commodity. And if you’re ready to spend money to expand your business, you’re even hotter. When roughly one out of every ten Americans is looking for work, competition for jobs is fierce. So in this economic climate, these folks are pretty much out of luck: With the economy struggling, times are tough for Houstonians looking for work. But for about 2,500 ex-convicts...

There’s lots of commentary out this morning about incumbent Rick Perry’s win over Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary. The general take-away seems to be that Governor Perry benefited from (as Jonathan Martin puts it at the Politico) “an anti-Washington message in an already volatile political environment”. Considering the overwhelming wins yesterday by the incumbent congressional representatives, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But it...

The US Supreme Court is hearing McDonald v Chicago — a case in which the plaintiff is challenging Chicago’s handgun ban as unconstitutional. Here’s how CNN describes the issue: The court will ultimately decide two fundamental questions: Do strict state and local gun control laws violate the constitutional “right to keep and bear arms”? And can an individual’s right to own a weapon extend beyond federal jurisdiction? The second of these questions — extending...

I don’t remember, to be honest, whether global warming one-liners were flying around when it snowed here in the Houston area on December 4th. We were all too busy staring flabbergasted out the windows to pay much attention. I’m sure, though, that the wits were regaling everyone with their brilliance. “Hey! How ’bout that global warming eh? Hawhawhawhaw!” **nudge nudge** That line’s so worn out, it reminds me of my daughter’s Blankie — all three...

From a very recent Rasmussen poll: Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes. Considering the public pillorying that occurs every time a politician dares to suggest cuts, I find that percentage to be absolutely astonishing. Are we really this schizophrenic?

George Bush Park, a 7800 acre city park in western Harris County, Texas, is a fabulous place for a photographer to hike. I’ve spent countless hours out there in the bayous and woods, and some of my finest images were taken there. From snakes (venemous and non) to alligators to banana spiders, there’s all manner of wildlife; every visit brings an encounter of one type of another. There’s one animal out there, though, that I prefer to view from a distance: the feral hog. It’s...

The closing performance of last night’s American Music Awards is generating quite the buzz today — and if he subscribes to the “any publicity is good publicity” theory, then Adam Lambert must be positively ecstatic this morning. Last night, though, he was on the defensive. “I do feel like there’s a bit of a double standard in the entertainment community, on television, on radio,” Lambert told CNN backstage. “I feel like women performers have been pushing...

Gems like these are why I so enjoy reading James Joyner at Outside the Beltway: The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well. Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration. And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that...

Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), writing in CNN, says he plans to oppose raising the debt ceiling what the issue comes up for a vote next month. He’s unwilling to raise this ceiling, he writes, unless “Congress adopts a credible process to balance our books and eliminate the red ink” — and he wants to form a “debt commission” to start the process. A debt commission will force members of Congress to take — or reject — a single gulp of politically...

Geeeesum! Could Jesse Jackson be more insulting with this? The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill. “We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” What Jackson apparently means is, you can’t think for yourself and call yourself a black...

This has been bugging me all day. “I think that we’ve restored America’s standing in the world, and that’s confirmed by polls,” [Obama] told CNN’s Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China. “I think a recent one indicated that around the world, before my election, less than half the people — maybe less than 40 percent of the people — thought that you could count on America to do to the right thing. Now it’s...

Andrew Sullivan reminds us all how Sarah Palin came to be driving the dialogue today: [W]hat I didn’t fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain’s recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. Certainly McCain’s VP pick brought some sudden life to his campaign. And yes, it looked extremely cynical to me as well. But when Sullivan goes on to suggest...

Writing about “The Excommunication Of Lou Dobbs” in Forbes, one Roger Kimball is perturbed by the claiming of the “middle ground” by Dobbs’ critics. Elevating political discourse. Drawing a line in the sand. Polite company. A middle ground. Get it? If you’re Media Matters, CNN or The New York Times, you are in the happy position of proposing that what you espouse is elevating, middle-of-the-road, non-fractious opinion that is acceptable to “polite company,”...

There seems to be a deep-seated need by some folks to cast Major Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, as something — anything – other than a religious fanatic who killed in the name of his religion. In spite of the ever-mounting information regarding his extremism, his self-declared status as a “Soldier of Allah”, his statements that he viewed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war on his religion… the arguments still continue. “He was just like every other crazy that...

I’m looking forward to reading Sarah Palin’s book. Like Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Palin’s Going Rogue will likely give insights into how she thinks, and who she is at a much deeper level than hyper-partisan electoral politics could ever give. I expect to come away from reading it with an even stronger liking for her personally — just as I did Obama’s book. She is, on so many levels, utterly ordinary. One cannot be a parent (much less a Mom), and...