I thought this post from EIA Online was both funny and sad.

If you didn’t catch it, one of the students is holding a sign that reads, “Save Are Teachers.”

The protest actually took place before school on March 8. It was organized by teacher Theresa Hoffman with the principal’s permission. You can read the story about it in the March 22 issue of the Iowa State Daily.

Hoffman is the students’ language arts teacher and is retiring after 33 years in the profession. She had the vigor and drive to put the rally together, lead the students in chants and notify the local news media, but evidently couldn’t muster the energy to check their signs for proper spelling and grammar.

“They need to run. They need to create. They need to draw. They need to sing,” Hoffman said of her students. And she’s right. But they can do all those things outside of school. They also need to learn the difference between “are” and “our,” which is presumably what the people of Des Moines are paying Hoffman to teach them.

Well said Mike. If Ms. Hoffman had been a math teacher, it wouldn't be such a big deal. I bet she spell checks the signs next time.

As a big fan of irony, I had to enjoy the fact that the Stanford New School, which was held out by the Stanford University's College of Education as a model school lost its charter from the Ravenswood City School District last week. This New York Times piece adds to the irony by pointing out that the school's founder, Linda Darling-Hammond receives considerable notoriety as an education reformer.

But Stanford New School has the best of credentials. It was founded by Linda Darling-Hammond, a leader in the school reform movement and President Obama’s adviser on education during his transition. Its blueblood board includes Stanford administrators and professors and Silicon Valley royalty with connections to Google and Cisco. It also includes Maria de la Vega, the superintendent of the Ravenswood City School District — who recommended that her board deny the charter extension.

What was Ms. Darling-Hammond's excuse for the low test scores?

Ms. Darling-Hammond — who told the board that the school “takes all kids” and changes their “trajectory” — was angered by the state’s categorization of the charter as a persistently worst-performing school. “It is not the most accurate measure of student achievement,” she said, “particularly if you have new English language learners.”

Unfortunately for Linda, the other charter schools in that district who also "take all kids" have higher test scores than Stanford New School. Read the rest of this post!

I know that my friends whose politics fall to the left of my own, which is probably everyone I know, are going to find this post irritating. To them, I apologize for the irritation. I couldn't help but see the irony in this Huffington Post piece by Josh Silver. Here we have the Executive Director of an organization called "Free Press" attacking someone in the media. In this case he calls Glenn Beck a fear-mongering, hate speech spewing extremist and while he avoids the oft-used connection to the Nazi party, he manages to connect him with the 1920s/1930s anti-Semite Father Coughlin and Senator Joe McCarthy.

The answer to Glenn Beck is not to deprive him of his First Amendment right to free speech. This is not about censorship, it's about sanity. Our leaders have a responsibility to condemn fear-mongering in all its forms, defend those who are unfairly attacked, and support a more diverse media system that provides alternative voices to the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other extremists. The lesson from the shameful Coughlin era and the McCarthyism of the 1950s is that we must confront the politics of personal attack with decency, reason and a commitment to more political speech, not less.

It isn't about censorship? Really? Sure sounds like it to me. I did find it interesting that Van Jones, whose White House resignation is blamed on Glenn Beck, was a board member of the Free Press and Arianna Huffington's political director when she ran for California governor. Funny how Free Press' executive director wrote this piece against Glenn Beck that appeared on the Huffington Post. Read the rest of this post!

I find it mind boggling that the President's administration ridicules conservatives for believing in "conspiracy theories" on one hand and then on the other hand, they ask Americans to report "fishy" emails and web postings on the Internet.

On the White House blog, Macon Phillips posted this post about the Drudge vs. White House brouhaha over the Healthcare reform... errr... I mean Health Insurance reform. The problems began when the Drudge Report highlighted this video:

The video seems to show the President saying that his healthcare reform wouldn't get to single-payer healthcare but that change would require 15-20 years of transition. It sure seemed to suggest that he favored single-payer health care despite claims to the contrary.

The White House posted a video response with a bunch of clips in response which show President insisting that nothing in his healthcare... oops.... I mean health insurance reform plans would eliminate private insurance.

In conjunction with that response, this was included on the White House blog.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

I find the idea that the White House is requesting that people notify them of "fishy" emails or web postings a bit troubling. On the heels of the fiasco over the disclaimer on the CARS web site, it is really unfortunate. It just feeds right into the conspiracy theory nuts. Who gets to decide whether something is "fishy." Is it "fishy" if it disagrees with the White House's position? What about the "fishy" emails I get from President Obama? Am I supposed to report those?

I think the post was just an innocent attempt to find out about emails or web postings that they might wish to rebut. Unfortunately, it wasn't well thought out. As it now stands, they've asked the American people to join the thought police and report their neighbors. I don't think this is the change the Democrats were hoping for. I'm beginning to think that the White House staff are their own worst enemies.

Read the rest of this post!

I'm not sure why I'm on a run of political postings lately, but this item from HotAir.com just cracked me up. This announcement from the FedBizOpps.gov web site is just loaded with irony.

Humor In The Workplace
Solicitation Number: RFI-BPD-09-0028
Agency: Department of the Treasury
Office: Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD)
Location: Division of Procurement

This is a sources sought notice and not a request for quotations. The purpose of this announcement is to seek qualified contractors with the capability to provide presentations for The Department of Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD), Management Meeting with experience in meeting the objectives as described herein.

The Contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour, Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life. Participants shall experience demonstrations of cartoons being created on the spot. The contractor shall have the ability to create cartoons on the spot about BPD jobs. The presenter shall refrain from using any foul language during the presentation. This is a business environment and we need the presenter to address a business audience.