Recall initiated against Lebanon school board member

Wow. Talk about your Friday afternoon info dump:
The Lebanon Citizens Alliance for a Responsible Education System (CARES) announced Friday that it will initiate a recall of Lebanon School Board member Debi Shimmin.
“The members of CARES and this community feel betrayed by Ms. Shimmin. She has broken almost every promise she made during her campaign,” [...]

OSU plans to cut Italian language classes

From the Gazette-Times:
Italian and other foreign language courses are popular at OSU and many have waiting lists, said Brad Dennis, the chief business officer for the College of Liberal Arts, which includes foreign languages.
Classes with high demand might be cut, Dennis said, because in the university’s budget model, tuition dollars don’t flow directly to the [...]

Hering

Wow. This is a well-written editorial that manages not to demonize anybody, but instead raise semi-decent (but obviously unresearched) concerns.
I’m amazed.
… of course, I think Hering is passing over any possible short-term upsides to being taught in two languages, but hey. All things considered, I’m just happy he admits that learning Spanish is [...]

Presidential Chest-Thumping

Is this postmodern? A sign that Bush is, indeed, a Boomer?
Or is he just an overgrown frat boy?

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

I could lose a lot (more) time playing with this.
If anyone gets five or more clicks, let me know. I could only get four.

The (televised) press is broken

“…the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

[LCSD] Rick’s next proposal? (Yes, that’s a joke.)

From a comment on a story about a middle school considering drastically reducing electives:
Also some teachers are not there to teach our kids, they want vacations and weekends.
Riiiight. Because everyone knows teachers don’t do anything over the weekend or during the summer. That syllabus? It practically writes itself…

Obsidian Wings

I can’t get over how fantastic the picture in the upper left and the line below the blog’s title are on this page. Have a look.

To be filed under ‘reasons I’m not asleep’

I’ve found that as I get older, it’s much harder to simply sit in awe and wonder at the world, to just be and experience the world as fully as possible without trying to interpret or change it.
Sometimes – like now – I connect that difficulty to all that I learned in college (and all [...]

[LCSD] Possible Ethics Violation?

It’s nice to be in one’s mid-20s. Lots of one’s friends are still in school learning interesting things. Look what a conversation I had led to me looking for and finding:
Rule 4.2 Communication with Person Represented by Counsel
In representing a client or the lawyer’s own interests, a lawyer shall not communicate or cause [...]

[LCSD] Unanswered Questions

Way back in early December of 2007, I wrote this:
One other possibility [regarding the then-upcoming contract negotiations] is that Alexander will try and micromanage the contract, or at least give directions to the negotiating team that undermine the interests of the district.
I got the name wrong – turns out it was Wineteer and not Alexander [...]

Concurrence

Atrios:
HBO’s showing their dramatization of the 2000 post-election fiasco this evening. They were kind enough to send me a screener, but ultimately I just couldn’t watch it. I even kept turning off CNN today when they were showing clips.
That whole saga was just really traumatic. It was my “holy shit everything is really screwed up” [...]

Compare and Contrast

Hering in October 2007:
“This government does not torture people,” the president said again last week. Of course not. But if the world thinks we do, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds — the most important battlefield in this prolonged war.
Hering today:
For years, there has been a public argument about the use of [...]

Fox News Guest Jokes About Killing Obama, Laughs

Excuse me?
Can we pull our collective heads out of our collective asses yet?
Please?

[LCSD] A Report From an Anonymous Commenter

A commenter left this account of the last school board meeting that I wanted to move to the front page:
It was a horrible board meeting. Several meetings before someone requested they move public comments to after the consent to the agenda so the public could comment on amendments as well. Josh said the comment period [...]