Entries for November 2006

If you want to know whom Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi is considering to replace Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida as next term's chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, you need look no further than the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It's the only group that supported Democrats in a big way in the November elections yet hasn't been rewarded with leadership posts.

The Web is alive with unstructured structuralism. The latest wrinkle is "unschooling." Kids divine their own instructional curricula. If a 6-year-old wants to play with a box on top of her head for an hour, that is as qualitatively beneficial a learning experience as an hour of Latin, according to unschoolers–perhaps even more beneficial.

So it's official. America is becoming more like France in a way that few Americans would wish. Government health data revealed this week that 4 in 10 children were born out of wedlock last year. This figure was up slightly from 200, but way up from 1940, when, marriage expert and authorStephanie Koontz reports, the rate was 7.1 births per 1,000 unmarried women.

Breastfeeding moms held nurse-in protests at airports across the country this week, to show opposition to Delta Airlines' ejection of a breastfeeding mother, her husband, and her baby from one of its planes this fall. The protest comes six months after the federal government launched an ad campaign urging new mothers to breastfeed or raise children's risk factors for all manner of undesirable health consequences.

The midterm elections take a decided turn to the left, and Sen. John McCain bolts right. Where is the logic here?

What part of "yes" do you not understand?

Buried in the election news coverage last week was a poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania showing that Americans want–yes, want–condom-inclusive, not abstinence-only, sex education for children in public schools.

Last night the women of the U.S. Senate met for the first time. All 16 (14 present and two new members) were supposed to be in attendance. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, were tied up on a military construction appropriation matter on the Senate floor and didn't make it. Sen.-elect Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, skipped freshman orientation entirely to make good on a promise to her family: She had pledged to take a family vacation as soon as the election was over to reward her kin for a year on the campaign trail. But the other 13 female senators were present and accounted for.