Entries for June 2007

What's missing from the coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation is a discussion of why race is still a factor in our largely segregated public schools. After all, it's been a half century since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Shouldn't a half century of proactive integration strategy have diversified public schools by now?

Yes, but the fact is it has not.

For those who have survived six years and change of Vice President Cheney's copresidency, it is barely more than amusing that some in Washington are launching serious discussions about ousting the "Angler."

This week's self-described blockbuster series in the Washington Post of the same name (Cheney's Secret Service code name is based on his love of fly-fishing) recounts in florid detail the veep's singular approach to his job—obsessive secrecy, arrogance toward constitutional restraints on executive power, kindness to close aides, and on and on. The bottom line is, though, he's more president than vice president, as if we didn't know all along.

Well, I'm ready to call the Senate's second go at immigration reform a failure. Two reasons for this. First, the polls. If senators are watching the polls, as indeed they must be, a new Rasmussen Reports poll finds the bill musters an infinitesimal 22 percent level of support from American voters. "That's down a point from a couple of weeks ago and down from 26 percent when the debate in the Senate began," Rasmussen says. "Fifty percent oppose the Senate bill while 28 percent are not sure."

In the latest seesaw over the abortion debate, House Democrats managed to work into a foreign-aid bill an amendment that overturns the so-called Mexico City policy.

This policy, born in the Reagan era, bars the funding of contraceptives (or much of anything) for overseas NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) that provide or "promote" abortion. Pro-lifers need not worry. President Bush is sure to veto the bill if it gets to his desk in this form. And battle-weary Democrats aren't going to risk a shot at the White House next year over the abortion issue.

OK, folks, it's official. There will be three presidential candidates (two major party and one indy), and they will all be from New Yawk.

Of course, it's not yet official, official. But with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's jettisoning of his second major party affiliation last night, the odds are increasing for a New York trifecta.

At a dinner party this weekend, I was listening to a mother of two fret about how much tougher it was last year for her soon-to-be college freshman daughter to gain admission to a decent school than it would be next spring for her son, who will be a high school senior in the fall.

Is it getting a heckuva lot more expensive to live in the United States, or is it just me? For the longest time I've wondered why consumer prices seem to be spiraling ever upward and yet most media outlets pay little attention, with one exception: gas prices. Now I may have found out why.