Conniption Fit

Love

Courtesy of XKCD under a Creative Commons license.

Darwin's Day In Florida (A Fit Limerick)

The greatest gift of biology

Is that science will set our minds free.

So why's Wise proposin'

That right beside Darwin

We also must teach mythology?

Running The Numbers

Amount the State of Florida will spend this year to pay for tuition at private colleges and universities: $92 million

Amount of funding cut from Florida's public universities during the special session: $112 million

Amount of funding cut from private university stipends: $0

Ratio of students to K-12 teachers in the U.S. in FY07: 15.5

Ratio of students to K-12 teachers in Florida: 16.4

Ratio of students to other K-12 instructional and student support staff in the U.S.: 44.1

Ratio of students to other K-12 instructional and student support staff in Florida: 56.7

Ratio of students to school and district administrative staff in the U.S.: 230

Ratio of students to school and district administrative staff in Florida: 273.9

 

SOURCES

1, 2, 3: Sarasota Herald-Tribune

4, 5, 6: U.S. Department of Education

Florida's Stimulus Quandary (Fit Limerick)

Schools are supposed to be "paramount"
But budgets force them to do without.
Although Congress is fooling
With a bill to help schooling
We've cut far too much for a handout.

Turning The Tide

As Jimmy Kimmel put it: "President Barack Obama has been busy.  Already he’s done more in two days than Bush did in his entire presidency."

Well, that's a funny line. It also appears to be the truth.

Look at this checklist:

• Order the closing of the shameful prison in Guantanamo? Done.
• Reverse the abortion gag order and free health care workers to discuss the topic? Done.
• Attack al-Qaeda? Done.
• Restore a code of ethics to the executive branch? Done.
• Ban the use of torture as a tool of U.S. agencies? Done.
• Win the fight to keep his beloved smartphone at his side? Done.

This is how the tide of history is turned.

Bushwhacked: Ten Years of Brotherly Trouble

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, 2009, he will become the nation's 44th president. This will be a historic occasion for the nation and for the world.

For Floridians, this will also be the first time in ten years and sixteen days without a Bush brother as the chief executive of the state and/or the nation.

That's three thousand, six hundred, and sixty-nine days of Bush brother leadership. Those days brought us many scars, some of which will never heal.

Farewell, brothers Bush. You won't be missed.

Running The Numbers

Decrease in Florida's annual budget since last year: $6 billion

Number of previous years that Florida's budget fell this far: 0

Percentage by which Florida's revenues will decrease next year: 22.6%

Total number of states with larger decreases: 2

Number of Floridians who are jobless: 680,000

Rate per $1,000 of income Floridians pay in all federal, state, and local taxes combined toward PK-12 education: $33.51

Number of states in which this combined tax rate is higher: 49

Number of schools Pinellas will close next year to save costs: 7

Number of Florida school districts with less than 2.5% in cash reserves: 8

Percentage of Republican Florida legislators who voted last week to slash another half billion dollars from schools: 100%

Percentage of Democratic Florida legislators who voted this way: 1.75%

SOURCES

1,2. Miami Herald
3,4. Center on Policy & Budget Priorities
5. South Florida Sun-Sentinel
6, 7. U.S. Census Bureau
8. St. Petersburg Times
9. Forbes
10,11. Florida Senate & Florida House of Representatives

If Only We Could Have Been This Disappointed

T.A. Frank of the New America Foundation has published a reflection of the outgoing president's administration in The Guardian.

No, that that president, silly.

Instead, this article is about President Al Gore's presidency, now in its final days. Be sure to keep reading until the very last hair-raising sentence.

Lord of the Flies: John McCain Continues His Crusade Against Science

Remember John McCain? He was Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's running mate in the 2008 presidential elections. Palin and McCain issued bitter attacks on scientific research and science education during that ramshackle campaign, apparently hoping that displaying profound scientific illiteracy would make their message more appealing to the American public.

For example, in October 2008, Palin did manage some cheers in Pittsburgh with lines condemning funding for "dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good—things like fruit fly research in Paris, France." Palin was apparently ignorant of the fact that fruit fly research is a fundamental and Nobel Prize-winning area of study because the brief life cycle of these organisms makes it easy to study genetic patterns. She was also likely ignorant of the fact the particular fruit flies in this study pose a grave threat to California's $85 million olive industry, and that the $211,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is likely to generate signficant returns for a minimal investment.

McCain supported all this with gusto, defending Palin and adding his own tirades against scientific research as being wasteful and foolish by its very nature. It turns out, however, that this wasn't just election-year "pretend" ignorance. It was real, deep-down ignorance. Even though McCain is no longer on the campaign trail, he's still campaigning vigorously against funding scientific research he doesn't understand.

Image courtesy of Giancarlo Dessì through a Creative Commons license.

Duty Calls

 
Courtesy of XKCD under a Creative Commons license.

Get Ready for Bush 45

Former President George H.W. Bush acknowledged that this isn't the best time for the Bush brand, but still believes that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush should serve as Senator or President.

Since the youngest Bush has already ruled out a Senate run, maybe he's taking Dad up on the second suggestion.  He'll be facing Sarah Palin for the nomination, of course, so he needs to be thinking about a running mate that will establish firmly his arch-conservative credentials, and remind everyone of his distinguished service as Florida's governor.

How about Bush-Schiavo?

Sansom Agonistes

Ray Sansom (R-Destin), the brand-new Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, has many issues facing him.

For example, he's suddenly got to deal with an emergency session of the legislature which is supposed to provide some stopgap relief to Florida's budget crisis. He didn't seem to be in favor of this session, but now he's got to deal with it.

However, Sansom's greatest challenge is not the session he didn't ask for, nor is it being a brand-new Speaker of the House. It'sNor is it being Speaker of the House of an enormous and profoundly diverse state. Nor is it being Speaker of the House during an economic downturn that shows every sign of being a historic event that will shape the future of the state for generations. Nor is it even being Speaker of the House in a state full to overflowing with paleoconservatives and ultraliberals who seem to be able to agree on nothing at all.

Instead, his greatest challenge seems to be remaining as Speaker of the House long enough to deal with any of these issues. He's being crushed by a well-deserved brouhaha about his unadvertised and low-expectation six-figure job at a state college to whom he's been especially generous in recent times, with said brouhaha now having its own dedicated Web site at SackSansom.com.

This becomes uglier every day, and Florida's real problems certainly outweigh one man's lapses in judgment. It's past time for him to move on, and perhaps his friends will soon let him know. Let's hope he didn't order too many new business cards.

MSNBC Gets Schooled

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was a guest yesterday on MNBCS's Morning Joe show. They were chatting about the recent violence in Gaza, but the interview went off the rails when host Joe Scarborough offered his opinion about the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit.

Brzezinski didn't flinch when he called Scarborough's understanding of history "stunning superficial" to his face. A few minutes later, Brzezinski confirmed his assessment when Scarborough tried to laugh it off, to the increasingly uncomfortable groans of his co-host Mika Bzrezinksi, who also happens to be Dr. Brzezinksi's daughter.

Zbiggy won this hands down, not that it was a fair fight to begin with.

This sort of thing desperately needs to happen on more television talk shows.

Lives Less Ordinary

Ah, the lives they lived and the world they made! Presented in order of the year of their birth,  the list of the notable passings of 2008 captures the full arc of the twentieth century, encompassing world wars both hot and cold, the exploration of outer and inner space, the advent of television and rock music, the fall of painting and the rise of sexual liberation, miraculous medicine, and all manner of feats and failures.

Albert Hoffman (b. 1906), the Swisst chemist who discovered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and synthesized psylocibin;

 

Michael DeBakey (b. 1908), the American physician, inventor, and Congressional Gold Medal winner who pioneering devices and procedures first made open heart surgery possible, and whose continuing research made it commonplace and effective;

 

Studs Terkel (b. 1912), the American author, historian, and personality whose oral histories such  as Hard Times and The Good War made the past come to life;

 

Mark Felt (b. 1913), the American FBI man who devoted his career to J. Edgar Hoover and then leaked key Watergate information as “Deep Throat” to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward;

 

Robert Mondavi (b. 1913), the American winemaker whose business savvy and technical innovations introduced the world to Napa Valley wines;

 

William Gibson (b. 1914), the American playwright who brought The Miracle Worker to the stage;

 

Forrest J. Ackerman (b. 1917), the American science-fiction fan who more or less invented the concept of being a science-fiction fan, and whose advocacy, curation, and publishing efforts helped bring science fiction to the attention of several generations;

 

Arthur C. Clarke (b. 1917), the British-Sri Lankan engineer, inventor, author, and science popularizer who first noted that geostationary satellites would be powerful communications devices, and who wrote numerous classic novels and screenplays including 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood’s End;

 

Jerry Wexler (b. 1917), the American music writer, producer, and Rock And Roll Hall of Famer who founded Atlantic Records and shaped the careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Wilson Pickett, and Bob Dylan;

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918), the Russian novelist and historian and Nobel laureate whose exposed Soviet prison camps in One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch and The Gulag Archipelago;

 

Edmund Hillary (b. 1919), the New Zealander mountaineer who, along with Tenzing Norgay, made the first known ascent of Mount Everest in 1953;

 

Suharto (b. 1921), the Indonesian president who ruled with immense power from 1967 to 1998, with significant advances in the nation’s economy and infrastructure but also with a grisly 24-year occupation of East Timor and widespread violence, repression, and corruption;

 

Madelyn Dunham (b. 1922), the American banker who helped raise her grandson in Hawaii from the time he was about ten years old, and who helped guide him through his life until two days before he was elected President of the United States;

 

Dick Martin (b. 1922), the American comedian and director whose extensive radio and television career included the counterculture breakthrough show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In;”

 

Paul Scofield (b. 1922), the British actor whose precisely-tuned delivery brought him wide acclaim, particularly for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the stage and film versions of A Man For All Seasons;

 

Bettie Page (b. 1923), the American model whose iconic pin-up images defined a new art form and helped launch the nascent sexual revolution in the 1950s;

 

Charlton Heston (b. 1923), the American actor whose flinty, hard-nosed characters helped make classics of films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, The Agony And The Ecstacy, Planet Of The Apes, and Soylent Green;

 

William F. Buckley (b. 1925), the American author, commentator, host of Firing Line, and founder of the National Review, whose intelligence and wit shaped the modern American conservative movement;

 

Robert Mulligan (b. 1925), the American director of To Kill A Mockingbird, The Summer of ’42, and The Other;

 

Paul Newman (b. 1925), the iconic American actor and humanitarian whose legendary film career included The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Verdict, The Color of Money, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Road to Perdition;

 

Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925), the American artist whose Dadaesque combines, collages, paintings, prints, and found works incorporated wit, vigor, and the man’s own powerful charisma;

 

Eartha Kitt (b. 1927), the American singer whose hypnotic, purring voice entranced millions, and whose confident sexuality and courage transformed modern celebrity and music;

 

Harvey Korman (b. 1927), the American comedic actor whose career-long association with Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, and Mel Brooks brought manic laughs to millions;

 

Bo Diddley (b. 1928), the American singer, songerwriter, guitarist, and Rock And Roll Hall of Famer whose rambunctious songs helped transform the blues into rock and roll, most famously with his syncopated, frenetic, and oft-stolen “Bo Diddley beat;”

 

Nappy Brown (b. 1929), the American singer whose emotional voice on such songs as “Night Time Is The Right Time” helped transform classic rhythm & blues music into what became soul music;

 

Charles Joffe (b. 1929), the American producer of nearly every Woody Allen film ever made, including Take The Money And Run, Bananas, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Hannah And Her Sisters;

 

Colin Murdoch (b. 1929), the New Zealander pharmacist and veterinarian who invented both the tranquilizer gun and the disposable hypodermic syringe;

 

Harold Pinter (b. 1930), the English playwright, actor, director, essayist, and poet whose haunting works capture the lurking horrors and miscues of modern life;

 

Bernie Brillstein (b. 1931), the American television and film producer who brought the world Hee Haw, The Muppet Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Sopranos;

 

Majel Barrett (b. 1932), the American actress and producer famed for multiple key roles in various incarnations of Star Trek, most historically perhaps as Number One in the original pilot but most enduringly as the computer voice of the U.S.S. Enterprise herself;

 

Roy Sheider (b. 1932), the American actor whose taut, acidic performances enriched memorable roles in classic films including The French Connection, The Seven Ups, Jaws, Sorceror, and All That Jazz;

 

Levi Stubbs (b. 1932), the American singer and Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer whose unforgettable voice made hits of “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” for the Four Topps, and who provided the voice of Audrey II in the Frank Oz film version of Little Shop of Horrors;

 

Sydney Pollack (b. 1934), the American film director and actor who brought us Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Tootsie, and Out Of Africa;

 

Phillip Agee (b. 1935), the American-born intelligence officer who worked for the CIA and whose later dissident writings exposed other covert agents;

 

Yves Saint Laurent (b. 1936), the French fashion designer who reinvigorated high-end fashion and moved it to the masses with his “ready to wear” lines;

 

Suzanne Pleshette (b. 1937), the American actress whose dry wit enlivened films such as The Birds and Support Your Local Gunfighter, but who is likely best remembered for her long run on The Bob Newhart Show;

 

Delaney Bramlett (b. 1939), the American musician who wrote “Let It Rain” for Eric Clapton and taught George Harrison how to play slide guitar;

 

George Carlin (b. 1937), the American comedian and actor whose often provocative standup routine paved the way for most comedians who followed him, and whose “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” became a classic piece of satire and a centerpiece to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision;

 

Don LaFontaine (b. 1940), the American voice-over artist whose voice powered more than 5,000 movie trailers, and whose trademark phrase “In a world…” was so successful that it became a much-parodied cliché;

 

Norman Whitfield (b. 1940), the American songwriter and producer whose Motown hits “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” “Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” and “War” provided an unforgettable soundtrack to American life and culture;

 

Michael Crichton (b. 1942), the American physician and author of The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and many other popular science fiction works, and who also came to create the television show ER;

 

Dith Pran (b. 1942), the Cambodian (later American) photojournalist whose harrowing experience during the Cambodian genocide was portrayed in The Killing Fields, and who later campaigned for documentation and remembrance of the tragedy;

 

Isaac Hayes (b. 1942), the American musician, songwriter, actor, and humanitarian whose Grammy and Oscar-winning career included writing “Soul Man” for Sam & Dave, composing the score to Shaft; and playing Chef on South Park;

 

Bobby Fischer (b. 1943), the American (later Icelandic) chess grandmaster and world champion noted for sometimes odd behavior but best remembered for his stunning Cold War-era defeat of Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky;

 

Richard Wright (b. 1943), the English keyboardist, songwriter, and Rock And Roll Hall of Famer whose recordings and concerts with Pink Floyd thrilled millions and profoundly expanded the boundaries of what is possible and what is expected in popular music and performance;

 

Stan Winston (b. 1946),  the American visual effects and make-up wizard who brought life and death to films such as The Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Edward Scissorhands, Jurassic Park, A.I. and Ironman;

 

Danny Federici (b. 1950), the American musician who played organ, glockenspiel, and accordion for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band for more than thirty years;

 

Tim Russert (b. 1950), the American journalist and longtime host of Meet The Press who became a reporter’s reporter and who popularized the concept of “red states and blue states;”

 

Bernie Mac (b. 1957), the American comedian and actor whose career included decades of stand-up work, television’s The Bernie Mac Show, and films such as Get On The Bus, Pride, and Ocean’s Eleven;

 

David Foster Wallace (b. 1962), the American professor and author of Infinite Jest, whose brief career and widely-hailed works are destined to inspire an entire generation of readers and writers; and

 

Heath Ledger (b. 1979), the Australian actor of immense promise who gave rich, original, and sometimes heartbreaking performances in films such as Monster’s Ball, I’m Not There, and Brokeback Mountain.

 

Pinter, Paused

A true genius has passed away. Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter died Christmas Eve at the age of 78.

His haunting, evocative, and sometimes alarming plays (The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, The Caretaker, The Dumbwaiter, A Kind of Alaska, and dozens more) stand out as singular accomplishments in contemporary serious drama. He also made his distinctive mark as an actor, director, poet, screenwriter, and social activist. His plays and other works captured, in startling relief, the profound problems humans have communicating with each other. His characters famously told different versions of their own stories in different scenes, contradicted others and themselves, worked furiously at accomplishing very little, and, quite famously, took awkward pauses when language failed them utterly. Here's to the memory and brilliant work of a great man.

Photograph courtesy of m1ndy9876 under a Creative Commons License. Shared rights © 2008 by Abingdon and Witney College & Richard Davies.

With Love, From 52% To 48%

I'm late noticing this, but it's well worth noticing that Ze Frank offered a comfy place where the 52% of U.S. voters who went for Obama can send a nice note to the 48% who didn't, and vice versa. All of this is immensely pleasant to see, and some of it approaches high art. Well worth a look!

"Jingle Bells", Nuked.

You either love this sort of thing, or you don't, so here's the pitch:

This video greeting from high-end advertising agency AKQA  shows how 49 microwave ovens can be programmed in such a way that their chimes play the song "Jingle Bells." This is (ahem) well done, but it's a questionable way to spend an afternoon, isnt it?

Bill Ayers Begs to Differ

The McCain campaign vilified Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers as a "domestic terrorist" in an attempt to use him to smear Barack Obama as a terrorist patsy during the 2008 presidential campaign. Ayers and Obama were indeed neighbors and did sit on a board together, but the close association claimed by the Republicans was completely imaginary.

As it turns out, just about everything else they said about Ayers was also false. Currently  a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers offers his side of the story in this New York Times piece.

Prop 8: The Musical

This spirited satire of California's disastrous anti-marriage Proposition 8 stars John C. Reilly, Jack Black, and with an all-star cast.

Now we really need a sequel for Florida's shameful Hate Amendment.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Fit List Update

GIVING US FITS

• California (wait, California?) hates its gay citizens.

GIVING US PAUSE

• Monty Python's classic dead parrot sketch is a true classic in that it appears to be 1,600 years old.

GIVING US HOPE

• Our next president's weekly radio address will be on YouTube.
• Obama's review team for the FCC post includes net neutrality advocates.
• Diane Ravitch, a one-time influential advocate for even the dumbest parts of No Child Left Behind, has proposed an elegant, simple, and sensible revision to the law.

"Dear Brother Obama"

Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer Alice Walker has written a moving open letter to President-Elect Obama from the "black people of the Southern United States" in which she passes on a torch carried by so many other American heroes.

Read it at the Root.

Image courtesy of Virginia DeBolt.

Bump

Thanks to Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Election Day Message

Americans, today is the day we must call upon the better angels of our nature, and do the right thing for the right reason. Let us make history, let us rejoin the community of nations, and let us save our national soul. 

Florida mourns the passing of Captain Tony

One of the last real Florida legends has passed away. Anthony "Captain Tony" Tarracino, 92, died on Saturday afternoon.

He had been a charter boat captain, an author, a gun runner for Cuban mercenaries, and the owner of Captain Tony's Saloon on Greene Street in Key West. (This is the bar that Ernest Hemingway knew as Sloppy Joe's.) Captain Tony served as mayor of Key West from 1989 to 1991. He wed four women and fathered at thirteen children. Somewhere in all that a film was made of his life.

His most enduring mark on history, of course, was that we was the subject of Jimmy Buffett's 1985 classic "The Last Mango In Paris."

"Our lives change like the weather but a legend never dies..."

Godspeed, Captain Tony.

Langston Hughes: I, Too, Sing America (1945)

 

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Ttthhheee Dddeeebbbaaattteeesss

Being "on message" has been taken to such a level that this clever overlay of all of this year's presidential debates makes it clear that we really had the same debate three times. Wait for "my friends" which only takes half a second—but it's a revealing half a second.

 

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Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Pushing back against the Enlightenment: Hitchens on Palin

Sarah Palin's War on Science: In Slate, Christopher Hitchens discusses how McCain and Palin have not only fighting against educated "elites," but have taken to attacking science and scientific thinking itself. According to Hitchens, the Republican Party has "placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. "

Happy Days in Mayberry

This will be a classic. Ron Howard's call to arms involves playing Opie and Ritchie again. You've got to hear Sheriff Andy Taylor and Fonzie help him out.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

An Ode To Open Minds

If the world really was a just and sensible place, this skeptical ditty by Tim Minchin would be a huge hit. It's titled "If You Open Your Mind Too Much, Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)."

It has made me smile for days.

NYT: The Class War Before Palin

Aside from her shocking scientific illiteracy and her jawdropping inexperience in doing much of anything, there's been something else about Sarah Palin that was grating. David Brooks of the New York Times has pointed out that it might be her perpetuation and escalation of the Republicans' disastrous "class war" against educated people.

McCain's Roommates Try To Cheer Him Up

It's not well-known, but one of John McCain's 13 houses is actually an apartment, which he shares with two roommates. In Episode 3 of this brillant series at Funny or Die, they do their best to snap him out of his glum mood.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Palin Protects Us From Putin (ROFL)

CBS News ran this interview with Sarah Palin in which she "clarifies" her argument that being governor of Alaska automatically entails foreign policy credentials of the first order. The interview, of course, confirms that she's a moron. It is horrifying that this person is the governor of a U.S. state, and scandalous that she is the vice-presidential nominee of a major party.

Watch CBS Videos Online

SNL Perfection

I simply cannot stop watching this. It's absolutely perfect.

Jon Stewart on hypocrisy

You've just got to see this one. Stewart needs a Nobel prize for something. Please.

Palin is no paleontologist

McCain's bewildering pick of the nationally-obscure Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is going to raise endless questions about his judgment. She doesn't even pass the most basic of litmus tests. For starters, she fails on science education.

During her 2006 election debate, Palin explained that she thought creationism should be taught in science classes. This either means that she is ignorant enough to believe in magic stories herself (like our current president) or that she is evil enough to promote ignorance in other people in order to get elected.

Apparently, McCain believed he had to pick a young person, in order to answer concerns about his advanced age. That's debatable, certainly, but okay—let's give him that one.

However, he also seems to have believed that he had to pick a woman to somehow lure Clinton supporters away from Obama. That's just silly. McCain is already spotty on science himself, adding to doubts about his intelligence. The supporters of Hillary Clinton are not going to flock to a right-wing religious extremist who is also a pro-choice, homophobic gun nut who denies global warming. The idea is laughable.

McCain may not have known much more about Sarah Palin than anyone else who doesn't live in Alaska. Perhaps he didn't know that she believed in magic. In fact, it's hard to imagine that he did know too much about her, since it appears that he only ever met her once before.

Republican apologists will argue that the opinion of the president and the vice-president regarding evolution isn't all that important. However, the Bush administration has been leading an all-out war against science for eight years now, with calamitous results.

They can't pretend that this kind of ignorance doesn't matter. It does, especially in Florida. During an epic battle for science earlier this year, the Florida Board of Education narrowly averted an attempt by a minority of its members to cripple the state's new science education standards. Along the way, an alarming number of Florida school boards adopted anti-science resolutions and the Florida Legislature squeezed out a couple of anti-science bills to add to the commotion. This is a real issue for Floridians.

Crist: Florida schools for sale

Gov. Crist and Lt. Gov. Kottkamp officially gave notice earlier this week that they were offering all public schools in Florida for sale.

Well, maybe they didn't put it into so many words, but that's what it amounts to. Crist and Kottkamp have sold out the Florida Association of Realtors and are hawking Amendment 5 (aka "The Bait & Switch Amendment.") They met with business bigshots at the Governor's Mansion on Tuesday to shill for it.

This boondoggle was orchestrated by former Gov. Jeb Bush through his total control of the Florida Taxation & Budget Reform Commission. This incredibly powerful panel is convenved only once every twenty years, but this round was nothing but l0ve-in for the former governor and his campaign to completely privatize all public agencies in Florida.

Amendment 5 attempts to lure voters with a tempting "bait" by promising to eliminate local school property taxes (the "required local effort") in favor of a penny increase in the state sales tax. That will be hard for many voters caught up in the current wave of tax revolt to resist. The problem is that the amendment will underfund public schools by many billions of dollars, and so an emergency property sale might well become necessary.

As Florida TaxWatch explained in this report, this proposed "tax swap" will instead result in a probable net tax increase of nearly $3 billion. That's assuming the newly-elected Florida Legislature actually gets around to dealing with complicated budget issues like bankrupt school districts.

Thanks, Jeb. Thanks, Charlie and Jeff. We'll make sure you get your commission on every sale.

What makes a true Floridian?

A buddy of mine recently provoked me into thinking about what is means to be a Floridian. Many years ago, those of us who were born here simply divided people into two groups: natives and non-natives (who were usually referred to as "Yankees.") That wasn't polite, and it wasn't even very helpful, as it turned out.

The reality is that being a Floridian is much more about a certain state of mind, and about a reverence for place than it is simple birthright.

After some thought, I decided that anyone who can answer "yes" to any of the following questions is probably a true Floridian.

• Do you really, truly understand what it means to try to garden in "Zone 10?"
• Do you believe it is perfectly natural to share your bathroom with a spider as big as your own head?
• Are you disappointed when someone overcooks perfectly good shrimp?
• Have you ever made mango chutney or guava jelly?
• Are you dismayed by people who don't understand the importance of college football?
• Have you ever seen the Milky Way in person?
• Do you know what the green flash is?
• Do you know why things are named after Plant or Flagler or Jackson?
• Can you throw a cast net?
• Do you put holiday lights on your palm trees?
• Would you rather drink kerosene than drink "Sunny Delight?"
• Do you know what lightered wood is for?
• Have you ever seen a drilled conch or shard of pottery on a Calusa mound and purposely left it untouched?
• Are you seriously annoyed with people who feed gulls, gators, bears, and frat boys on spring break?
• Do like the smell of ozone, rainwater, sawgrass, or seashells?
• Are you surprised when people don't have at least one papaya, loquat, kumquat, mango, grapefruit, tangerine, lychee, avocado, or tamarind tree in their front yards?
• Do you believe that roaches less than six inches long are not really all that a big deal?
• Do you call gopher tortoises "gophers?"
• Have you ever been to Bartow on purpose?
• Do you own a smokehouse, or wish you did?
• Are you able to paddle past a horseshoe crab without shrieking in sheer terror?
• Do you like the smell of burning sugar cane?
• Do you understand that putting masking tape on your window isn't going to slow down a fencepost moving at a hundred miles an hour?
• Can you back up a boat trailer in the rain on the first try, even with an audience?
• Have you ever shaken the hand of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, a Florida governor, a scientist from a water management district, an astronaut, or a fertilizer salesman?
• Can you list (without pausing) a hundred things that were better before the presence of too many people ruined them?
• Have you ever owned a driveway, an article of clothing, a piece of furniture, or a house made largely from seashells?
• Can you distinguish grouper, mullet and snapper from each other in a blind taste test?
• When the captain tells you to do something, do you do it immediately without first asking why?
• Do you know how to harvest swamp cabbage?
• Do you know what happened to all the fireflies and that other kind of frog that we used to have?
• Do you know why the Kissimmee is supposed to be crooked?
• Can you play (or hum) the "Orange Blossom Special?"
• Can you put up a dead-straight barbed-wire fence?
• Are you yourself a novelist, or have you met three dozen novelists in person?

Let me know if I should add questions.

How to Honor the Bush Legacy

Sometimes there is a kind of poetry in American public life.

The Presidential Memorial Commission, an activist group in San Francisco, has successfully placed a measure on the November ballot in that city that will rename a public facility in honor of President Bush.

If voters approve the measure, the facility currently known as the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant will be named the  George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

It may well be too late to enact similar measures here in Florida by November, but we can certainly still think about it. What might we name in honor of President George W. Bush right here in sunny Florida? Or what might we name in honor of his little brother, the Dark Lord Jeb himself?

Lines are open, and suggestions are welcome.

Image by Trey Ratcliff | Stuck In Customs

All The News That's Not News

Anyone reading this blog surely knows that world is full of real news, and that just-for-pretend outfits like The National Enquirer or Fox "News" don't even make a pretense of trying to cover it. That's their business, and not the topic of today's rant.

But when did CNN get so trashy? Look at what they're offering as "news" this morning on their Web front page:

• Angelina gives birth to twins
• 100 snakes siezed; pastor arrested
• Cerebral palsy boy mows lawns
• Actors Brolin, Wright arrested in bar fight
• Town lays down miles of pennies

Sigh. This list represents about a third of their "top stories" of the day.

If I were to tag these stories, I could cover all but the last with "personal and private" and then file the penny story into "purely local curiosity." None of these things are news, in the sense of being important enough to interrupt my coffee time.

To be fair, they are running actual news stories on bank failures, a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, and the U.S. presidential election. However, all of these stories fail to provide any depth or context, which used to be something I could expect from them just about all the time.

Somebody needs to tighten up, because this once-distinguished news authority is now on my Fit List.

Farewell, Florida Market Bulletin

Another little bit of Florida history has quietly passed into oblivion.

For most of the past thousand years or so, Florida has created wealth and power for its people through its incredible agricultural abundance. With due credit to all the sea pirates, tax evaders, carpetbaggers, smugglers, mad scientists, rum runners, robber barons, speculators, railroad tycoons, religious wackos, land swindlers, and theme park mavens who also developed many of Florida's vast and various economic empires, it was those who worked the farms and pastures of our land who have created the most widespread prosperity. Until recently, that is.

Most recently, of course, U.S. Sugar has cashed in on a sweet deal with the state, and some of the sugarcane fields that have injured the Everglades for so long will soon be burned away for the last time. Cane cutters and the other two or three thousand Floridians working in the sugar industry will have to look for new employment. They will be following thousands of people who used to work millions of acres of rolling orange groves, who use to drive cattle or raise chickens, who used to grow tomatoes, and sweet corn, and mangoes, and lychees, and ten thousand other gifts from Mother Florida. They will follow those who rolled the fat, luxurious cigars that made Tampa famous. They will follow those who used to fish or harvest oysters, whose livelihoods vanished decades ago, both for good and for ill.

As these industries give way to progress, they take with them a mixed heritage. It is a terrible thing to lose the pride of having dirty hands at the end of a hard day's work. It is worrisome that we will find it harder to understand the ancient unity of the good of the people being tied to the bounty of the earth . Of course, some old evils will also be going away: the exploitation of migrant workers won't be missed, nor will the protectionism and good-old-boy deals that made some landowners filthy rich at the expense of the actual workers.

But as Florida abandons agriculture as part of its economic base, it is inevitably giving up part of its heritage, part of its culture.

And so it goes: another icon of Old Florida has just vanished. With scarcely a notice, the Florida Market Bulletin ceased publication with this month's issue.

The Market Bulletin was a monthly trade journal for anyone in Florida whose job involved sunlight, water, manure, soil, or seeds in some way. It was one of the most unpretentious publications ever, documenting who did what with this crop or that herd, with simple, stark articles written in plain style by employees of the Florida Department of Agriculture.

It began publication during World War I, when strategic crops and livestock were of enormous importance and when it seemed that Florida was the land of endless clean water, rich soil, and cheap, eager labor. For nearly a century, the Market Bulletin was read both in corporate offices and in the homes of subsistence farmers. For generations, "the Bulletin" was as commonplace as Bibles or bitties.

Its classified ads were free, but limited to those people who broke a sweat during the regular course of their day. Those terse little ads chronicle the life and times of Florida: untouched parcels of ten thousand acres were offered during boom times, and tiny ramshackle family farms were sold in distress during hard times. In a given issue, someone might offer a particularly randy animal for stud services, and someone else would remind readers that their boys could put up barbed wire fencing faster than anyone else south of Bartow, guaranteed. Behind the lines of listed items no longer needed, it was sometimes easy to see who had just lost their goats, or their farm, or their child. The telegraphic language in these ads was sometimes brutal, sometimes poetic, always plain and simple.

The times change, of course, and now more and more Floridians are working inside and online. When we do chance to step outside, we very rarely smell orange blossoms, or see anyone mending nets, or hear an auctioneer hawking a tractor or a harrow. It is what it is.

Once circulated far and wide, the Market Bulletin has been on a long, slow slide for years now. The ads will continue online, but the last paper issue was mailed to scarcely more than five thousand people. The state's current budget crisis made it clear that the old girl was going to have to be put down, and so the deed was done.

Farewell, Market Bulletin. You served us well, and we'll miss you.

Everything You Ever Hated About FISA (In One Minute)

Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is looking for a way to amend the evil FISA bill now in the Senate to weaken its immunity for the telcom companies who collaborated in illegal wiretapping of their customers.

Sadly, some Democrats are supporting this bad bill to show their seriousness of purpose, or frequent manhood, or something such as that.

However, there are still heroes among us. The finest performance on the House side was this one-minute summary of everything wrong with FISA by Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. He even managed to get in a Benjamin Franklin quote before his sixty seconds were gone.

Both his split-second timing on the floor of the House and his exacting interpretation of the Constitution were impeccable.

Bad dog Charlie

Poor Charlie. He can't help it. He's just a weenie dog.

In the earliest days of his administration, the former "Chain Gang" Charlie Crist was looking pretty good. He seemed to show a healthy disgust for Jeb Bush, and seemed intent on actually making improvements in open government. For a short while there, it looked he might be able to pull off a more or less bipartisan approach to governance. For just a moment, it looked he really might be able to fulfill a campaign promise or two. For a moment, it seemed like we had ourselves a pretty good guard dog.

Of course, those days are long gone now. Trembling and terrified, our Crist cowered in the corner while the Florida Legislature stole from the people of Florida and handed the loot over to their corporate cronies. Now faced with a starvation budget, he keeps saying kind things about the thieves, yipping and yapping at the filthy bars in his crate, hoping they'll come back to Tallahassee and be a little nicer to him next time.

Then, Crist pretended not to notice while Jeb Bush manipulated the Florida Tax Reform Commission, loading the November ballot with all manner of sneaky efforts to promote vouchers for private schools, slashing of school budgets, and the usual Jebby corporate welfare schemes. He could have played pit bull here, charging and snarling at the first sign of danger, but he just sat on the porch like a bored, pampered, prissy poodle the whole time.

Finally, he has repeatedly wet himself, jumping up and down like a hyperactive chihuahua who got into Mama's expresso, trying desperately to convince the Republican elders to please, oh, please pick him. Little Charlie keeps running back and forth, straining at his dainty little leash, begging to be noticed.

Yip, yip! The hate amendment? Well, sure, Charlie's all for it! He hates gay people and old people and unmarried couples! Why not? The big dogs hate 'em, so he will, too.

Yip, yip! Offshore drilling in Florida? Even though it isn't needed? Even though it won't make us safer? Even though it won't lower gasoline prices ever? Sure! Charlie's all for it! He hates the environment. He hates science. He hates beaches. Why not? The big dogs hate 'em, so he will, too!

For his part, old dog John McCain seems to be doing his level best to ignore this yapping fool of a governor. Sooner or later, he's going to have to bark at this little weiner dog of ours.

It's just got to happen. As satisfying as that may be, Floridians are still going to have a heck of  a mess to clean up.

Bad dog, Charlie! You're a bad, bad dog.

I'm Voting Republican

This brilliant satirical ad from SyntheticHuman Pictures in Arizona is well worth three minutes of your time. It was written and directed by Charlie Steak, and, in true netroots style, the entire cast and crew worked on the film for free.

Please share this far and wide. You can get good info on the film and the issues it raises at I'm Voting Republican.

The Four Amendments of the Apocalypse

Yes, friends, it's true: The four horsemen of the apocalypse have arrived to spread hate, fear, famine, and pestilence over our beloved Florida.

These four riders aren't metaphorical, however: instead, they are four very real constitutional amendments.

THREE RIDERS SENT BY THE DARK LORD JEB HIMSELF

The Florida Tax Reform Commission has bypassed the normal means of getting constitutional amendments before the votes, and they have hornswaggled three disastrous amendments onto the November 2008 general election ballot.

These three amendments try three different means of diverting precious public funds away from local school districts in order to promote the usual anti-school agenda. Amendments 5, 7, & 9 will appear largely due to the scheming of former Governor Jeb Bush, whose frightening control over certain Commission members guarantees his continued infamy.

Here's the skinny on each measure:

Amendment 5: "The Bait & Switch Amendment"

This amendment presents a tempting "bait" by promising to eliminate local school property taxes (the "required local effort") in favor of a penny increase in the state sales tax. The amendment is written so as to appeal to tax reformers (PDF), but it fails to point out that a penny increase won't even halfway cover the resulting loss in education. This easy-sounding "switch" would be horribly regressive (placing the greatest burden on the poorest citizens) and it would impoverish our already-starving public schools.

Amendment 7: "The Secret School Voucher Amendment"

This is perhaps the most peculiar of all of the amendments on this ballot, because it appears even to knowledgable voters to written about something else entirely. The backstory is that the Bush's old voucher plot was intended to snatch money away from public schools and make it available via vouchers to private and religious schools. The Florida courts obviously found this unconstitutional, so this amendment seeks to abolish the legal principle upon which such rulings were based. The legal principle descends directly from the First Amendment to the U.S. Consitution (the one that eventually provided for the separation of church and state), and is enshrined in nearly all state constitutions in funding provisons known collectively as Blaine Amendments.

Basically, the current Florida constitution says that public funds aren't to be diverted to religious schools. This amendment reverses that protection, and does so in noble language (PDF) about protecting innocent people from harm because of their religiouis beliefs. It would be easy for even a progressive, well-intentioned voter to miss the point of this amendment, which is to give Bush's sycophants in the Florida Leglislature a free hand to bring back vouchers for private and religious schools in a big way.

Amendment 9: "The 65 Percent Stupid Amendment"

Several attempts to implement the so-called "65% Solution" have failed in the Florida Legislature in recent years, so the Bush operatives placed this on the ballots in hopes that well-meaning voters w0uld fall for it. The gist of this "solution" is to require school boards to spend 65% of their funding "in the classroom."

This sounds like a perfectly fine idea, until you ask anyone who has ever run a school system. It turns out that some "out of the classroom" costs such as transportation, insurance, food service, guidance counselors, and libraries actually cost money.

It's hard to imagine having a good school unless you have a way to get the kids from home to the school, so this "solution" is just pretend. There's no "problem" to be solved, although the promoters would have voter believe that school boards secretly crave to spend more money on wasteful things like bus tires than they want to spend on textbooks. The idea of depriving school boards of yet another key area of authority is laughable, but the danger is very real.

This is micromanagement at its worst, and it's at least 65% stupid. Maybe more, since this amendments also includes a bonus phrase that is also intended to eliminate a legal principle used by the courts to invalidate private school vouchers. (They didn't miss a trick.)

AND A FOURTH RIDER SENT FROM THE FLORIDA TALIBAN

To add insult to the injury created by these three riders of the Apocalyse, the Florida Republican leadership have manipulated a group of far-right Christians into the usual frenzy over...yes, cue the ominous music...GAY MARRIAGE.

Dah-dah-duhhhhhhh. Ooh, scary!

Amendment 2: "The Hate Amendment"

In past years, it has become customary for Republicans to add as many homophobic measures as possible to state and local ballots in the hopes that doing so will bring out as many homophobic voters as possible, thereby increasing the odds of Republican victories. Sadly, this has worked as intended most of the time.

With John McCain's prospects in Florida questionable at best, Amendment 2 is the big gun for the Republicans in Florida. As usual, it seeks to single out gays and lesbians as being unfit for marriage, certainly, but adds clever phrasing intended to banish even the meager possibility of civil union, and even for straight couples, cohabiting roomates, shacked-up seniors, and anyone else who isn't bound by one-man-one-woman marriage. If you really want to ruin your day, you may read the sickening ballot language here (PDF) or a good Florida ACLU analysis here (PDF).

These four horsemen have been sent, and they're riding rampant in every precinct in Florida. Time to prepare for battle.

It's Creepy Veep Week

After Sen. John McCain's big vice-presidential wannabe sleepover last weekend, most of the wannabes have been busy running around the country making sure that everyone notices their gleaming youthfulness, their God-given heterosexuality, their non-cult-like Christianity, and their new-found commitment to bipartisanship.

It's Creepy Veep Week!

Charlie Crist's neutron tan is supposed to suggest that Florida sunshine pretty much beams right out of his very pores, but his confirmed bachelorhood keeps making the GOP Old Guard squirm. In a truly amazing coincidence, Politics1 is reporting that Republican overlords are preparing to release a videotape that just so happens to show Crist actually kissing on a real woman. The alleged smoochfest is said to have taken place in a hotel elevator, which is apparently where one would expect a really good vice-president to do his slobber-swapping.

This is really happening. The best minds of the Republican party are positioning the governor of a key state as vice-presidential material by hinting that he's straight.

Meanwhile, Jeb Bush is making the rounds as well. While he's not actively campaigning for McCain's veep position, he's showing every sign of campaigning to be U.S. Secretary of Education, from advising McCain to setting up his own voucher foundation. If he gets himself appointed as the new NCLB commandant, he could then expand his life-long campaign to sell off every public school in Florida, and lead the Republicans in ending public schooling all across America once and for all.

Louisiana Governor and big-time vice-presidential wannabe Bobby Jindal was so taken by Bush's "leadership" style, that when he left the McCain sleepover he invited Jeb to come to Louisiana as the first in a distinguished lecture series for his own cabinet and staff.

Bush's lecture has not yet been made public, but it almost certainly included some advice along the lines of how to recover from hurricane devastation by privatizing your schools.

And it is a sad fact of nature that most people would rather have to watch a video of Crist making out with some poor woman than listen to Bush pontificate about anything at all.

Jeb Bush Attacks Florida (Again)

Jeb Bush is attacking Florida again, trying to raid the public treasury in his long-standing campaign to destroy Florida's public schools. Arguably the smartest of all the Bush brothers, he has devoted his talents to trying every possible way to divert money away from bona fide public schools and toward corporate-run pseudo-schools, fly-by-night charter schools, religious and parochial schools, and home schools.

Here's how his latest ploy works:

For most of its history, the Constitution of the State of Florida has prohibited the use of state funds to benefit religious organizations. This prohibition helps ensure a proper separation of church and state, and similar provisions exist in most other state constitutions.

This century-old protection for the people of Florida is Bush's latest target. If he can eliminate this Constitutional protection, then he will be able to use his sock puppets in the Florida Legislature to continue his attempts to end public education in Florida once and for all. Once this protection is removed from the constitution, legislators will be free to enact all manner of voucher and privatization programs, including vouchers for overtly religious schools. Such schemes have been thrown out by Florida courts in the past on the basis of the current constitution, so eliminating this protection is key to his evil plan.

In order to try to sneak this past Florida voters, Bush has manipulated the rules and members of a special taxing commission in a scheme that will put an innocuous-sounding constitutional amendment on the November ballot. This amendment drips with goodness and light and pointedly avoids use of words like "privatize" or "voucher. Instead, it gently provides that "individuals or entities may not be barred from participating in public programs because of their religion."

This wording has been carefully composed to sound as much as possible as a new protection, rather than the new assault on schools that it actually is. The campaign to promote the amendment never mentions its intended purpose, which is to subcontract the state's obligation to provide a system of free public schools out to religious wackos and corporate shills.  Instead, the campaign keeps trying to scare voters into thinking that religious charities are somehow about to be shut down, and can only be saved by this one little vote.

Jeb Bush did all manner of horrific damage to Florida during his two terms as governor, including engineering the collapse of its hurricane insurance infrastructure, weaking public schools with budget cuts and oppressive "accountability" schemes, and aggressively lowering taxes for the richest citizens of the most undertaxed state in the union. His legacy is so awful that it was hard to imagine any future governor doing more damage.

As it turns out, however, it isn't future governors that Florida has to fear most. Instead, its greatest enemy seems to still be its former governor.

Brooding at breakfast with Al Gore

Al Gore used to get a lot of mileage out of a funny but truly painful line he used to open public appearances: "I'm Al Gore and I used to be the next president of the United States."

Ouch.

Those days, though, seem to be getting behind him. Yesterday around breakfast time, Al Gore learned that he would share the Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As has been noted far and wide, Al Gore has had one great year. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold. First, the Live Earth concerts, while not without their serious musical flaws, actually did seem to promote awareness about Gore's lifelong concerns regarding global climate change. Then, of course, there's the Oscar, the Emmy, and now (ahem) the Nobel Peace Prize. With the possible exception of Bill Clinton, no other living American politician seems to have such high regard among citizens and such extraordinary ability to achieve their individual goals.

Certain not our current president,  easily the most conspicuous non-example of a leader who can get things done.

The convential wisdom has to be right: with this much going for him, it would make no sense at all for Gore to throw away all this good will by entering the 2008 presidential race. He's already got all the dignity, all the moral high ground, and all the name recognition that is possible for a modern leader to obtain. He's already a successful retired president, without any tawdry scandals or sinful wars attached to his name. Besides, the Democrats have this next election locked up, and it's theirs to lose.

The only problem with this convential wisdom is Gore himself. He has accomplished all that he has accomplished because he really does seem to be everything we believe him to be: experienced, educated, bright, insightful, committed, effective, sincere, nerdy-cool, and even goofily charismatic. That means that he really would be a great presidential candidate, as he has so well proven already.

A Gore campaign is probably unnecessary and certainly ill-advised, both for the Democrats and for the man and his family. But surely he wakes up every morning, and reads about what's happening in Washington and the world while he eats his granola. Surely it's got to stick in his craw sometimes that, with all he has accomplished, he never got the chance he deserved at what is still surely the biggest prize of all.

Put yourself in his slippers at breakfast. Your beloved Tipper is there with you, eager, youthful, and fully capable of any challenge set before her. The newspaper says the world is coming to pieces. Should you pour yourself another cup of environmentally-aware coffee, or should you take back your stolen presidency?

Wolf at the door

Right now, I'm catching up on books I should have read years ago. Steven Pinker's can't-put-it-down The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature was such an enormous a-ha to me, that I immediately grabbed How The Mind Works. Pinker is a gifted thinker, writer, and synthesizer of complex information, and so he's keeping me quite busy.

However, I can tell already that the next book on my to-read stack is going to have to be Naomi Wolf's new The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Here's why.

America's love-hate relationship with fascism has been with us since the very beginning, when a slave-holding class of intellectual revolutionaries founded a new nation devoted to freedom and liberty. We've been struggling with it ever since, and the topic isn't new at all. It's a commonplace that America veers wildly toward fascism one instant, and then recoils in horror the next.

However, it appears that Wolf's approach in this book is to determine, in startlingly simple terms, how far we seem to have slid toward fascism of late.  She previewed the book in The Guardian back in April. As she makes the rounds on the talk shows, she seems to be getting a lot of traction because she's based her argument on ten immediately-recognizable steps toward fascism:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Golly. Does that sound like any county you know? Yep, I'm afraid so.

Top of the stack.

Spellings to run for governor of Texas?

During a week when most of the federal education policy news is dominated by the House draft of the NCLB reauthorization bill, there is suddenly a new story regarding the President's chief education policy architect:

U.S. News & World Report is confirming that there is considerable discussion within the department that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is planning to run for Governor of Texas in 2010.

The magazine's "Washington Whispers" column also suggests that she may not remain in her office as Secretary of Education through the end of the Bush presidency in January 2009.

Why this matters
There is no consensus on an heir apparent to the Secretary. She has been with the President for many years, and she is one of the few remaining original Texas team members to still serve a formal role in the administration. This week, she has vigorously defended the original NCLB legislation against the many proposed changes in the House draft, and it appeared that she was organizing for a sustained campaign against changing too much of the law.

If she departs during the formal reauthorization process, it is unclear who will represent the Department's official positions to Congress—or even what those official positions might turn out to be. Spellings played a central role in the original development of NCLB, and the absence of her leadership in the debate would be the first time in nearly a decade.

It would also leave the President in the position of having to nominate a new Secretary to a Senate controlled by another party during a presidential campaign.

What to make of this
A grain of salt is certainly in order here. It is more or less understood that Cabinet members should submit resignations to a President not less than 18 months before the end of their administration. Generally, this means the Labor Day in the year prior to the actual election. That date has come and gone and the Secretary has given no public indication that she plans to leave early. In fact, her office confirmed to Education Week just a week ago that she no plans to depart.

This story may just be Washington jibber-jabber (in which case it's completely meaningless), or it may signal the beginning of a major change in federal education policy leadership (in which case it matters immensely).

All things considered, it seems unlikely that she intends to leave, at least not during the current Congressional session. However, given the signfiicance of the matter if she did, it's being posted here out of a sense of prudence.