Cruising the Web

Peggy Noonan often seems like a bit of a society space cadet to me, but she nails the two points that she makes in her column today. First, she advises Romney to take his verbal gaffes as an opportunity to explain more fully his beliefs and the points he was trying to make. Let people see more of what he believes. And, as Noonan points out, the so-called Republican establishment isn't for Romney; they're still hoping that someone like Mitch Daniels or Paul Ryan could swoop in and take the nomination. The other point she makes is that the Obama administration has woken a sleeping giant with their ruling forcing Catholic institutions to offer health insurance covering procedures that they have religious beliefs against. In this case, Obama chose ideology over politics and the politics is going to be difficult for him.

Kimberley Strassel has some scary thoughts about how it may be difficult for the GOP to hold onto the House. Could we have a Speaker Pelosi again? Shudder.

Matt Lauer and Brian Williams are fighting over which one gets to have the annual gushing interview with President Obama before the Super Bowl. Can't we have our sports events without politics?

Jonah Goldberg has some consolation for conservatives trying to come to terms with a Romney nomination.

Byron York reports that the Obama campaign is trying to fundraise off of the shocking statements that Romney has made about his desire to defeat Barack Obama. Who knew that that was a Republican goal?

Why would Mitt Romney have cozied up to Donald Trump to accept his endorsement? Now he's going to have to answer questions about all of the wacky things that Trump has said, beginning with Trump's birther rumblings.

Daniel J. Mitchell has some eye-opening charts comparing Obamanomics and Reaganomics and the effect on GDP growth and unemployment.

Mickey Kaus has some fun with a New Yorker piece about how Barack Obama spends his days.

Choosing a major has a direct connection to future employment possibilities. What a shocking finding.

Eric Holder thinks he deserves more respect. Poor boo.

Another example of how Democrats don't truly support freedom of choice - their opposition to right-to-work laws.

Cruising the Web

It's never too early: National Journal goes through possible vice presidential nominees for Romney to consider. It includes all the people that conservatives wish had been running this year, but for various reasons have chosen not to.

George Will looks at the "pettifogging laws" that states are using to put the clamps on political speech.

Stuart Rothenberg goes through the reasons why Newt Gingrich may not last through to the end of the nomination fight. Meanwhile, Michael Barone makes the exact opposite argument. Choose your analysis.

Jim Vandehei explains why things might not be looking as rosy for Obama's reelection hopes as it may seem today.

Daniel Henninger looks at how, despite its faulty logic and departures from reality, Barack Obama's campaign speeches may very well allow Obama to ride the fantasy to reelection.

Why should anyone care whom Donald Trump endorses? The man is a joke. And I wouldn't think that Sharron Angle's endorsement would carry weight with anyone. I wish that politicians would realize that 98% of political endorsements don't matter at all and it just weakens a silly distraction.

Mitt's problem

As Romney sticks his foot in his mouth once again by his inelegant phrasing of what he's trying to say and, more importantly, demonstrates his lack of understanding of conservative principles, the WSJ has a good recommendation for him.

Mr. Romney's failures to communicate are common among businessmen and other normal people who have the right instincts but haven't spent their lives thinking about politics. He also recently ran into trouble when he said he liked firing people, when he was really talking about the discipline of market competition.

Still, his business now is politics, and as the Republican front-runner he has an obligation to explain how conservative principles and policies can address America's current problems. We'll be happy to translate for him in these columns, but it would be less politically painful if Mr. Romney sat down for a week-long tutorial with, say, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush and others who can help him avoid such obvious liberal traps.

Mitt Romney is not a stupid man, but he's not a conservative thinker. Neither were either of the Bush presidents. Romney might be capable of absorbing such tutoring and be able to mouth conservative principles for the purposes of the campaign, but those aren't his instincts or, probably, the foundation for his approach to public policy. He has an understanding when it comes to economic policy, but not when such policies touch on the cultural results of such policies. Thus, he can demonstrate his understanding of such principles when it comes to economic policy as when he talked about liking to fire people when he meant the strengths that come from a competitive marketplace or the blessings of entrepreneurs willing to take risks. But he doesn't have an instinct of why government policies have been counter-productive for those very poor that Mitt Romney isn't worried about. He can't make that connection. Businessmen usually don't have to think about such unintended cultural consequences.

He can sit down for that recommended tutoring session, but I suspect that he'll never be an eloquent spokesmen for conservative principles.

The presidential ambitions of Mitt Romney's father collapsed with one unfortunate phrase about having been brainwashed by Johnson's aides on Vietnam. Mitt Romney is, supposedly, very aware of that history and afraid of making a similar error. It's ironic that one inept remark could sink a politician in the pre-internet days and now Mitt Romney seems to be on the road to the nomination despite making several such inept comments. It's not surprising that Romney would be caught up by his poor phrasing in answering a question. These guys are campaigning non-stop and probably getting by with minimal sleep in a different hotel room every night. They're tired. They'll make mistakes. No amount of tutoring is going to eliminate that problem. Barack Obama can make such errors every single day, but it will never have the effect one remark by a Republican will have. That's the playing field we're on.

Cruising the Web

In which Nancy Pelosi is proven, once again, that she is a fool who doesn't understand public policy.

Theodore Olson explains what is so corrosive about how the President and his allies have singled out the Koch brothers simply because the Kochs oppose the Democrats and fund their opponents. This demonization of people because of their political beliefs is damaging to our whole political system.

Victor Davis Hanson offers a campaign lexicon. Words don't seem to mean what their users think they mean.

Twitter wits come up with Secret Service code names for Mitt Romney who is about to get Secret Service protection.

Newt Gingrich can't control his anger even when it's clear that it loses him votes.

Do Obama supporters have anything stronger than their constant dog-whistle comments on supposed racism?

Are college students learning? How would we measure that?

A former Navy SEAL exposes how the Obama administration is endangering our special ops forces by using them for political purposes.

It is infuriating to see political gain put above the safety and security of our brave warriors and our long-term strategic goals. Loose lips sink ships.

Yes, but everything must be put to the purpose of reelecting The One.

Jay Cost identifies a geographic split among how conservatives are voting.

If conservatives are feeling glum about the seeming inevitability of a Romney nomination, they can turn to the Senate to elect strong conservatives there. That would be one way to keep a possible President Romney to a conservative path.

Jim Geraghty offers five take-aways from Florida's primary.

The Buffett Rule, in short, is a suitably meretricious proposal for a meretricious presidency.

Obama's Buffett rule is extremely bad and stupid policy. As Rich Lowry writes,

You can listen to Otto von Bismarck's voice in a recording made by Edison. Wow.

Revolutionary education reform

Bobby Jindal is going all in to push education reform in Louisiana. Already, New Orleans has the most charter schools in the country with 80% of students enrolled in charter schools. The results have been a marked improvement in how students are doing and a narrowing of the racial gap in student achievement. Now Jindal wants to take those results statewide and he wants to use choice and limits on teacher tenure to totally reform the education system. He is proposing to offer vouchers (or as they're now being called "scholarships") to all low-income student whose school gets a C, D or F grade from state administrators. They could use those vouchers for "private or virtual schools, career-based programs or institutions of higher education" using money from what the state would normally spend on students.

Jindal would increase the number of charter schools statewide to follow the success of New Orleans. And he would take a whack at teacher tenure.

As for tenure, Mr. Jindal would grant it only to teachers who are rated "highly effective" five years in a row, meaning the top 10% of performers. And tenure wouldn't equal lifetime protection: A tenured teacher who rates in the bottom 10% ("ineffective") in any year would return to probationary status. Ineffective teachers would receive no pay raise. Louisiana would also ban the "last in, first out" practice under which younger teachers are dismissed first, regardless of performance.

Of course the teachers unions are all over this. But they're having a harder time trying to argue that parents shouldn't have choice in picking their children's education.

Louisiana Association of Educators leader Michael Walker Jones took to insulting Bayou State parents: "If I'm a parent in poverty I have no clue because I'm trying to struggle and live day to day," said Mr. Jones of parental choice. How's that for faith in self-government?

This just reeks of paternalism. Jindal's message is that parents care enough about their children to look for the schools that will provide the best opportunities for those children. Just watch any of the documentaries such as Waiting for Superman or The Lottery that have been done about the agonies that parents go through as they wait to see if their students will win the lottery to get out of the regular public schools and into a charter. And teachers will have to depend on their performance rather than seniority or tenure to maintain their jobs. What a revolutionary concept for education.

Governor Jindal is pushing for revolutionary education reform on the state level. If his bill passes, we will have a real-life laboratory of democracy to assess whether such reforms, which conservatives have been pushing for years, actually make a difference. The Republicans have majorities in both houses of the state legislature so we can hope that the reforms will pass. Then I imagine that researchers will be keeping their eyes on the results to assess if the reforms make any difference.

Here in my area we're witnessing a small example of how the education blob opposes change. Since the Republicans took over the North Carolina legislature, they loosened the limitations on charter schools. A good friend of mine is involved in the creation of a new charter school, Research Triangle High that sounds as if it will offer marvelous opportunities for students. It will be focused on STEM education, that is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics using experiential learning and giving students opportunities to intern with businesses in the area. The teachers will also be collaborating with teachers around the state to bring their educational techniques to schools that need help with teaching those subjects. It sounds very exciting and a great opportunity for area students. So of course, the existing school system, Durham Public Schools, is furiously trying to block the opening of the school.

“RTHS will function effectively as a de facto private school supported by taxpayers,” reads a draft of the board’s resolution.

Board member Natalie Beyer, who drafted the original resolution, said she’s particularly concerned by what she sees as barriers to low-income students attending the school: the need for at-home technology to utilize a “flipped learning” model in which students listen to lectures at home; a location “away from where students of need live”; and a requirement that students complete at least Algebra I by the end of their freshman year.

Board members are also concerned by what they see as small transportation and nutrition budgets, $22,200 and $16,650, respectively, for 160 students in the 2012-13 academic year.

....“We’ve yet to successfully create separate but equal. We’ve never been able to do that as a society, and that is what this is creating,” said board Vice Chairwoman Heidi Carter, noting that more than 75 percent of DPS students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. “We need [RTHS] to share the burden of educating children with social challenges.”

Board member Leigh Bordley said she’s heard concerns about RTHS from Durham County residents, dismayed by what they see as a re-segregation of schools unfolding in the Wake school system.

“I can’t count the number of people [who have said] if we allow things like this to go forward, we’re deepening the segregation of our own community,” she said.

Blizzard [who wrote the school's charter application] said diversity is important to RTHS and that she’s not worried about the potential for homogeny because “we’re working so hard to that the school is working to recruit from a really diverse and broad student population.”

She said the proposed school is interested in collaborating with DPS programmatically, noting that the Contemporary Science Center has long worked with DPS schools to enrich students’ education. Blizzard is also interested in partnering with DPS on resources, infrastructure and transportation, but she said she hasn’t had conversations with the district about a potential collaboration since the school’s application has yet to be approved.

Concerns about students having to take Algebra I by the end of the ninth grade aren’t valid, she said, noting that most North Carolina teenagers already take the course by that point.

Since Pamela Blizzard also helped found the school where I teach, Durham Public Schools is also upset about our school's success.

The school’s application was filed by Pamela Blizzard, executive director of the RTP-based Contemporary Science Center and a founder of Raleigh Charter High School – designated by the state as an Honor School of Excellence since 2005 and a fixture on national rankings like Newsweek’s America’s Best High Schools list.

But those accolades come at the cost of diversity, board members suggested. Data on the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools website shows that Raleigh Charter’s student population in 2010-11 was 73.1 percent white, 13.2 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 2.5 percent Latino and 5.2 percent other. That contrasts with demographics from the same year in the Wake County Public School System: 49.3 percent white, 6.3 percent Asian, 24.7 percent black, 15 percent Latino and 4.7 percent other.

Like all charters in our state, admission to our school is by a blind lottery. Siblings receive preference. The only requirement is that students be able to enter Algebra I in 9th grade which is the minimal goal of North Carolina's math curriculum.

What is striking to me is that the Durham Public Schools, instead of being happy to have an exciting public school opportunity offered for their students, all they can do is complain and try to block the reform. They could embrace the new school and try to work with it. They could encourage their middle school students to apply. Then they see about adopting successful methods. But they'd rather keep the status quo than try to see how experimental reform could offer new opportunities for their area's students.

The more that such reforms as this school or Louisiana's statewide plan, the more that the existing schools are challenged to change and improve. And they're being dragged kicking and screaming all the way.