Snapshots

Cox News is fighting with our (OUR) Justice Department over the public's right to know. National secrets at stake? In a sense. The national secret is just how badly the Bush Administration is doing at enforcing the law. At issue is the identity of all of the illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes (other than the obvious) who have been released back into society. Our society, not their own.

The University of Texas has revamped its curriculum requirements. In order to graduate, students will have to take two signature courses, and accumulate six "flags" that is, take a number of courses that teach specific skills or cover some subject matter.  The signature courses (it sounds like they got someone from a retail marketing background to name these conceits) will be interdisciplinary, meaning (a) hodge podge, (b) worthless.  Possible topics for "signature" courses include Obesity (I couldn't make this up on a bet), Law and Justice in Shakespeare, Natural Disasters, and The Nature of Consciousness.  This last was suggested apparently with no irony intended.

With 50 percent of recent college grads unable to decipher a typical newspaper editorial and another (or maybe an intersecting) 50 percent unable to calculate a fifteen percent tip, I'm just not sure that a typical college freshman, even at the much vaunted UT, is up to the rigors of a semester course on Natural Disasters.  And I'm not kidding.  I see that course as requiring some serious application of physics, hydrology, climatology, and geology.  Hmmm.  What do you think the chances are that the emphasis will be on population displacement, disaster relief, government failure and success with unflattering comparisons drawn between the US and Cuba?  Just a guess. 

The Austin American-Statesman headline yesterday: Pelosi Faces Pressure Over Intelligence Post.  Sub head: Rights groups back Floridian who fought corruption charges.

To review the bidding: Alcee Hastings was acquitted of bribery charges by a jury, although his friend was convicted.  He was then referred by not one but three federal judicial panels to Congress for impeachment, and one of them concluded:

[T]here is clear and convincing evidence that Judge Hastings sought to conceal his participation in the bribery scheme and to explain away evidence connecting him with the sale of justice and that he pursued these objectives through concocting and presenting fabricated documents and false testimony in a United States District Court.

He was then impeached by the House of Representatives (then with a Democrat majority) and convicted by the Senate.  No bias in the media here: he was certainly busy fighting corruption charges when he was a judge.  And who are these rights groups that stick up for corrupt judges?  The Greenback Coalition? The NAACCJ?

Imamectomy Update:  Ann Coulter, with her usual flair, published her take on the Imam Air Affair.  She's upset that only six were arrested.  There was a convention of 150- how did 144 get away? She also has a bunch of details that are not published in the schlappschwanz AP/MSM reports.