Buying a Better Education: Guest columnist, Matt Miller, in today's New York Times Op-Ed section has a unique idea for improving education in the tough inner city schools in America: spend more money.

Okay, that's not new, but his approach is worth considering. He wants to keep the estate tax (the so called "Death Tax" that only a tiny few ultra rich folks pay) to fund a dramatic increase for teachers of inner city school kids, including paying nice, lawyer sized saleries to teachers who are recognized for their excellence in teaching or who teach math and sciences.

As we all should know by now, qualified math and science teacher in all but the wealthiest suburbs of America are as rare as dinosaurs. And truly good teachers in any discipline are difficult to come by. Miller proposes to correct this problem by making a few excellent teachers millionairs by the time they retire.

This novel approach deserves serious consideration. Public education in America has sunk to all time lows and predicates impending disaster if we don't start placing a proper value on it. The Bushites' No Child Left Behind fiasco has only succeeded in making the problem far worse.

Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with Miller's idea. How is an "excellent teacher" identified. I've witnessed a variety of attempts to make such determinations, and at best they are only accurate about 33 percent of the time. That means about two out of three "excellent teachers" are not excellent at all, and if we toss in the possibility that people who are designated as such have the opportunity to become millionairs based on such a categorization, you can be assured that considerable chicanery will be devoted to achieving that status. There's nothing like discoverying that someone elevated to such high status is actually guilty of criminal behavior or witnessing some principal's brown nosing lacky being designated the star faculty member.

Generally speaking, true excellence in teaching is properly measured against the success of one's students. This can take a long time to determine, however. Jesus and Socrates are two prime examples of such problematic measurements. Each was executed before they could earn their proper accolades as educators. Unfortunately, there was no pot of gold to spend in their retirement years.

Apples vs. Oranges: Today's lead story from David Pogue's "Circuits Column" over at The New York Times posts some good reasons for not arguing the about whether Apple or Windows is the better OS, but he forgets the chief one: Windows has over 90 percent of the market share and Apple has been stuck at just 3 percent for years.

Macs remain too darn expensive for most people or businesses to buy, especially when a Windows maching costs about half as much. It's true that when Apple finally saw the light and gave up on trying to make an operating system, switching to BSD, a Unix varient, that its OS became much sturdier, faster and safer than anything it had created before, but that fact has made hardly a stir in the market place. Windows 2000 and XP, despite their security problems and the bloat associated with any Windows OS, are quite sturdy and capable.

It will, nevertheless, be interesting to see down the road in a few years when Bill Gates decides he wants to spend all of his time trying to figure out the best way to give his money away. Once his leadership is significantly detached from Microsoft, Apple might be able to make a move into the larger market place, if they don't lose it to Linux, which looks better and better all of the time.

Most of the current analysis on the OS situation has been on which one is used in the workplace. People like to come home and use the same OS and all of the same applications as they use at the office. However, I'll go out on the limb and state that once Linux becomes an OS on which installing software becomes as easy and mindless as it is in Windows and the Mac, and once enough game manufacturers create games that will install and run easily on a Linux, the little OS that would really will.

In his column, Pogue warns school officials that they should not try to guess what OS students will be using in ten to fifteen years and thus purchase equipment based on such a forecast. It's good advise, but I'll stay out on my limb and state that school officials should do more to cover their bases. Microsoft has a soft underbelly, and the people at Apple are still in love with their elitism. If Linux can succeed at shedding its geekiness, it could become the next ubiquitous OS. It might even be running your cell phone right now.

Was It Newsweek or Iran and Pakistan? Speculation about the violence in Afghanistan that resulted in 17 deaths and that the administration insisted was caused by a small item in the news magazine, Newsweek, indicates there is good reason to believe that Iran and Pakistan were actually behind the demonstrations and the hightened level of violence.

Operatives from both countries are heavily involved in the country, and both countries have good reason to provoke such volitile demonstrations. Both countries want the U.S. out of Afghanistan so that they can each have far more influence in the region. Iran is concerned about the U.S.'s military encirclment of their nation, and Pakistan has long considered Afghanistan little more than a province. The U.S. has changed that factor by its presence and influence.

The "university" from which the "student" led demonstrations came is little more than a group of shacks with a permenantly locked "librar" and the "medical students" have little if any materials with which to work. The so called "school" it appears is nothing more than a gathering place for Iranian and Pakistanian opperatives to recruit Aghans.

Are There Heroes in Washington? Remember when you were a kid in grade school and you learned about George Washington refusing to tell a lie? And Honest Abe Lincoln? Then there was Roosevelt assuring the country that we had nothing to fear in the face of the worst depression in our history and World War II, and Truman insisting that the buck would stop with him.

Sometimes it seems as though political heroics are a thing of the past or simply legend, but Senator Arlen Specter, the senior senator and a Republican from Pennsylvania, is showing his party and the country that backbone still exists in the nation's capitol. God bless the man, I don't always agree with him, but here is a man battling cancer, and he is standing up to the president of the United States and the fanatics who seem to control the direction of the ship of state. He fought his own party to hold the chair of the judicial committee, and now he is mustering enough votes to override a presidential veto on stem cell research.

Of course it is quite possible that Senator Specter is working in conjunction with the White House. It is difficult to believe that the administration is truly opposed to human embryonic stem cell research, but they do have to appease their base constituency. Perhaps the administration quietly requested Senator Specter, a known maveric, to spearhead the movement, thus saving the administration's face? Regardless, I still pick the good senator as a true political hero, someone I can ask my children to look up to.

Apple Talking to Intel: Shocking news from Ziff Davis recently—Apple reportedly has been in talks with Intel about using their processors instead of or in addition to IBM processors. No doubt this news reflects Apple's needs to get the prices of their computers down if they hope to ever improve their market share from a minimalist 3 percent. Linux has been encroaching on this share, and with a change in the not so distant future at Microsoft, Apple may be seeing an opportunity to move into a larger share, especially now that the iPod has made such a big splash.

Now that season four of 24 is over here's an idea for next January's show: A Ziff Davis Security message yesterday reported the latest and greatest Web threat, called "Trojan.Pgpcode." The worm is downloaded from a malicious Web site and holds your files hostage. It uses in encryption to prevent you from accessing them and leaves a note demanding money in order to receive the key to unlock them. (Currently, the problem only shows up when browsers use Microsoft's Internet Explorer.)

The threat is considered low risk because such an exploit leaves a trail back to the theif. But think what a plot devise for the cloak and dagger TV hit. A rogue state wouldn't give two hoots whether or not its trail could be followed if it was able to capture and hold for ransom the most important information that CTU held on all of its undercover agents.

The producers of 24 are very proud of the fact that they "killed someone off" at the end of the season, but they simply killed off the head bad guy. I was waiting for something a little more startling. They have also said that character development is important to the show, although it always takes second place to plot. By the end of the season—the first I've watched—that became very apparent. Of course there's little that can be done to develop so many characters over a period of just twenty-four hours. Personally, I think the show would do better with less office romance. The two most interesting characters in the show are Chloe and Edgar, the computer geeks.

By the way, who was behind the terrorist attacks? Certainly not some idealogue hiding out in a cave back in Afghanistan. The plot was so intricate, required so much expertise, and had so many American co-conspirators that it had to be someone with greater capabilities than a consortium of the greatest minds from the finest Ivy League schools. For sure no government would have the capacity to pull off something so intricate.

The Right Way, The Wrong Way, The Military Way: Dateline Bagram, Afghanistan. Two Afghani citizens are beaten to death by U.S. military police. Army investigators determine determine they "could never see any criminal intent on the part of the M.P.'s to cause the detainee to die," and they end investigations into the cause of death.

Here is "the military way": A good soldier always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS tells his superiors precisely what they want to hear.

To date, 27 soldiers have been charged in abuse cases at the detention center in Afghanistan. An organization as large as the U.S. Army is bound to attract all sorts of people to it, including sadistic scum like those who committed the atrocities in Afghanistan. It's time to stop pretending the ad copy that the government uses in its recruitment. Not everyone in the military is an honest to goodness hero.

An organization as large as our army is going to contain a cross section of the general population, and this one, which contains only volunteers who agree to do a very nasty job for low pay, is likely to be "more average" than most. For the army to function in a fashion that adheres to the standards we demand of it, we must be ready to admit its mistakes. As quickly and honestly as possible.

Pick it up, troop, and if you can't pick it up, paint it.

Required Reading: Everybody in America should be required to read Tim Golden's article in Friday's New York Times about the murder of Afghan inmates. Weak minds will try to compare the sadistic murders of two Afghan prisoners, both of whom appear to have been innocent of any crimes against the U.S., with the events of 9/11, but no such comparison can be made.

Currently, it appears that our military leaders are doing their utmost to defray attention from the fact that actions this despicable can be performed under their watch. The administration has tried to turn blame onto a newsmagazine for riots in Afghanistan. We must not let them forget or deny their responsibility.

On March 31, 1971, Lt. William Calley was convicted of the 1968 My Lai Massacre. He served only three and a half years of a twenty year sentence, and that time was served under house arrest. Calley and his platoon murdered 109 Vietnamese civilians. No one above Calley was ever convicted of any criminal behavior. The military never accepted any responsibility for having helped to create such a situation.

The truth of leadership is always—always—what happens under your watch IS your responsibility. The buck always stops here, whether you want it to or not. When you hire the wolf to herd the sheep, he will eat the sheep.

Whether or not Calley was a wolf herding sheep or not is open to speculation. But the men and women who committed the atrocities in Afghanistan were definitely wolves, and our leaders hired them, failed to train them, and placed them in the middle of a pen full of sheep.

Pentagon Labels Newsweek Article "Appalling": Lying to the world about WMDs is okay, but a small article about how prisoners are handled in the administration's highly questionable prison camp in Cuba is "appalling." It's good to be self-righteous. Watch what the administration does with this bit of propaganda and how it tries to further undermine what's left of America's free press.

The End of Freedom: The Corporation for National Public Radio and for the Public Broadcast Service was created to allow tax payers to finance independent journalism to stand outside of government influence and judge the behavior of our ellected and appointed officials. Today, with more and more citizens turning to these entities in order to get something resembling the news, the demagogues in Congress have pushed to scrutinize them for bias.

Now that ABC, CBS, and NBC have all abandoned their responsibilities for reporting the news in favor of chasing whatever dollars they can scavange in the next three months, we voters have little choice for hearing views other than the government's own propaganda than to turn to NPR and PBS. The demagogues know this, so they are turning their ire on these last bastions of the news.

NPR and PBS have both been accused of being too "left leaning." Something is desperately needed to correct the ship of state. It has pitched so far to the right that freedom and truth are near drowning. The next thing they'll be telling us is that those Brown Shirts marching down our streets in jack boots are just Peace Corps members.

Newsweek Apologizes: Newsweek offered an apology for reporting that unnamed Pentagon sources revealed that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay may have flushed pages from the Koran down a toilet in order to provoke a detainee into talking. The Pentagon, naturally, was outraged by such a suggestion and rebutted that Newsweek was responsible for inciting rioting in Afghanistan that resulted in 17 deaths. Other sources stated that the detainee was the person who had actually flushed pages from the Koran down the toilet.

Cooler heads in Afghanistan reported that it was doubtful the story provoked the deaths, which were probably the result of opportunistic trouble makers.

In the meantime, you've gotta ask yourself isn't it wonderful to see the Pentagon officials outraged over a news magazine's article? As if the news magazine is the source of the abuse. Me thinks they doth protest too much.

Insulting Our Intelligence: Here's how the numbers on Bush's Social Security package breakdown according to Paul Krugman:

Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year.

Let's see, you lose a little less that ten grand a year some forty years from now, if you're one of those happy few, those brave millionaires, but in the meantime you get to save fifty grand a year. With compound interest that adds up to, let's see … Gosh, my calculator doesn't go that high. Thanks, Uncle Georgie. And all we have to worry about is Grandma eating dog food.

The Pope and Condoms: Will there come a time when a Catholic Pope can see his way to make the sacrifice and admit that condom use really can limit the A.I.D.S. epidimic? Twenty million people have died of A.I.D.S., and the number just keeps growing. That's more than 20,000,000 people.

The church seems terrified that if they admit the truth, that condoms really do help reduce the probability that people will contract A.I.D.S., people might actually think they're useful and acceptable for the purposes of birth control. At some point, anyone with an ounce of compassion has to realize the truth. If "just say no" hasn't got a snowball's chance in the war on drugs, how on earth, or anywhere else, will it prevent A.I.D.S.?

Preach abstinence all you want, but spend a quarter and save a life. Give people access to the cheapest and easiest to access form of A.I.D.S. prevention.

(See Nicholas D. Kristof's "The Pope and AIDS" in today's New York Times.)

Kansas Battles Change: The demogogues in Kansas are at it again. Appealing to folks' fear of change, they have convened board of education hearings to determine whether biology teachers should teach Kansas children "intelligent design." (Presumably there exists "non-intelligent design"?)

Evolution means change, and good folks in Kansas (as well as in many other states) are terrified of change. The notion of "intelligent design" suggests that because you can't design something that looks complicated, it must have been designed by someone superior to you. Nothing as complex as a human being, it is theorized, could have come from something as primitive as a monkey (or a creature other than human).

And then there is that problem with an expanding universe. Maybe if we stop teaching evolution in physics classes, the universe will no longer expand but will reach stasis, and all will be as it should be in the universe, which of course it already is. Or isn't.

Kansas has had a marvelous history. They began waging the civil war there about ten years before the attack on Fort Sumter. It seems these folks have been at war with themselves a long time.

Speaking of religion and politics, examining the situation in India seems appropriate, now that Microsoft is so heavily invested in the sub continent and we hear constintly from folks like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times about how progressive that country is. Take a look at the cover story in the June 2003 issue of National Geographic. You'll find a wonderful description of how 15 percent of the poplulation of that country lives and the wonderful convenience to the other 85 percent of having a religiously defined group as "untouchables." The Indian Constitution outlawed the class system, but no one in power will lift a finger in defiance of it.

According to Hindu beliefs, the untouchables are serving out their sentences for crimes committed in past lives, a kind of hell on earth for those Christians among us. Science tells us that around 1600 a population explossion occurred throughout most of the world. There are acutually more people alive at this minute than all of the people combined who have lived and died before the current time. This notion belies the belief that there could possibly be enough people for reincarnation to provide a probable answer to be mathmatically feasible.

However, if you want someone to clean out your sewer system, you either need to pay them a lot of money or designate them as a special, god provided, group who must clean the sewer for very little reward. The Indians have found a wonderful answer to clogged sewer systems. And they can feel sanctimonious about it.

Once upon a time, we had a system like this in place in the U.S. It was called slavery. The justifiers of that system also believed in "intelligent design." Slaves were slaves because a higher intelligence had designed the system to be that way. And the owners of slaves could feel very smug about the system god had provided them. It made them rich, didn't it? They weren't suffering, the slaves were. Obviously god wanted things to work that way, or otherwise he would have made the owners of slaves to suffer. And then that lunatic John Brown started running around in Kansas.

More Faith & Political Power: Writing in today's New York Times, my favorite Republican apologist, David Brooks, cites Lincoln's argument for why he would not listen to objections from his cabinet for freeing the slaves in 1862: "[Lincoln] said he had made a solemn vow to the Almight that if God gave him victory at Antietam, [he] would issue the decree" (the Emancipation Proclamation). Evidently, Lincoln played a gambler's game with God—the kind of game small boys make on the athletic field: Let me get a hit my time at bat, and I'll go to church Sunday.

Later, Brooks asserts that "When great leaders make daring leaps, they often feel themselves surrendering to Divine Providence, and their strength flows from their faith that they are acting in accordance with transcendent moral truth." I'm sure Hitler would agree. Was their ever a man who was more convinced that his hand was guided by "transcendent moral truth"?

Lincoln desperately needed people to believe that divine providence was guiding his hand. He lived in a land shriven with race hatred, even as it struggled with the moral rectitude of clensing itself of the sin of slavery through a baptism of fire and blood.

Like today, Lincoln's was a time of religious renewal, and as in our time religion was often the justification for all sorts of acts, both good and ill.

Personally, I have no problem with a judge arguing that our code of laws, our Constitution, was derived in part from the laws set forth in the Old Testement of the Bible. I believe he is correct in his assertion. People have been told to follow The Ten Commandments for thousands of years. They set forth beliefs about correct behavior common to almost every culture. And they themselves are set forth in a document, The King James Bible, that heavily influenced all things English. Regardless of the beliefs of the men who wrote down our Constition, the Ten Commandments must have been in the backs of their minds, so to speak, when they composed it.

However, an historical, literary, philosophical truth cannot justify demogoguery. When that same judge wants to prop up a two-ton statue of The Ten Commandments in his courthouse, he is not simply bearing witness to the aforementioned truth, he is attempting to intimidate all who enter the courthouse with his own power.

As Buffy Summers says in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, "It's the power, it's always about the power."

Definition: "Intelligent Design" – an attempt to avoid responsibility. (If I can get the high school biology teacher to preach religion to my kids, then I don't have to d0 it myself.)

Once upon a time, Baptists were at the forefront of advocating the separation of church and state. I know this because I was raised in the church, my great grandfather was a Baptist minister, my grandmother's cousin was president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and one of my forefathers was a member of the Rhode Island legislature that insisted on the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in order to receive its approval for the U. S. Constitution.

There is only one reason for the mixing of religion and politics = POWER. That most corrupting of all forces that will lead even an angel of the very highest rank into open rebelion: "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven."

"What kind of people are we? Where did we come from?"

"Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion."
– John Adams (letter to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812)

"[T]he number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State."
– James Madison (letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819)

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
– Thomas Jefferson (letter to the Danbury, Conn. Baptist Association, January 1, 1802)

"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
– George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI, August 18, 1790)

"The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion."
– James Madison (Detached Memoranda, ca. 1817)

"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions … shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power… we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society."
– John Adams (letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785)

"As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious protesters thereof, and I know of no other business government has to do therewith."
– Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

4 Dead in O-hi-0! Today is the 35th anniversary of the Kent State murders.

Energy Crisis: Finally someone is at last advocating lowering the speed limit to 55: Today, the New York Times ran a piece, "Unmentioned Energy Fix," reporting the effectiveness of the stratedgy the government imposed on us back in the seventies. Back then, our cars got half the mileage that they do today. Now cars are better tuned and we can get decent mileage at higher speeds, but the quickest fix to reduce oil (that is, gasoline) consumption is to reduce highway driving speed. The move would really payoff with deisel. Trucks notoriously get bad mileage at speeds above 45 miles per hour. The trick, of course, would be enforcement.

Personally, I drive 55 whenever I can on the Interstate. I put in a lot of miles every year on a very busy Insterstate, with almost half of that traffic being semi-tractor trailer vehicles. I find that when I drive 55 vehicles have no trouble passing me while at the same time they rarely run up on the tail of my car. In the meantime, I'm cutting down on my gasoline use. It amazes me how many people don't realize that driving slower actually improves gas mileage.

The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: If you pick up and read a book, you're part of it. Reading a book is a liberalizing activity. So, be careful, conservatives! Michael Moore lurks within Rupert Murdock's empire!

Oh, would that I could sing the songs of my youth,
For the fire that burns in my belly now is an ash of little consequence.