Free Republic

Maureen Dowd, channelling a new liberal narrative, argues that at least Romney is not an anti-intellectual dunce like Rick Perry, and to prove her point, she returns to Perry’s college transcripts. To the coastal elite, college grades are always proof of intelligence and legitimacy: “Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force. “His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of...

A new study shows that the most common grade at four-year U.S. colleges and universities is an A, which accounts for 43 percent of all grades, and the second most common grade is a B, which accounts for 34 percent of all grades. The study points to the idea that grade inflation at U.S. colleges is, yes, really rampant. But it also points out that those who manage to show up for class tend to be fine, and that professors are finally acknowledging just how challenging that can be. When you're wasted and everything, at least. Ah, college. WE MISS...

I think I heard Michael Medved mention that George W. Bush had better grades in college than John Kerry. Verification of this and proof would help me win an argument with and arogant liberal. Any information?

In the heady days of the late 20th century, the best way to get ahead was to slap a dot-com after your name. Internet start-ups were all the rage, and with the stock market surging, they seemed headed for a brilliant future. For example, Boo.com raised almost $120 million of venture capital in 1999. Pets.com went public in February 2000, and pocketed $76 million on its first day of trading. But when the high-tech bubble burst, investors quickly learned which companies enjoyed real value and which were empty shells. By September 2000 Boo.com, Pets.com and dozens of other Internet companies were...