Free Republic

-snip- In a best-case scenario for him, the GOP will spurn Perry for Romney. It’s a given in Washington, of course, that Romney is the tougher opponent for Obama because he appeals to “moderate” and “independent” voters. The Beltway hands making this case are usually the same suspects who caution Obama to stick to the “vital center.” As Michael Gerson, the Bush 43 speechwriter turned columnist, put it last week, Romney is the GOP’s “safe choice” because he represents the “reassuring center.” Gerson argues that Romney’s “prospects are better than his current polling” and likens him to Thomas Dewey without...

More than 150 years ago, Horace Mann fervently hailed education as "the great equalizer in the conditions of men." Horace Mann, generally considered the father of US public education, counted on good schools to fulfill American democracy. Poorer children, via effective education, would rise as far as their talents and hard work could take them. Social mobility would be guaranteed; merit would be the chief determiner of success. Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton, recently praised Mann's vision, and lamented that we are not honoring it. She pointed out that our K-12 education system is "leaving vast numbers of students...

I remember being grouped together with other students as early as the first grade. Rather than being arranged in rows of individual desks, we were clustered in groups of four, facing each other. We were given work to do as a group, rather than as individuals. I despised the practice then, and I continued to all the way through college. It didn't seem right to have to compensate for others and share a grade. The result was always the same. I did less and worse than I would have individually. It was far more work to pull others along than...

Where do athletic and artistic abilities come from? With phrases like "gifted musician", "natural athlete" and "innate intelligence", we have long assumed that talent is a genetic thing some of us have and others don't. But new science suggests the source of abilities is much more interesting and improvisational. It turns out that everything we are is a developmental process and this includes what we get from our genes. A century ago, geneticists saw genes as robot actors, always uttering the same lines in exactly the same way, and much of the public is still stuck with this old idea....

March 11, 2010 How to Pollute a Mind: Lessons from John Dewey and Van Jones By Chuck Rogér A new Ivy League "fellow" will soon have the opportunity to teach students his belief that white people are "steering poison into the people-of-color communities" and that America should give up its wealth to the American Indians. This June, Princeton University will welcome to its hallowed halls former Obama Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist. The story of how America started down a path leading to communist instructors in our classrooms begs to be told. In 1899, Vermonter John Dewey...

Chuck Roger at American Thinker weaves the nefarious Progressive educators into his analysis of why Obama is so screwed up. Add to Obama’s narcissism the influence of the progressives during his formative years: “Psychologizing introduced an emotionalism to education that defocused the student from facts, knowledge, and contributing to the prosperity of society. Teachers gradually split into factions, with ruinous consequences for American society. Some teachers continued to embrace the knowledge goal, but many of them began to indoctrinate their captive young sponges in ‘critical thinking’ — a euphemism for rabidly questioning everything and adopting a mindset that rejects all...

NR Special: The Progressives The “progressive” label is back in vogue; politicians of the Left routinely use it to describe themselves, hoping to avoid the radical connotations associated with being “liberal” in the post-Reagan era. The irony in this is manifold, especially because the aim of the movement to which the name refers, the late-19th- and early-20th-century progressive movement, was anything but moderate. If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil...

<p>CNN's Election Center 2008 hosts an Election Tracker that allows you to view their company's most up to the minute predictions. As of early morning Election Day, CNN had Obama winning at 51%, McCain with 44% and leaving 5% of voters ready to cast their ballot claiming to be 'unsure'. CNN also allows you to predict the election yourself by giving you the CNN ELECTORAL MAP CALCULATOR. In this function you predict the outcome by selecting states you think either candidate will win. This could be something fun to do with family, friend or co-workers.</p>

Starting a thread for putting links to election result sites.

ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True; By MIKE GLOVER and DAVID ESPO Associated Press Writers DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Despite John McCain's prediction of an upset, Barack Obama reached for a landslide Friday, invading his rival's home state with TV ads and building a lead in early voting in key battlegrounds as the presidential race headed into a hectic final weekend. McCain charged that Obama, bidding to become the first black president, "began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it. He's more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist," he added in...

WV4Hillary Presidential Member = >1000 Posts Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 1,453 Poster Rank: #87 (Oct. 26, 2008): Dewey v Truman: Holy Crap, Read This!! (Really) Replace: Truman = McCain Dewey = Obama Republican Controlled Congress = Democrat Controlled Congress Republican = Democrat and vice versa Given Truman's sinking popularity and the seemingly fatal three-split in the Democratic Party, Dewey appeared unbeatable. Top Republicans believed that all their candidate had to do to win was to avoid major mistakes; in keeping with this advice, Dewey carefully avoided risks. He spoke in platitudes, avoided controversial issues, and was vague on what...

For the past sixty years, whenever a presidential candidate is down in the polls days before Election Day, Harry Truman's victory in 1948 inevitable comes up. Of all the comebacks, Truman's still ranks as the most startling, down to the premature headline published by the staunch Republican media mogul Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune the day after the election: "Dewey Defeats Truman!" A month before the election, Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, had a double digit lead over Truman. Most pollsters simply stopped polling, believing that voters made their minds up well before Election Day. Of the 50...

Progressivism was the reform movement that ran from the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, during which leading intellectuals and social reformers in the United States sought to address the economic, political, and cultural questions that had arisen in the context of the rapid changes brought with the Industrial Revolution and the growth of modern capitalism in America. The Progressives believed that these changes marked the end of the old order and required the creation of a new order appropriate for the new industrial age. There are, of course, many different representations of Progressivism: the...

HUMANISM UNMASKED AS DEFINED BY JOHN DEWEY, THE FATHER OF MODERN EDUCATION Humanism is as old as the garden of Eden, but few know what it is. The idea of Humanism replacing Godism can be seen in the garden of Eden when Satan taught Eve that she would know longer need God, she could be as her own god and do what she pleased after she got enough knowledge of her own. Men have written on the subject since Plato and Aristotle, but still most people only think it means 'kind' or 'humane'. A better definition is required if...

Scientists have uncovered remarkably preserved fossils – including feathers and webbed feet – of the oldest known relatives of modern birds, which also shores up the theory that birds evolved from aquatic environments. Little is known about birds from the age of dinosaurs, since fossils that date back to the early Cretaceous Period – some 105 to 115 million years ago – are have rarely been found, the discovery reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science is particularly exciting for those trying to fill gaps in the avian family tree. “I was totally blown away. I was stunned,” said...

Five fossil specimens of a near-modern bird found in the Gansu Province of northwestern China show that early birds likely evolved in an aquatic environment, according to a study reported today in the journal Science. Their findings suggest that these early modern birds were much like the ducks or loons found today. Gansus yumenesis, which lived some 105 to 115 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period, took modern birds through a watery path out of the dinosaur lineage. The report was co-authored by Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania and his former students Hai-lu You of the...

I've just come back from a week in Australia, and have been pouring over my regular sources of 'What's going on in the world', and came across the article entitled: Mayor, Officials Swept Out of Office for Their Support of Illegal Aliens, by Jim Kouri, CPP. I thought it very interesting, but it was not until I read a joke that arrived in an email, that I saw another 'moral of the story'. The Joke: The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours...

The state imposed a $140,000 penalty for what it called "willful, continuing, and egregious" violations of the price law... The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The fine against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001, when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices. Kevin Murphy, deputy commissioner of the department, called the violations "willful, continuing, and egregious and warrant...

He who aims at changing society -- for good or for evil -- knows that he should gain control over three things: education, the news media, and entertainment. These are the keys that shape a society. My concern is education. Great men have always emphasized its crucial importance. To form young minds is to build the future of a society. There is no nobler task, and education begins at home. The mother is the primary educator of her child, for she will spend more time with her babies than the father can, even though his role is also crucial. To...

I often decry the laziness, incompetence and bias of the American press. Tuesday night in Sago, West Virginia, the press sank to an all-time low, in covering the mine disaster. Working on the Internet, with a 24-hour news channel running, I heard the announcement that the original reports were false. Instead of one miner dead and 12 rescued, the reverse was true. Only one was found alive where they had barricaded themselves in, to await rescue. An orgy of press coverage followed, in which reporters stuck microphones in the faces of grief-stricken survivors, seeking agonizing sound bites for the titillation...