Free Republic

Just how much do Obama supporters love the president? MRCTV was at the National Mall for the Inaugural celebration and asked attendees what position Obama would hold if they had to rank all U.S. president's from best to worst. Keep in mind, that Obama has only just started his second term. I'm sure if it goes as smoothly as his first, his legacy will shine even more brightly in the eyes of these supporters. http://mrctv.org/videos/where-will-obama-rank-presidential-history

I understand that we are more than $16 Trillion in debt and unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 straight months, but education reform is a moral imperative that cannot wait: We have a crisis in our schools. This is not a new revelation, but it needs to be stated regardless, particularly at the start of another academic year and at a time when America is struggling to compete in the very fields — math, science, technology — that are defining the global economy. Consider that U.S. high school students graduate with just a 32 percent proficiency rate in...

What should students want in a college? Good teachers, intellectual stimulation, ample job opportunities, friends for life, a good value for the money. What do professors and administrators want? A large endowment, a big library, the smartest students, high faculty salaries and prestigious awards. The interests of the kids and the grown-ups are rarely aligned on college campuses these days. And the US News & World Report Best College Rankings measures the things the professors and administrators care about — not the ones the students should. Last month’s news that Emory University had sent US News falsified data raised old...

An organization called the Institute for Economics and Peace has crunched some numbers and some up with the U.S. Peace Index, a ranking of the most peaceful states in America. Minnesota comes in at No. 4. Maine came out on top overall. Louisiana, on the other and, ranked dead last.

I don't do mad very often, because I save it up for posts like this. With internet porn and sex being flashed in front of our faces constantly I'm sure its getting tougher for nerds, who have to work harder than ever, to find activities that allow them to avoid wanting to lose their virginity...but...It looks like the nations elite squad of presidential scholars have found a way to remain preoccupied... According to Politico a new poll of presidential rankings has found President Obama to be in a stratospheric 15th place (no I didn't view that number through a...

The ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee said Monday that he's studying options for investigating the Sestak affair if the administration does not responded to calls for an inquiry. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) said Friday that former President Bill Clinton had conveyed an offer of an administration post if Sestak did not run against Sen. Arlen Specter for the Democratic Senate nomination. Sestak said he immediately brushed off the offer, and White House counsel Bob Bauer released a memo Friday saying "we have concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the...

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Are you excited about Presidents’ Day? Neither am I. It’s hard to think of a less inspiring, more perfunctory “holiday.” To most Americans, its only significance is that the banks and post offices are closed on a mid-winter Monday. Yawn. One of the few ritual observances marking Presidents’ Day is the publication of historians’ and pundits’ rankings of the greatest presidents. Yawn again. Those rankings tell us little more than the political philosophy of the person(s) making the ranking. Writers who prefer activist, big-government presidents—those who centralize power, establish new federal programs, and seek to engineer a better society from...

Steven Colbert recently had a segment on college rankings. Colbert expressed disappointment that his alma mater, Dartmouth, did not rank well in the Washington Monthly rankings of college effectiveness. Washington Monthly focuses on the graduation rates of low-income students. Colbert complained that Dartmouth has plenty of social mobility, as you could enter a plutocrat and graduate an oligarch. Despite the lighthearted treatment, a serious issue surrounds the issue of the perverse incentives created by the U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) rankings. Inputs dominate the USNWR rankings--how much money the universities have, and the SAT scores of incoming students, etc....

NEW YORK (AP) - A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites. The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful. Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular. Currently, sites and...

A revolt is brewing among college presidents against the influential college rankings put out each year by U.S. News & World Report. Dozens of schools have recently refused to fill out surveys used to calculate ranks, and efforts are now afoot for a collective boycott. Colleges have complained in the past about the rankings. But recent events have rallied opposition, including the tying of presidential pay to ranking at Arizona State University and accusations by the president of Sarah Lawrence College that the magazine threatened to use hocus-pocus data to stand in for average SAT scores at the school. At...

For the 16th straight year, Johns Hopkins Hospital has earned the top spot in the in U.S. News and World Report's annual list of the best hospitals nationwide. "Once again, the magazine and medical professionals across the nation have affirmed the excellence of our faculty physicians, our nurses and our staff," Dr. Edward Miller, dean and chief executive of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said in a letter to employees. Hopkins also ranked first in five specialties: ear, nose and throat, gynecology, kidney disease, urology and rheumatology. It also ranked second in neurology/neurosurgery, ophthalmology and psychiatry; third in cancer, digestive disorders, endocrinology,...

Kinderstart sues Google over lower page ranking Sat Mar 18, 2006 09:09 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - A parental advice Internet site has sued Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning. The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on Friday by KinderStart.com seeks financial damages along with information on how Google ranks Internet sites when users conduct a Web-based search. Google could not immediately be reached for comment but the company aggressively defends the secrecy...

How's He Doing? George W. Bush is "average," but far from ordinary. BY JAMES TARANTO Monday, September 12, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT Ask someone to describe the presidency of George W. Bush, and "average" is not a word you're likely to hear. Mr. Bush's detractors treat him with a level of vituperation unseen since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt; some even blame him for bad weather. His admirers don't go so far as to credit him when the sun shines, but their affection for him is palpable. So it may come as a surprise that in a new survey...

Want to see how well your Senator or Representative scored with the ACLU according to their 2003-2004 108th Congress vote record? Go here and here.

Folks are complaining that government took God out of public life, but they fear trying to do anything about it. Much of our common language is now censored in favor of "political correctness" and it probably will not be long before making any derogatory remark will be a federal felony. Today, instead of teaching kids patriotism and American history in school, parents stand by and allow their kids to be taught the feel-good benefits and joys of foreign cultures by socialist leaning public school teachers. Even in government schools, American patriotism is somehow painted in a bad light in favor...

KERRY POLL RANK LOWER THAN DUKAKIS, JESSE JACKSON, MARTHA STEWART, PUTIN Tue Sep 14 2004 12:06:00 ET In last week's WASHINGTONPOSTWABCNEWS Poll, John F. Kerry was viewed favorably by 36 percent of registered voters, down 18 points over the past six months. But just how low Kerry's standing has fallen cannot be appreciated fully without comparing his standing with that of other household names in GALLUP polls over the years, the POST's Dana Milbank reported on Tuesday. Kerry finds himself in a dead heat with Martha Stewart and Joseph McCarthy, and behind Herbert Hoover -- although he narrowly beats O.J....

How does that old saying go? The one, I mean, about putting all your eggs in one basket. For the past decade the Liberal government has been encouraging Canadians to absorb national self-esteem from our stellar performance on the annual United Nations Human Development Index. Whatever one's own experience of living standards, labour markets, and whatnot, Canada was officially the world's best place to live from 1992 until 2000. In 2001, it dropped to third-best. We trembled, but we coped. Last week the 2002 numbers were leaked. We're now ranked eighth, one place behind a large country to the immediate...

WorldNetDaily has climbed to 995 on the Alexa.com ( http:// www.alexa.com )website rankings of the largest websites in the world. Alexa.com is a ratings and website search partner of Amazon.com. As of yesterday, WorldNetDaily is ranked as the 995th largest website in the world over the last three months. It ranks considerably higher than that in more recent rankings – moving closer to the top 500 mark on a daily basis. Alexa's rankings show WorldNetDaily substantially larger and attracting bigger audiences than all of the following sites: RushLimbaugh.com, the New York Daily News, CBSNews.com, SkyNews, NPR, the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago...

Last, again Louisiana health numbers keep state at the bottom Sarah Crooks / Features Reporter Posted on November 14, 2002 Louisiana is last, again. At least, that's what the UnitedHealth Foundation says. Each year, UnitedHealth ranks all 50 states from "most healthy" to "least healthy." This year, five of the top 10 are in the Northeast and seven of the bottom 10 are in the South. Louisiana is 50th. That's - dead - last. Louisiana has traded that position with Mississippi and Arkansas over the past four years. "We're not surprised," said David Hood, Secretary of the Department of Health...