Daily Archives: April 27, 2009

Will swine flu become a pandemic?

April 27, 200912:30 p.m.

Mexico Swine FluU.S. officials Sunday declared the swine flu to be a public health emergency, and the World Health Organization said it has “pandemic potential.” Kansas has had two cases so far.

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Health and safety | Comments (155)

Forecast for 2012 favors Obama

April 27, 20096:03 a.m.

obamahandsup7Presidential politics never takes a holiday, not even during the first 100 days of a presidency. Public Policy Polling has President Obama leading in the 2012 election, whether he faces Newt Gingrich (52 to 39 percent), Mike Huckabee (49 to 42 percent), Sarah Palin (53 to 41 percent) or Mitt Romney (50 to 39 percent).

By Rhonda Holman | Filed under Presidential race | Comments (52)

Open thread 4/27

April 27, 20096:02 a.m.

screamthe17

By The Editors | Filed under Open thread | Comments (218)

Loss of global education edge proving costly

April 27, 20096:01 a.m.

schoolraisinghand5“The excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us,” wrote columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman. Citing a new study titled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” Friedman warned: “In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Education | Comments (6)

Ideologues don’t like newspapers

April 27, 20096:00 a.m.

extraextraA House Judiciary Committee hearing last week deteriorated into a press-bashing session in which “ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. But as University of Pennsylvania law professor C. Edwin Baker told the committee, “the biggest correlator with less government corruption is newspaper readership: When people are reading newspapers, corruption goes down.” That’s why Thomas Jefferson famously said that if asked to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Congress, Media | Comments (52)