I don't know what to make of people like Steve Baldwin

"You've heard of Jesus Freaks?" he bellowed. "Well, I'm the first Jesus Psycho!"

Maybe that sounds less idiotic if you're actually there, just as interminable guitar solos sound so terrible when you listen to the live version of a song at home, far away from the live event. But here it sounds like a caricature from a "Simpsons" episode.

I wonder what he would say to an actual African if he confronted him. "You don't deserve debt relief?" Maybe he doesn't think they're real people, and has difficulty with the notion that abstractions like foreign debt are ultimately about other people, who are just as real as he is.

My impression is that many fundamentalists are like that, and that their fundamentalism is a sort of filter designed to make reality less frightening-- much as cocaine may once have served "Stevie B."

Ever since Powell gave that speech at the UN in early 2003, the ghost of Bob McNamara has hung over him, which of course is a pretty neat trick considering McNamara isn't dead. Likewise, Powell's ghost already hangs over Condi Rice. The metaphor works for me because they are hollowed-out men, and all three knew (and know) better.

This strikes me as a difficult issue for democrats to deal with-- advocating for felon's rights in our soundbite age will inevitably be cast as "those no-good soft-on-crime liberals," etc.

I agree that laws like Florida's that essentially ban felons from voting in perpetuity are wrong. But I think a case can be made for laws like Rhode Island's that reward successfully rehabilitated felons for putting their lives back on track.

The issue isn't either/or, and in this case the middle ground may be the only politically viable one for progressives.

I partially disagree with Carey's advice. I definitely wouldn't advise you to cheat, but the messed-up academic culture you describe sounds like one in which the only students who maintain stellar gpa's are either the informally anointed favorites, or those who successfully cheat. I wouldn't be surprised if cheating is rampant at your school, and informally rewarded if one is skillful at disguising it.

Moreover, if the atmosphere at your B-school is in fact so screwed-up, are you actually learning anything? If you stick it out, following Carey's advice, and your GPA deteriorates and you still can't stand it, where can you then hope to transfer to?

One of the other commenters mentioned cost-of-living. Well, there are tons of highly-regarded B-schools in the south and the midwest,where the cost-of-living is moderate, and you'll still get an exceptional education. And of course, you can always move back when you're done. Moving out of your region is actually a less drastic step than borrowing astronomic sums of money, as it's a lot easier to move back to where you want to live when you're done than to pay off a mountain of debt.

It's not the only B-school.

What about: Univ. of Texas-Austin, Texas A&M, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville, U-of-Alabama, Florida, Florida State, U of Missouri, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Indiana-Bloomington,or Iowa?

Do you really think the top MBA grads from these schools are just unemployable, worthless second-raters because they didn't go to, as you call it, "fancy-pants U?"

Forgive me if I sound glib, as I don't mean to(and I don't know how far along you are in your program)

--but one of the lessons of business is knowing when to cut your losses and move to a more appropriate and productive facility. Right?

ok, I wrote that I didn't know how far along you were in your program-- I assume you meant you were accepted and started the program proper in August, as opposed to doing leveling work, but I wasn't sure. Either way, it does sound like you wouldn't lose a lot of credits if you jump ship sooner rather than later. Whatever you decide to do-- best of luck.

Can't we ship off all our white folks who don't like to live around non-whites and "baby-killing lesbians" to Idaho and Utah, and encourage them to secede? We could even start printing up 48 state flags again!

They'd have an international border with Canada as well as the US, we could deny them foreign aid, and allow Indians and other non-whites leaving the (suddenly crowded)new country to occupy the houses they "Left Behind."

Just a thought.

Three separate studies in the past decade, including one due in dissertation form from Columbia University next spring, have put the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the upper ranks of the military at 8-to-1.

I'm glad some of them are finally speaking out, especially the ones who don't have book deals. Nevertheless, if the officer class is THAT politically skewed, maybe those ideological blinders are part of the reason we are in this mess.

Apart from SCIRI's Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who in Iraq actually favors partition? I am seriously skeptical of Americans asserting that they know what Iraqis want or need. The SCIRI membership of the Iraqi congress may have voted for a federal plan recently, but how do we know they speak more for their constituents than out of fear of displeasing their party's leadership?

The reason that partition is attractive to American politicians like Hutchison and Biden is because it flatters them; insofar as they both voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, if partition is the eventual result, the chaos they helped create with their votes can be retrospectively seen as "inevitable" because supposedly the Iraqi state was never a tenable solution.