Clearly, the timing of this was meant to distract us from Taitz's blowing the lid off Obama's kenyan birth certificate. In fact, the two journalists must be in on it. IN FACT, here's a rough timeline of the conspiracy:

48 years ago: Obama's parents coordinate with the Kenyan government, as well as the governor of Hawaii, and the Australian government to switch out Obama's real b.c. for the "copy" we now have from Hawaii. (Somehow they failed to destroy all copies of the original, though!)

March: Realizing the heat is on, Obama sends two "journalists" on a secret mission to North Korea in order to bribe the Korean gov't (with nuclear secrets?) to keep quiet.

Having succeeded in their mission, the "journalists" are held until their release can be timed serendipitously to distract from further sleight-of-hand.

August: Hillary is dispatched to Kenya at the same time Bill goes to N. Korea. Bill provides bells and whistles while Hillary is on a mission to destroy all remaining evidence.

Oddly, the only ones smart enough to see through this plot are a ditzy lawyer with a crackerjack box law degree and a handful of cranks in the salon letters thread.

Stinkbrain and LLad, let me know if I'm missing anything here...

obama is the master of projection, for better and worse. he's admitted this in his book, I believe -- people tend to imagine what they want about me, something like that. we saw it during the campaign in the outsized hopes people attached to him, expecting nothing less than camelot revisited upon his inauguration.

we see it here with this fevered frenzy of madness from the birthers. he's been cool as cool about it and i expect he'll continue to be so. release the long form b.c.? screw you. it will not convince these people and it will only show weakness. let them bluster and froth. the laundry list of stuff these people want is totally unreasonable and intrusive. for each item he produces there will be one more they "need" to see.

forget it.

lkaline:

One example of US Interests: The US does the lion's share of funding the UN, providing the force behind its decisions (military and financial). Therefore, we should also get the lion's share of institutional benefits, otherwise US taxpayers are being fleeced for the benefit of other UN members. Bolton gets this; sadly, many do not.

Natty: you're living in 1987. The world doesn't work like this anymore, as Iraq definitively proved.

DLF:

Your naivete is laughable. North Korea is one of the most hideous violators of human rights in the last 250 years of history. Would you have agreed if FDR sucked up to Hitler to get back a couple of AWOL soldiers? Treating Kim as an equal is foolish in the extreme and perpetuates the nearly unimaginable suffering of enslaved N Koreans.

You're the one who's being naive. Human rights? The U.S. lost mucho credibility on this front under (guess who?) GWB and Bolton's watch. Again, see Iraq. We need to talk to people. The world needs to see us talking to people. Coming down a few pegs and doing diplomacy, rather than issuing orders and sending bombs and troops, simply won't work any more. Doesn't mean you have to promise the moon or give away the farm. Also, it has the potential for opening dialogues on other fronts. It's called being subtle and using finesse and all that, which again fell by the wayside under the previous regime.

If two hikers were arrested in Canada, fine - let's talk.

Coming down a few pegs and doing diplomacy, rather than issuing orders and sending bombs and troops, simply won't work any more.

Oops -- obviously i meant this the other way around:

Issuing orders etc....

ALL universities now operate on the business model. Admins are gradually being replaced by MBA douchebags who promote bottom-line thinking and encourage dept. heads to think of students as "clients"/"customers." Liberal arts study is viewed as a chore, something to be cheated through or avoided.

Students encourage this approach by believing that they paid for a grade, instead of the right to participate in a rigorous environment where they might learn something.

The true value of higher education is that it teaches you to think critically and deeply about your area of study, and hopefully enriches and deepens your life experience in other areas as well. That it also prepares you for a well-paying job as a productive member of society is a result of that process. Unfortunately, we've lost sight -- both from the point of view of the university and the students -- of that crucial middle step.

Lawsuits like this show the folly of both sides of this approach.

I have been a headhunter for 30+ years. While any education has some value, these for-profit, proprietary schools promote themselves as being equivalent of state colleges and universities and/or non-profits, Ivy League, etc. THEY ARE NOT.

Hockeymom: I forgot to go into the generation-long assault on the TT system that has also degraded higher education (and I'm not defending everything about tenure; different can of worms). The logical conclusion to for-profit schooling is that you cut costs at every level. You do that by treating your instructors like service employees, low-balling them at the bargaining table and squeezing every drop of productivity out of them. So a lot of instructors of low-level courses at state schools -- and i would imagine ALL instructors at these fly-by-night schools -- are overworked, underpaid, and undertrained. Class sizes are bigger -- many are shifting to online (no overhead) -- the focus is on "processing" students, not teaching them.

It's not a good situation from any angle.