Doesn't anyone else remember the reports in Feb 2001 of American flights over Iraq, intentionally trying to provoke Saddam in to shooting one down? I clearly remember thinking that W was planning something in Iraq, for whatever reason. And then, there were those energy meetings that remain secret, right around the time of the California energy blackouts in May of that year. I'm afraid it all adds up to a ham-handed attempt by the Bushies and the oil-military-industrial complex to have their way in the middle-east. 9/11 was a pretext that played right into their hands--and since we know they were warned, I am sure they sat on those hands, hoping to get that pretext. I think we always underestimate the degree to which the "ruling class" is cut off from the rest of us--they consider themselves a transnational, multinational elite using the various conflicts around the world to forward their interests, but not actually considering themselves potential victims of those efforts. Every portrait of Cheney shows a man who lives in secret--not only is he secret from us, we are secret from him. He lives to exercise his own power. W lives to stroke his own ego. He always acts like an adolescent. SOmetimes he even has good impulses, but he can't possibly act on them, because to do so is too frightening--he would have to repudiate everything else he has done. The saddest thing is that at this stage in history, we would get stuck (by the Supreme Court) with such small, angry leaders, worthless individuals who really have nothing to offer.

Doesn't anyone remember when Blair said that he would answer to God for his decisions on Iraq? Gosh. And I thought he was an elected official, not a member of the Elect. You expect idiocy from Bush, but somehow that particular idiocy from Blair was indicative, to me, of total narcissism. He's a war criminal and should shoot himself on his way out of Downing Street. But I suppose that's too much to hope for.

Bush never fooled me. I never thought the Florida vote counting fiasco was a one-off and I knew they were cheating, and intent upon cheating, from the start. Scalia and Thomas should be disbarred for the conflicts of interest they maintained throughout the Supreme Court case. These people live like cheaters and always have, which is why they do not know how the world works, and the policies they come up with have no relationship to reality, and are failures. Does no one remember the events of Feb 2001, when they began to send planes into Iraq to provoke Saddam into retaliating? They are and always were despicable. Are they incompetent? Are they immoral? Are they cheaters and liars? Yes, all of the above. They are incompetent BECAUSE they are cheaters and liars and always have been. Bush and Cheney have NO virtues at all of any kind. And Scalia is worse.

Greer never has a kind word to say to anyone or about anyone. She always imagines herself defending the defenseless and voicing the opinions of the voiceless, but in fact no one is quite as mean spirited as she is. She needs to pass away now.

The main point of Kalish's argument is one that none of the letter writers have addressed, which is that those who study the issue don't find any correlation between doing homework and learning the material. Is there one or isn't there? If those who study the issue don't find it, then you can't defend homework on those grounds, you have to defend it on some other grounds.

Nevertheless, in the US, school, especially high school, is about status. In some schools, there is moderate status in doing well in school, in many schools, there isn't. Much of what the student thinks about school work is dictated by his or her relative status. Low status students who do well academically often experience their entire post-high school life as a sheer joyful repudiation of everything that high school represents. That's what happened to me and what I hope happens to my children. The high status kids in my high school (which was private but co-ed) never did much but reproduce the conformity of high school and the conformity of their parents' social niche. How boring--and in such a second rate city, too! Anyway, homework is the least toxic thing about high school. I would rather have my kid working to please his teachers, even if he doesn't like it very much, than dressing, walking, talking, and swaggering so as to please his peers. Doing homework in the America we live in is actually subversive.

the extroverts are out having fun with their friends and the introverts are reading salon and deciding that that is just good enough. If I took the Myers-briggs test, I know that I would score exactly in the middle on the introvert/extrovert scale. Most of the time, I like seeing a couple of people in a day, and I hate parties, but I would be sorry to have no friends. What I think modern people forget is that in the bad old days of big families, lots of people didn't have anyone they could actually like and relate to--they were surrounded by unpleasant relatives that they were obliged to serve and take care of. We don't have that anymore, which is good in some ways and bad in some ways. Friends take a lot of time, and much of what we do with them seems shallow and not very rewarding. Even so, I think it is worth it. This very week-end, I spent three days with my oldest friend, and I loved just seeing her face and hearing her voice, and having that instant and longterm connection. It's worth it.