The Daily Top Five

Today's good stuff:

1. Remember when Hilary Clinton wrote "It Takes a Village" about raising kids in America. Well Brett Pawlowski is the founder of Business/Education Partnership Forum, a group that seeks to build partnerships between public schools and the business community, a relationship that can bear signficant fruit. Read Brett's recent letter to the Editor of the School Administrator discussing the reasons why the business community takes education so seriously.

2. The Maryland Court of Appeals is set to hear a case on same-sex marriage and will determine if same-sex marriage should be allowed in Maryland. In advance of that hearing, the gay right community is running a full-court (pun intended) press trying to sway public opinion. The Maryland Moment notes that psychologists, social workers and child welfare advocates think that

highlighted an extensive body of scientific research supporting the idea that children raised by lesbian and gay couples develop as well as children raised by heterosexual couples.

[snip]

There are more than 15,000 same sex couples in the state of Maryland and between one quarter and one third are raising children, according to Susan Leviton, founder of the Baltimore-based Advocates for Children and Youth. Couples who are not allowed to marry face barriers such as getting insurance coverage for their families.

I am not sure about the science and to be honest, I could care less whether a gay couple gets married or not, or whether the law says they can or not. But what I am sure about is that if a person has legal custody of a child, that person can get health insurance for that child through any health plan out there and that is a fact. They may not be able to get coverage for their partner, but they can get coverage for their kid. It is lies that these that don't do the debate any good.

3. In college I wrote a thesis dealing with the arguments of the Anti-Federalists during the Constitutional rafitication debates in teh 1780's. This post by Ilya Somin brought back some of those thoughts. Noting that history is written by the winners:

We today are so inured to to the idea that the Constitution is a good thing that we forget that many great Americans opposed its ratification, including Patrick Henry and George Mason, after whom George Mason University is named. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson, had serious doubts about it, though they didn't actively oppose it.

History is written by the winners, and rarely is this more true than in the field of Constitutional law, where most of us have forgotten the views of Henry and Mason. Indeed, even the very names by which we call the supporters and opponents of the Constitution ("Federalists" and "anti-Federalists") are the products of winners' history.

[snip]

But the anti-Federalist/anti-rat critique of the Constitution (including George Mason's criticism linked above) is much more compelling than we realize and some of it is relevant even today.

A good post to read.

4. Here is an article by Jonathan Moreno about the military's research in to drugs that can reduce the mental fatigue of soldiers, which the military claims leads to more casualties and "friendly fire" incidents. A pretty interesting read.

5. And now for something completely vacuous, via the Pillage Idiot.