The Daily Top Five

For Decmeber 14, 2006

1. Most of us have received the spam with the Nigerian Bank scam. I get about 1 a week and usually just delete them. But here is the communication thread of one person who decided to find out what would happen. Very interesting (and long). Tip o' the hat to Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy, who also has seen a recent twist on the idea, using a U.S. Marine strawman. Watch out!!

2. Joy Behar (of the view) is a big fat idiot!!! She wonders if Sen. Tim Johnson's illness (it is not a stroke according to press reports) was "man-made" because she know what "that party is capable of" meaning the GOP? Hot Air has the video.

3. What if the NBA had quotas? So asks Larry Elder at Townhall. After positing a fictitious NBA Press Release on a new player recruitment policy that would place black players at the back of the line in favor a racial diversity policy for players, Elder writes:

Yet when it comes to colleges and universities admitting Asian-American students, this is, in effect, exactly what is happening. Because of the superior performance of Asian students on high school grades and pre-college aptitude tests, many colleges and universities, through unannounced policies, place these "minority students" at the back of the line.

Most race based preferences in academia discount both white and Asian students in favor of less qualifed Hispanic and black candidates, all in the name of "diversity."

4. I have often railed against teachers' unions, even once calling them the biggest impediment to improving education extant. I also know that some local unions organizations actually do what unions are supposed to do, stick up for the workplace conditions of their members. But I tend to think that the larger the union gets in terms of members and money, the less it actaully does to serve those members because it starts feeling its oats and believing it to be powerful influence in local politics. However, there are a lot of teachers out there who feel cheated by their union not to mention feeling their money has been wasted. Mamacita has her viewpoint, but summed up here:

Union rep: worthless.
Union dues: ridiculously high and very little of it went to anything local.

It goes downhill from there.

5. JennyD has been at an education conference in Washington and reports:

It was not what I expected, at least not entirely. There's this weird political convergence on education, and some people who you might peg as hard-core conservatives or die-hard liberals can agree on aspects of schooling.