The Daily Top Five: February 20, 2007

I have gotten behind due to work issues, but here are today's top five:

1. This is an important decision regarding the rights (rather assumed rights) of Club Gitmo detainees. Here is the WaPost story and here is the decision. I have not read the whole decision yet, but I plan to. As a starting point, I would not grant terrorists or terrorist supporters who are not U.S. Citizens any rights in U.S. civil courts. Period, end of story.

2. This post by Joanne Jacobs is a few days old, but brilliant. It is also garnering a lot of comments about direct instruction. While I don't consider myself a DI expert, the exposure I have had with it tells me intuitively that it works better because knowledge and material is presented in a logical progression with lots of response by students. Of course, DI has it detactors, but if you were to put DI up against all other pedagogical programs, put your money on DI to win and win by a mile. It works for everyone, maybe a different speeds but for everyone.

3. Edspresso brings us the insanity of Arizona school choice opponents. Remember, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

The ACLU Foundation of Arizona, People for the American Way and the Arizona Education Association seem bent on betting against school choice in court. Fine, whatever. But they also appear to think foster kids have nothing to lose and would like to play too. ACLU et al can deny it all they want, but their lawsuit would strip a precious educational opportunity from a lot of kids who have enough difficulties in life to begin with. I know they're beholden to other interests, but the odds on foster children are risky enough without their interference.

These people have lost twice in Arizona courts and given the limited focus of this program for foster kids, they seem likely to lose again.

4. Philip Mella fisks E.J. Dionne and Democrats for their viewpoints on the war:

Therefore, the question that must be asked is whether, on balance, our chances to bring stability to Iraq--and thereby security to the region--are enhanced or undermined by the Democrats' plan of establishing a withdrawal date? If not, then we should be pleased that President Bush is not listening to the Democrats, because it's abundantly evident they have nothing to say.

So long as Democrats continue to yap rather than act, they really don't have anything to say.

5. Michael Barone on military intelligence. Having served in the military and having had friends who were intelligence analysts I can tell you that they may be more accurate than weathermen, but military intelligence is far from fully accurate and they will admit it. Barone notes that today, Bush critics don't understand the basic precept:

The critics seem to be assuming that we can somehow obtain intelligence that is 100 percent accurate. But that is not possible in the real world. Intelligence tries to get information that regimes are making great effort to conceal -- evil regimes, in the case of Saddam and the mullahs. Our leaders must make decisions based on incomplete and highly imperfect information. And that information can remain imperfect for a long time. We still don't know what Saddam did with the WMD he once had and never accounted for.

With perfect information, you can make a perfect decision right? Wrong I say. Even with perfect intelligence, decision can be poorly made, poorly executed and poorly reviwed. Human decision making is fraught with faults and foibles. But leaders can't wait for perfect information--they are elected and paid to act on imperfect information, just as President Bush has done for a long time. Barone closes with this:

Again we encounter the idea that intelligence agencies' conclusions should be regarded as Holy Writ, not to be questioned or analyzed critically by high government officials -- that there can be an intelligence product that is 100 percent accurate, and that every intelligence community conclusion must be treated as if it is.

The Bush critics' position is that we must believe without reservation or criticism any intelligence that can be used to argue against military action and that we should never believe any intelligence, however plausible, that can be used to argue for it. That's not very intelligent.

Indeed.