One of the many wars between Britain and France/Spain during the 18th century was a war called the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Some Spanish naval commander off the coast of Florida chopped off the ear of an Englishman named Mr. Jenkins on the charge of smuggling. The British used this as a pretext to declare […]

Heard on the radio today: A writer at the Wall Street Journal (sorry, don’t recall the name – a woman) has suggested that, if the Republicans won’t defund Obamacare – and it looks like they won’t have the numbers to do this – they should declare en masse that they won’t take the Obamacare exemption […]

So what would happen (pace Slate’s Allison Benedikt) if everyone, including the horrible people, did have to send their kids to public school? Well, when I was in about sixth grade, population changes required the Salt Lake City School District to close one of its four high schools and re-draw the boundaries. My neighborhood, which […]

Thanks to Jonah Goldberg’s email-only G-File, we have a link to an essay written in 1964 by Isaac Asimov. In it he makes prediction on the state of the country/world 50 years hence in 2014. I must say, he did a fairly good job. But by far the the most impressive prediction came at the […]

I started my 22nd year at the helm of a classroom this week, and the sailing’s been a bit rough. My biggest goal for my 6th grade class has always been to get these children to start seeing themselves more as independent young adults rather than dependent children. My crew this year seems fairly entrenched […]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/john-cleese-on-threat-to-europe.php btw, it was NOT authored by John Cleese Preview Open

We are currently on vacation to visit our son in Florida. We usually prefer to drive on all of our vacations mostly because we enjoy the scenery (the expected…and unexpected). Sometimes we make the choice because of cost, sometimes it’s because we are hauling stuff to our son, sometimes you just can’t get there unless […]