From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, February 8, 2007 2:17 P.M. EST

Keep Your Money
"Illinois Senator Barack Obama became the latest presidential candidate to opt out of the U.S. public financing system, deciding not to accept public money for either the primary or general election," Bloomberg reports:

An official close to the campaign confirmed the decision, which follows on the heels of similar statements from Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Clinton, who represents New York in the U.S. Senate, led the way by taking donations for both campaigns as soon as she announced her candidacy.

The move allows Obama, 45, to immediately double the amount he can raise for an election battle that analysts say will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and leaves him in a better position if he should win the Democratic nomination. . . .

On the Republican side, the top candidates are still weighing their options. Officials at the campaigns of Arizona Senator John McCain, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said they haven't made their decisions yet on public funding in the general campaign.

The interesting question here is what McCain--generally considered the GOP favorite, though he trails Giuliani in some early polls--will do. It is McCain's conviction that special-interest money is at the root of most evil in American politics, but will he abjure some of that money in order to make a statement?

If all the major candidates are refusing federal funds, the system will end up being nothing but a subsidy for minor candidates. When deciding whether to check off the $3 on your tax form, consider that you're paying for the likes of Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun. Then again, with movie tickets north of $10, that may be entertainment money well spent.

'A Platoon of Lesbians'
Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, is criticizing the "military's policy" (actually a law passed by Congress in 1993) against openly gay servicemen, the Associated Press reports:

"For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists. They're very brave with the terrorists, and if the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad," said Ackerman, prompting laughter in the room.

We're uneasy about the idea of homosexuals in combat units, in that issues of sexual tension, jealousy and harassment could easily hurt morale. But give Ackerman credit: That "platoon of lesbians" line is hilarious. Unlike John Kerry*, this guy knows how to deliver a joke.

* "You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Ha, ya get it?!

Something's Missing
An Associated Press account of yesterday's proceedings in the Scooter Libby trial contains lots of background about the case:

Plame's identity was leaked shortly after her husband began accusing the Bush administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq. The controversy over the faulty intelligence was a major story in mid-2003. . . .

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has spent weeks making the case that Libby was preoccupied with discrediting Wilson. Several former White House, CIA and State Department officials testified that Libby discussed Plame with them--all before the Russert conversation. . . .

Though President Bush was publicly stating that nobody in the White House was involved in the leak, Libby knew that he himself had spoken to several reporters about Plame. He said he did not bring that up with Bush and was uncertain whether he discussed it with Cheney.

Nowhere in the story, though, is the name Richard Armitage mentioned.

A Move for Real Diversity
Bloomberg columnist Andy Ferguson spots what he calls a "trendlette":

Most recently it's been percolating in Missouri, where Representative Jane Cunningham introduced a bill that will surely unnerve many of her state's higher education bureaucrats.

Cunningham's bill is aimed straight at the ideological orthodoxy that holds sway on U.S. college campuses. It would require that Missouri's state-funded colleges and universities announce each year what they have done institutionally "to ensure and promote intellectual diversity and academic freedom." A bill similar to Cunningham's has also been introduced in Virginia.

In 2005, the state legislature in Pennsylvania established a special committee to investigate academic freedom and intellectual diversity on its campuses. The committee is requiring Pennsylvania's public colleges and universities to report by November 2008 on what concrete steps they've taken to ensure "student rights" with respect to intellectual diversity.

And the South Dakota Board of Regents, responding to a similar move by its state legislature, now requires that an a [sic] so-called Academic Freedom Statement be included in all course syllabuses, informing students that only academic performance, and not their political opinions, will serve as a basis for their grades.

Opponents predictably call this an assault on academic freedom. But such efforts would not be necessary if professors lived up to the responsibilities that academic freedom entails. Those are outlined in the American Association of University Professors' 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom. Some excerpts:

Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. . . .

College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

We're not entirely comfortable with the idea of politicians telling universities how to conduct their business. But it's also clear that self-regulation has failed, so maybe a little interference from outside is in order.

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Rick Casey, a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, describes a particularly egregious case of overzealous school discipline:

When the principal of Beckendorf Intermediate School in Tomball thought 10-year-old Casey Harmeier deliberately set off a school fire alarm, she took action that some school administrators would support and some, even in these days of terrorist fears and zero tolerance, would think excessive.

Without calling Casey's parents, she had him hauled off by the police, who charged him with a felony. That was last Oct. 25.

After further investigation, however, Tomball ISD officials discovered they were mistaken. Casey had not pulled the fire alarm. He had, on a dare, removed a clear plastic cover from the alarm, unaware that he would trip a very loud horn designed to prevent students from pulling the alarm.

"There is overwhelming evidence to conclude that a BIS staff member inadvertently set off the building fire alarm while attempting to deactivate the local alarm on the pull station," wrote Huey Kinchen, assistant superintendent for administrative services, in a Jan. 19 memo. "There is overwhelming evidence to conclude that Casy (sic) Harmeier did not pull the lever on the fire alarm pull station, and did not activate the building fire alarm."

Incredibly, Casey is still scheduled to go on trial, on May 15, although the prosecutor says she'll reduce the charges to " 'attempted' false alarm, a misdemeanor."

Too Much Tolerance
From Allentown, Pa., the Associated Press reports on an example of the perils of too little school discipline. Parents at Central Elementary School have filed a lawsuit alleging the school concealed a 12-year-old student's sexual assaults on first-graders:

The assaults began in December 2003, a few months after F.H., a special education student with a history of behavioral problems, was transferred to Central Elementary from another school in the district, according to court papers.

After learning of the first assault from a second-grader who witnessed part of it, administrators kept quiet and allowed F.H. to remain in school, the lawsuit said. The 12-year-old sexually assaulted three more first-graders over the next four months, according to the parents.

Here's the kicker: According to the lawsuit, before the final assault--for which F.H. was convicted of rape in juvenile court--he was put on " 'hallway detention'--out of view of any teacher and next to a bathroom used by first-graders."

The Truth About Monkeyfishing
Reader Brian Gates makes a good point about our item yesterday noting Slate's acknowledgment that its 2001 "monkeyfishing" story wasn't true:

I don't understand Jack Shafer's apology. He had a column a little while ago in which he pronounced the stories about leftists spitting on Vietnam vets an urban myth, based on his inability to find stories about those incidents in the press. If "true" is equivalent to "what appears in the press," Slate has nothing to apologize for--the monkeyfishing story was true from the moment they published it. If they have decided monkeyfishing is no longer true, it stops being true, like the importance of the filibuster or the Clinton administration's belief in Saddam's arsenal--and I don't see Shafer apologizing for either of those claims.

Homer Nods
In an item yesterday, we failed to note that Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times had failed to mention Hurricane Katrina along with the plight of the homeless, the injustice of Guantanamo Bay, or the 47 million Americans without health insurance, in a column on TV shows that did make gratuitous mentions of abortion, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and global warming.

We regret the error.

Another item quoted a New York Times article that said Amanda Marcotte, a blogress now employed by the John Edwards campaign, "used vulgar language to describe the [Catholic] church doctrine of the Immaculate Conception." We thought this was probably mistaken, but we were unable to track down the post. A reader found it for us. It is both gross and (to Christians) blasphemous, so don't click here if you don't want to see such material.

Anyway, it turns out that Marcotte was referring to the Christian doctrine of Virgin Birth, not the Catholic doctrine of Immaculate Conception (which holds that Mary, Jesus' mother, was conceived without original sin). The error was the Times's; Marcotte's post nowhere uses the term "Immaculate Conception."

You'd Think They'd Have Kept Looking After Finding Rita
"Body Found in Texas Home Year After Rita"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 7

Total Recall
These headlines are all from the Web site of WNDU-TV in South Bend, Ind., and all undated:

And to think, we sometimes have trouble recalling phone numbers!

Wouldn't It Be Better to Cut Taxes and Slow Aging?
"Tax Cut Sought to Aid Aging"--headline, Columbus Dispatch, Feb. 7

'It Feels So Silky!'
"Hair Salons Raise Stroke Awareness"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 8

Another Bride, Another June
"Struggling African Nation Hopes Whoopi Can Help"--headline, CNN.com, Feb. 7

News You Can Use
"For Women, Nothing's Like the Smell of Men's Sweat"--headline, Reuters, Feb. 7

Bottom Stories of the Day

'Muslim Leaders Did Not See the Humor'
Newsday reports on the latest clash between free speech and religious sensitivity:

A video by five students at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University depicting ski-masked "hostage-takers" speaking in cartoonish Middle Eastern accents has drawn condemnations from local Muslim leaders.

The university dismissed the students from their jobs as residence hall assistants in Brookville Hall, saying they had engaged in activity that violated their employment contract and that reflected "insensitivity."

In the video, which mocks those aired by real-life terrorists, five figures speak in exaggerated accents as they threaten their captive, a rubber duck dubbed "Pete," according to an account in the student newspaper that knowledgeable campus sources agreed was accurate. The subtext is understood to many on campus: The duck is the mascot for Brookville Hall.

While friends of those who created the film amphasized [sic] it was made in jest, Muslim leaders did not see the humor. They acknowledged students' right to freedom of speech, but said that right carries responsibility.

"I think it's not a prank," said Ghazi Khankan of Long Beach, a member of the board of the American Muslim Alliance.

Anything that involves a rubber duck named "Pete" is deadly serious in our book.

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