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Kid-Friendly Policies Don’t Help Singles
As someone who doesn’t plan on having kids, I am acutely aware of the inequity described in this piece. In short, it’s unfair that taking time off to have (or care for) kids is preferenced over taking time off to complete a degree (or travel, or relax, or do any one of a number of other personally and socially utile things).
Audit finds Education Dept. missteps
“Missteps” is a fairly generous summary of what amounts to gross corruption in the Education Department’s “Reading First” program. To wit:
It also depicts a program in which review panels were stacked with people who shared the director’s views and in which only favored publishers of reading curricula could get money.
In one e-mail, the director told a staff member to come down hard on a company he didn’t support, according to the report released Friday by the department’s inspector general.
“They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the (expletive deleted) out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags,” the Reading First director wrote, according to the report.
Blatant favoritism based on an equal mix of ideological fervor and straight corruption… now, what does that remind me of? Wait for it, wait for it… oh, right.
Thai PM ‘overthrown in army coup’
I realize that this may just be a function of poor translation, but a coup announcement that includes the phrase, “We ask for the co-operation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience” just strikes me as funny.
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
I was initially going to title this post “Incompetence 101″, but having re-read the article I’m convinced that the antics described here are more like the graduate seminar of cluelessness and malfeasance.
Why have career professionals when you can have political hacks?
Why ask about relevant experience (finance, public health, law enforcement) when you can ask about Roe v. Wade? (After all, Iraq would surely crumble if the rate of abortion exceeded infant mortality or fatalities from suicide bombings…)
To wit:
To recruit the people he wanted, O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
Smith said O’Beirne once pointed to a young man’s résumé and pronounced him “an ideal candidate.” His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
Nigerian candidates in graft con
Oh, Nigeria.
A number of Nigerian politicians have been conned out of thousands of dollars by people selling papers purporting to certify them as “corruption-free”.
The following is best read with a Jeff Foxworthy inflection: your country might be a cesspool of sketchiness if…
…conmen are selling “corruption-free” certificates (and politicians are buying them!)
Left veteran just wants to retire
That’s awesome… the politburo won’t let this guy retire!
(I do want to point out how hard the BBC fights for a joke - they had to use “nyet”, despite the fact that we’re talking about India…)
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Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance
Well, that inspires me with confidence… CIA officers buying legal expense and liability insurance in case they get sued for torture and whatnot.
To be fair, from reading the article I don’t understand why everyone at the CIA counterterrorism unit wouldn’t buy this insurance, since apparently their premiums are 100% reimbursable (which is great in its own right - at least the Justice Department is marginally honest about the risks CIA operatives incur by performing activites “authorizing” by the DOJ).
Look, I’m all for insuring against all possible ills… I’m just saying that this signals just a wee bit less certainty by the government about the actual legality of the things they’ve asked the CIA to do than the “oh no, our lawyers say it’s fine” rhetoric coming out of the WH/DOJ would suggest.
[via Wonkette]