The Morning Blog

Arizona has declared that the Mexican-American studies program offered by the Tucson school district is illegal under a new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer. Arizona is of course, a hot mess when it comes to the way they treat their Latino citizens. However, I'm a little mixed on this one. Though it seems suspicious that a program serving Latinos would be singled out as illegal while programs for African-Americans or Asians were left alone, I have to say that I become very, very nervous about the threat of ideology being taught as history. Ultimately, I'm not happy about this law because in the end, an attorney general, rather than a group of teachers and students, is determining the best means towards education. I would hazard that this is the sort of thing that falls outside an attorneys field of expertise.

Here's one use for the post office: Handwritten letters from prisoners to magazines. Sounds like pretty interesting stuff actually. I'd love to see some of the letters collected in a book.

This is the thing I don't get about religio-fascist movements: Other than the fact that banning men and women from shaking hands is just evil, it seems like the sort of edict that would just be extremely difficult to enforce, not to mention a waste of resources. Is this really one of the top priorities for the Somali insurgency? Aren't they still at war? It seems from a purely practical standpoint that they'd have better things to do with their members than send them out on 'handshake patrol'.

The Idaho Republican party is attempting to move to closed primaries which is surprising to me to be honest. Granted, a Republican is always going to win in Idaho. That said, you'd think that the lesson learned from the fiascoes that were Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska would be that closed primaries lead to candidates that are ideologically pure, not necessarily electable.

I don't like this at all. First thought? If you're a bartender or a waiter and you spend a lot of time handling alcohol, the sensors will probably determine that you're drunk just because you have so much contact with it. Second thought? This sort of thing is going to do wonders for the used car market.

North Korea has a Twitter account? What zippy fun! I can't wait to follow the progress of their glorious tractor industry!

Here's one alternative to recycling.

British newspapers permit me to type the following:

Leopards!

Murder!

What I will be squandering my hard earned money on for the next 12 months. I like video games. You may not and that's perfectly fine. I would urge you though, to click on the Batman video just to get a sense of what the state of the art is in terms of graphics. Pretty exciting stuff. Don't even get me started on the sublime wonder that is a new Elder Scrolls game!

Having now committed my life's savings to things that blip and whir, I'll think I'll call it quits on today's Morning Blog.