Meryl Yourish is in disagreement with Susanna Cornett (which is odd, by the way) about the possible anti-Semitic ramifications of Mel Gibson's movie "Passion," about the last 12 hours of Jesus' life. Both have good points--I lean toward Ms Cornett's arguments but share Ms Yourish's concerns. Not going to get into it because I'm not good with details on prophecy and such.

Suzanne Fields puts forth the difference between Europe and the US on matters of foreign policy. It's especially delightful because Europe is cast as feminine and in decline--US is the opposite. She's not joking, either--read it.

"San Antonio School District trustees unveiled a radical proposal Monday to combine prekindergarten through eighth grade into single academies for the next school year." Oh, man! For those of you not from SA, let's make it clear--SASD doesn't control all the schools in San Antonio. It seems like they control all the low-performing ones. We've got North Side ISD, North East ISD, etc. etc. So, as usual, this radical experimentation will take place on the poorest segment of the population. Looks like there are two aims here. First is the age-old drive for smaller class sizes, more parent participation, and...

Hmm..."The reorganization is among Olivárez's initiatives to address a drop in performance when students move from elementary to middle school.

"Social problems such as teen pregnancy, discipline and truancy also tend to pick up during the middle school years." Wow, this should win awards for some of the cloudiest thinking ever. They're going to do away with middle schools because that's when kids start screwing up. But, um, that's also sorta when kids, by nature, start to get a little screwed up. I have a feeling that traditionally that's why these three years are set aside for 12- to 14-year-olds (thereabouts).

We'll watch, and shake our heads, and hope they don't ruin too many futures before they change course. I hope I'm wrong, but SASD is sort of a rotten idea factory. Even if it's a good idea they'll find a way to ruin it.

An Express-News human-interest piece on Dan Morales. I don't know if it's sad or not. I had a lot of respect for Morales until he did the stylish thing and went after tobacco companies. After all the news from other states and the various lawyer- and money- fed corruptions involving "settlement money," the whole thing had a bad smell to it. Dan Morales was a Texas Democrat. In most cases that means taking great pride in Texas, its history, and its culture, and one's place in it.

But no, he had to go the Democrat route and take His Chunk.

You get the idea that San Antonio's trying to be stylish. "For the second time in less than a year, the way San Antonio police treat minorities — whether it's the rate at which officers search African-American drivers or the number of times they use force on Hispanics and blacks — has brought the department into sharp focus." Time for the NAACP's favorite game, Tarring the Reputation of a City's Police Force!

Here's a tellng point: "...blacks were more than three times as likely as whites to face certain types of police searches. Yet police found contraband in the searches at about the same rate for both races." Hm... so police are searching whites and blacks and yielding about the same percentages. But it continues, "a finding that civil rights groups said shows the disparate treatment was unwarranted." Looks to me like the overall could-be-carrying-contraband profile needs to be adjusted so that the searches are yielding more success across the board. It sucks that people are embarrassed when they're searched, but if the searches yield a certain percentage of success, then the race of the searchees don't seem to be an issue.

But according to the same findings in this report, "San Antonio police stop minority and white drivers at rates that are roughly similar to their share of the population." On the whole (look towards the end of the article), SA is scrupulously fair when it comes to local racial proportionality of stops, searches, citations, everything. But "A lopsided pattern emerges in searches where officers flex their discretion." Blacks do take a big hit there.

The anecdotal stuff towards the middle of the column is, well, laughable.

The rest of the article's pretty dry--the usual racial profiling data boilerplate. Some of it's interesting, most of it's not. Read it anyhow if you're from SA. It's hard to get worked up over this stuff. I predict a task force, some chest-pounding, and more crime, most likely against minorities.

North Korea's being awfully provocative. Kruschev only said that they'd bury our grandchildren. If he meant under a sea of pro-Communist, anti-US propaganda put forth by US teachers he was right. But I think "we'll make the cinders dance" talk was pretty limited from the USSR.

In light of this, talk of pulling out of S. Korea kinda worries me, especially since pulling out of Somalia and so forth was illustrative to the militant Muslim world that the US would wuss out when things got a little hairy. I do think we should leave S. Korea--that country can take care of itself against conventional N. Korean forces and its leadership and citizenry aren't boiling over with gratitude. In the words of Howard Johnson from Blazing Saddles: "Why should we get our own men killed?"

Oddly, I don't even think Clintonian foreign policy is to blame for this rock/hard place problem. The phrase, "It's easy, post 9/11, to consider" is ubiquitous in talks like these, but you know... who'd have thought? Kim Jong Il's getting nuttier by the day. Early on I hoped his jabber was an artifact of translation, but no, he's crazy. There are times when I wonder if Kim's going to nuke an image of the N. Korean flag into the world just to see what it looks like.