Mixed feelings here.  Reading a lot of bad stuff but hearing counterbalancing arguments as well.  So there's this:

 The Common Core’s Pedagogical Tomfoolery

sample:

In mathematics, the examples of curriculum and pedagogy are numerous. Look, for example, on a first grade standard:

1.OA.6: Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Were this a true content standard, it would have simply stopped after its first sentence: Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Yet the standard continues and lists at least four different ways students must use to show … what? Can’t they simply show they can add and subtract, correctly and fluently?

And lest you think this is just a fluke, here is essentially the same standard in the second and third grades:

2.NBT.5: Fluently add and subtract within 100 using strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction.

3.NBT.2: Fluently add and subtract within 1000 using strategies and algorithms based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Once again SG Verilli gets his hat handed to him by Paul Clement.  If this was a fantasy game Clement would be Megatron and SG V would be Itula Mili.  Just sayin'.

A few links and takes to make it easier:

Justice Kennedy:  Under your view, a [for-]profit corporation could be forced—in principle, there are some statutes on the books now which would prevent it, but—could be forced in principle to pay for abortions.

Solicitor General Verrilli:  No.  I think, as you said, the law now—the law now is to the contrary.

Kennedy:  But your reasoning would permit that.

Verrilli continued to resist Kennedy’s simple  hypothetical question, treating it as though he could not answer it unless there were really such a law on the books—and as though he had not spent his whole legal career since law school entertaining hypotheticals to test a principle!

And then the chief justice intervened:

Chief Justice Roberts:  I’m sorry, I lost track of that.  There is no law on the books that does what?

Verrilli:  That makes a requirement of the kind that Justice Kennedy hypothesized.  The law is the opposite.

Roberts:  Well, flesh it out a little more.  What—there is no law on the books that does what?

Verrilli:  That requires for-profit corporations to provide abortions.

Justice Kennedy began to speak at this point, and Chief Justice Roberts cut him off by pursuing Verrilli like a hound who has treed a raccoon:

Roberts:  Isn’t that what we are talking about in terms of their religious beliefs?  One of the religious beliefs is that they have to pay for these four methods of contraception that they believe provide abortions.  I thought that’s what we had before us.

[Eugene Volokh] Prof. Michael McConnell (Stanford) on the Hobby Lobby arguments

Hobby Lobby—Separation of Powers

IPCC admission from new report: ‘no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct’

HATE WEEK on the Climate Certainty Channel™

Ive been saying this for years, gla to have a big name on board: Father of the ‘Gaia hypothesis’ James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion

The big list of failed climate predictions

Michael Moore: Hunt Down and Execute GM Officials Behind Ignition-Related Deaths

EXCLUSIVE—NRA Board Member to Mike Malloy: 'Here I Am If You Want to Come Kill Me'

Compassion: Anti-Obamacare cancer patient smeared by Harry Reid now receiving death wishes from liberals. “Indeed, unleashing left-wing wrath on ordinary people for the sin of speaking out must be a pretty effective method of stifling dissent — which is precisely what Reid wants.”

Lawrence Walsh and the Abuse of Power

Gay-Hating Democrat Fred Phelps Is Dead.

better late than never? NJ Democrat: Republicans 'Have Been Proven Right' about Misuse of Sandy Aid

Jim Geraghty: Why It’s So Hard To Make Progressives Live Up To Their Own Rules. 

Remain calm! All is well! Plus: “One way to preserve presidential self-esteem in the face of failure is to surround himself in ever more lavish trappings.”

UPDATE: Imperial Trappings For An Empty Suit. “It was, I suspect, the jarring juxtaposition of the two phenomena — a president who travels like Julius Caesar but negotiates like Neville Chamberlain — that most amused Russia’s oligarchs.”

ED DRISCOLL: A Criminal Organization Masquerading as a Political Party. 

THEY GAVE IT THAT NAME BECAUSE IT’S DIM: Frozen pink dwarf planet ‘Biden’ spotted beyond Pluto.

Conestoga case argues to the Supremes, NU football players are employees, all KINDSA suff .... but here's a smattering of stuff

The President Can't Even Spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T

You do not have the right to a wedding cake.  Cato’s Ilya Shapiro had an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on this subject, based on Cato’s, Dale Carpenter’s, and my amicus brief in the case. An excerpt:

Take, for instance, a freelance writer who declines to write a press release for a religious organization with which he disagrees. By the reasoning of the New Mexico Supreme Court, the writer has violated the law because his refusal to write the press release is discrimination based on religion — much as Elaine Huguenin’s refusal to photograph an event with which she disagreed [a same-sex commitment ceremony] was treated as violating the law. Yet a writer must have the First Amendment right to choose which speech he creates, notwithstanding any state law to the contrary.

The same is true of photographers who create a visual expression. The U.S. Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the First Amendment protects an “individual freedom of mind” — e.g., West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which affirmed the right not to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance — which the government violates whenever it tells a person that she must or must not speak. Forcing a photographer to create a unique piece of art violates that freedom of the mind.

[Stuart Benjamin] If an algorithm generated this post, is it First Amendment speech?

[Will Baude] Should sentencing judges look defendants in the eye?

Ohio Dems honor woman convicted of voter fraud…at a voting “rights” rally.

THIS FROM THE MAN WHO PAYS HIS WOMEN WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS LESS THAN MEN: Obama: GOP should ‘join us in this century’ on equal pay for women.

Been on the roada LOT!  Vegas for four days last week - and what happens in Vegas STAYS in Vegas.  But it was an awesome trip!

Then flew to Albany NY and drove home in a blizzard.  Two hours sleep, flew to Rochester NY and did it again.  Then a day off.

Then a lovely four-day trip to New Orleans.  Walked the CRAP out of the Quarter.  GREAT food.  A bit of alchohol.  Stayed with a magicician and his face-painting wife.  Final dinner at Cochon.  Not a bad meal the whole trip.  It's one of the few cities I'd actually be willing to consider moving to.

Currently sitting in the Louis Armstrong Airport awaiting my delayed flight to Chicago, then to Cbus.  ETA in Reynoldswrap is 6:30.  Expect a lot of catch-up posts the rest of the week. 

No foolin'

nice to see wiser and more visable heads are picking up the banner

REIHAN SALAM ON OBAMA’S HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAM: Don’t Just Target For-Profit Career Colleges:

Given the epidemic of underemployment among recent college graduates, it might make sense to apply the same standard to all post-secondary institutions, not just those that are explicitly labeled career training colleges.

Steve Gunderson, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the trade association that represents the for-profit higher education sector, observes in a tart press release that “if the regulation were applied to all of higher education, programs like a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, a law degree from George Washington University Law School and a bachelor’s degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University, would all be penalized.”

My reply to Gunderson would be that, well, yes, let’s penalize these programs too. It makes perfect sense to establish a regulatory floor to protect consumers from the least effective post-secondary programs, whether they’re at vocational schools or standard-issue colleges and universities.

The answer, of course, is that traditional “nonprofit” schools are among Obama’s biggest sources of donations and support.