Dear God. There's more out there.

OK, reporters. Let's put on our thinking caps, shall we?

The Fun Superintendent is suing her former employer, Des Moines Public Schools, to prevent it from releasing any more emails she thinks are "purely personal." Which, of course, she illicitly sent and received via her work account, often using school-system computers.

Nancy Sebring may be stupid, but she's also arrogant and ballsy. It must be from . . . never mind.

According to a report Wednesday in the Omaha World-Herald, the incredibly horny (not to mention reckless and foolish) woman who missed being Omaha Public Schools' next superintendent by this much appears to be suing to close the barn door after the brood mare already has made a break for it. After all, the whole thing already has made The Smoking Gun on the Internet, where you can read all the naughty bits the Des Moines Register and the World-Herald censored out.

ANYWAY, said the World-Herald's report:

Sebring filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Public Schools in Polk County, Iowa, District Court. She filed the request for an injunction Monday, after The World-Herald and Des Moines Register published selected emails over the weekend. Sebring resigned Saturday from the Omaha superintendent position.

The Des Moines district, responding to public records requests from the newspapers, provided the emails last week with some information redacted, including the identity and email address of Sebring's lover. Both newspapers removed certain sexually-explicit content from the emails before publishing them.

Des Moines officials acknowledged last week that the district's discovery of those emails was the reason Sebring resigned abruptly May 10, despite being under contract through June 30. At the time, Sebring said she needed more time to make the transition to the Omaha job and to help prepare for her daughter's wedding.

(snip)

In her lawsuit, Sebring claims that other individuals have requested or will ask for full, unredacted copies of her Des Moines emails.

The Des Moines district is no longer informing her about new records requests, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit acknowledges that free and open examination of public records is generally in the public interest.

But the suit argues that a small number of the emails were purely personal and their content is of no public interest.

The lawsuit says some of the emails were sent by a private individual who would not have sent those emails “had they known the information would be available for general public examination.”

In the lawsuit, Sebring also alleges that the Des Moines district has refused her repeated requests to delete her emails, which she contends is the district's practice for former employees.

Sebring is asking a judge to find that free and open examination of the emails is not in the public interest because “it would cause substantial and irreparable injury to the persons involved.”

Sebring wants the judge to block the release of personal emails until a judge can rule on her request. She also wants to be notified of any public records requests made to the Des Moines district involving her.

YOU KNOW what this means, right?

Even Sebring doesn't think you can unring a bell -- that a lawsuit will magically erase all those X-rated, Not Safe to Be Sent From Work emails between her and her married lover from The Smoking Gun or newspaper websites . . . or Google's Internet cache. If you want to titilate yourself with the lowlights of the Fun Superintendent and her man friend talking dirty to one another on the public dime, you don't need to file a public-records request with the Des Moines school board.

Nobody's going to put those d*** pictures in a box.

Everybody's going to be reading about Sebring's love affair with a penis, spanking, No. 69, butt licking and her desire for a chair with an attached "suction-cup dildo" for a long, long time.

So, what the hell? With the lawsuit, I mean.

Easy. There's more of this stuff out there . . . or on there, meaning server hard drives (which sounds suspiciously like a line from one of Sebring's oversexed missives).

Note that the Register and the World-Herald were searching for emails having something to do with Omaha. What in the world was she saying that wasn't about Omaha somehow?

Inquiring minds want to know.

IF I were one of the reporters covering this hot mess, I would submit a public-records request for every bit of correspondence to and from Sebring from her then-lover's email addresses. I'd also request all emails to and from Sebring containing a laundry list of words and phrases I cannot mention here.

Just like it should have been obvious that the Naughty Schoolmarm had something to hide when she unfortunately convinced the Omaha reporter to narrow his records request, it likewise ought to be obvious that the woman is at it again, this time trying to "sucker" the Iowa district court.

Because.

There's.

More.

Out.

There.

Or at least there's ample reason to think there might be.

X-rated film at 11.

It's a Boomer (wild) thing

Picture a world in which you get almost all the way through The Music Man, only to find out that Marian the Librarian has a thing for kinky sex and arouses herself by gazing at magic-lantern pictures of Harold Hill's . . . baton.

So to speak.

Welcome to Omaha; we'll show you around. And then we can then slide on down I-80 to central Iowa to the horndog digital world of a 21st-century schoolmarm -- Des Moines' former- and Omaha's almost-superintendent, Nancy Sebring . . . complete with throughly modern, thorougly naughty "magic lantern" shows.

Who knew what passions which lay beneath the plastic-rim glasses and sensible suits of the plain-Jane, middle-aged educator? And you thought spanking was yesterday's news in the public schools.

Not only that, but who knew what entertaining reading would result from the Des Moines Register's simple public-records request to the local school district for any emails Sebring sent or received mentioning "Omaha"?

Who knew that a professional reporter could be dumber than the ceaseless horde of amateur journo-bloggers who -- we are told -- are no substitute for "real" journalism, as practiced by "real" journalists at "real" newspapers? Don't answer that.

That's a lot of questions floating around in one measly blog post -- one by an amateur idiot, no less, who's no substitute for his betters at The Daily Blab. Not that he particularly cares to be.

But I do have one answer. Hire more horny schoolmarms and let them talk dirty to -- and traffic in Favreian crotch shots with -- the guys they're screwing instead of their husbands, let them do it during office hours and on school computers . . . and you'll get people critically interested in public education again. They won't let Junior withing a country mile of a public school, but the more adventuresome of America's parents might like to make the Fun Teacher's acquaintance.

Not to mention the Fun Superintendent.


I MEAN, read this stuff. After I did, I kept thinking of the "nurse" who showed up at Ferris Bueller's house in the movie . . . but school administrator-y:

Click on email for higher-resolution version.

BUT CAN she take his (censored) home to meet the family? Is his (censored) in love with the Fun Superintendent, too, or is this just another "third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous"?

Mainly, I'm just picturing Nancy Sebring standing at the altar with a giant penis. Is that wrong of me?


I DON'T WANT to imagine how Nancy's Special Friend might attempt to type a reply if he did.

Click on email for higher-resolution version, go to Friday, Mar. 30.

O! Dear. Me.

You get the drift, and you get the staggering, incomprehensible stupidity involved in a) doing this s***, then b) emailing about it incessantly on the job, while c) using your company email account and your company computer, when d) you work for a public entity subject to your state's open-records law.

All entertainment value aside, Omaha is lucky a reporter in Des Moines was paying attention to this stuff and not susceptible to being "suckered," as the Los Angeles Times put it. We dodged a bullet.

Though one might feel compassion (above and beyond the compulsion toward snark) for a reputedly talented educator who now must oh-so-publicly -- not to mention pubicly -- stew in her own hormonal juices, one "fun" fact trumps all: Nancy Sebring is too much of a "Fun Superintendent" for her -- or our -- own good.

Stupid is as reckless does.

Thou shalt not take Obama's name in vain

I had a couple of teachers this stupid, ignorant and hostile when I was in school.

And I can't get the IQ points back that those fools cost me.

Some school systems tolerate this kind of willful incompetence and bullying. Those would be bad school systems, best avoided.

The problems with this moronic gasbag of a social-studies teacher at North Rowan High School in North Carolina -- as evidenced by the video -- begin long before she suggests the government of the United States hass veys of dealink vith doss vhat "slander" der Gott-Kaiser Barack Obama. That the woman still is employed (suspended with pay) by the Rowan Salisbury School System more than a week after her "discussion period" is all one needs to know about the Rowan Salisbury School System.

This "teacher" doesn't need firing so much as she needs defenestrating.

No, I didn't learn that word from those crappy teachers I had, just like I suspect no kid in the the presidential-respect commissar's class learned a damn thing about social studies this year.

Grace crashes high-school reunion

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We live in a world that doesn't easily grasp the concept of divine grace.

Likewise, we live in a world that doesn't believe it is fallen -- as in, "No, I'm not OK, and you're not OK, either." We think we're nice people, and that's all that counts.

I'm here to tell you that I'm a pretty big rat bastard and that you may be, too. Or that, at some point, you likely were.

A bunch of teen-age rat bastards circa 1987 just received grace, which led to insight, which led to repentance, which led to more grace . . . which may lead to healing for a woman who was horribly bullied in her California high school and for those who bullied her all those years ago.

God often shows up when and where you least expect Him. That's the reality of this MSNBC story . . . and that's the deeper reality that American mainstream journalism is constitutionally incapable of reporting.

A woman says a Facebook poem she posted about bullying has brought pleas for forgiveness from former classmates who tormented her at a California high school 25 years ago.

Now, some of those classmates want to make amends and have asked Lynda Frederick, 42, of Rochester, N.Y., to attend her 25th high school reunion in Escondido, Calif., on July 27, compliments of the Orange Glen High School Class of 1987.

“I am nervous,” Frederick told msnbc.com on Friday. “I am looking forward to seeing them, even knowing that what has happened has happened. I have forgiven those who have hurt me in the past.”

Frederick said she received phone calls, emails and Facebook messages from former classmates after she posted a poem on the Orange Glen High School Class of 1987 Facebook page.

In her poem, she wrote:

that little girl who came to school with the clothes she wore the day before
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had to walk to school while others rode the bus
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had bruises and was dirty
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who was always crying
instead of asking why.. you picked on her

“They’re all apologizing now for how I was treated,” Frederick said. “I had one man call me up and we talked for an hour on the phone. He cried and cried. I kept saying, ‘You can’t fix yesterday, so let’s fix today.’”

GRACE. It's what's for sinners.

Go to L. ('S' and 'U' are getting pink slips)

Louisiana's governor, Huey P. Jindal, believes in robbing Peter's budget to tide Paul over until the magical thinking pays off.

Louisiana's House of Representatives believes in a meat-ax.

Louisiana's college administrators believe they're about to get screwed. Yet again. Really badly.

Etymologists, after considering the Gret Stet, believe they really need a more descriptive word than "clusterf****" to put in their Funk & Wagnalls.

The Advocate's capitol-beat writers probably believe in a couple of pops before sitting down at the laptop to depress themselves and others:

LSU System Vice President Fred Cerise told the committee that additional cuts to the state’s public hospitals would result in reductions to the programs that train doctors and other health-care professionals.

He said an emergency room training program already is facing possible accreditation problems.

“We’re going to get back a list of things that’s going to be quite dramatic,” Cerise said.

The state’s public universities could lose more than $225 million in state funds next year. Those budget cuts would be on top of the $360 million hit higher education has taken since the decline in revenues to state government began four years ago.

“We will be on the brink of cataclysm,” said Interim LSU System President William Jenkins.

If the cuts stick, LSU will be in line to lose nearly $98 million in state funding next year including a $42 million loss for the main campus in Baton Rouge, according to numbers released by the Louisiana Board of Regents.

Jenkins estimated the LSU system would also have to furlough or lay off more than 1,300 employees.

The Southern System could see two more of its campuses declare exigency next year if changes aren’t made to the HB1, said Kevin Appleton, the system’s vice president of finance and business.

The $42 million in cuts the state’s community and technical colleges are facing — $3 million at Baton Rouge Community College — means the difference between putting medical equipment in their nursing classrooms or not, Louisiana Community and Technical College System President Joe May said.

I BELIEVE that Louisiana should put up state-line road signs that warn "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

When the captain heads for the lifeboats. . . .

When the ship's taking on water from 100 million leaks and the captain heads for the lifeboats, one can assume the next port of call will be Davy Jones' Locker.

And when that captain is Chancellor Mike Martin of the good ship Louisiana State University -- and when the governor and any number of legislators are packing icebergs and aren't afraid to use them -- optimism probably is no longer appropriate. Especially when the lifeboat Capt. Martin's about to jump into is bound for the SS Colorado State -- a lateral move at best.

Of course, it could be that Martin figures his political detractors are about to pull the plug on his tenure, and he wants to quit before he gets fired -- still not a good omen for a university that's suffered 100 million one-dollar leaks and is beset by politicians ready to poke a few more holes in the hull.

ACCORDING to The Advocate, which has been chronicling the shipwreck for some time now:

Informal talks between the two parties started in December, before getting more serious in early January when Martin said he made his first of three trips to Fort Collins, Co. [sic]

Martin said he has had only preliminary talks with CSU about the direction of the system and his compensation.

“Up until now, it’s largely been them examining me. Now I can begin to talk more deeply with them,” Martin said. “I’m going to compare the adventure I could have with them with the adventure I’m having right now at LSU.”

Martin’s time at LSU has been marked by nearly $100 million in state budget cuts. He previously said ongoing state budget cuts to LSU and all of higher education over the last three years have played a factor in his possible departure from Baton Rouge.

Martin, 65, said while his original plan was to retire when his LSU contract expires in 2013, he feels as if he as more to offer.

“The last four years I thought I’d hang it up, but I don’t feel that way anymore. There’s still some more tread on the tires.”

GOOD for Martin. I'm glad he still has tread left on the ol' four-plies.

Those about to slip under the whitecaps on Louisiana's sinking flagship university, I'm sure, would be damned happy to have even an inner tube to hang onto right now.

This is the point where one would say something about how Louisianians, and their so-called government, should be ashamed of themselves and their screwed-up priorities. One would if one thought Louisiana susceptible to shame.

It isn't.

It'll be sad when that great ship goes down.

The second-to-last refuge of scoundrels

If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, "policy" is the last way station before you get there.

And "policy" is why ditwad administrators at a ditwad school district in Carrollton, Ohio, won't let a high-school senior "walk" with his classmates at graduation this year.

You see, Austin Fisher has 16 unexcused absences this year -- the limit is 14 if you want to go to prom or participate in the graduation ceremony at Carrollton High School. And it doesn't matter why you're inexcusably absent.

For example, missing school to care for your cancer-stricken mother. Your terminally ill cancer-stricken mother. When you're all she's got.

WJW television, Fox 8 in Cleveland, reports:

Let Fish Walk.

The phrase is taking over the small town of Carrollton, from car windows to signs at local businesses. It’s a grassroots effort for 17-year-old Carrollton High School senior Austin Fisher, who has made it clear that his role as ‘student’ comes second to his role as ‘son.’

“He’s been my hero, my rock,” says Fisher’s mother, Teresa, as tears stream down her face.

Teresa has been battling breast cancer for six years. Last year doctors told her it was stage four–terminal. Through months of chemo and radiation, she leaned on Austin.

But being his mom’s lifeline meant sacrificing school.

“I missed a lot of school for that. Running her to cancer treatments, staying home when she was in bed–it’s just me and her at the house,” Austin explains.

The varsity baseball player, who worked two jobs when his mom was too sick to work at all, racked up 16 unexcused absences. That is two more than the Carrollton school policy will allow for a student to attend prom or walk at graduation.

The news was devastating.

“Those are the moments you cherish,” Teresa says. “I said, Austin, hold your head up, don’t be negative about it. I said, they’ll look at this situation, they’ll come around.”

But Austin says a meeting with his principal proved otherwise.

“They can’t change it. They said guidelines are guidelines. It won’t be changed. I can’t walk,” Austin explains.

A COUPLE of millennia ago, longstanding policy dictated that a woman caught in adultery be stoned to death. Jesus Christ thought better of that, stopped "policy" in its tracks and told the woman to "go and sin no more."

Of course, we know where stuff like that got Him.

Policy dictated it. Just like policy in the Carrollton school district is coming down like a ton of bricks on a teenage kid who knows WWJD . . . and then does it. Some things never change in this life.

I have a new strategy for the seniors of Carrollton High School -- "If Fish doesn't walk, none of us do."

Sometimes, life requires that you put your mortarboard and tassel where your mouth is. And, in the process, bring down the full weight of an entire town of enraged parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles down upon the temple of the holier than thou.


UPDATE: You can't make twits smart or scoundrels virtuous -- at least not in a day -- but you can turn the heat up so much on your average bureaucracy that it cries "UNCLE!" as a matter of self-preservation.

Late developments in the story come from The Repository newspaper in Canton, Ohio:

Austin said that although his story exploded in the last three days, he has known since January that he wouldn’t be permitted to walk at the ceremony.

Upon finding out, he said he immediately went to Principal Dave Davis, as did his mother, but Davis told them, “Rules are rules.”

Petitions were circulated in January, but were confiscated, Austin said.

On Monday, as the story went viral, classmates wore “Let Fish Walk” T-shirts to school.

That afternoon, Austin and Teri met with Fogler and the two building principals, Davis and Jason Eddy, along with an attorney for the district.

Teri agreed to not talk with the media as part of the agreement.

According to Austin, the group discussed the negative publicity the school has received.

“I never intended that,” he said emphatically.

He said the administrators argued the number of absences for the first semester to be 17 days, not 16.

In the end, the decision was reversed.

WHEN YOU genuinely scare chickenshits, they rarely go quietly (or penitently) into that good night, but they do go. That's because while they generally don't much care about doing good, they do dread looking bad.

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

AMEN.

Tell me lies, but hold me tight

What.

A.

Whore.

With "leadership" like this -- and, believe me, system president John Lombardi is how most "leadership" ends up at Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College -- the Gret Stet generally gets the kind of higher education its tarnished reputation can be proud of.

I read the Times-Picayune article below, and I wonder whether folks here in the Gret White Nawth might believe that my degree is from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

NAH . . . I'm not nearly well-educated enough.

Higher education leaders didn't testify Thursday morning as Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration presented its 2012-13 state spending plan. But, if a memo from LSU System President John Lombardi to his fellow LSU executives is a reliable forecast, then lawmakers and the public will hear no complaints from the state's largest university system.

The email, sent hours before the Joint Budget Committee convened and later obtained by The Times-Picayune, offers an inside view of the political machinations that precede the public budget process. And it parallels Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater's emphasis that the budget "protects essential services" in higher education and health care.

Lombardi did note some of the budget maneuvers that are part of a long-term negative trend for higher education: Whatever the bottom line, state taxpayers play a smaller and smaller role each year in direct appropriations to LSU and the rest of the higher education system.

To support claims that higher education is spare drastic downsizing, the budget counts tuition increases in the system's total state budget allotment.

The budget includes tuition paid through the college scholarship program, TOPS, and new tuition revenue from recent hikes the Legislature allowed schools to make for the upcoming school year.

It's the same budget framing the administration used in recent years to say they protected higher education while using grants from the 2009 federal stimulus act to prop up colleges and universities. But Lombardi did not complain, and he suggested that Jindal expects the entire higher education hierarchy to follow suit.

"In exchange for this good treatment," Lombardi wrote, "the administration would appreciate" higher leaders "recognize that the budget gives higher ed special treatment and thank the administration for their attention and concern for higher ed."

He said the administration wanted support for Jindal's plans to overhaul parts of the state retirement system, proposals that include increased worker contributions, effectively the payroll taxes for those employees since they don't participate in Social Security. Further, Lombardi said the administration preferred "coordinated" public relations messages so "all units of higher education respond in the same generally positive and supportive way to the Administration's efforts." That's also the preferred strategy, Lombardi suggested, of the LSU Board of Supervisors, which a Jindal-appointed majority now controls.

TIGERS put on the red light. Tigers put on the red light. Tigers put on the red light. Tigers put on the red light.

Tigers put on the red light.

I can haz apostrophe?

Molly the Dog can't believe it. She thought the humans were supposed to be the smart ones.

Silly dog.

I suppose it would be too much to assume that the canine on the Milk-Bone box is named Mini. I suppose it's too much to assume that both dogs on the boxes of Milk-Bone "Mini's" answer to Mini.

And I suppose it would be a really gigantic stretch, at this point, to assume the United States hasn't become a nation of blithering illiterates.

OR THAT in another 20 years, as Americans devolve into communicating by a series of grunts and clicks, creatures such as my little friend Molly will come to be known as "the articulate ones."

For all I know, she already may have better mastery of the difference between possessives and plurals than your average U.S. high-school graduate.

Come to think of it, that may explain why, after giving the box of treats a good going over, Molly looked at me, cocked her little head and asked "What the hell, Dad?"

Not. Helping.

Alas, after the embarrassing performance by my LSU Tigers tonight, I fear there just may not be enough booze in the world.

Alabama Coach Nick Saban is a genius. An evil genius, but a genius nevertheless. LSU's Les Miles? Not so much.

Listen. I can screw up just as badly at just about anything as the LSU coaching staff and quarterback Jordan Jefferson did Monday night at football. Please . . . somebody pay me $4 million fo f*** up just like Les did.

Better yet, how about the Gret Stet of Loosiana throw a few more million at its flagship university's actual reason for being, which is education. I am sure there are plenty of professors who can teach as bad a class as Les coached a game. I also am sure there are plenty of undergrads who can take as bad a final exam as Jefferson played a final game.

FOR GOD'S SAKE, show those f***-ups as much money love as boosters and fans show the football program. Then maybe Louisiana natives like me won't be thinking -- before the Big Game -- "Please, God, let the Tigers win. It's all we got."

Furthermore, I have theories about the inexplicable performance of LSU that are not based in reality. Well, at least not likely based in reality. Unfortunately, they make much more sense than anything that's remotely plausible -- of which I got nothing.

Congrats to hated rival Alabama. I wish the Tigers could have given you a game.

Screw football, I wish Louisiana could have given its children a national-championship future.

College in the ruins

Xavier’s mission is to educate. Our essential activity is the interaction of students and faculty in an educational experience characterized by critical thinking and articulate expression with specific attention given to ethical issues and values.

Xavier is a Catholic institution in the Jesuit tradition, an urban university firmly rooted in the principles and conviction of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the best ideals of American heritage.

Xavier is an educational community dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, to the orderly discussion of issues confronting society; and, as would befit an American institution grounded in the humanities and sciences, Xavier is committed unreservedly to open and free inquiry.

-- Xavier University mission statement

The University of Cincinnati serves the people of Ohio, the nation, and the world as a premier, public, urban research university dedicated to undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, experience-based learning, and research. We are committed to excellence and diversity in our students, faculty, staff, and all of our activities. We provide an inclusive environment where innovation and freedom of intellectual inquiry flourish. Through scholarship, service, partnerships, and leadership, we create opportunity, develop educated and engaged citizens, enhance the economy and enrich our university, city, state and global community.

-- University of Cincinnati mission statement

The Big Game vs. the budget game

Jeré Longman of The New York Times, by my reckoning, was seven years ahead of me at Louisiana State University.

He was a working-class kid from Cajun country. My daddy worked long decades at the Esso refinery and Enjay Chemicals in Baton Rouge -- now Exxon-Mobil but forever Standard Oil to my hometown.

We both worked on The Daily Reveille at LSU. He went all the way to the Times. Me, not so much.

But in a wonderful essay in Friday's newspaper, he speaks for me and for God knows how many other alumni for whom the Ole War Skule opened up worlds that were closed to our parents, and did it at a price good country folk and Baton Rouge plant workers could afford.

SOMETHING had to be said, and bless Longman's heart for saying it to the world:

I am forever grateful to L.S.U. for the opportunities given to me and countless other rural children, many of us the first in our families to attend college or graduate. Yet, 35 years after leaving campus, I worry that football success has obscured L.S.U.’s escalating academic ambition and its struggle to maintain excellence over the past three years in the face of about $50 million in state appropriation cuts and the loss of a tenth of its faculty.

“If we sent the football team out with only 10 players, how would people feel?” said John M. Hamilton, L.S.U.’s executive vice chancellor and provost.

Let’s be clear: budget cuts are not the football team’s fault. L.S.U. has one of the few self-sustaining athletic departments. It does not use state tax dollars or student fees. Instead, the athletic department contributes 5 percent of its budget to the university annually — about $4.25 million at this point — and has spent millions to help finance a band hall and business school.

There is nothing like Saturday nights at Tiger Stadium. Tailgating summons the best of Cajun culture — geniality, cooking and storytelling. And football success buoys a state sagging under the weight of poverty, educational lethargy and high rates of cancer, obesity and infant mortality.

“When we’re No. 1, it’s usually for something bad,” an L.S.U. fan named Rudy Penton once told me.

DO GEAUX NOW and read the whole thing.

I can has TV webbmasstr Jowb?

I'm not sure what disturbs me more about the state of mass media in these troubled times.

Is it the fixation on bread and circuses, like pointless audience polls (and please don't ask me about the fascination with Kim Kardashian)? Or is it the unrelenting daily confirmation that many members of the Fourth Estate seemingly teeter on the razor's edge of functional illiteracy?

Sorry, make that Forth e-State. Foreth Eestayte? Fowrthe Estayt?

I would say "bring on the new Dark Ages" . . . but I suspect they're already here.

Or is that "hear"?

Philm ate 11.

Look away, look away, look away, Teabagland

You know what John Boehner's problem is in getting his debt-ceiling bill through the U.S. House? Pell Grants.

Tea Party lunatic leges are furious, saying there's too much money set aside for helping poor kids attend college. Pell Grants, to a certain subset of the Republican Party, are this decade's "welfare Cadillac."

Now we know why the speaker of the House often needs a drink and a smoke.

Me, I'm pretty much just speechless. This takes some doing, and the Tea Party jihadists just did it.

I'll merely say the whole thing really reminds me of this.

I'M TURNING it over to The Hill newspaper now:

Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.

This has shocked some conservative House freshmen who say they were elected to cut spending, not increase it. Some House Republicans think of it as being akin to welfare.

“I really don’t understand why we’re increasing spending in a bill supposed to be cutting spending,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a freshman Republican from Maryland. “It was negotiated without the input of a lot of members.”

Harris has indicated to The Baltimore Sun that he will vote no.

House Republican leaders say they included concessions to Democrats in efforts to forge a compromise that could pass both chambers.

(snip)

The inclusion of the extra money for Pell Grants could cost Republican votes.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) has compared Pell Grants to “welfare”.

"So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century," Rehberg told Blog Talk Radio in April. "You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”

DEAR LORD, we humbly beseech Thee . . . HELLLLLLLLP!

America today

In case you had any doubt there's a class war going on, and that the middle class and below have giant targets on their backs, read on.

What the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate doesn't mention is that you at least get fed regularly in prison, which also serves as a permanent address. Look for Norwalk officials to spin their arrest of a homeless woman for sending her kid to one of their schools as actually being a compassionate act:

A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child's education.

Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.

McDowell's babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, was also evicted from her Roodner Court public housing apartment for providing documents to enroll the child at Brookside Elementary School.

The police investigation into the residency began in January after Norwalk Housing Authority attorney Donna Lattarulo filed a complaint alleging McDowell registered her son at Brookside, but actually lived in an apartment on Priscilla Street in Bridgeport.

As part of the evidence presented in the complaint, police received an affidavit of residency signed by McDowell and dated last September attesting that she lived in the Roodner Court public housing complex on Ely Ave.

When she was interviewed by police in the case, McDowell admitted to living in Bridgeport at the time she registered her son in Norwalk schools.

She said she knew a man who owned a home on Priscilla Street and he allowed her to sleep at the home at night, but she had to leave the home during the day until he returned from work.

She also acknowledged that she stays from time to time at the Norwalk Emergency Shelter when she has nowhere else to stay.

McDowell also admitted that Marques was her son's babysitter from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. after the boy got out of school.

JUSTICE without mercy is no justice at all.

Maybe ol' Jeremiah Wright was right, after all. Maybe God will damn -- indeed, is damning -- America.

Even God's mercy has its limits -- eventually -- and sooner or later the unrepentant sinner (or country) finds out exactly what dangerous a thing we do when we mindlessly pray "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Public school buses for Jesus

Back in my Louisiana hometown, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is considering a list of $37.4 million in budget cuts as a start on tackling what officials think will end up being a $39 million budget deficit.

Class sizes will increase. Three schools will close. Staffers will face furloughs. Direct bus routes -- 62 of them -- for gifted and magnet-school students will be eliminated.

One thing that won't be cut, however, is bus service for parochial schools.

Non-Louisianians might react to this with a great big "WTF???" They might wonder what the name of "separation of church and state" are taxpayers doing funding bus service for Catholic schools.

LOUISIANIANS, however, probably would wonder why taxpayers wouldn't provide school buses for parochial-school students. They'd argue that white kids ought to have just as much access to school buses as black ones.

Absurdity, after all, is so prevalent in the Gret Stet as to not even be noticed.

In today's newspaper, The Advocate reports on the abjectly insane machinations of what passes for self-governance in Louisiana with nary an eye roll:

Carnell Washington, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers, said parochial school children should also lose direct bus routes if magnet and gifted children lose there’s.

“If we have to give up something, they should give up something,” Washington said.

Dilworth said he struggles with some suggested cuts, including ending after just one year an experiment in year-round schooling at Claiborne and Park elementary schools, saving $4 million in the process.

“So I spend $4 million at those schools and then look at the cuts I’m going to have to make across the district … can I justify that? No,” Dilworth said.

Washington placed the blame for the cuts on Gov. Bobby Jindal whom he described as “selfish.”

“We are here because the state of Louisiana has refused to fund public schools,” Washington said.

GOD, I HOPE someone makes a federal case of this.

It probably won't be the commenters at the bottom of the article -- the one yearning for a return to "neighborhood schools" and another who wants the school system to be rid of all its "magnate" programs.

Gee, if I were in charge, I'd make every school a "magnate" school. Them magnates would have enough money to pay for their own damned school buses.

Kids: The other endangered species

McDonogh 35 High will have to remain batty for a while longer.

The variety of bat infesting the New Orleans school, you see, is an endangered species. You can't harm a little bat hair on their little bat heads. And now, apparently, the "exterminators" have to . . . not do that.

Instead, they have to catch and release all the remaining bats. Meanwhile, the endangered kids inside McDonogh 35 have to hope they don't come down with bat-scratch fever. Or something.

NOW, don't get me wrong. I don't want to kill the little endangered winged mammals -- bats have their place in this world, albeit not inside somebody's kid's school.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice if our society placed the same emphasis on the health and well-being of its children as it does on that of a bat?

Apparently, we can move heaven and earth not to kill the winged love children of Grandpa Munster, but -- in Louisiana, at least -- no one can lift a finger to make sure kids have clean, well-maintained and bat-free public schools.

In the Gret Stet, among other places, you have to pay the "private-school tax" for that. That's because, when it comes right down to it, we don't give a bat's ass about our children -- or the future they represent.

MAYBE INSTEAD of worrying about the bats in McDonogh 35's belfry, the now-kinder and gentler "exterminators" ought to be trapping the McDonogh 35 student body . . . and safely releasing it far, far away from the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

A school only Grandpa Munster could love

It was only a matter of time before the bat-s*** craziness of my home state extended to . . . bats. And s***.

In New Orleans, McDonogh 35 High School's flying-rodent problem has been well known for a while now. In fact, it made the TV news in January (above).

Plans were hatched (none of them, sadly, involving input from Grandpa Munster, who knows bats better than your average ghoul), and Orleans Parish School Board officials spoke earnestly about the school's winged dilemma.

On the television, doctors gravely noted that people can, like, catch stuff from being around bats -- and their droppings. Rabies, for one.

Of course, this wasn't deemed a problem, and district officials noted that a student was far more likely to die falling through a floor or when a ceiling caved in on him.

OK, Orleans school administrators didn't actually say that. It well could be true, but that's because the McDonogh 35's falling-down problem just might be worse than its bat-infestation problem.

Anyway, that was last month. Plans hatched. Anti-bat blitz promised. Students thought to be perfectly safe -- just so long as you didn't actually think about it.


NOW WE fast-forward to Friday's TV news.

It seems students are protesting outside the school and are refusing to go inside. Now, why might that be? Guess.

Actually, WWL television didn't have to. Let's go to the videotape . . . and the Channel 4 story below:

Students at McDonogh 35 High School refused to go to class early Friday morning, saying they are fed up with problems at the school, specifically bats in the building.

Students and parents say there have been bats inside the school for months and they've begged the principal to do something about it with no results, so Friday students stood outside the building demanding action.

Outstide the school students chanted, “No more bats, no more bats.”

Organized and determined, these high school students said enough's enough. They were teaching the first lesson Friday morning, and it was the right to protest. They say the school building is old and falling apart, and they've been living with that but say now its infested with bats and they can't learn.

“When I walked out the class and turned the corner,” said student Tatiyana Nodoselski, “I saw a white bat and it was coming toward me. It was in my face and I forgot the wall was behind me, and I ran, and it forced me into the wall. I just panicked.”

Parents share the frustration and stood alongside their kids demanding something be done immediately.

"The only thing we want to do is protect our children, this right here is our future and if they dont' care about it, we care about it," said Gail Greathouse, a parent.

Orleans Parish School Superintendent Darryl Kilbert said bats are common problem in older buildings in blighted neighborhoods. He said they will close the third floor of building, at least through Mardi Gras, to let pest remediation continue.

IF YOU'RE shocked, you must not be from Louisiana.

What is shocking, though, is that parents and students cared enough to actually raise hell. That may be a first.

Obviously, all that flappin', swooping and screeching must have driven them, uh . . . batty.