Politics Daily

Reform of 'No Child Left Behind' Calls for More Flexibility, Higher Standards

Linda Kulman — 2010-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Education, Obama Administration, Woman Up

It's been something of a parlor game among educators and Washington think-tank types to speculate on what the long-overdue reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act would -- and should -- eventually look like. (Perhaps knowing that's what passes for cocktail-party chitchat is the reason that President Obama's outline for education reform was released on Saturday night.) On Monday, Obama delivered his much-anticipated wish list for revamping NCLB to Congress, to largely positive reviews.

"A Blueprint for Reform," as Obama's outline is called, makes clear that one of the first things to be jettisoned is the name No Child Left Behind (in the same way that New York City real estate developers once tried to change the name of the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood to Clinton, to distance itself from unsavory associations).

But the changes Obama envisions for the nation's 10,000 schools go beyond cosmetics.

For more than a year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has told any group he's spoken in front of that the current education law (one of George W. Bush's signature pieces of legislation) is backwards -- that rather than being "tight on goals and loose on how you get there," it's the opposite. The "Blueprint" seeks to rectify that. As George Wood, a high school principal in Stewart, Ohio, and the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy, says, "There's a lot of [good] language about teaching, a lot of language about flexibility, a lot of language about districts being able to choose strategies that will work" for them.

For example, rather than just testing kids in English and math, the new outline allows schools to test in other subjects, recognizing the value that history, science, civics and other subjects bring to the student (and, expressing my own view here, perhaps in recognition of the richness that a well-rounded student brings to society).

In addition, the proposal shifts the focus from singling out under-performing schools to fostering a "race to the top" to reward successful reforms. It supports the expansion of public charter schools and calls for flexibility in how school districts spend federal dollars "as long as they are continuing to focus on what matters most -- improving outcomes for students." It also allows them to use federal grant funds "to provide differentiated compensation and career advancement opportunities to educators who are effective in increasing student academic achievement."

There is also much in the plan aimed at closing many of the achievement gaps that plague our schools. One example is that states and districts eventually would have to equalize resources (including top teachers), leveling disparities between high- and low-poverty schools.

Along with greater flexibility, the administration is setting a higher bar. The president has called for all students to be college- or career-ready by 2020 (as opposed to the current law, which mandates that students be proficient in math and English by 2014). The change is a recognition that with a higher dropout rate than those of most industrialized nations and a cripplingly high percentage of college freshmen enrolled in remedial coursework, there's an urgent need for high schools to prepare students for whatever comes next -- and ultimately for success.

And whereas another criticism of NCLB has been that some states compensate for sub-par student performance with low standards and easy tests, the new outline emphasizes stringent standards, ideally achieved by adopting the new national "core" standards released last week by the National Governors Association and chief state school officers -- or a tough-minded equivalent.

Mike Petrilli, who worked in the Bush administration and is now at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy group, writes that the proposals represent "a dramatic change in the federal role in education -- one that would be more targeted, less prescriptive, and use a lighter touch on the vast majority of America's schools."

Not everyone is happy, however. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has said that the proposal "places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers and gives them zero percent of the authority."

Dennis Van Roekel, head of the National Education Association (the nation's largest teachers union), complained in a statement that "the 'blueprint' requires states to compete for critical resources, setting up another winners-and-losers scenario." This would result, he said, in a "top-down scapegoating of teachers and not enough collaboration."

As the Forum for Education and Democracy's Wood points out, "Rhetoric always sounds good. It's the difference between campaigning and governing. This is a campaign document."

In other words, while this is a strong framework for the debate in the months to come, it's only that. Exactly how No Child Left Behind will be reformed -- and even the name the new law is given -- will be hashed out in the months to come in Congress.

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Jim DeMint and Marco Rubio, in Sync and on the Road in South Carolina

Mary C. Curtis — 2010-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Endorsements, Senate, Democrats, Republicans, Primaries, Fundraising, Obama Administration, Woman Up, 2010 Elections, Campaigns

To hear South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint tell it, it started with a conversation about a week after Marco Rubio, a former speaker of the Florida House, announced his challenge to popular Gov. Charlie Crist in that state's GOP Senate primary. Back in May, it was "David and Goliath," DeMint said recently. "I like that kind of courage."

DeMint said he was impressed by the "heartfelt" passion of the conservative Cuban-American candidate who "grew up with parents who lost their country." As Florida's August primary approaches, DeMint's early support for the man he said is "not the status-quo" Republican looks like a smart move. A Public Policy Polling survey, conducted March 5-8, has David leading Goliath, 60 percent to 28 percent, with 12 percent undecided. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, an early Crist backer, has backed off, announcing it will spend no money on his behalf.

DeMint and Rubio, meanwhile, are friendlier than ever. Both scored big with appearances at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). They have launched a joint fundraising Web site, suggesting $20 donations toward a $100,000 goal.

On Monday, they made three South Carolina stops on their "The Comeback Begins" tour, starting the day in Charleston and ending it in Greenville. I caught up with the two like-minded politicians at the second stop, a barbecue lunch in Columbia. I didn't get a chance to speak with Rubio or hear either speak at the event, which was closed to the press. About 100 people attended, according to DeMint's campaign spokesman, Ian Headley. (It cost from $35 for one attendee up to the $2,400 host level, which included lunch, a place in the photo line and recognition.)

But DeMint stepped outside for a few minutes, with a relaxed smile on his face and a "Marco 2010" pin on his lapel. His own profile has risen since his early opposition to President Obama. Last July, he predicted health care would be the president's "Waterloo," and when I asked about that on Monday, he told me: "I don't back off of it at all. It's true. This is a critical week for us, because it's important we stop the health care bill. If not, there's a wave of big government agenda items right behind it that are going to be harder to stop."

DeMint's quotable hard-line views have eclipsed what some in South Carolina see as the too conciliatory demeanor of the state's other senator, fellow Republican Lindsey Graham, whom I've heard disrespected by supporters of Rep. Joe ("You lie") Wilson at a rally, at Graham's joint town hall meeting with Sen. John McCain at the Citadel, and by Glenn Beck at a South Carolina book-signing. (Some will never forgive Graham his vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.)

DeMint must feel comfortable enough in his own re-election race to share the spotlight with Rubio, whose campaign has benefited from more than $340,000 from DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund. "If we can get Marco Rubio in Washington, he'll help us reshape the Republican Party," DeMint said.

A vocal fan of the Tea Party movement, he said the GOP needs to "embrace what's going on in our country because there's nothing small about it."

"This is a group out there that is saying exactly what we say we're believing," DeMint said. Of Republicans who are "stiff-arming" the Tea Party movement, "I just think they're out of touch." If the GOP doesn't respond, he said, "You'll see a third party."

"We can rebuild a strong majority and a majority that will actually do what we say we're going to do."

Mary Black, 58, has been a DeMint fan for a long time, even though she can't vote for him. She traveled from Statesville, N.C., to hear him and "up-and-comer" Rubio. Black, who, like everyone I spoke with, favors what she called a return to "the fundamentals of the Constitution," said she is "praying for our country every day."

"Everybody in health care knows our health care system needs work," said Hilda Barnwell, 62, a Columbia respiratory therapist. "Health issues can devastate a family." But she favors tort reform as a solution.

An Aiken, S.C., couple - "just say Debra and Dale" - said it's about taking the country back from the politicians. "They forget who sent them there in the first place," Debra said. And what do they think about Obama? "I don't think you can print it," Dale said.

Click play below to watch the Demint and Rubio's "The Comeback Begins" virtual town hall:

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Women's Vote Will Likely Decide British Elections

Delia Lloyd — 2010-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Voting, Woman Up, International, United Kingdom

Many things are still uncertain as we move toward the British general elections later this spring. But here's one thing everyone agrees on: This election will be decided by women.

Signs of women's strategic importance are everywhere you look. Both candidates for prime minister have assiduously courted the "Internet vote" by reaching out to the well-educated, middle-class stay-at-home moms who populate popular sites like Mumsnet. (There's even a new tag to identify these voters -- "cybermums" -- which bears resemblance to America's "soccer moms" of campaigns past.)

Last week, in an unprecedented move, the BBC's premiere political debate program, "Question Time," had an all-female audience to highlight women's concerns going into the election. And the grassroots Fawcett Society, the U.K.'s leading nonprofit for promoting equality between women and men, is spearheading an initiative titled "What About Women?" The campaign challenges all major political parties to outline their proposals as they affect women across a host of policy areas, including the economy, education and crime.

So far, at least, things seem to be favoring the opposition Conservative Party where women's votes are concerned. Although women in the U.K. historically tend to vote Conservative, Tony Blair was able to woo them to Labour's side in 1997. But the latest YouGov polls show women favoring the Tories, 37 percent to 29 percent, with men split evenly between the parties.

A lot of this has to do with the exceedingly charming and media-friendly David Cameron, who has -- against the wishes of some in his party -- promised to impose all-women shortlists in local elections to boost female candidates. Cameron is also helped by his beautiful and skilled PR-executive wife, Samantha, a poster-girl for the working mom (lest anyone accuse the Tories of being old-school where women are concerned).

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is, both by nature and by aspect, far more telegenically challenged than Cameron. (He famously fumbled a question about his favorite biscuit (cookie) on a Mumsnet chat.) Still, Brown is doing his best to woo women back to Labour. He recently argued that proposed Tory tax cuts would harm "middle-class mainstream mums." (He's referring to shadow Finance Minister George Osborne's pledge to make some of the government's current tax breaks for families means-based.) On Monday, Brown went so far as to promise women a legal right to home births.

It's still too soon to tell how all of this posturing for the women's vote will play out. (The election must be held by the first week of June.)

In the meantime, the opposition Liberal Democrats Party has an entirely novel strategy for winning over the hearts and minds of female voters. Last week, the party announced that one Anna Arrowsmith will stand for election as a member of Parliament. Ms. Arrowsmith made her name in Britain by making highly popular pornographic films -- for women. Now she'd like to fight against the sexualization of children and wants to improve the visibility in women in government. In her own words: "Someone had to do it . . . and I've got a lot of -- for want of a better word -- balls."

You go, girl!

Follow Delia on Twitter.

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Health Care's Fate Is Moment of Truth for 'No Drama Obama'

Jamie Stiehm — 2010-03-14T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Barack Obama, Health Care, Obama Administration, Woman Up

Aides nicknamed the president "No Drama Obama" as a compliment during the 2008 campaign. Barack Obama is certainly cool under pressure, but "Obama's Drama" is happening right now: he needs a win and he knows it. He's starting to speak his piece loud and clear, just what people wanted to hear . . . last year.

It's the drama of his lifetime, one that the Bard set the stage for. This is like Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt against France, where he and his band of brothers, "we happy few," proved the leader's mettle. Charm, charisma, good looks, eloquence: these things are not good enough armor to take into battle against the Republicans.

The wise men of Washington, even his own advisers, are starting to say this town likes a winner. The sages are getting restless to see if Obama is one.There are no quick victories for the plucking on the foreign policy horizon, so that leaves health care as the immediate measure of what Obama can do. Its fate hangs in the balance this week in the House where Obama and Democratic leaders believe they will prevail, although they don't yet have the votes.

The irony is that the advent of spring seems to have awakened the political passion in the president who took to the hustings with a strong populist call to arms on health care reform -- which is great, but late to the game.

In Pennsylvania and Missouri last week, he demanded an up or down vote on health care, saying "if not now, when?" He criticized the insurance industry, urging us not to give it more control over health care in America. He said the time for talk is over.

It's clear now the first year White House was way too mellow on health care -- waiting while Washington watched to see if Republican Olympia Snowe would melt in summer. Apparently, Maine snow does not melt, summer or not. The president and Senate Democrats did not need her vote to win, which made the spectacle hard to watch.

If they were children, Republicans would have sized Obama up as a lenient babysitter they could push around. When he was a member of the Senate club, he never pounded a table or broke a sweat, which made colleagues wonder about him. The Congressional Black Caucus is equally puzzled as to why he he has not taken more action to address unemployment in big cities like his own Chicago, according to the Washington Post. And as a former ambassador told me, the international community wishes he would wield more the power of the Nobel Peace Prize to get direct talks going toward a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Democratic lawmakers like the fighting form they see today -- but not even the president's best friends are sure of the outcome of Obama's Drama. Beautiful words won't be enough for the first time in his life.

A leading pundit, David Brooks of The New York Times, thinks the fault for the fix we're in lies not with the president, but with the post-modern polis. He casts Obama as a reasonable, realistic and progressive reformer trying to walk a very fine policy line between a rabid right and a disillusioned left, without much of a middle ground. And there's a lot of truth to that; if everybody's mad, maybe he's doing something right -- and left -- at the same time. Policy aside, the political stars in Washington still say this on the Ides of March: the president needs a win this last week of winter.

Obama must, to quote another Democratic president, force the spring.

Now health care is about so much more than health care.

Pure and simple, this is the testing ground for all of Obama's ambitions -- and for all in town and country to see whether he's a winner.

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Jerry Brown and Me: A Progressive's Lament

Frances Tobin — 2010-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

OAKLAND, California -- Jerry Brown has been part of the political landscape in my home state longer than I've been alive; by the time I was born, in 1985, he had already served two terms as governor, made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency, and one for the U.S. Senate. While I was growing up, he was California's state Democratic Party chairman, served two terms as the mayor of Oakland, where I live, and was elected attorney general, a position he still holds.

So when Brown, who's 72, announced earlier this month that he is running for the 2010 Democratic nomination to get his old job as governor back, the collective response inside the state and beyond seemed to be, "Yeah...and?"

Still, I wanted to be fair to Brown, and give him a chance as a candidate. After all, I hadn't followed politics avidly until after high school, and to review his entire career, there was a lot of territory to cover. As the LA Times' Michael Rothfeld put it, "For Brown, a Democrat who has spent almost his entire adulthood in public life, 40 years of quotes, speeches, televised interviews and debates are both a blessing and a curse as he seeks to recapture the job he first held in 1975."

With no shortage of material, I did what every Californian who plans on voting this fall should do: my homework. I read about Brown's policies and positions throughout the years.

Perhaps the most personally troublesome political relic of Brown's past to emerge from my self-assigned study project was his association with the infamous Prop 13, one of the most intractable issues in California to this day. Prop 13, which was passed when he was governor in 1978, was a referendum that capped local property taxes at one percent and instituted a requirement of a two-thirds legislative majority to raise statewide taxes. Brown was vehemently opposed to the measure, but when voters with 65 percent of the vote approved it, he quickly announced, "We have our marching orders from the people," and was soon labeling himself a "born-again tax cutter."

(The referendum was written by the anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis, who was so pleased with Brown's political turn-about that he ran TV ad's endorsing Brown's re-election bid. Brown even took on the nickname "Jerry Jarvis" for his eagerness to implement Prop 13, and an L.A. Times poll found that most Californian's believed Brown had always supported the measure.)

It is adroit calculations such as this that has ensured and maintained Brown's political relevancy. As George Skelton of the LA Times put it, "Brown is a political Darwinist with an acute ability to adapt and survive."

Perhaps in another economic climate, in another era, in some alternate reality, Brown's candidacy as the lone Democrat on the ticket would thus be enough. But with the daunting -- and potentially even catastrophic -- challenges facing our state, I see him as a completely uninspiring and unexciting career politician who owes his political longevity mostly to his instinct for self-preservation.

As a progressive, I wanted to maintain a sense of optimism about this coming November. I don't know that there's a state where residents have more reason to be distrusting and disappointed in their current government than we in Californian. Many of my peers and I believed that if there were ever a time when Californians would be open to fundamental, structural change within Sacramento, it would be now. After all, California is facing not only an economic crisis but also a crisis of confidence, and real change -- repealing Prop 13 would be a great start -- is clearly required.

But Brown has made it just as clear that he is not interested in running on a platform dedicated to such change. In the video he used to announce his candidacy, he pledged to raise no taxes unless such a change was voter-approved. He told SF Gate that he "can live with the current two-thirds majority needed to pass new taxes and state budgets, and that he does not believe changes are needed in the Proposition 13 tax initiative." He told the L.A. Times " "I'm not going to advocate messing with 13. That's a big fat loser." "

That Brown recognizes what is and is not politically popular, and runs his campaign based on the former, is not surprising. One silver lining in the race for governor is that because the stakes are so enormous for California, this is entirely an issues-based election. But because Brown is running unopposed by any other Democrat, there is no one (but the voters) to call him out on tough issues.

I won't be staying home in November, and continue to hope Brown somehow rises to the occasion and recognizes that this election is his chance to break with his political chameleon past. But from everything I've seen so far, Jerry Brown is just not that guy.

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In Defense of Sean Penn

Donna Trussell — 2010-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

The outspoken director, actor and political activist Sean Penn is no stranger to controversy. Now, however, he's insulted the rectal cancer folks. At least, that's the conventional wisdom. But what did Penn actually say?

In response to CBS reporter Lara Logan's question on how Penn felt about criticism of celebrities in Haiti, Penn replied, "Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer, yeah... But I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it."

Sean Penn is not one for moderation. Just a week ago on comedian Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time," Penn said that reporters and pundits who refer to Hugo Chavez as a dictator should go to jail. (Like Christopher McCandless, the quixotic seeker whose fatal trek to Alaska Penn memorialized in the 2007 film "Into the Wild," Penn never lets an opportunity to overstate, overdo or over-dramatize pass him by.)

But come on, people. To me, a survivor of ovarian cancer, the comment sounds like an off-the-cuff remark meant as a joke. In Web World, of course, no such remark goes unpunished. Washington Examiner reporter Tara Palmeri ambushed Penn at a charity event. Palmeri asked, "How have you seen your critics change since you mentioned that they should die of rectal cancer?"

Palmeri was asked to leave. She's lucky Penn didn't throttle her. I might have. (And no, literalists, I don't mean that in any concrete sense; ever heard of a figure of speech?)

Here's the thing: Many cancer survivors, like myself, find all the squirming and recoiling to the word "rectal" either amusing or annoying. The only cancer-related word that would make me wince is "recurrence."

I feel for rectal cancer survivors. I'll bet most would try to coast along with a simple "I have cancer" to friends and acquaintances. But that attempt at obfuscation would be in vain, since it would be only a matter of time - ranging from one second to one minute - before people inquired what kind of cancer.

Lucky me by contrast to have had ovarian cancer - located in the abdomen, but still rather vague. Certainly not as visually suggestive as testicular. Aside from my atrocious survival statistics, the worst thing about ovarian cancer was the puns of advocacy groups devoted to "ovar'coming" cancer.

Ovarian awareness ribbons are colored a pretty teal. Guess what the initial ribbon color for colorectal cancer was? What would be the worst, most tasteless choice? That's right! (Colorectal survivors, understandably appalled, switched to navy blue.)

Back to Sean Penn: The man is a genius. My years as a film critic proved that to me, even when you limit the scope to his acting ability alone. And when I saw Penn's 1998 interview on the Bravo channel's Inside the Actor's Studio, I knew he was an artist rather than a craftsman. Among hacks and sell-outs (in an industry that handsomely rewards both) Penn fights an uphill battle for integrity and transcendence.

Near the end of the hour-long program, he talked about Charles Bukowski, who, Penn said, found poetry in the ordinary details of living without exaggerating for dramatic effect. Penn said that while you may feel exhilarated during a movie, if you feel more alone after you walk out,

"then the director has crossed us. And I don't think there's any room for a film like that. As entertaining as that [movie] might be, even when we think back and want to excuse it - 'well, when I was a kid I saw a movie like that and I loved it' - I think we're less people than we would have been had we not seen it. So that's what I love about the people who found poetry without creating a world we can't touch.

In the 12 years since Penn said those words, movies have only become more computer-generated and unreal. Of course, the very qualities that make him a great actor also make him intemperate. But whether you agree or disagree with his politics, Penn has consistently stood up for the dignity of art and artists.

He could have done so quite comfortably from a villa in the south of France or an apartment overlooking Central Park, but instead he did it again and again in the context of the world's poor, the powerless, and the suffering.

Sorry, Sean Penn haters. You're just plain wrong.

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Burglarized but Unbowed: They Stole Nothing of Value

Mary C. Curtis — 2010-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Crime, Woman Up

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A home invasion. That's what they call it if the family is home when the robbers come. But even if you've stepped out for an hour (thank God for the dentist), it still feels like an invasion. Someone kicked in my door, ran through my house, and stole things, the most important being peace of mind.

Five minutes, in and out, the police said. It's a thief's job. Some job.

First of all, you feel violated. You spot the pillow on the floor, realize that someone used the case to haul off your laptop and you know you will never again be able to lay your head on that pillow and catch a peaceful nap.

You do an inventory of the jewelry they swiped -- not a diamond or rare stone in the bunch. But there's the pin from your sister-in-law that went perfectly with your brown sweater. And the clip-on earrings collected over a lifetime, many of them valued presents.

The gray cloth earrings - gone. The woman who insisted you take them told you about life with her husband, a Secret Service agent performing advance work in Dallas on the day President Kennedy was shot. He recalled that day in the few clear moments amid his Alzheimer's fog. He gradually forgot everything and everyone -- except his wife. You wrote about it all in a front-page story that she displayed at his funeral. That rush of approval and love you felt as she cried and pressed her gift into your palms - well, that's something the thief couldn't touch.

We have a new door now, and I've learned of too many similar stories. Some say it happened because times are tough. I don't know about that. My father, on his own at 13, worked two and three jobs if he had to. Are times tough now? He lived through the Depression.

But gradually, I've realized how lucky I am.

The thief may have some of the notes locked in my computer. But I have the mind that put them there.

He didn't get the chance to hurt me, my husband or my son. We have each other and the values that would never allow us to take something that belongs to someone else.

The thief has things, only things.

A version of this column was broadcast by Mary C. Curtis on "Fox News Rising" Charlotte.

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'Life' on Screen: 22 Hours of Nature at its Most Riveting

Ria Misra — 2010-03-12T15:09:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

The United Nations has declared 2010 the Year of Biodiversity, audience members at the Washington, D.C., screening of "Life," the Discovery Channel's new 11-part series, were reminded this week.

It was a fitting introduction for the documentary, which looks at some of nature's most unusual creatures, while worldwide, it is estimated that three species go extinct every hour -- a rate that has many concerned about environmental impacts, as well as the possibility of a planet that is increasingly less diverse.

"Life's" producers say they filmed over 3,000 days on every continent to make up the approximately 22-hour series, which is co-produced by the BBC. The first episode, which premiered Wednesday night at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, focused on the "challenges of life." The final episode is devoted to how filmmakers managed to get their shots for the documentary.

The nine middle episodes focus on reptiles, mammals, fish, birds, sea creatures (including the first video of a humpback whale mating battle), predators and prey, bugs, plants, and primates.

The shots in "Life" are beautiful and often stunning. But, at their best, they are also occasionally profoundly weird -- a description that feels particularly apt when watching the process by which the stalk-eyed fly comes by its stalks.

The flies are not born with their characteristic wide-eyed look, but instead, inflate their eyes up from their heads like tiny balloons, which then harden into long stalks. It's a serious business because, like Wyatt Earp scanning the length of the O.K. Corral at high noon, a stalk-eyed fly newly armed with stalks will soon go eye-to-eye with its counterparts for what can only be described as a high-stakes staring contest.

The winner will be rewarded with the very best that stalk-eyed fly life has to offer, while the loser will slink off into the jungle alone. It's a high-drama moment for a bug.

It's also a moment that leaves you feeling for the camera people who spent days crouched in the mud with camera pointed at a cocoon waiting for nature to unfold.

Oprah Winfrey narrates the series, which will start to air on Discovery on March 21.

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What Begets a Blond, Blue-Eyed Terror Suspect?

Bonnie Goldstein — 2010-03-12T10:02:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

In a socially acceptable version of her life, Colleen Renee LaRose, the alleged modern-day Mata Hari of the Internet, who was charged with four federal crimes Tuesday, would have been more successful and happy as a reality-show contestant. Instead, to her deep discredit, the Pennsburg, Pa., woman with too much time on her hands allegedly turned to do-it-yourself jihadism.

How she got to that point is a bit of a mystery. Born in 1964, she was married at 16 to Sheldon Barnum, who told the Washington Post his long-ago life with young Colleen was forgettable. "What do I remember about her? Nothing. Wasn't nothing to remember." Public records indicate she divorced and married again, to a man named Rodolfo Cavazos in Tarrant, Texas. So far, no reporters have dug him out of obscurity for an equally dismissive comment.

In the late 1990s, during her mid-30s, the transplanted Midwesterner (she was born in Michigan) was arrested in Texas for driving while intoxicated. She moved around, turning up in small towns named Ferris, Mineral Wells and San Angelo. She got divorced again, was busted for passing bad checks and eventually moved east to Pennsylvania, where she got into more trouble. The Post reports that in 2002 she faced charges of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The New York Times says in 2005 she attempted suicide.

Maybe she was looking for a commitment after an online romantic attachment went sour? According to CNN, in February 2008 LaRose, using the online name "Fatima," wrote on the social network hi5: "my love you make me so happy!! Inshallah, I cannot put into words how much you make my life complete!! One day I will be at your side as your wife and never leave." Whether it was for love or sympathy, nobody yet knows, but she was apparently seduced by intrigue and passion in the manner of a tragically misguided John le Carre heroine (think: "The Little Drummer Girl" or "The Constant Gardener").

The Internet can connect you, if you are so inclined, with fringe-extremists who might think, for example, that killing Lars Vilks is a legitimate cause for justice. (Vilks is the cartoonist whose 2007 political drawings of the prophet Mohammed sparked jihadist Web sites to offer $150,000 rewards to anyone who'd travel to Sweden and "slaughter him like lamb.") LaRose took to posting on sites typically watched by the SITE Institute and other folks monitoring such traffic 24/7. Unsurprisingly, extremists reportedly found her, and about the same time, the FBI became curious about her, too. The founder of a Web site that researches online activities of militant groups told the New York Times that LaRose made little effort to hide her identity and seemed to be using the radical sites as a dating service. "It was like she was looking for a soul mate."

While this was going on she was working as a caretaker for an elderly man. Last August, the FBI says, she "knowingly took the United States passport of K.G. without his permission in order to provide it to the 'brothers.' " Kurt Gorman, her elderly client's son, was at the time her live-in boyfriend; it was his U.S. passport that went missing. On Wednesday, Gorman told CNN: "She wasn't no rocket scientist. She was limited in her capacity, so I'm not sure how much she thought she could do on her own."

Plenty, apparently. According to her federal indictment, LaRose posted a video as "JihadJane" on YouTube in June 2008, announcing she was "'desperate to do something somehow to help 'the suffering Muslim people.' " Within a few months, conspirators in Asia and Europe got in contact with her, wondering about her "desire to become a martyr in the name of Allah." Soon, in e-mails monitored by the FBI, she was allegedly plotting "to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe." Before long, the indictment spells out, she had "insinuated herself into an online community" hosted by her intended victim, and become a "citizen" of Vilks' artists' enclave in Sweden. She e-mailed a conspirator that "only death will stop me here that i am so close to the target!"

What in fact stopped her was her arrest. She has been jailed in a federal facility in Philadelphia since October and her indictment was unsealed this week.

Whether Colleen LaRose was driven by loneliness, instability, or true conviction is an open question, but officials allege something fueled her "conspiracy to kill in a foreign country" and "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists." Though even amateur terrorists can do terrible damage to innocent lives, it appears that nobody was harmed by her (hardly harmless) activity. Seven other conspirators were arrested in Ireland Wednesday in connection with her case. LaRose faces an arraignment next week.

In a bit of good news for the would-be martyred matron, if she doesn't end up in a penitentiary for the rest of her life, she would probably now qualify for a spot on "Celebrity Apprentice."

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Divorced at Age 10: Nujood Ali's Stolen Childhood

Linda Kulman — 2010-03-12T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up, Culture, Yemen

The astonishing story of Nujood Ali, the 10-year-old Yemeni child bride who bucked her culture by demanding a divorce from her abusive husband, left me feeling a combination of anger and admiration.

I was angry that any society could place a third-grader in that nightmare, but I was also thrilled that Nujood, a child who still likes to watch "Tom and Jerry" cartoons and play with dolls, had the moxie to extricate herself.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote last week, and Glamour magazine wrote last year, Nujood was married off by her parents to a man three times her age, who vowed to wait for sex until Nujood had had her first period, but instead raped her on their wedding night. Using her bread money to hire a taxi to take her to the local courthouse one day, Nujood was lucky enough to run into a lawyer who agreed to represent her for free. "I hate the night," she told the lawyer.

Nujood's memoir, "I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced," a best-seller in France, was just published in this country.

Besides making my stomach flip, Nujood's story also made me think about how childhood is stolen or simply lost, not just in Yemen, but in many cultures, including our own. We love to say in the United States, as we have for generations, that children grow up too fast these days -- and it's true, given that 7.1 percent of kids are having sex before age 13.

Besides their constant exposure to sex, there's pressure to build a resume early on in order to get into a good school, which requires excelling at all things while also developing a passion for baseball or quantum physics or gardening and then being able to talk about it coherently. (If not to try to get a leg up for their babies, why else are those "educational" videos that my colleague Ria Misra recently wrote about so popular among parents?) Then there are the legions of children suffering from adult diseases such as Type II diabetes.

Growing up in America is now defined by a continuum, where age is blurred and there's no clearly defined period when children inhabit a world and culture separated from adults.

And at the other end of the continuum, adults these days don't ever fully seem to grow up. Perhaps it's because we try to compensate for being on the fast-track as kids by searching for that lost childhood. A couple of generations ago, people graduated from high school or college, got married, and set up housekeeping on their own. But now it's not uncommon for overgrown kids to move back in with their parents at age 26. Or there's my case, where a few years back I went to visit my mom and dad with my new baby and, as it got later, wondered when my mom was going to put the baby to bed. Suddenly I remembered, Oh, I'm the mom! Just to make it clear, I engaged in that magical thinking in my 40s, when I had been an adult, at least chronologically, for 20 years.

The stories I've been hearing lately of parents partying with their college-age kids down at the fraternity house or the fact that my 4-year-old daughter and I dress much the same in leggings and boots are other examples of the same phenomenon.

Children and adults in other countries are mushed together, too, but for different reasons. Nujood wasn't married off because her parents thought it was a great idea; they needed the dowry--roughly $750 to feed their large family. They also considered the frequency of rape and kidnapping of young girls in Yemen, including another of their daughters, and thought a husband would keep Nujood safe.

It's hard for me to imagine my most adult-like friends acting more bravely than Nujood. But this little girl paid a heavy price: Nujood got her divorce, but she still lost her youth.

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'Bones' Inspiration Kathy Reichs Inspires Girls in Science

Mary C. Curtis — 2010-03-09T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up, Culture

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - We occasionally like to highlight accomplished women on WomanUp, even when their busy and organized schedules leave us feeling dizzy and a bit envious. I caught up with Kathy Reichs - forensic anthropologist, academic, best-selling author and inspiration for a hit television show - before her talk at a Book and Author dinner at Queens University of Charlotte.

Reichs and her family live here, where she is on the faculty at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. But she spends a lot of time traveling - to Montreal, where she is a consultant for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec - and on the day after Monday night's event, to California, where the TV show "Bones" is filming the first script she's written.

The show's title character is based on both Reichs and Temperance Brennan, star of her books. On the show, Temperance is a forensic anthropologist who solves crimes during the day and writes novels in her free time - books whose heroine is named Kathy Reichs. Got it?

As a producer, the real Reichs reads every script - for the science, mostly, she told me before her talk. She gets a kick out of all the e-mails and notes she from girls and young women interested in following her in a field that had few female role models when she started. An unscientific survey confirmed many girls count "Bones" among their favorite TV shows because Reichs stand-in Emily Deschanel is brainy, not just because co-star David Boreanaz is cute. Reichs said she deconstructs the sexy plot lines with young fans to point out the science. "Did you know that part was chemistry?" she says to them. "And that was physics?"

Reichs said her TV self is "younger." Reichs is funnier, her banter breezy and sharp -- or as breezy and sharp as you can be while describing sifting through skeletal remains. She explained how the bones of victims told her a serial killer in Canada was either a butcher or an orthopedic surgeon, or "perhaps it was both," she said she joked at a gathering of orthopedic surgeons.

The fictional cases can't compare to what she's handled in real life, though. Reichs testified at the United Nations tribunal on genocide in Rwanda and helped exhume a mass grave in Guatemala. Her hardest assignment, "physically and psychologically," she said, was identifying remains found at Ground Zero after 9/11, "13-hour shifts, digging through rubble. Everybody was fragile and wanted to help."

As though to prove her point that she doesn't believe in writer's block, Reichs is working on a young adult series with her 31-year-old son, a "recovering attorney." Her latest book is "206 Bones," named for the number in the human body; "Spider Bones" is due in August.

And, she said, no one calls her "Bones" -- "more like doc."

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Social Networking: Obama's New Weapon Against Iran, Cuba, Sudan

Alex Wagner — 2010-03-09T06:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

Facebook is mightier than the sword, or so it would appear with a new policy announced this week in Washington. On Monday, the White House said it would allow companies, including Microsoft and Yahoo, to export such technology as instant messaging, chatting and photo sharing to some of the world's most censorial countries, including Sudan, Iran and Cuba, in the hope that increased access to information and greater communication among citizens will establish more tolerant societies and progressive governments.

Specifically, The New York Times reports that the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), run through the Department of the Treasury, will issue a general license to companies providing the "export of free personal Internet services and software geared toward the populations" in each country. Previously, these companies had feared violating existing sanctions and were thus hesitant to send their technology overseas. In line with her previous assertion that an uncensored Internet is a basic freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posited that blog posts and viral videos are critical weapons in the fight against repression.

This policy is very good -- if not great -- news for journalists and advocates in countries where access to Twitter might one day lay the groundwork for regime change. I've written before about the importance of such Google applications as Gmail and Gchat as a vital means of communication for underground activists, and this latest news can only be greeted with open arms by those who ordinarily find themselves handcuffed by repressive regimes.

Still, it's not exactly open season for the opposition movements. In mid-February, the Iranian government slowed Internet access to a crawl in advance of presumed protests. Opposition tweets -- so prevalent in the aftermath of the country's 2009 election -- were largely silenced. Though social-networking applications will soon be widely accessible in a way they haven't yet been, to connect to the Internet, you still have to go through Big Brother.

It's worth noting that this policy is coming at a time when the president is showing an increasingly confrontational attitude toward rogue regimes he once said he could and would engage with. Secretary Clinton minced no words when she condemned Chinese cyberattacks on Google: This was as much a call for free speech as it was a stinging repudiation of Chinese policy. A lot of folks think the president and his team have backed themselves into a corner on the heels of a failed engagement policy -- in this context, it's interesting to see what weapons they are now pulling into their arsenal. What remains to be seen is whether the administration's stance on Google, Twitter and Facebook is an opening salvo in a tougher-foreign-policy campaign or merely saber rattling.

In the meantime, here's to hoping that the reporters, freedom fighters and human-rights activists around the world start downloading these new applications with gusto. May their wireless hot spots be plentiful and their connections crystal clear.

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Parents, Wake Up -- 'Educational' Videos for Babies Don't Work

Ria Misra — 2010-03-09T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Education, Woman Up

Color me surprised. Another study has come out saying that educational videos for infants are not helpful, and might be harmful. This latest study is set to be published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine in May -- and it reports that educational DVDs aimed at infants are not likely to boost their word power.

Yes, I too am shocked (shocked!) that sticking your 1-year-old in front of the DVD player for an hour a day will not, in fact, turn her into a prodigy.

The APAM study is not the first with this finding. One done almost three years ago by researchers at the University of Washington and published in the Journal of Pediatrics said that infants who watched educational DVDs not only didn't pick up vocabulary any faster than their counterparts, but in some cases they were slower. One of the founders of Baby Einstein multimedia products filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the university, demanding that researchers provide him with their raw data and methods. But Baby Einstein offered customers refunds for their videos last fall -- an offer, The New York Times notes, that came after the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and threatened a class action lawsuit, saying that claims the DVDs were educational ran counter to recommendations that infants not watch television.

As the Times notes, the videos were popular enough in 2003 that a third of babies between 6 and 24 months old had watched one. So, the better question may be not whether a DVD can teach an infant vocabulary, but why parents kept buying them.

One possible reason is that they probably seemed to work.

Here's why: The videos are recommended for babies 12 to 24 months old, and 18 months is generally when a child's grasp of language expands at a markedly faster clip -- so much so that researchers from the University of Iowa who looked at language acquisition during that age termed it the period of "vocabulary explosion." So, many parents do see their baby's vocabulary beginning to build, though it has nothing to do with the videos.

Researchers in the APAM study did note at least one correlation with vocabulary scores: Infants who watched DVDs scored lower on a vocabulary test as children. Our vocabulary word of the day: irony.

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News Flash: Your Diet May -- or May Not -- Beat Cancer

Donna Trussell — 2010-03-08T10:12:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

Diet may play a part in ovarian cancer survival rates.

Hey, Los Angeles Times, if you're going to use "may," the most powerful weasel word ever invented, you don't have to settle for the humble vegetable. The sky's the limit!

Butter-pecan ice cream may prevent cancer. A Maui vacation may keep cancer from spreading. Daily massages may prevent recurrence. Especially free massages, given by reluctant relatives.

On the other side of the equation, housework may cause cancer. Also clerical work.

I'd expect weasel words in a blog, since most bloggers don't get paid. Plowing through a thicket of medical/legal language would not be my definition of a fun or relaxing way to spend a weekend. Nor is waiting for medical experts to return your calls.

But the L.A. Times pays, doesn't it? Probably, but in the last couple of years newspapers have cut staff and consolidated beats. When they weren't closing their doors, that is. The free classifieds of Craig's List busted the monopolies newspapers enjoyed in the late 20th century, and advertising revenues fell off a cliff.

As expected, journalism migrated online, but not without first shedding quality. Experienced, meticulous reporters cost money. Now publishers have at their disposal an army of hungry free-lancers (a.k.a. laid-off journalists) and reams of search engine data to tell them what to write.

Several companies have sprung up around this business model, but one is gaining on the others, according to Daniel Roth in his Wired magazine post "The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model."

By summer, Demand Media will be publishing 1 million chatty, newsy how-to articles and videos per month.

Writes Roth, "To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else."

Citizen journalism takes up some of the slack, but for every Neda video or footage of Sully belly-landing in the Hudson River, there are thousands of innocuous videos of cats riding on vacuum cleaners or instructions on how to draw a Greek helmet. These items may entertain and inform, up to a point, but they do not help us understand the world we're in or the challenges we face.

On the Michigan-centric blog freefromeditors, the post "What Went Wrong" caught my eye. It begins with a bang: The powers that be "announced the shuttering of one newspaper and neutered three others."

A commenter named Dave Forsmark complained about the "man on the street" interviews that pass for knowledge, but are not. He found one story particularly galling:

"They talk to some 'holistic healer' . . . the Michigan president of some kind of medical society. When you look it up, it had a half dozen members in the state! He asserts that the [truck] plant is definitely making people sick. Then they start calling people who live by it, and one woman with MS says she hadn't thought of it before, but now she wonders if it is making her worse. Then they call another woman who is told this doctor says the plant is making people sick, who says something like, 'I guess that's the price you pay for jobs.' Not a single real scientific source was consulted."

At least the L.A. Times cancer/diet post, which was based on a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, begins with science. But there are other problems.

The study followed a tiny sample. The Times says 351, but the correct number is 341, according to the abstract. Only 341 women out of the 21,550 in the United States diagnosed annually. In one year, 14,600 will die from ovarian cancer. With statistics like that, it's no wonder people grasp at straws. Or carrot sticks. Hell, I'd eat a bag of turnips every day if I could be sure it would keep cancer at bay.

Another problem is that the diets are self-reported. Who would admit they cruise the doughnut shop every morning? Also, I don't know if this study controlled for other healthy or unhealthy habits like smoking and exercise. The L.A. Times doesn't tell me. You could read the abstract, but the language is obtuse.

However, even I understood the study's conclusion: "Prediagnosis adherence to diets that reflect recommendations for optimal nutrition and cancer prevention may have benefits that continue even after an ovarian cancer diagnosis."

There's that pesky "may" again, even for a statement as lame as that one. Gee, food that's high in nutrition may be good for you. Who knew?

WebMD, reporting on the same study (conducted by researcher Therese Dolecek), gives a more detailed picture in "Good Diet May Aid Ovarian Cancer Survival." Milk and processed meat once again get whacked. But overall, the WebMD story backed off the study's conclusion:

"High intakes of fruits and vegetables evaluated together didn't make enough of a survival difference to be significant from a statistical point of view, the researchers found. It's not clear, either, exactly how a healthy diet may lengthen survival in those with ovarian cancer, Dolecek says. 'You might have a stronger immune system,' she says, or 'your overall health status may be better.' "

What? It sounds like the study's author is contradicting the study's own conclusion, not to mention the headlines in L.A. Times and WebMD.

Another recent article, "Stage IV Cancer Without Chemotherapy," in the Suffolk News-Herald features a Virginia woman diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer in April 2009. She tried chemo but didn't care for it. No surgery either. Instead she went to Colorado to fast for eight days, and then changed her diet to raw food.

"I felt that for me, if I wasn't going to survive the cancer, I didn't want to be sick on my last day because of the chemo. I'm convinced now that was the right decision for me. . . . When I first started telling people the Lord was going to heal me, I didn't say it with a whole lot of conviction, but now I know it is."

She had another CT scan in December. "It didn't show they'd gotten smaller," she said, but the doctor was "amazed they hadn't grown."

I'll bet.

My beef is not with the cancer patient. She took stock of her situation and made a decision. It's her body and her life. My beef is with the reporter and, by extension, the newspaper. They had a chance to educate the public by balancing the patient's comments with a statement from an oncologist or scientist.

You could argue this is a feature story. Why not keep it light? As long as the patient is happy, who cares?

You could also argue that the story would be more appropriate for a church newsletter or a sales brochure on alternative cancer "cures" than a newspaper. How do we, without the benefit of aggressive reporting, separate fact from fiction when so many entities stand to profit from vague claims and outright distortions?

Cancer is complicated. Often we don't know what causes it, or what we can do to prevent it. Doctors make you well by first making you sicker, and even then the treatment may fail.

What a bummer. Easy to see why people don't like that story. Even if it's the truth. Especially if it's the truth.

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America the Peevish: When Debate Descends to Name-Calling

Mary C. Curtis — 2010-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Republicans, Barack Obama, Religion, Nancy Pelosi, Gaffes, Humor, Media, Gay Rights, Taxes, Race, Immigration, Terror, Sarah Palin, Obama Administration, Woman Up, Culture, 2010 Elections, Conservatives, Harry Reid, News Media, Campaigns, Ethics, al Qaeda, Tea Party

Demonize your opponent. Technically, it's nothing new. But Republicans are finding that it is possible to go too far, especially if you get caught. Party leaders are backing away from a fund-raising document that suggests using "fear" to motivate donors and paints Democrats as cartoon caricatures: President Obama is the Joker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Scooby-Doo.

Ruh-ro!

It's pretty hard to get worked up over such excess, as Democratic outrage resembles Claude Rains' sly Captain Renault in "Casablanca," shocked that such dirty dealings are going on.

But it is depressing that attacks that start by parsing complex issues -- from health-care reform to national security concerns -- quickly descend into school-yard taunts. The GOP PowerPoint, first reported by Politico, was catchy and occasionally funny, but it offended because it's ultimately so silly. If you are comfortable in your beliefs, isn't that enough?

Disagreement has become a battle to the death, with the other guy not just wrong but inhuman, dangerous even. It's easy to put horns on his head and to exact retribution whenever possible.

Though I have no doubt the intentions are based on Church doctrine on one side and civil rights on the other, it was troubling that the Catholic Archdiocese and Washington, D.C., could not reach a more conciliatory solution in the matter of medical insurance at Catholic Charities in the district. The archdiocese decided to cut health coverage for spouses of all future Catholic Charities employees rather than provide benefits to same-sex partners; the city would not adjust its decision or provide a waiver for the Church. When the city and the Catholic Church had a similar spat in San Francisco, they reached a compromise allowing insured employees to add anyone legally in their home -- parent, child or partner -- to their health-care package. Compromise, however, has come to mean capitulation. The result in Washington will be fewer people with health insurance.

Standing on principle looks nothing like strength. Instead, it has taken on a tone of defensiveness. And it happens on both sides.

As I prepared to leave for the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last month, excited to talk with some of the 600 delegates who traveled to this first-ever event and - let's face it - wondering what Sarah Palin was like up close, I was surprised at the reaction from people who I thought were more open-minded.

One told me she didn't know how I could go because she wouldn't be able to even be near them, political disagreement being a contagious disease, I suppose. Others feared for my safety, as though a journalist with a notepad and tape recorder would be the prime target for a beat-down in the middle of the Opryland resort.

I didn't get this much hand-wringing solicitude from friends when I reported a story on Confederate heritage groups, and traveled to meetings where folks refused to salute the American flag "because you can't serve two masters" and punctuated solemn renditions of "Dixie" with a rebel yell.

Some tea party activists had indeed earned bad reputations, with crude signs, some disruptive behavior and the occasional firearm at rallies. But no group wants to be judged by its most extreme rhetoric. I figured the best way to get to know what someone believes was to just ask.

My first night in Nashville, sitting with three delegates from Florida, we all managed to get through dinner with no raised voices or food fights. Different roads had led them to friendship and their pro-small government, anti-health-care bill stance. We even had an interesting discussion of states' rights vs. federal rule after I said that Supreme Court intervention overturning laws forbidding marriage between blacks and whites made it possible for me to marry my husband years later.

But on the larger stage, nuances disappeared, with countless references to the president as a socialist, communist and fascist. "I have nothing against him personally," folks would say before unloading a barrage of insults, one comparing him unfavorably to Mussolini.

While delegates expressed some resentment at being defined by Tom Tancredo's speech advocating civics literacy tests as a voting prerequisite, they greeted the former Colorado congressman with loud applause and stood in a long line to chat and take pictures. A convention organizer said: "Congressman Tancredo had a gift for understatement."

Also popular in Nashville was former Judge Roy Moore, famous for his refusal to obey a federal judge's order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building. His appeal was religious and muscular, as he excoriated President Obama for "denying we are a Christian nation" and called for "300 million people armed in the cause of liberty."

The terms revolt and revolution were tossed about throughout the convention weekend, with those claiming to be true patriots warning, often with a disingenuous wink, that the prospect of armed conflict against the duly elected U.S. government was at hand.

Media were placed firmly placed in the unpatriotic, villainous category. Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express led a wave of jeers toward the back of the room where media representatives camped on a platform. "We do not need the media -- at all," she said. I was in the audience at the time, sharing a pleasant breakfast with a nice older couple from California, who looked a little embarrassed. "She's going too far," they said, not daring to stand and join the crowd in shouts of "go home" since we had just been talking about family and other normal stuff. (We've been in touch since. They approved of my stories and invited me to their home.)

When conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart took over, he continued the"liberal media" bashing, saying he was going to organize a tea party at "Sixth Avenue in Manhattan," so the patriots could stand in the way of the rich elite and their beach getaways at the Hamptons. I was relieved to know he wasn't talking about me, living as I do far away on the North Carolina-South Carolina border in a lifestyle so modest that thieves recently turned their noses up at my non-flat-screen behemoth of a barely working TV.

On the one side, accusations of "racist" and "scary," on the other, "Whole Foods" and "al-Qaeda" sympathizers. Partisan politics is defined by catch phrases and characterizations that barely make sense.

The insults flying left and right remind me of a five-page handwritten letter I received when I wrote about the Confederate flag then atop the South Carolina statehouse. It was so filled with hate that by the end, the author had stopped communicating in complete sentences, content to just scrawl random insults until she ran out of steam.

Is there any hope that the 50-state "civility tour" of former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is taking grass root? The Coffee Party, with more than 87,000 fans and counting, hopes its March 13 National Coffee Party Day will draw believers in its mission to give "voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government." So now you have to join a group to calmly chat? Some how, I don't know if anything not powered by outrage has a chance.

That simplistic sniping is not a new phenomenon brings little comfort. You'd think we'd know better by now.

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Cameron and Bigelow: Giving Exes a Good Name

Jamie Stiehm — 2010-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

"Best Director" Academy Award nominees Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron have a good thing going on, setting a fine example for us in making nice with ex-spouses.

Cameron, not known for graciousness, softened his persona when he was quoted saying he'd like to see one of them win for Best Director and one of their movies win Best Picture. His three-dimensional global morality play, "Avatar" and her war story, "The Hurt Locker," are sure to be major contenders in every category in which they are nominated. In other words, he expressed the wish for his ex-wife to win a showcase Oscar, too.

Are we making progress in our collective consciousness? We need more of that generous spirit, from Hollywood to Washington. Bitterness is getting old and wrinkled in talking about your ex-mate. Try a little sugar, cream and nutmeg, then see what happens, a la Cameron.

This same spirit succeeded at the box office with "It's Complicated," a wicked romp dedicated to the proposition that exes can still enjoy each other's company, with or without clothes. Weren't we all secretly rooting for the Meryl Streep character to relent and go back to her bad boy of an ex-husband, the handsome rogue played by Alec Baldwin? Yes, I think so.

Now, this is not all academic for me. My charming ex may be one of the most eligible lawyers in London. Mr. Darcy has nothing on him.
On a perfect summer night, long after our split, I happened to meet him at a party across the pond. I was all smiles and sparkles when he walked in the door. To his credit, he came right over, gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said, "Am I allowed to do this?" Bien sur.

To that he added: "Jamie, I really want to talk to you, but I need to get a drink first." And then something quickened in the air and changed the way I felt about him. I started seeing him though fresh eyes after a long parting -- not through my old pair of glasses.

We decided to go sit down in the parlor after the champagne was poured. "I did used to be married to her," he said by way of explanation to someone. And there we were for a tete-a-tete that let our past fly out the window. There was so much more to talk about, like our lives now. Wishing each other well was not how we left it in San Francisco. Oh, but that was long ago. It was much better to remember what you saw in each other in the first place.

That's the way of the world, a bittersweet Zeitgeist.

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Kiddie Condoms: The Newest Weapon Against Teen Pregnancy

Delia Lloyd — 2010-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Health Care, Woman Up, International, United Kingdom

Apparently, sometimes size really does matter. A Swiss company has created an extra-small condom aimed at 12-to-14-year-old boys. It's called -- wait for it -- the Hotshot.

The condom was developed after a government-sponsored study in Switzerland showed that younger boys do not use sufficient protection when having sex. The study, which was conducted on behalf of the Federal Commission for Children and Youth, interviewed 1,480 subjects ages 10 to 20. It showed that more 12-to-14-year-olds were having sex compared with the same age group in the 1990s. It also showed that because they are younger and less well-informed, boys in this group tend to engage in riskier sexual behavior. Drawing on an earlier German study showing that nearly 25 percent of standard condoms are too large for teens 13 to 20, the Hotshot's size was reduced from the normal 2-inch width to 1.7 inches.

The manufacturer -- Lamprecht A.G. -- has already stated that Britain will be a "top priority" if it expand sales abroad. The U.K. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe.

Teen pregnancy has been a hot issue in the U.K. of late, where the government has recently unveiled a new set of guidelines on sex education. Beginning in 2011, all state schools will be required to teach sex ed as part of the country's personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum. This means that children will learn about sex in the broader context of relationships, homosexuality, marriage, civil partnerships, divorce and abortion, rather than simply as the biological facts of puberty and reproduction currently taught in science classes.

Crucially, this new form of sex education will also become the norm in both primary and secondary schools -- meaning that it will be taught to children as young as 4. For children 15 and up, it will be compulsory, regardless of parental objection. (In a highly controversial move, the government is requiring state-funded "faith-based schools" to follow this curriculum, but also allowing them to teach what their religion has to say about, say, homosexuality.)

The head teacher at my daughter's school presented these new guidelines to a roomful of parents Wednesday morning. While I was not able to attend the meeting, I'm told that the mood was "anxious" and that a number of parents expressed shock and disapproval that the schools would contribute to "over-sexualizing" young children. (As someone whose daughter has a male friend who -- at age 6 -- was troubled to discover that girls don't have penises, I can't say I'm against having the little ones learn at least a bit of basic biology.)

And of course, this debate isn't confined to the U.K. Just last month we learned that teen pregnancy rates, which had been declining for more than a decade in the U.S., are once again on the rise there. More interestingly still, we also learned that abstinence-only programs -- long derided, at least in some quarters, for being counter-productive in combating teen pregnancy -- in fact work quite better than alternative approaches, at least with this very young age group (sixth- and seventh-graders).

All of which leaves us . . . where, exactly? What is the best way to combat teen pregnancy and should the government be in the business of doing it? Or should we all just run out and buy our 10-year-olds a box of Hotshots and be done with it?

As with so many things these days, we may need to wait until a health care reform bill emerges in its final, evolved state before we know the answer to at least part of that question. As things currently stand, the Senate bill provides $75 million for comprehensive sex education, while the House version provides $50 million. But the Senate legislation also had $50 earmarked for abstinence-only education. But as the president still hasn't released legislative language on his own health care bill, it's anyone's guess as to where we'll end up.

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Dolley Madison: What the History Books Leave Out

Jamie Stiehm — 2010-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up

Plucky, vivacious Dolley Madison was the first Washington hostess of note, and people have not stopped talking about her since the War of 1812, when she saved George Washington's portrait from being burnt by the British as they advanced on Washington on a late summer day in 1814.

A new PBS documentary, aired this week, embellishes the dewy-eyed portrait of Dolley Payne Todd Madison in the public mind. Eminent presidential historians, namely Richard Norton Smith, praise her bravery in saving a symbol of the early republic as she fled the White House with the dinner table set and a feast prepared for 40 -- which the British General Robert Ross and his soldiers enjoyed greatly before they burned the house down.

Another effusive Dolley fan belongs to my book club: my friend says she's descended from the nation's third first lady (she often acted as hostess for Thomas Jefferson, a widower.) And if my Millennial book clubber has a certain savoir faire as a hostess, I suspect she inherited it from her ancestress.

But please, count me out of the fulsome praise for Dolley Madison, who leaves me a little cold.

First of all, there's the fact that Dolley Payne was born a Friend -- a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a.k.a. Quakers -- and wed a young lawyer within the faith in the Philadelphia Friends Meetinghouse on PIne Street. So far, so good. Then her husband John Todd sadly died in the Philadelphia influenza epidemic in 1793 -- leaving her a young, widowed mother. Dashing Aaron Burr saved the day for her by making a match with a fellow member of Congress, the older James "Jemmy" Madison, a cerebral bachelor about 40 years of age. Philadelphia was, of course, the nation's capital at the time, in the 1790s, while Washington was being built.

So this is where her life story takes a bend into the nation's original sin. The newly married Mrs. Madison was disowned by the Society for marrying outside the faith. What made matters worse, a true forsaking, is that Madison was a Virginia "planter" -- a euphemism for slave owner. The Quakers were the first religion in America to take an organized stand against slavery.

So Mrs. Madison really crossed the river out of her culture -- north of the Mason Dixon line -- as well defying her birthright faith. Perhaps it was an act of economic urgency, as in a Jane Austen novel of the same period. Her mother ran a boardinghouse to make ends meet; maybe as a young widow Mrs. Todd wished for more than that to sustain herself. Quite likely, she loved the brilliant philosophical introvert who made such a contrast to her vivid personality. But give me the intriguing Aaron Burr any day.

More important is the testament of Madison Hemings, the son of Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress, Sally Hemings. His memoir was published in 1873, in an Ohio newspaper, the Pike County Republican. What he has to say about Mrs. Madison in plain English:

"As to myself, I was named Madison by the wife of James Madison, who was afterwards President of the United States. Mrs. Madison happened to be at Monticello at the time of my birth and begged the privilege of naming me, promising my mother a fine present for the honor. She consented, and Mrs. Madison dubbed me by the name I now acknowledge, but like many promises of white folks to the slaves she never gave my mother anything."

"Broken promises of white folks" may as well be a tragic chorus for the history of Southern slavery followed fairly swiftly by segregation after the Civil War. Madison was one of five children born to Sally Hemings and Jefferson on his beloved plantation, Monticello, with a "great house" and a slave village in Albemarle County, Virginia. As Madison Hemings related in his memoir: "I was born at my father's seat of Monticello . . . I was almost 21 (and a half) when my father died on the 4th of July, 1826."

This porthole into the past suggests Dolley Madison knew the true extent of the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, many years younger than he.

That truth we may never apprehend, but there's one other little detail about grande dame Dolley Madison I just can't shake. She put out impressive scholarly tomes out on her salon tables -- books that she confessed she never read, but they made good conversation pieces. It doesn't matter that much, but all these shades of gray add up to a new portrait of a first lady -- in black and white.

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High School Students: Present, But Not Accounted For

Linda Kulman — 2010-03-04T16:20:00+00:00

Filed under: Education, Woman Up

"I hope school is as close to prison as you children ever come."

It's not the kind of wish you'd ever hear coming from today's overachieving parents, who tell their kids that school is their job -- one they'd better do well at. The above line is what a friend's eccentric father used to tell his children 40 years ago. And given the mind-numbing rote he saw his children subjected to, no wonder he thought they were only slightly better off than learning to stamp license plates.

It's a sentiment I was reminded of when I read John Merrow's recent thoughts in his blog, "Taking Note," on a promising initiative happening in eight states that will allow high school students to test out of their last two years of high school to start college. (Merrow is a long-time education reporter who produces segments on the PBS NewsHour as well as other PBS documentaries.) He compares high school students to indentured servants, who, if "they put in their seat-time for a set number of days and years, will receive diplomas and be done with schooling. They will be free."

The rationale behind the board exams, which have already found great success in England, France, Denmark, Finland, and Singapore, is to do away with face time (they call it "seat time") in school and encourage mastery, reducing the number of students who have to take remedial courses in college. Students who pass can go immediately on to community college or, if they're planning to apply to a selective four-year school, can continue to take college prep courses during their junior and senior years. Either way, they have a firm grasp on where they stand in terms of what they need to know.

But whether school is more like jail or indentured servitude, recent events indicate forces are coming to bear on the worst of American high schools' offenses. Among the dismal statistics, which I've written about before, are that one in four high school students drop out before graduating - an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 students a day - and about 2,000 schools turn out half of the nation's dropouts each year.

It's this lowest common denominator that President Obama addressed earlier this week (take a look at Lynn Sweet's full report), pledging $900 million to turn around the nation's 5,000 lowest-performing schools over the next five years. That's in addition to the $3.5 billion that was included to help low-performing schools in last year's stimulus bill.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Washington-based bipartisan organization Achieve, created by the nation's governors to raise academic standards, announced this week that in the past five years, "aligning high school graduation requirements with the demands of college and the workplace has gone from a radical concept to the new norm throughout the country.

America's schools - and students -- still have a long way to go. The Achieve report says that only 14 states administer college- and career-ready assessments (up from three states five years ago). And we're still behind other countries: our 15-year-olds are still just ahead of the Slovak Republic and Lithuania in science literacy and on par with Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation in math literacy.

But there's a sense that things are percolating and that necessary changes might finally be happening. If I were a high-school student right now, I'd feel like my days of being present but not accounted for were over. Even the president has got your number.

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Far From Lightweight: Michelle Obama's Childhood Obesity Fight

Judy Howard Ellis — 2010-03-04T08:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Health Care, Woman Up, Michelle Obama

I love the idea of First Lady Michelle Obama pushing her anti-childhood obesity campaign. Childhood obesity may seem like one step above planning the White House Easter Egg hunt to critics who like their superheroines throwing punches in the health care debate. But I admire bloodless coups. And to let you in on a theory: I think the first lady is launching one.

As the Woman Who Stands Beside the Most Powerful Man on Earth, she understands the public role of first lady is tricky, as my colleague Sarah Wildman writes. Obama may appear like she made an apolitical choice by taking on childhood obesity, but something else is at work. Remember, a contentious America persistently attacks Obama's biracial husband, who hails from that foreign outpost called Hawaii, and accuses him of suspect birth, questionable personal history, and little competence to run the Free World. The last thing that fragmented atmosphere needs is to be further fueled by the perception of Michelle Obama as the Angry Black Woman Railing About Health Care, or even the Measured Black Woman Railing About Health Care. If health care was a debacle pit for First Lady Hillary Clinton, imagine the bloodletting if Michelle Obama were to let loose about reform.

Instead, she chose to campaign about childhood obesity. As was the case Wednesday in Mississippi, she can emphasize nutritional school lunches and getting kids to exercise every day and no one will start a Tea Party in protest. If the first lady sounds like, and looks like, she's serving scones and marmalade, who will suspect her of attacking a systemic health problem at its root? Weak, I can hear the critics yelling. Old-fashioned!

You only get what the first lady is doing if you live in neighborhoods where arugula can't be found in the produce section. In these neighborhoods, salt and sugar stalk the streets. After-school eating for many children in these areas involves the fast-food chicken and fish joints, donut shops and pharmacies where candy lines the shelves near check-out. Those spots multiply while retailers who boast about fine organic products and supporting organic agriculture are rarely found. Obesity and its companions, diabetes and heart disease, are common. Bike paths are few, if any, and a run through the park can be dangerous if you're not careful. Environment, personal responsibility, physical activity, genetics, politics, and economics all are among obesity's causes. But whatever the reason, in these neighborhoods obesity is not a throwaway subject. You wanna tackle the costs of health care? Then don't forget to tussle with the essential issues related to obesity.

During the same month Obama kicked off her campaign, Drs. Ian Smith and Mehmet Oz appeared on "Oprah" to discuss diabetes. I was glad to see Smith given such a platform. He has gone to the neighborhoods I'm describing with his campaign to help America lose 50 million pounds. And I was struck by the poignant interview Dr. Oz conducted with a woman who had her leg amputated because of diabetes. Also in February, chef Jamie Oliver won a $100,000 TED Prize for his proposal to "set up an organization to create a popular movement that will inspire people to change the way they eat." America should make a huge deal out of eating better and living better precisely because health care is not a given in this country. Why shouldn't the first lady tackle an issue that matters to so many Americans?

Her approach may seem in line with the tradition of first ladies who are seen but largely ignored, but I don't fully buy that. Obama doesn't strike me as backing away from the health-care debate, but she doesn't have to conspicuously "Xena" her way through the discussion to prove herself politically buff. I expect her to be Xena-like in a way that matters: She will be relentless. Her words challenging cultural habits about food will telegraph much more into neighborhoods well aware of the perniciousness of obesity-related health issues, whether or not she turns up the volume. By fixing the spotlight on this issue, Obama may ignite a righteous movement from our neighborhoods on up to help repair what's broken in the health care system -- without lifting a single verbal dagger.

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