"If You Think Education is Expensive Try Ignorance"

I almost cried when I read this column by Susan Delacourt, because it reminds me of what we have lost in the last four and half years. She shares excerpts from a story on Barack Obama who has been quietly returning intellect and science to government.

Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for—but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors ere all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety ad Health Administration (OSHA), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early 20th century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

I can't tell you how much I miss intelligent debate, and expert opinions. Science. I so miss science. And compassion.

This visceral, combative, divisiveness that defines neoconservatism is wearing me down.

Michael Ignatieff has it so right. "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

I swear at the celebration when Harper and his gang of thugs are sent packing, I'm bringing a bunson burner and science book, if he doesn't have them all burned.