Immigration Bill is a Fraud

Of course, with the current democrat leadership in charge of the re-writes, you already knew this.

I wouldn't presume to speak for the millions of Americans who oppose this bill, but it's because I'm an immigrant myself that I object to the most patent absurdity peddled by the pro-amnesty crowd. The bill is fundamentally a fraud. Its ''comprehensive solution'' to illegal immigration is simply to flip all the illegals overnight into the legal category. Voila! Problem solved! There can be no more illegal immigrants because the Senate has simply abolished the category. Ingenious! For their next bipartisan trick, Congress will reduce the murder rate by recategorizing murderers as jaywalkers.

Read the rest of Mark Steyn at this link.

Hat tip to Gull.

Paying for Grades Can Be Costly

Paying students for good grades can be costly in terms of funding and learning. Will motivating students to achieve a grade ensure learning? Better study the research, Mayor.

Mayor Bloomberg defended a controversial proposal to pay kids for high test
scores yesterday, but said there are no specific plans to make it happen."As one
of the new approaches to try to tackle the intractable problem of poverty, we
have said that we would raise ... $50 million privately to encourage people,
using economic incentives," Bloomberg said. Money for test scores is "one of the
possibilities."The Daily News reported exclusively yesterday on a plan to pay
fourth-graders as much as $25 and seventh-graders as much as $50 for high scores
on so-called interim assessments, which, beginning in September, will be
administered in all city schools. The tests will help teachers determine what
kids know and what they still need to learn.The mayor's Opportunity NYC plan
also would give poor families cash rewards for actions like taking their kids to
doctors' appointments and attending job training.

I'm not convinced that paying students to achieve higher scores will work in the long run ....

Not every child is capable of earning an "A." Someone has to fall below the norm to establish a standardized scale .... How the heck do you think scores are averaged???? Will the Mayor offer a sliding monetary reward scale based on actual scores? And at which percentile rank will scores be rewarded?

Talk about depression and loss of esteem. Try to convince the child who scores below the mean or below the average that he's "worth" something. Go ahead. Try. You'll pay much more in rehabilitating him.

Murtha: Clean Up on 5th Floor!

Oh, my. Jack's got himself boxed in on a 5th floor boondoggle -- for sure!



Jack Murtha: the Dems' poster boy for ethics!