This is a tough spot for Obama?

I’m with Kevin Drum, this seems to be a pretty straightforward choice:

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would “fight hard” for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports the personnel office on denying benefits to the San Francisco court employees, he risks agitating liberal groups that helped him win election. If he supports the judges and challenges the marriage act, he risks alienating Republicans with whom he is seeking to work on economic, health care and numerous other matters.

It doesn’t seem it’s a tough choice if we listen to President Obama’s people:

Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, said: “While the president opposes gay marriage, he supports legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. He believes this country must realize its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”

Mr. Obama and his choice for director of the personnel office, M. John Berry, have endorsed the idea of providing health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

So, let’s see, Obama campaigned saying he would give more rights to same sex couples, Democrats mostly agree with him (and there are probably more that think his problem is that he hasn’t gone far enough), but he might hurt the feelings of some Republicans. Seems like an easy choice to me.

More Same Sex Classrooms

The New York Times has another article about same sex classrooms. I’ve had a few posts about this. My take-away is that any gender difference in learning is dwarfed by individual differences. And I’ve noticed that all the articles I’ve seen have comments like:

Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of the Bronx like a basketball coach. “You — let me see you trying!” he insisted the other day during a math lesson. “Come on, faster!”

Across the hall, Larita Hudson’s scolding is more like a therapist’s. “This is so sloppy, honey,” she prodded as she reviewed problems in a workbook. “Remember what I spoke to you about? About being the bright shining star that you are?”

In other words sexism arises. Since this is the stuff they are willing to show to reporters, you can be sure that there are more obvious examples when reporters aren’t around.

I’m all for innovation, but this is the cheap and lazy way to do it. If there are problems in a school, you need to find out why by talking to the students and parents. Of course, this takes time and money. It’s cheaper to just come up with a simplistic answer. It’s the American way.

A picture of Mercury and a poem

Ok, here’s a picture of Mercury:

It’s titled ‘Volcanism on Mercury’ and shows lava filled craters and lava plains. It comes from here Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Brown University/Carnegie Institution of Washington).

And here’s a poem that has pretty much nothing to do with Mercury (unless you want it to):

What is life
And what is death
What is in between
Nothing and everything
And let’s forget the rest.