Daily Broadside - Thursday Morning Edition

Garrison Kiellor, in the Chicago Tribune, writes:

When an entire major party has excused itself from meaningful debate and a thoughtful U.S. senator like Orrin Hatch no longer finds it important to make sense and an up-and-comer like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacks the president for giving a speech telling schoolchildren to work hard in school and get good grades, one starts to wonder if the country wouldn't be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Absolutely, Garrison. But you'd better figure out how to pay for all those expensive government programs once you've killed us all off.

It's all in your mind.

Piggybacking on the video circulating of kids singing praise to Obama, there's this from Michelle Malkin, via Smart Girl Nation:

Even with all of the hoopla over the lesson plan suggestions, some schools still found ways to push support for the President. A few days after President Obama’s speech, one of the members of Smart Girl Politics contacted me and was upset about something that had transpired in her daughter’s school. Her daughter, a senior in high school, had come home upset because, although the speech was not shown in her school, her anatomy teacher had made the class watch the President’s health care speech. After the video was shown, the students were given a short quiz about the speech. The questions asked gave the assumption that the answers provided in the President’s speech were fact and not opinion. The students were given no opportunity to discuss opposing views or have a debate on the topic. In fact, when one student stated that the President had lied, the student was told that kind of talk was unnecessary. Students in the class with opposing views were forced to remain silent or whisper amongst themselves.

Also important to note this afternoon: the Hannah Giles Defense Fund link.