Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn referred to minorities as "dark ones" on Wednesday, prompting criticism from several state lawmakers, MLive reported.

Debating whether Michigan should adopt the Common Core State Standards at the state legislature, Arnn recalled receiving a Department of Education letter that voiced concerns about racial diversity at Hillsdale College.

"They said we violated the standards for diversity because we didn't have enough dark ones, I guess is what they meant," Arnn said in his opening remarks.

After receiving criticism for the "offensive" language from several state Democrats, Arnn doubled down.

More at http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/college-president-on-student-body-diversity-criticisms-we .

[font color=green]Occasionally I'll read an opinion from one of the "Constitution" experts who took an online course from Hillsdale and then I wonder why didn't they name the place "Teabagger University".

SANTA FE (AP) — The latest fundraising disclosures show that Democratic Sen. Tom Udall has stockpiled $1.5 million so far for his re-election campaign next year.

Udall raised nearly $875,000 from April through June, and spent almost $264,000.

No Republican challenger has announced plans so far to run against Udall.

Udall’s campaign cash balance of $1.5 million is the largest of any member of New Mexico’s congressional delegation.

More at http://www.abqjournal.com/228070/politics/udall-banks-1-5m-for-re-election-race.html .

Amid a still-uncertain financial climate of rising costs and decreased enrollment, donors are stepping up to support Centenary College.

According to financial information released by Centenary, donor support for the liberal arts college reached a three-year high of about $6.6 million. That’s up $400,000 from last year’s total and an increase of $500,000 from 2011.

“Our alumni and other donors are supporting us in such a large way and helping us to offer students more scholarships and opportunities with each donation,” said Fred Landry, associate vice president of advancement.

Approximately $4 million of the total will go toward student scholarships. And with tuition once again set to see an increase of roughly $1,000 to total $30,740, every dollar counts.

More at http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20130731/NEWS0402/307310030/Centenary-College-giving-hits-three-year-high?nclick_check=1 .

[font color=green]Disclosure: One of my friends is the president of Centenary College.[/font]

The New Orleans inspector general reiterated Wednesday in court that the Orleans Parish School Board must produce a host of financial documents for an audit. Furthermore, the IG's office said, the School Board never authorized its attorney to fight the IG's June 25 subpoena for the records.

At issue is whether the inspector general may audit an entity with a history of corruption and one that lost most of its authority after Hurricane Katrina, when the state swept the city's low-performing schools into its own Recovery School District. The New Orleans Office of the Inspector General may audit agencies that are part of city government or that receive money through City Hall.

The School Board operates separately from City Hall and sets separate property tax rates. The city collects the taxes for the school system, but the School Board says the collector just passes the money on and has no control over it. The Inspector General's Office scoffed at that Wednesday, saying the School Board's "argument is that 'through' doesn't mean 'through.'"

The IG's filing also challenges the School Board's assertion that the inspector general is overstepping its bounds. A 2008 state law expanding the New Orleans office's authority was expressly meant "to provide for oversight of entities ... that received funds through the City of New Orleans as the tax collector for the parish," the filing states, quoting the law as saying its provisions should be "liberally construed."

More at http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/07/new_orleans_inspector_general_1.html#incart_river_default .

Photo By Cody Duty/Houston Chronicle


After months of restoration work, a piece of television sci-fi history has come to Space Center Houston in Clear Lake.

The Galileo Shuttlecraft, fully restored to its original luster when it was featured in the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Galileo Seven," is now finished and will be on permanent display inside Space Center Houston’s Zero-G Diner.

On Wednesday morning the spiffed-up Galileo will be unveiled to Houston, with a number of celebs from the Star Trek on hand for the party, which is free and open to the public.

According to NASA spokesman Jack Moore, lots of smoke, dazzling lights and costumed characters will accompany the first glimpse of the spacecraft.

More at http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Restored-Star-Trek-shuttle-unveiled-for-crowds-4695966.php?cmpid=hpts .

WASHINGTON – Sen. Ted Cruz and a handful of tea party allies are trying to stir up public pressure – enough to persuade GOP leaders to risk a government shutdown in a confrontation with the White House.

“We don’t have the votes, and we are unlikely to get the votes in closed-door meetings in Washington. The only way that we win this fight is if the American people rise up,” Cruz said today on a rare call with Texas reporters.

-snip-

Congress has until Sept. 30 to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year. That seems unlikely, so the focus is on a “continuing resolution” to keep government running at current levels. Cruz, along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, believe that offers leverage, at least for the next two months. (Lee, who initiated the effort, is the only member of that foursome not eying a White House run.)

“My focus for the next 61 days is very directly targeted to one thing, and that is working to defund Obamacare,” Cruz said. “This is the best opportunity we have to defund Obamacare and quite possibly our last opportunity to effectively defund Obamacare.”

More at http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2013/07/sen-ted-cruz-calls-for-public-uprising-to-defund-obamacare.html/ .

John Graves, a Texas writer whose book about a canoe trip down the Brazos River in the late 1950s, is regarded as a classic, died on July 30 at Hard Scrabble, his small farm outside Glen Rose. The dean of Texas letters, he was 92 and had been in declining health for several years.

Graves wrote a number of books about Texas rural life, nature and the environment, but his "Goodbye to a River" is the one that endures. The late historian A.C. Greene, in a review for the Dallas Times Herald, called it "as fine a book as has ever been written about Texas." Austin writer Stephen Harrigan called "Goodbye to a River" "a towering American classic."

Graves was born in Fort Worth on Aug. 6, 1920, and grew up in Fort Worth and on his grandparents' farm near Cuero, Texas. Graduating from Rice University in 1942, he joined the Marine Corps, and as a first lieutenant in the Pacific was injured on the island of Saipan, losing sight in one eye. After the war, he received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1947.

He lived for awhile in New York and Spain, but eventually realized that as a writer, Texas was his place. Coming back home in 1957 to care for his father, who was ill with cancer, he taught for two years at the University of Texas at Austin and later at Texas Christian University.

More at http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Goodbye-to-a-writer-John-Graves-dead-at-92-4698127.php?cmpid=hpbn .

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Aug. 19 College Football Preview.

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@JManziel2: Bullshit like tonight is a reason why I can't wait to leave college station...whenever it may be

FOUR DAYS AFTER the tweet, Johnny Manziel did what many boys do when they're in trouble. He went home. The farm roads and state highways between College Station and Tyler blurred under the wheels of his black Mercedes-Benz, the one he wanted so badly that his dad finally bought it for him. Paul Manziel didn't want his son to do something stupid to get it for himself. A jagged line marked the back left quarter panel; even before Johnny tweeted that he wanted to leave College Station, someone had keyed his car. When Johnny arrived at his grandmother's house in Tyler on this Wednesday, Paul leaned over and silently ran his finger along the length of the cut, seeing what someone had done. He felt helpless. Building tension from the past week, and from the seven months of scrutiny that preceded it, had left his son on edge and exhausted. Maybe here, outside the siege walls of College Station, Johnny could exhale. He needed space to retake the control he'd lost over both himself and his new persona. Johnny Football is a growling grown-ass beast of a human. Johnathan Manziel is a boy trying to become a man.

Johnny wanted to play golf with his dad, so they unloaded their bags in the sun-baked parking lot of Hollytree Country Club. Paul also had the usual half-dozen items for his son to sign, things given to him by family friends or mailed to the car dealership he runs. People in passing carts waved and smiled. Paul grew up on this course as a kid, the grandson of a Texas oil fortune, which still funds the family. Enough remains to make sure Johnny never wants for anything. "It's not Garth Brooks money," Paul says, laughing, "but it's a lot of money." Still, those piles of cash couldn't make Paul's father pay attention to him. This golf course is where Paul went for peace. It's where he played the club father-son tournament with someone else's father, vowing to be different when his time came. That chance finally arrived, in the form of a baby boy he named Johnathan Paul, and he built a house for the family at Hollytree. The Manziels lived on the 16th hole here before a new job took them to Kerrville, six hours southwest, where Johnny became a Texas high school football legend. This is the last place they were normal.

One of Johnny's former teachers whizzes by in a golf cart and screeches to a halt, giddy. "I have had more fun telling everybody I taught you!" she says.

This is a long story, but a must-read for Manziel followers. Read more at http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9521439/heisman-winner-johnny-manziel-celebrity-derail-texas-aggies-season-espn-magazine .

Cross-posted in Football Group.

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Aug. 19 College Football Preview.

*************************************************************************

@JManziel2: Bullshit like tonight is a reason why I can't wait to leave college station...whenever it may be

FOUR DAYS AFTER the tweet, Johnny Manziel did what many boys do when they're in trouble. He went home. The farm roads and state highways between College Station and Tyler blurred under the wheels of his black Mercedes-Benz, the one he wanted so badly that his dad finally bought it for him. Paul Manziel didn't want his son to do something stupid to get it for himself. A jagged line marked the back left quarter panel; even before Johnny tweeted that he wanted to leave College Station, someone had keyed his car. When Johnny arrived at his grandmother's house in Tyler on this Wednesday, Paul leaned over and silently ran his finger along the length of the cut, seeing what someone had done. He felt helpless. Building tension from the past week, and from the seven months of scrutiny that preceded it, had left his son on edge and exhausted. Maybe here, outside the siege walls of College Station, Johnny could exhale. He needed space to retake the control he'd lost over both himself and his new persona. Johnny Football is a growling grown-ass beast of a human. Johnathan Manziel is a boy trying to become a man.

Johnny wanted to play golf with his dad, so they unloaded their bags in the sun-baked parking lot of Hollytree Country Club. Paul also had the usual half-dozen items for his son to sign, things given to him by family friends or mailed to the car dealership he runs. People in passing carts waved and smiled. Paul grew up on this course as a kid, the grandson of a Texas oil fortune, which still funds the family. Enough remains to make sure Johnny never wants for anything. "It's not Garth Brooks money," Paul says, laughing, "but it's a lot of money." Still, those piles of cash couldn't make Paul's father pay attention to him. This golf course is where Paul went for peace. It's where he played the club father-son tournament with someone else's father, vowing to be different when his time came. That chance finally arrived, in the form of a baby boy he named Johnathan Paul, and he built a house for the family at Hollytree. The Manziels lived on the 16th hole here before a new job took them to Kerrville, six hours southwest, where Johnny became a Texas high school football legend. This is the last place they were normal.

One of Johnny's former teachers whizzes by in a golf cart and screeches to a halt, giddy. "I have had more fun telling everybody I taught you!" she says.

This is a long story, but a must-read for Manziel followers. Read more at http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9521439/heisman-winner-johnny-manziel-celebrity-derail-texas-aggies-season-espn-magazine .

Cross-posted in Texas Group.

In the year 3013 in public squares at the hearts of modest villages and small capitals the world over, there will be statues of a global hero whose original identity is barely remembered, his or her actual existence in doubt and debated among scholars and the faithful. The exact appearance, face and general physical attributes will vary slightly from statue to statue.


Library of Congress
High school hero, dressed for a date

But every iteration will express same the essential truth:The hero will always be a gawky, androgynous, too skinny or too fat teenager with not very good skin and teeth that didn't get fixed -- face green with reflected light, eyes bright, a tiny crooked grin at one corner of the mouth.

The hero who saves humankind will be a very, very smart late-adolescent of uncertain sexuality, ignored or battered by stupid irresponsible parents, shunned by knuckle-dragging conformist peers, a weirdo-loser by common standards who spent his or her adolescence bent over a computer playing games, trading anime art online, making up awkward not-terribly-funny personas on social media, then barking angrily at people who say it's not funny.

How in the world could a reject like this become a global hero? Ah, there's the secret, the rub, the thing that will save us all. It's precisely this person, the young Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden, who will save us from ourselves. He or she knows our secrets better than we, sees how we hide them, hates us for them and eventually will always throw them in our faces no matter how long we lock them up in jail cells for it.

More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/07/manning_and_snowden_smart_weir.php .