FLAP Develops: Mandatory Arabic Classes in Texas?

From michellemalkin.com- By Doug Powers -If one of the main goals of the Department of Education is to educate parents on why they might want to consider the option of private or home schooling, then mission accomplished: MANSFIELD (CBSDFW.COM) – Some Students at Mansfield ISD schools could soon be learning Arabic as a required language. The school district wants students at select schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant. The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education. As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would be mandatory at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and Kenneth Davis Elementary School. The program would also be optional for students at T. A. Howard Middle School and Summit High School. More here
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Why Big Government is Bad Government

From hotair.com -That government which governs least, governs best. This well-known wisdom from Thomas Paine has been lost on succeeding generations that see an ever-growing federal government as the way to impose favored outcomes on markets and individuals. Blayne Bennett from Students for Liberty hosts the latest Econ 101 video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, explaining the damage that big government does by crowding out private markets and redirecting resources into non-productive and counter-productive uses: Video and more here
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The Lessons of History

Jim Spence
We are constantly monitoring the progress of the companies we hold shares in and weighing all the signs to decide if we are seeing improvement or deterioration in the competitive advantages that attracted us to them in the first place. How many ways can we find to reinforce the idea of why competitive advantages are so critical and why the durability of competitive advantages is integral to superior analysis? Let us count the ways. Sometimes we find ourselves searching through the archives of our old newsletters from yesteryear. When we do this we are looking for a slice of history that is similar to what we see today.
In the past when we have found reasonable parallels we have done a serious amount of self-plagiarizing of our previous work. Why re-invent a new wheel to describe the same old thing. The problem with writing financial columns today is that the present is not like any other moment we can recall in history. The search for similar historical analogies bears no fruit. We find ourselves taking an ever-increasing mercenary approach to investing. Long ago we abandoned our hopes for better policy-making in the U.S. that would keep us investing in the unassailable stability of the U.S.A. These days we are reminded of the recent PIMCO newsletter we read that likened U.S. fiscal and monetary policy to that of the male mantis during reproduction activity.
Apparently (we have not seen the video) the male mantis does what nature tells him will feel good, while the larger female (a metaphor for the ruthless global markets) kills it by eating its head. We are sure Ben Bernanke would not like the comparison though the late Teddy Kennedy probably would not mind. The good news for investors is there are a reasonable number of U.S. based companies that still offer durable global competitive advantages. And many offer investors a significant percentage of overseas sales revenue. There is one too often overlooked fact. The U.S. is still nearly “everyone’s best customer.” 
Ben Bernanke
Though this reeks of precariousness, there are a fair number of American companies that do not have all their eggs in the basket that is so heavily influenced by U.S. policymakers. Over the balance of 2011 we expect we will remain cautiously optimistic that the U.S. economy is gradually improving. We also hope to remain more optimistic about the prospects for the companies we own stakes in though there is no substitute for monitoring those situations every day. Perhaps we should take some comfort in knowing there is little advantage in the short run for any other nation to digest the gigantic head of America. We don’t.

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Hawkins: 15 Quotes on Global Warming

John Hawkins
Townhall - Liberal luddites who hate capitalism and industry have spent billions to spread global warming propaganda, despite the fact that it looks more like a fraud, a scam, and a hustle every year. Not only do those on the Left use their control of the mainstream media and the school system to push this nonsense, they've even found a way to rig the scientific process. If you say global warming is happening and it's caused by man, you're deluged with money for research, members of the media are dying to talk to you, and you're patted on the back. If you take the opposite position, the grant money dries up, you can't get published, and you're attacked non-stop as a "denialist." Fortunately, people have started catching on to the game and the public has become much more skeptical about manmade global warming. Read 15 quotations from conservatives explaining why the public is right to be extremely skeptical of manmade global warming here:
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New Mexico Ballot Access Improvement Bill Introduced

From ballot-access.org -New Mexico Senator Linda Lopez (D-Albuquerque) has introduced SB 403, a 130-page bill of election law changes. The bill is backed New Mexico elections officials. It includes a few improvements in the ballot access laws. It changes the filing deadline for independent candidates from the day after the primary (which is in early June) to the day that is three weeks later than the primary. For presidential independents, the existing New Mexico law has the earliest petition deadline of any state except Texas. The bill also lowers the number of signatures to qualify a new or previously unqualified party, in midterm years. Current law says the petition needs signatures equal to one-half of 1% of the last vote cast. The bill changes that to the last vote cast in a gubernatorial election year. Because turnout is always higher in presidential years than mid-term years, this eases the number of signatures for a party that is qualifying in a midterm year. For example, in 2010, a party needed 4,151 signatures, but if this bill had been in effect in 2010, the requirement would have been 2,796 signatures. The bill also specifies that the petition to create a new qualified party must be available from the Secretary of State’s office at any time. Past Secretaries of State have withheld the petition form, even though there had been no law authorizing that behavior. The bill’s author is Chair of the Senate Rules Committee, the Committee that handles election law bills.
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