liberals

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Calling Rob Reich, calling Rob Reich . . .
Self-driving cars?? Right there at Stanford University, whence emanate your advanced theories of controlling kids to set them free?

Homeschooling should not be banned, but regulated much more vigilantly.

Not to mention the intellectual cradle of your Stanford-educated colleague Kimberly Yuracko, who quotes your theories so um, liberally -- or illiberally, both, neither? -- as spitshine for her own Stanford-servile theory that home education is a public function from which government is required to protect all children. (Did you two go pub-crawling while she was a student, to swap collegial notes on these elaborate fantasy worlds you both had under construction, like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien?)

It says right there in the news, “The idea of a self-driving car is a really big idea that will have a big impact on society.”

Only if society is asleep at the switch, and that's where you come in, quick! There's still time to cook up some kind of ethical servility theory to stop it. Maybe use your homeschool regulation screed as a template, here, we'll help --

The families of homeschooled children are clearly different from those of traditional schoolchildren.Some 97 percent of homeschooled children live in married couple households; the comparable number for public school students is 72 percent. Nearly 88 percent of homeschooled parents continued their own education beyond high school; less than 50 percent of the general population has attended college. The home environment of these students is supportive, nurturing and encourages diligence. . .

Yes, good! Let's actually focus on the kids and their learning, not just exploit them in the name of helping their exploited moms or any other political agenda. Let's leave prayer and religion out of it, too, since most folks in schools and government (and politics) also self-identify as god-fearing believers; religion is a confounding variable in education analysis that may quack like a duck, but really is more of a duck-billed platypus.

In other words, religion is not education and religious freedom is not academic freedom, wherever it happens. So let's stick to the constitutionally sound raison d'être of Compulsory School -- secular academics and independence sufficient to preserve and protect our liberties and provide for the common good -- for at least this one conversation.

promoted to front page by Lorraine
I hold the Democratic leadership's feet to the fire because I have loved this party for 40 years. I come from a time when liberal values and principles were the ripples on the river that ran over the basement of time, the bedrock principles that engendered pride when these words were spoke, I am a Democrat.

I come from a time when the very word liberal wasn't bracketed but was a driving force, I come from a time when women began to stand up and insist our voices were heard. When equality and justice were at the forefront of the national party, a time when we could hold in our hands the knowledge that we were the party, a time when the leadership fought for the Voter's Rights Act, a time when the leadership fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, when they fought for Roe v. Wade and said out loud and proudly that we were the party of choice.

Because much has changed over the past two decades and because the Democratic leadership was all that stood between this administration and us, the American people, when the leadership didn't do their job in protecting us, when the leadership concentrated more on being elected instead of enforcing our rights through denying the passage of such legislation as the Patriot Act and the Bankruptcy Bill, when the leadership consistently refused to say one word about the war against women, it was then that I started to look outside the party it has become to the party it can be, a more progressive party, a party that embraces its liberal base once again.