Catching up on the past week: Charter schools, Santorum, birth control, Whitney

While I’ve been away, I (and y’all) missed a lot of opportunities to comment on a lot of topics. Here’s some quick making up for lost time:

CHARTER SCHOOLS AMENDMENT FAILS: Here’s hoping a second effort this week finds success. If not, the agents of the status quo — i.e., the educational establishment trying to protect its turf — may find the next option even less palatable than this one. I’ve been hearing for weeks now that one prominent Plan B involves setting up a state commission to review charter applications in tandem with local school boards; if a local board doesn’t follow that commission’s recommendation, the board could find itself receiving significantly less state education money. It would be wholly constitutional — the Legislature already attaches all sorts of strings to state money, and the final decision on an application on the charter would rest with the local board — and there are Democrats and Republicans alike pitching its merits. Only a simple majority (rather than a two-thirds majority for the amendment) would be necessary for passage. I consider it less attractive than the amendment. I’m guessing the amendment’s opponents will come to the same realization … if perhaps too late.

SANTORUM SWEEPS FEB. 7 CAUCUSES: I’m partial to anything that happens on Feb. 7, but I’m not sure Rick Santorum’s sweep of the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and the non-binding primary Missouri means a whole lot. Mitt Romney pulled a similar trick four years ago, and it didn’t blunt John McCain’s momentum. Those states’ delegates to the Republican National Convention this summer are not bound to follow the results of last week’s votes. Still, Romney has been a shaky front-runner throughout this race, as conservative voters have proven desperate for anyone else who’s viable. Santorum led the most recent major national poll of GOP voters; can he now prove that he’s a viable contender against President Obama? If not, Romney is still going to win the nomination.

BIRTH CONTROL MANDATE FLAP: American Catholic bishops were right to reject the “accommodation” offered by the Obama administration regarding the mandate for a broad range of religiously affiliated employers to pay for contraception, abortifacients and sterilization. Either the Obama administration doesn’t really understand how health insurance works — which would explain a lot — or it just doesn’t care. But forcing the insurers of these hospitals, colleges and other organizations to pick up the tab, rather than the organizations themselves, is a distinction without a difference. The insurer is going to make someone pay for that coverage via some type of new charge or increase in premiums. If it’s the employees themselves, they’re no better off. If not, it’s going to be the employers, which brings us back to square one. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or a free Pill. Obama can’t get off the hook for a major constitutional infringement (remind me what subject he taught at the University of Chicago law school?) this easily.

WHITNEY HOUSTON, R.I.P.: Surprised to see me mention this one? While I’m not a real R&B or pop aficionado, I am a child of the 1980s and ’90s — and Whitney Houston contributed to the soundtrack of that era as much as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana or any other performer. (OK, maybe not Michael, at least not on a sustained basis.) If you grew up in those years, it was sad to see Houston — someone who once sang about “learning to love yourself” as the “Greatest Love of All” — spiral into such self-destructive living and destroy a voice that was a gift to so many people. We don’t yet have a cause of death for her. But the first thought I had, and which surely many people had, was that it must have been one of the things that spawned so many demons in her for too many of her 48 years. I’m afraid that says enough to make her a cautionary tale for the children of today. Teach them well, indeed.

– By Kyle Wingfield

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