"When the pattern of the Democratic attacks became apparent in July 2003, we should have countered in a forceful and overwhelming way," he writes. "We should have seen this for what it was: a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency."

Until 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified, the citizens of the states elected U.S. senators indirectly: Voters elected the state legislators, and they in turn selected U.S. senators. From 1913 onward, voters have directly elected U.S. senators in statewide elections.

This change has led to a number of negative results, including

-Vastly increased federal power and vastly decreased state, local, and personal authority due to the state governments losing their representation in the federal government;

-The domination of Senate elections (and legislation) by forces outside of the particular states wherein elections are being held, e.g., out-of-state donations, political party operatives, and campaign consultants; and

-A decline of the influence of individual voters and small, local associations of voters over who is selected to be a senator from their state.

Erskine is part of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which describes itself as conservative and evangelical -- well to the right, on political and social issues, of other Presbyterian churches. The ARP (as members call it) is also small, with only 250 churches, so a requirement that all faculty or students at its only college be church members wouldn't yield enough people qualified to enroll or teach. The college has required all faculty members to be Christians, and students of all faiths have been welcome -- with only a minority of students and faculty members coming from the ARP.

This week, however, church leaders will gather to discuss a special report they commissioned about Erskine, which has been well regarded academically for its liberal arts programs, but which critics fear has strayed from its founding faith. The report has not been finalized or formally released, but some faculty members have seen it, as have some outside the college. The report is seemingly most critical of the church leaders themselves, saying that they have been "negligent" in overseeing the college. But the reasons given for why this negligence is faulted have many faculty members scared.

Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.

In an era when college students commonly take longer than four years to get a bachelor's degree, some U.S. schools are looking anew at an old idea: slicing a year off their undergraduate programs to save families time and money.

As if the recession had not given community college advocates enough to worry about, some fear that the anti-tax sentiment stirred by Tea Party activists could endanger their federal, state and local funding.

One Tea Party group in New Jersey is questioning Warren County Community College's plans to open a satellite campus, meant to accommodate the institution's burgeoning enrollment in outlying areas and free up space on its main campus. As required by New Jersey law, half of the $7.3 million bond to buy and renovate a commercial building for the new campus would be paid from an existing pool of state funds. The remainder, officials say, would be paid for by leasing additional space in the renovated building to interested tenants.

A Montgomery County teacher has agreed to apologize to a 13-year-old student whom he reprimanded and sent to the office for twice refusing to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance, said a lawyer who represents the student.

Street theater. Communes. Manifestoes. Denunciations of "the system." The counterculture is back. Only this time it's on the right.

Political factions that are out of power have a choice. They can form a counter-establishment or a counterculture. A counter-establishment (a term that Sidney Blumenthal used to describe the neoconservatives in the 1970s) seeks to return to power by reassuring voters that it is sober and responsible. A counter-establishment publishes policy papers and holds conferences and its members endure their exile in think tanks and universities.

In contrast, a counterculture refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the rules of the game that it has lost. Instead of moving toward the center, the counterculture heads for the fringes. Like a cult, it creates its own parallel reality, seceding from a corrupt and wicked society into morally and politically pure enclaves.

THE .50 CALIBER Bushmaster bolt action rifle is a serious weapon. The model that Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pray is saving up for has a 2,500-yard range and comes with a Mark IV scope and an easy-load magazine. When the 25-year-old drove me to a mall in Watertown, New York, near the Fort Drum Army base, he brought me to see it in its glass case—he visits it periodically, like a kid coveting something at the toy store. It'll take plenty of military paychecks to cover the $5,600 price tag, but he considers the Bushmaster essential in his preparations to take on the US government when it declares martial law.

His belief that that day is imminent has led Pray to a group called Oa/th Kee/pers, one of the fastest-growing "patriot" organizations on the right.

Most of the men's gripes revolve around policies that began under President Bush but didn't scare them so much at the time. "Too many conservatives relied on Bush's character and didn't pay attention," founder Rho/des told me. "Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists. But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, 'I think you are a threat to the nation?'"

It is a grand vision: a global college with no tuition, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

When the higher education entrepreneur Shai Reshef laid out his ambitious plan to build a free university that would use modern technology to spread the promise of a college degree to all corners of the earth, he got an enthusiastic reaction from some high-profile institutions. The United Nations has backed the venture. So has Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. Reshef and his lieutenants also like to mention the many letters of support and offers to pitch in from professors worldwide.

Questions about the so-called University of the People abounded: How do you build quality programs without charging tuition? How effective would the project’s peer-to-peer pedagogical model be in classrooms of students from vastly different cultural and educational traditions? Who would accredit such an operation at a time when the perceived value -- even necessity -- of a postsecondary education is ascendant in virtually every country? Reshef’s heart seems to be in the right place. But is his head?

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

South Carolina will no longer recognize U.S. currency as legal tender, if State Rep. Mike Pitts has his way.

Pitts, a fourth-term Republican from Laurens, introduced legislation earlier this month that would ban what he calls “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

If the bill were to become law, South Carolina would no longer accept or use anything other than silver and gold coins as a form of payment for any debt, meaning paper money would be out in the Palmetto State.

[Texas School Board member Don] McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – In the wake of his comments about the earthquake in Haiti, televangelist Pat Robertson has become a “public relations nightmare” and a “gynormous embarrassment to me, personally,” God said today.

Washington, D.C. – Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, praised an independent committee at the Department of Defense for adding emergency contraception (EC) to the list of medications made available to servicemembers overseas. Approximately 350,000 women serve in the military or depend on military facilities for their health care abroad.

After a comprehensive review, the Board of Trustees has, at my recommendation, voted unanimously to eliminate our intercollegiate football program in order to redirect those resources toward academic initiatives and need-based scholarships.

Last year, Willamette University took a step toward reducing tensions surrounding the budget. As we planned for the current year, we faced the high degree of uncertainty that the financial crisis has forced on many universities. We dealt with this situation by shifting from planning a fixed budget to planning a flexible one. The process required to design this more elaborate plan resulted in unusually deep discussion between faculty members and administrators about which high-priority items needed to be included in the “base” budget and which could be deferred pending receipt of the revenue that might be generated by higher enrollment. Contingency plans were thus devised and discussed before we incorporated them into the budget.

In the past decade or so, the practice of faculty governance has become increasingly vexed by the proliferation of special interest research and teaching centers sponsored by outside benefactors who expect to be involved in the content and management of programs they pay for. University administrations, strapped for resources and hungry for fame, have found it difficult to turn down any offer of support for teaching and research, even if it comes with ideological mandates.

In the new audit, the inspector general [for the Department of Health and Human Services] reviewed data from the federal government's 2006 fiscal year and found universities almost always trust scientists to judge whether their stock holdings or payments from outside medical companies pose any conflict of interest.

In an unusual pushback against President Obama’s expansion of federal financing of human embryonic stem cell research, the University of Nebraska is considering restricting its stem cell experiments to cell lines approved by President George W. Bush.

Cole W. Camplese, director of education-technology services at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, prefers to teach in classrooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and another to project a Twitter stream of notes from students. He knows he is inviting distraction — after all, he’s essentially asking students to pass notes during class. But he argues that the additional layer of communication will make for richer class discussions.

They showed up as soon as these defections started happening. We planned this about a week and a half ago. The Chamber's absurd stance is really what inspired us, of course. The US is the one thing that's holding up the talks in Copenhagen and we have to send Obama to Copenhagen with a climate bill; even though the Kerry-Boxer one isn't great, it's something. And the chamber is opposing climate change legislation and the whole rest of the world is saying we need to do something. Even a lot of big companies are saying we need to do something. The chamber, representing the biggest and stodgiest and most powerful corporations in America is just saying, "Nah, let's let the whole planet go to rot." We just wanted to show what it would look like if they didn't take that absurd stance. And none of the reporters in the room were really surprised.

Congress has not given final approval to legislation ending federal subsidies for private student loans for college. But Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter Monday to thousands of colleges and universities urging them to get ready to use the government’s Direct Loan Program in the 2010-11 school year.

The House of Representatives last month passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, expanding the government’s direct lending and ending the current program of government subsidies and loan guarantees for private lenders. Under that law, all colleges would be required to convert to the federal Direct Loan Program by July 1.

The Obama administration is calling for an overhaul of college programs that prepare teachers, saying they are cash cows that do a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the classroom.

Many colleges now require criminal background checks of all new employees. But the University of Akron -- in what some experts believe is a first -- is not only requiring a criminal background check, but is stating that new employees must be willing to submit a DNA sample.

The paranoid pattern persists regardless. It is impervious to world events; a blurring of the American subconscious that has not changed since Hofstadter analyzed it 45 years ago. Consider the recent wave of fear that the hypnotic Mr. Obama was planning to indoctrinate schoolchildren. In "The Paranoid Style," Hofstadter wrote, "Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; . . . he has a new secret for influencing the mind; ... he is gaining a stranglehold on the educational system."

A Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the second world war has been arrested, in the latest apparent clampdown on historical research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities.

[W]hat has followed, the school's current leaders say, is unexpected academic progress. Admission decisions are more selective than a decade ago. SAT scores are up. A rejuvenated faculty is building a national reputation for undergraduate research.

In the weeks leading up to the National Equality March -- held in Washington this past Sunday -- I found myself in the awkward position, for a straight person, of defending same-sex marriage rights to gay people who hated the whole idea with a passion.

Half the pleasure of being gay, explained my irritated interlocutors, is running wild. Maybe more than half.

The Bush administration Environmental Protection Agency actually reached the conclusion back in 2008 that climate change was a threat to humans. They just decided not to let anyone know about it.

Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweat suits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings.

By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more. With the cuts extending beyond hiring and salary freezes to measures that affect what students eat, where they study and other parts of their daily routine, the euphoria of fall in Harvard Yard is dampened.

Harvard University is known for providing its undergraduates with an unexpectedly high number of graduate assistants as teachers rather than professors because, apparently, the profs are too busy with more important things than teaching.

Now those poor kids can’t get a hot breakfast, a near tragedy that has just become the subject of numerous media accounts. Why is this, at a school where tuition is $33,696 for undergraduates this year and the total package (including room, board and student services fee) is $48,868?

Given that it seems to be common wisdom that publications are helpful, two anecdotes I heard in the past week or so scare me a little bit. Both anecdotes are about departments that were searching or are planning a search. Both departments see their department as mainly a teaching department, but they do have research requirements (I think 3/3 or 3/2 loads). Also, according to both anecdotes, these departments consider publications in top journals as counting against a candidate!

He said that universities need his edition of Origin of Species because professors today "are not allowed to mention God. If a professor believes in a creator, they are not allowed to mention it because it's religion." Asked if that was not an exaggeration, given that many professors of various faiths at a range of colleges and universities do talk about their belief in God, Comfort acknowledged that such discussion takes place, but said that it is banned as biology instruction.

The idea, according to the fund raising materials, is that top universities, which might not be thrilled at their students being given anti-evolution materials, will be unable to block the distribution of Darwin's writings. "Let's see if they try to ban Darwin's Origin of Species," it says.

Berkeley is caught in a full-blown budget crisis with nothing much in the way of upside in sight. The school is trying to cope with what the chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, described as a “severe and rapid loss in funding” from the state, which has shortchanged Berkeley’s budget nearly $150 million this year, and cut more than $800 million from the higher education system as a whole.

This is like waving goodbye to the futures of untold numbers of students. Chancellor Birgeneau denounced the state’s action as “a completely irresponsible disinvestment in the future of its public universities.”

(The chancellor was being kind. Anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes watching the chaos of California politicians trying to deal with fiscal and budgetary matters would consider “completely irresponsible” to be the mildest of possible characterizations.)

Marek Edelman, a cardiologist who was the last surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Germans, died Friday in Warsaw. He was 90.