guess I missed the seminal post ...

what is it?

Enquiring minds must ask ...

For that reason I am very impatient with people who make fun of Bush's intelligence or lack thereof. It is so not the issue here.

What is Clinton's excuse? He was a Rhodes scholar, and still he decided to ignore the voters and ignore the nurses and caregivers and ignore IOM report and even go after the doctors.

Clinton came from a working class background, he was a bright scholar, he was a liberal, and he turned out to be the worst enemy weed has had since Harry Anslinger.

Politically correct oppression, how about that one?

He had a great education that he fully earned by working hard on his own, and he initiated the drive to close the cannabis clubs that Ashcroft is finishing now.

And Al Gore -- standing up on MTV and saying there was "absolutely no evidence" for medical marijuana -- lying in public about the IOm report.

Gore is a wonderfully intelligent man who fully earned his elite college degree.

And he is also a lying scumbag who will never get my vote in 100 years.

Wilson was a young boy when he saw federal troops march through Georgia with them all living off the land. The one thing Wilson knew was poverty. His efforts to radically change Princeton did not go the intellectual path that he wanted. You cannot push a person that never have to work a day in their life and has to pay someone to keep their accounts for them around. Much less a bunch of them and forget about the parents.

If anyone could comment on the Alien and Sedition Acts that came out under Wilson, it would keep me from exposing my ignorance on the subject. My real interest has to do with legislation that Busch proposed that was intended to limit what you could say about the president and present policies after 9/11. It was intended to muzzle opposition. It fizzled and I only read about it once never to hear it rementioned.

Didn't Wilson have glaucoma and go blind in the end? Didn't he wear glasses at an early age because of his blood pressure or eye damage because of his high blood pressure? Anyway, a good idea for a short story would be a take on our present world had President Wilson used marijuana for his ailments.

It is my belief that Homer Simpson will be getting high this Sunday? Any info anyone?

VAAI

I mean, for some minority backgrounds, it is commonplace for males to continue the former traditions of the fathers, and "graduate" from the same institutions of higher learning frequented by their dads. We wouldn't want to start a college, with productive classes, and positive goals, and hope, and future potential, with the same name, as a former prison colony, in the same place, with the same bricks, and the same yard, and the same history, would we?

OR WOULD THIS BE JUST THE KIND OF TRANSITION WHICH COULD STIMULATE AND INDICATE AND DEMONSTRATE THAT WE TRULY DO WANT TO MOVE FORWARD, AND JETTISON THE STAGNANCY AND INERTIA AND SELFISH AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE "WAREHOUSING" that has ruled and ruined our culture for some 50 years? (who'se counting?).

Yale, Professor of History, Gaddis Smith, said, "Yale has influenced the Central Intelligence Agency more than any other university, giving the CIA the atmosphere of a class reunion." And "Bonesman" have been foremost among the "spooks", virtually building the CIA into a "haunted house."

F. Trubee Davison (Skull and Bones '18), was Director of Personnel at the CIA in the early years. Some of the other Bonesmen connected with the "intelligence community" are: William Sloane Coffin, Jr. ('49); V. Van Dine ('49); James Buckley ('44); Bill Buckley ('50); Hugh Cunnigham ('34); Hugh Wilson; Reuben Holden; Charles R. Walker; "Yale's unofficial Secretary of War," Robert D. French ('10); Archibald MacLiesh ('15); Dino Pionzio ('50), CIA Deptuy Chief of Station during Allende overthrow; William and McGeorge Bundy; Richard A. Moore ('3?); Senator David Boren ('63); Senator John Kerry; and of course George Bush. Bush "tapped" Coffin, who, tapped Buckley.

p4me, there's a slight problem with the view of a university as a resource. It's not like a tree that grows from the ground. A university costs a LOT of money to support.

The parents of these so-called rich brats were hit up for a LOT more money than just the tuition for their children. The parents of the rich brats paid for the real estate the school sits on, the libraries, the classrooms, the scientific laboratories, the auditoriums, the musicical instruments, the concert halls, the athletic fields, the dormitories the students sleep in.

For a very long time the only money that supported this "resource" of higher education came from the rich.

A university is only rightly a public resource when it is the public that is paying for it.

But now even big private universities like Harvard and Yale are forced to rely on federal funding for many aspects of their programs, so private universities are more accountable than ever to public standards of meritocratic admissions.

Still though, large private donations are tremendously important in funding any major private university, and legacy admissions are not going to go away, for that reason.

It takes one hell of a lot of money coming in the door to keep a university going.

It's not like I'm defending nepotism, but you have to pay the piper, and that's how compromises get made.

I wanted more to expand on EJ's post 5. Did anyone ever see the PBS documentary on Wilson. It was in two parts. Wilson had a problem with migraines and high blood pressure. If he would have used marijuana for his conditions we might still have legal marijuana today. I would be a lot richer and happier and my government would not have to waste all these billions on a WoSD. An interesting thing about Wilson when he became completely incapacitated while serving his second term- Basically his second wife became president in everything but name.

Wilson was the President of Harvard or maybe Yale. Anyway the practice of the day was for the college to house the rich people's children for 4 or so years and let them grow-up so they would not be so green when they re-entered the world. Education was not even as important as the dining clubs known by another common term I do not recall. In Wilson's day he was a reformer and intellectual that came to national attention because of the quality of reason in his lectures, first to his classes. His public speaking got him elected first governor (Mass,)

To come to a conclusion it was the reformer Wilson that pushed for the idea of hey we have this resource we call a university. Why not let the academically gifted by the users of this resource instead of all these rich brats.

The contrast is clear between EJ and my comments here. He goes for dazzle them with brilliance and all I have is baffle them with bull$hit. All I can say is you have to play with the cards in your hand.

VAAI

Schools like Yale and Harvard and so on have had a long history of being the breeding ground for the upper class/rich -- BEFORE the idea of educational meritocracy took hold and grades became important in getting into and staying in college.

In a traditional rich upper class family in a traditional class-based society, you wouldn't want the social embarassment of the father going to Yale and the son going to a community college or a trade school. That would be unthinkable.

How could Junior take over Daddy's position at The Firm in that case?

These really top flight schools have a certain number of their admissions that are allocated to what are called legacy admissions -- the sons and daughters of certain important alumni, donors, what have you.

For the university there is a big financial advantage. They can keep a wealthy family as alumni for several generations, so that giving money to the school can become a family tradition.

The idea of only letting into college those who satisfy some merit-based standards like tests and grades is a relatively new idea in the very long history of higher education.

Meritocratic admissions policies became more in demand when universities developed other sources of funding apart from the personal donations of rich upper class families.

For example, public funding. It doesn't make sense to have legacy admissions for a publicly funded university. If the taxpayers are paying for the university, then the children of the taxpayers had better face a level playing field when they apply for admission.

But for a private university, legacy admissions can make good economic sense, even if they offend modern meritocratic sensibilities.

But hey let's be fair -- there's a Democrat's signature on that bill and he was a Rhodes scholar and that man has no excuse for signing a law that could have kicked him out of college for residue whether or not he ever got to inhale.

I'd like to see HIM start a fund for the students denied an education because of the Bill he chose to sign of his own adult free will.

Maybe Denise Rich could contribute a few buckarooneys.

But that would be morally right, so don't expect it from them.