The day before Thanksgiving provided a little joy for American farmers. The cause for celebration is that a U.S. District Court in Arizona reversed a September 27, 2011 decision regarding consultation requirements under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) involving pesticides. The federal Court on November 23, 2011, reconsidered its September...
Some argue that the emails of University of Virginia professor Michael Mann should be protected from public release on the grounds that to do otherwise would “chill” the work of scientists and academics. Others argue that Mann is doing nothing more than trying to keep secrets and let no one...
In it’s December 2011 report, the Thomas Jefferson Institute reviews its work with Governor McDonnell’s Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring; its support for educational reform, including new options for students and it’s work to promote market-oriented economic development policies.
... Celebrate EPA’s withdrawal of job-killing ozone standards – but prepare for more onslaughts Millions of Americans recently celebrated the demise of the Environmental Protection Agency’s job-killing ground-level ozone regulations. While a toast was appropriate, we shouldn’t drink too much champagne just yet. As with the Battle of Midway and...
A data warehousing project coming online in late 2012 will help Virginia lawmakers forge education policy based upon hard data instead of anecdote and ideology. Tod Massa is big man with big ideas. His goal is to build a “Longitudinal Data System” (LDS) that will track the progress of Virginians...
(Publisher’s Note: Dr. Schnare is the lead attorney in the UVA-Mann email case.) Recently, Nature Magazine published an editorial suggesting that “access to personal correspondence is a freedom too far” and that Michael Mann, whom they favorably compare to Galileo, should have his emails, written and received while he was...
Some analysts have started talking about the sluggish U.S. economic growth as the “new normal.” I have a hard time with that term. For one thing, “normal” is a relative term. What is normal in one environment is not in another. Based on history and the experience of other countries,...
11/9/2011 – Local school boards are understandably drooling over the possibility of getting out from under the poorly-devised accountability rules of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). That federal system has annually moved the “finish line” of educational success further and further down the field until, this year, 342 Virginia schools...
Local school boards are understandably drooling over the possibility of getting out from under the poorly-devised accountability rules of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). But it won’t be a free ride …
... In 2010, Virginia became the 28th state to create a formal policy for the establishment of full-time multi-district virtual schools — online education through which students anywhere in the state are able to work full-time with their teachers and curriculum over the Internet, rather than in a traditional classroom. But...
