There are wolves at the door and we’re so demoralized, so hopelessly feminized, so addicted to comfort that we’re now feeling just fine with being a morsel. Worse, we’ve lost touch to the extent that we’ve deluded ourselves into believing that the wolf, if we’ll just invest a little time, will understand our admonitions. We welcome him to the dinner table and we ask if he’d be kind enough to carve.

What else can one believe given the recent furor over the Islamic Stupidity Group, er, Iraq Study Group? We so desire the return of a simple life and diminished strife that we’re willing to suck this Kool-Aid through a straw and shout, “Damn those Neocons!” Who in their right mind could doubt the sheer brilliance of James Baker and Lee Hamilton and Sandra Day O’Conner (what genius Republican made this pick?) when it comes to abandoning a peoples and striking a well reasoned compromise? Oh, and let us not forget Vernon Jordan! Now there’s seriousness for you. Apparently Jimmy Carter had a previous engagement.

Surely these folks had access to the same materials that Andrew McCarthy relied on for his superb overview, Negotiate with Iran?, published at National Review Online. But of course they did. Perry and Panetta knew these circumstances well; as must Eagleburger-- after all he has 27 years in the Foreign Service-- but only a month with the Stupidity Group.

Bill Bennett summed it up best, “In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.”

We’re all Murthas now!

Spent the week in Kansas City, MO. Had the opportunity to help keep the rest of my flight safe by surrendering my gallon Zip-lock baggie for the required quart one.

I had, in the previous week, sacrificed my 4 ounce bottle of mouthwash for the safety of the crew and passengers on that flight.

I know I feel safer knowing that I have placed my appropriate ration of liquids in the appropriate sized bag so that they could be X-Rayed just as they would have been had they made the ride in my shaving kit.

No Chem sniffers, no way to tell if the ingredients of my approved size bag are components worthy of explosion. Just the same old X-Ray.

They ought to have a sign: “Line up Fools! Submit to this madness so that you’ll feel safer. And so that we can claim to have acted in your best interest.”

Bad news became good news where I come from. But then-- bad news again.

The USA Today announced the results from SAT testing on Tuesday.

National average scores for the SAT college entrance exam fell 7 points — the biggest drop in 31 years — for the high school class of 2006, the first to take the new version of the test.

Got that? Six years into No Child Left Behind, driving a 65% increase in Department of Education K-12 spending since 2001 to an unimaginable $23,615,510,000 (projected 2006). And-- inclusive of all Federal agencies-- an incredible $66,000,000,000 is spent on K-12 education. But, alas, SAT scores are down. Imagine that.

This national news was followed by a press release from the NC State Board of Education which cheered the fact that the NC scores fell at a smaller rate than those nationally, allowing them to harp that “North Carolina students continued to close the gap between the state and the national average…” And closing that gap allows the state to boast of placing only 36^th nationally. Oh, and this is coupled with the stirring news that a whopping 3% of NC students took AP tests. Surely a sign-- Dewey smiles!

More fun was to be had in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Nationally known as a result of eye-popping litigation a few years back when parents sued to escape busing and won (psst! was it racism?), then more recently mired in controversy around the system’s performance, the Charlotte Observer reports:

Overall, North Carolina's mean SAT score was 1008, a two-point drop. But the state moved closer to the national average of 1021 and now ranks 36th.

South Carolina's 985 was an eight-point decrease. The S.C. totals for reading and math bested only Washington, D.C. When writing was added, the state also topped Hawaii.

Several schools in CMS and the region topped state averages. And the top 10 percent in CMS outscored their peers in North Carolina and across the country.

See, those of us in NC, and particularly Charlotte, always have an out since we share that southern border with South Carolina. Wasn’t it interesting to see their secretary squirm as John Stossel’s ‘Stupid in America’ probed the failure of government schools there? Why even the Governor was expected to abandon the public school system.

It’s way past time, people. School choice is a must. And not only for the disadvantaged or those where the walls are literally coming down. But for every parent.