Picture Bachmann In An Orange Jumpsuit

Salon has an interesting story up*, that Michele Bachmann hasn’t paid five Iowa staffers from her failed presidential campaign because they have refused to sign an agreement prohibiting them from discussing with police or the press “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity” they saw.

There is an ongoing criminal investigation pertaining to a home schooling group’s accusations that Bachmann’s campaign stole their email list.  The group has also filed a civil law suit.  As Dick Morris will be the first to tell you (check out the self-dealing between his PAC and Newsmax to make Morris rich from selling his email list, whereby poor fools donate to Morris’ PAC, the PAC then pays Newsmax for Morris’ list and calls it “fundraising,” and Newsmax pays Morris), you can’t just steal someone’s list, you have to pay for it.

I love the image of Bachmann in an orange jumpsuit, picking up trash by the side of the road.

* “Bachmann still hasn’t paid presidential campaign staffers,” Alex Seitz-Wald

In Rick Santorum’s America

In Rick Santorum’s America, birth control is illegal.  He believes that sex should be between married couples and only for procreative purposes.  Of course, Americans still want birth control, so a black market develops, and local, state, and federal governments must expend enormous amounts of law enforcement resources to fight it.  People go to jail because they were caught with a pack of condoms.

In Rick Santorum’s America, abortion is of course illegal.  Back-alley abortions flourish once again (especially now that it’s so difficult to get birth control), and if you have a botched one, you have to decide if you want to go to the emergency room and “turn yourself in.”  Because if the hospital is able to save you (and many women will die despite their best efforts), they will then turn you into the authorities, and you’ll be prosecuted.

In Rick Santorum’s America, prenatal testing is illegal because it might lead you to seek an illegal abortion.

In Rick Santorum’s America, there are no public schools, and everybody home schools their children, whether they want to or not, whether they are qualified to do so or not.

In Rick Santorum’s America, women are free to work outside the home.  If you can care for your 8 or 10 or 12 kids and home school them, and you want to be a surgeon or attorney in your spare time, knock yourself out.

In Rick Santorum’s America, the poor don’t get any government help and must rely on private charity as their safety net.  If other Americans follow Rick Santorum’s lead in giving only 1.8% of their adjusted gross incomes to charity, there won’t be much for the poor to rely on.

In Rick Santorum’s America, there are no environmental policies or protections, so many of us get sick from foul air and water and contaminated soil.

Rick Santorum’s America — what a wonderful place to live!  And he calls President Obama radical and extremist.

Santorum Wants Everybody to Home School

Rick Savonarola Santorum  home schools his children, and he thinks you should too.  He is questioning the involvement of not just the federal government, but state governments in schools.  He’s asking, “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America?  Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.”

Where did they come up with that idea?  In Boston, in 1635, when the Puritans established the school that is still functioning as Boston Latin School.  I am a graduate of that school, and because of Boston’s public schools, I was able to get a scholarship to Wellesley and then Yale when it accepted women in 1969, and move from the lower-middle-class to the upper-middle-class.  I grew up in one of America’s poorest neighborhoods and now live in one of the most affluent.

As Americans moved West and established new communities, parents raised new schools — literally — for their children and hired teachers to come from back East.  Parents took seriously their responsibility to have their children educated by professionals, not to do it themselves.

Our free public schools and public libraries are what made this country great and gave us an educated and informed citizenry capable of self-government.

When I worked on the 2008 presidential campaign, I met a lot of home schoolers.  I was very naive about this movement.  I thought these people just liked having their kids at home and enjoyed teaching them.  What I learned was that home schoolers really hate and mistrust our government and think they have to teach their children at home so their minds don’t get corrupted and poisoned.  I was stunned and dismayed by what I learned.