Beckel is a verbal bomb-thrower for the Left; he's only on The Five so as to provide statements like this.

Letterman is an idiot; he thinks Sen. Paul is wrong, he just doesn't know why. So, he'll keep thinking until he comes up with an answer which satisfies his pre-determined concept.

Wow. LD, you don't understand that profit is absolutely not "unnecessary"; the potential for profit, coupled with need, drives innovation. In your world, we would have a government subsidizing sharp, pointy thing production for ventures outside the cave for those adventurous "members of the collective" - of which there may be very few, as their need to "profit" from such ventures would be demonized by the betters among them.

"Unions operate by treating workers as interchangeable cogs in the machine." Unions aren't the only entity doing this. Administrations are guilty of this just as much or more (and I would lean toward more). There are a growing number of schools where it is required that high school teachers teaching the same subject and grade teach the same thing in the same way every day. So, if a principal goes from one room to the next, he should see the same thing taking place. Thus, "teaching" becomes all procedure, no art. How much creativity and dedication do you suppose that engenders in teachers?

What must - MUST - go with getting rid of the Dept. of Ed is the repeal of all federally mandated education law. If you do the former without the latter, it seems to me that the states will simply have to live under the mountain of unfunded mandates which come from on high.

What is wrong with public schooling cannot be captured in one catch-phrase.

I think your point about "elite" public schools always seeming to have money is indicative of the number of mandates and requirements that disproportionately hammer more "diverse" schools. The sheer weight of cost that regulations and laws regarding SPED and 504 kids have on a school or a district can be debilitating to the whole. And guess where a great number of kids tagged as SPED or 504 go to school? Obviously, this does not spell out the whole issue - it is just a small, expensive part. But it adds to the case that the further up the gov't chain control is placed, the more expensive - in innumerable ways - it is for folks at the bottom to do the real work.

Studying literature is quite inexpensive and is always "up to date" - buy novel/play, read, discuss, back up arguments with evidence from the text. In the case of public domain texts (like, for instance, all of Shakespeare), the cost is zero - or the cost of printing at Kinkos.

I think the only reason folks don't see government as force at the moment is because government "gives" so much. At least for now. At some point, the "giving" gloves will come off, and then it all depends on who is in power what direction - against whom - force moves.

It is a habit of the Left to openly accuse its opponents (or enemies) of the very things that the Left is engaged in at the moment. So when Benen contends, "a major political party ... possibly undermining the strength of the country -- on purpose, in public, without apology or shame -- for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012," he really is talking about the Democrat Left, though he implies something different. It's a cloaked gaff, but it happens regularly on the Left.