No Child Left Behind

...that the Department itself is unnecessary. I live and work just outside DC, and every time I drive by the building, I think to myself, "What an incredible waste of space and resources."

I used to work for the Department of Labor, yet another massive waste of funds. Though it did allow me to send emails to my friends telling them who testified before Ken Starr every day (our top floor looked down on the driveway of the court).

So many federal agencies have pretty dubious missions, but the Department of Education is truly puzzling. They real do almost nothing themselves. They exist almost entirely to take money from the states, take a cut and then return it to the states. It is a great make work program for education bureaucrats, but I have no idea what it does beyond that.

And as this is the first post of yours to which I have responded (I see there is another, but haven't read that yet), welcome to the blog and thank you for the comment. I hope you come back again.

I'm the managing editor of Townhall Magazine, and I liked your post that we picked to reprint. Be sure to let me know when you have other gems for us to consider. :)

I hope you enjoy what I have posted here. I am afraid I am a bit wordy for most publications, but perhaps with some creative editing one of my verbose pieces could be squeezed onto a single page.

Actually, I have to thank you, Chris, whoever else was involved. I am a frustrated fiction writer and it is great to see my name (or a variant thereof) in print again.

I spent half a decade writing and being rejected on a regular basis, and continued to write and get rejected for many, many years since. I did get one publication credit in a mimeographed horror rag out of NH. (Funny, the story was the one I wrote to see if I could get published. I intentionally wrote the worst, most stupid story I could, and, as expected, it was picked up on the first submission.)

Where previously I had to console myself with the Atlantic keeping a short story for 3 months and sending a hand-written rejection letter (and the rationalization I made up that it was only rejected because of the excessive length) or that two novels were held for a long time by a publisher.

At least now I have a nice, glossy publication to console me for another decade or two. And as it comes at the same time I am ending my three year vacation from fiction writing, it couldn't have come at a better time.