Quick hits

I've got papers to grade and a car drag to the shop later, so I can't spend all day blogging. However, you can spend all day reading:

• Robola is on the McIlheran Watch beat again, though with far more profanity than I use.
  
• McIlheran's column from yesterday is about his resolutions. There are some outright lies and more plain distortions in there (no time for debunking today), but he really should have resolved to stop lying and distorting instead.
  
• Renee deserves a standing ovation for this moving essay.
  
• Republican pollsters continue to tell us that Wisconsin doesn't care for Republicans.
  
• To answer the headline question: I sure hope so.
  
• Ten Wishes for education in 2006.
  
• Tara Pfeifer gave me an idea for 2005 in review. First sentence of every month:

  Hiatus is almost over. Just some random notes today. I missed this story last week about Learning Enterpise closing down. As an amateur (read: desperately unpaid) writer, I find myself saying "Somebody got paid to write this?!" way too often, usually over badly written television. My union is in the process of conducting a Superintendent's Interim Report Card, so that he can get a sense of what we really think about him and his attempts to break our backs and our spirits. I wish something newsworthy had happened today. Sarah Carr, an education reporter down to the local rag, has a brief profile in Monday's paper on some of the small schools opening in MPS this fall. I saw [$3.49 gas] driving in to work at one station. Jim Horn has it. For your Tuesday reading pleasure while I'm busy with the state tests. I knew, just from reading the title of McIlherans' latest dreck, that I would get angry reading it.

  I might be a little obsessed with Patrick McIlheran, no?