The Thursday Wrap

President Obama's heart obviously wasn't in his remarks of late about U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Which led comic John Oliver of HBO's “Last Week Tonight” to quip, “Ah yes, reluctance — it's always been the best tone for leaders to use when inspiring troops before battle.” Yep, that's our commander in chief. ... The president of New York's United Federation of Teachers in a video defended Common Core top-down academic standards at a teachers conference, insisting “you don't take what is mine!” Then Michael Mulgrew ramped it up: “I'm going to punch you in the face and push you in the dirt because this is the teachers'.” His conclusion: “These are our tools and you sick people need to deal with us and the children that (sic) we teach. Thank you very much!” Some attendees said Mr. Mulgrew's diatribe frightened them. What's frightening is that this mindset rose to the top of a teachers union. ... In the continuing food fight over “nutritional” school lunches, a Kentucky district has joined others nationwide that are opting out of the federal school lunch program and forfeiting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why? Because the Fort Thomas Independent Schools and others are losing money on lunches that kids refuse to eat — money that could go to textbooks or technology instead of “whole-grain hot dog buns,” The Cincinnati Enquirer reports. If only school districts could wean themselves off the academic “menu” that Washington's central planners force-feed them.

Subscribe today! Click here for our subscription offers.

TribLive commenting policy

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments — either by the same reader or different readers.

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.

Most-Read Editorials