Iraq's Cell Phone Follies

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Iraq is now investigating the behavior, news that gets front-page attention in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal's news box.

Video of the "undignified and disorderly moments before Hussein's hanging" has "triggered outrage, in Iraq and abroad," writes the Post. Iraqi Sunnis have "declared the execution an act of Shiite revenge" and The Vatican said the images of the hanging were "'a spectacle' that violated human rights and could harm Iraq's process of reconciliation."

While Prime Minister Maliki's aides said they didn't think any officials were responsible for the video, the deputy prosecutor in Hussein's trial, Munkith al-Faroun, told the Post that "he saw two official observers … 'recording through their mobiles openly.'" The New York Times writes that al-Faroun told them that "he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cell phone, but he could not recall his name."

Slow News Is Slow News

In what can likely only be the result of a slow news day, two education-related stories (a topic typically relegated to A27) appear on the front page of the NYT and one on the front page of the Post. (Another tell-tale sign is USA Today's front page story on Evel Knievel, who is "still cheating death," albeit with a new liver and a replacement hip.)

On to the education stories: Due to crime rates, dropout rates and "newly documented slumps in learning," the Times writes that "educators across New York and the nation are struggling to rethink middle school and how best to teach adolescents at a transitional juncture of self-discovery and hormonal change." I'm not sure why it took this long to "rethink" the horror that is middle school, but as one who lived through it, I hope it works out.

The other Times front pager examines a "social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied" – education. It appears to health economists "in study after study," that education is more valuable than factors such as money and health insurance.

Finally, the Post profiles Montgomery County, Maryland's "aggressive policy on identifying academic talent," or, as it is more commonly identified by parents at cocktail parties, "giftedness."

For example, the Post writes Bannockburn Elementary School in Bethesda, frighteningly enough, is much like "Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor's fictional hamlet where every child is above average." In fact, 70 percent the school's third graders have "been identified as gifted, based on tests and other academic indicators."

Throughout the county -- which screens all second-graders for "extraordinary ability" and will spend $9.1 million in 2007 "for the core of its gifted education services" -- 40 percent of students are "gifted." So, unsurprisingly, the criteria for "giftedness" are "unusually broad, covering not just intelligence data but also classroom performance and the impressions of teachers and parents."

Surely, that doesn't include parents who call teachers to recommend their own children for the gifted education program, does it?

Bush Writes for the Wall Street Journal

Finally, it doesn't appear on the front page, but it's notable nonetheless: President Bush today has written an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "What Congress Can Do For America."

The Journal's news section also conveniently provides a story about what Bush says in the Op-Ed. And so does the Associated Press (which revealed that the president has written Op-Eds on at least four previous occasions.)

There are no real bombshells here – he continues to oppose tax increases, will push for changes in Social Security and pork barrel spending by Congress and repeats similar adages related to the war in Iraq ("If democracy fails and the extremists prevail in Iraq, America's enemies will be stronger, more lethal, and emboldened by our defeat.")

And as the 110th Congress convenes tomorrow – with the majority rearing for a whole lot of partisanship in its first 100 hours – Bush calls for the opposite: "If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate. If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation. We can show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can come together to find ways to help make America a more secure, prosperous and hopeful society."