ASSHOLES AND ACADEME. Here's your cheap shot of the day, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving soul than Roger L. Simon:

As a graduate of two Ivy League institutions (Dartmouth and Yale) I am beginning to question the Ivy educational hegemony in general.

Knowing that, so are we, hat boy! A little traveling music, maestro!

Seriously, and I say that with ferocious air-quotes, why do these guys keep bitching out the good schools? If Simon and his fellows think Columbia is anti-semitic (or too hard on Israel, which, these days and in their world, is the same thing), or too liberal, or insufficiently respectful of bloggers, or whatever, why not let the magic of the marketplace rule -- and send one's young'uns to Jerry Falwell's Liberty Law School? Yeeee-haaawww:

Like law students everywhere, students at Liberty spend much of their time reading and discussing judicial decisions. But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."

Yeeee-haaaawww! Thass some good education, hoss!

Like good moderns, our conservative education reformers (who are not shy about using political litmus tests and the force of law to enforce their "reforms") want it all: they want their kids protected from ideas they don't agree with, and they also want a swank brand name on the kids' diplomas. Even so I can recommend Falwell's inquisitor mill to them, because in the hell toward which this society is rapidly descending, no one'll be respectin' them fancy-pants schoo's no-how, and the only questions they'll ask yo chillens is have yew been saved? and how much money yuh got? Yeeeeee-haawww, Roger!