Today’s Reads

I hope to make this a daily place to share links I’ve found interesting as I’ve browsed the net throughout my day. Perhaps this will make me less annoying to my Facebook friends who become weary of my constant shared links.

• So, basically, No Child Left Behind leaves non-white kids behind.

• No more Viagra pens? No more free samples?

• Times behind the times on trays, as I remember the fight over Lyon deciding to ditch them my freshman year!

• My love for Olympia Snowe grows as she discusses the Arlon Specter defection. I agree we need two strong parties in this country, and the future of the GOP is in moderation, not increasing white-wing radicalism.

• For perhaps the first time ever, Bonnie Fuller manages NOT to write a shallow column about Michelle Obama’s fashion choices and instead takes on racist white wing commentators who are using swine flu as an excuse to make hateful comments about illegal immigrants.

• I could probably do an entire feature on the ways my South Carolina Senators and Representatives embarrass me on the daily. Here’s Jim DeMint’s contribution to my embarrassment quota for the day.

• Glenn Greenwald makes clear why Democrats should be wary of getting too excited about Arlen Specter defecting to their side. Sure, he gives us 60 votes to prevent filibusters. But other than that, he’s still a conservative (in the traditional sense of the word), and his defection only underscores both the fact that the Republican party has moved too far to the right for even some of it’s normal, conservative members, and that Democrats are willing to sacrifice electing a real Democrat from that district in 2010 in exchange for some fili-busting now.

• And to round things out, an interesting suggestion from an interesting character (Eliot Spitzer) that the government use its sheer gun purchasing volume to achieve gun control without legislation through pressure on its suppliers.