Inside the Beltway

Dick’s dream

One knows the presidential primary season is in full swing when a politician has his lunch served at Margie’s Dream Truck Stop — and that’s where you’ll find Democrat Richard A. Gephardt tomorrow, ordering up some New Hampshire votes.

’Amelia Bedilia’

• Foes fight education choice in the District

• The D.C. teachers union embezzles $4.6 million

• D.C. student achievement among nation’s lowest

“But whoever said life was fair?” asks the Center for Education Reform regarding recent news — headlines that aren’t indigenous to the nation’s capital.

In New York City, the CER notes, rules defended by the local teachers union in the name of educational excellence specify that “the incoming teacher need not be interviewed by the principal of his or her new school. Thus, a principal may receive several new teachers, sight unseen, on the first day of school.”

If that’s not enough to frighten parents and pupils, curriculum guides issued earlier this school year by “highly paid educrats” are riddled with errors, the CER states.

Take the popular book “Amelia Bedelia,” which the group says was rendered as “Amelia Bedila,” while author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats was renamed “Era Jack Keats.”

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that teachers are advised to identify “student strengthens and weakness” and encourage students to “think about a time when your family work together.”

Mum about nothing

We learn of an “ongoing squabble” between the Washington press corps and press officers at the Office of Personnel Management, which has led to several reporters bowing out of an OPM teleconference.

At issue, says the Senior Executives Association, has been OPM’s off-the-record qualification for the press, which asks that nothing discussed be quoted or even used. Which, to many reporters, makes the information useless.

Not that OPM officials reveal much when going on background.

“Some reporters have commented that even when speaking off-the-record, OPM officials consistently stick to the administration’s line on policy,” notes FedManager, a news summary for federal employees.

We can’t help but recall this past fall when President Bush, after potentially damaging intelligence information was leaked by somebody high up in his administration, issued an order that henceforth White House officials were to identify themselves by name rather than solely a “senior White House official.”

Or so revealed an unnamed “senior White House official.”

Same-sex outrage

Massachusetts citizens are heartened by support from across the nation in advocating the value of “one man and one woman marriage.”

“What we have seen since the Supreme Judicial Court decision on November 18 to redefine marriage is a palpable sense of disbelief and outrage,” says Ron Crews, spokesman for Massachusetts’ Coalition for Marriage.

Since the same-sex “marriage” ruling, offers of assistance have poured in from the Alliance Defense Fund, Black Ministerial Alliance, Center for Marriage Law, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Massachusetts Catholic Conference, Massachusetts Family Institute, Massachusetts State Council, Knights of Columbus, Bay State Republican Council, Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, Concerned Women for America, Family Policy Councils of the United States, Massachusetts Attorneys Resource Council, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Massachusetts Physicians Resource Council, Morality in Media Massachusetts and the Traditional Values Coalition.

Cultural war

In his new book, “The Enemy Within,” best-selling author Michael Savage says the goal of the extreme left is to “redefine marriage to conform to their own perverse worldview.”

The top-rated radio talk-show host goes so far as to say that al Qaeda is not America’s worst enemy. Rather, “internal enemies” present a far greater threat to the nation’s long-term survival.

Mr. Savage says the “enemies within” are busy undermining schools, faith, courts, military, media and law enforcement, whether through homosexual “marriage,” the American Civil Liberties Union routinely suing to remove the Ten Commandments from public view, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending almost $2 billion each year on HIV — a largely preventable disease.

• John McCaslin, a nationally syndicated columnist, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.