America’s K-12 schools have been among the biggest winners of COVID relief funds since March 2020. But wasteful spending decisions by administrators are setting public school districts up for big failures when the COVID relief money spigot gets shut off in two years.

Putin has reshuffled European politics by turning some of the bad guys into good guys. Or, to be precise, by rehabilitating some of Europe’s nationalist populists in the eyes of western Europe and the liberal democratic world.

Senator Rand Paul will introduce an amendment to eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and establish three new institutes headed by presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, and serving a term of five years.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed ‘dictator in chief,’” Paul wrote in a Fox News commentary. “No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans.”

Readers of William P. Barr’s One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, new from William Morrow, will recognize the author from the administration of President Donald Trump. Some readers may recall Barr’s stint as A.G. for President George H.W. Bush, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Readers now learn that Barr also served in the CIA.

Recruited in the late 1960s, Barr worked for the agency while attending law school, and as a lawyer, worked for the CIA’s Office of Legislative Counsel. Aside from Stansfield Turner, “a disaster,” Barr is uncritical of CIA bosses, including John Brennan, a special case.

In 1976, John Brennan voted for the Stalinist Gus Hall, candidate of the Communist Party USA, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union. That disqualified Brennan from any post at the CIA, but by 2013 the Gus Hall voter was running the place.

On March 6, 1457, King James II and the Scottish Parliament banned golf and football (soccer) because, according to authorities, the sports distracted men of fighting age from perfecting their military archery skills. Fighting age in 1457 Scotland started at 12 years old. The bow and arrow were the primary weapons of war then, and the King feared another invasion by England and demanded protection by his subjects.

Things aren’t going well for President Joe Biden. He’s pretty obviously grasping for straws at this point in trying to present any kind of positive news. But did you catch this gem about cutting the budget deficit from the President’s 2022 State of the Union Address?

“By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office. The only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.” Biden proclaimed. Let’s rephrase that claim like the joke it really is: “What’s the fastest way to cut the U.S. government’s deficit by one trillion dollars? Start with a budget deficit of two trillion!”

According to press reports, President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have not spoken since a February 12 phone conversation. The last contact between Russian and American diplomats was February 23. Much has changed since these previous conversations. The vaunted Russian military, launching an invasion from its home soil, has struggled to achieve objectives in Ukraine. The West has imposed crippling sanctions on the Russian economy. Traditionally neutral nations such as Switzerland have joined in sanctions. Germany, hesitant to send offensive weapons into any combat zone, has made an exception with Ukraine. Mass protests inside of Russia show defiance to the Putin regime.

As Putin’s columns move into Ukraine, some background on Russia’s relations with that nation may prove helpful.

In the winter of 1932, Robert Conquest outlines in Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin set impossibly high grain quotas and blocked all assistance from the outside. As a result, millions of people starved to death, with a high body count in Ukraine. 

Debates about the meaning and limits of free speech typically center on the relationship between the individual and government. Court cases involving the First Amendment are examples.

Watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine was personal for me. In 2020, I had the privilege of participating in two short-term teaching assignments at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University on the Sea of Azov and at Zaporozhye State University. Both are in the eastern part of the country not far from the two separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that Putin recognized just prior to launching his invasion. I, of course visited Kyiv, which is a beautiful European city. When I live steam the camera at Maidan Square to check in on the city, I think of the scrumptious meal I enjoyed at Last Barricade restaurant situated underground in this city center. The restaurant is something of a museum tracing Soviet repression of the Ukrainian people and claims to have the best traditional Ukrainian food in town. (No argument from me there). Maidan Square is the site of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity when protestors toppled the regime of President Viktor Yanukovych because of his refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union and his efforts to keep Ukraine tied to Russia.