Introducing a new Attytood feature that I've scheduled to sunset out of existence tomorrow. But this is an awesome quote about our beleagured schools superintendent:

“It’s funny that all these people can show up to defend Arlene Ackerman, but not come to talk about when Asian students were getting beat up or that kids are failing out of school,” said a former district employee.

Bingo. Maybe one of the "exorbitant" (awesome use of the language there) number of high-ranking officials can identify just one wonderful thing that Ackerman's done that at least 500 other skilled school administrators wouldn't have done as well. In the meantime, Ackerman has done bad things those other 500 wouldn't have done. such as a) totally botching an episode in which students were phsyically attacked because of their race and b) directing a seemingly "exorbitant" contract to a high bidder. The way that corrupt public officials close ranks -- and get away with it -- in Philadelphia is flabbergasting. The buck stops with Ackerman, and the officials who heap praise on her are making fools out of themselves, but the voters who re-elect these fools aren't doing themselves any favors.

Meanwhile, as strongly as I feel that Ackerman must go, I wish some of the Philly.com commenters in the linked post at top would take their hoods off before posting. Jeez.

I didn't have any good ideas for getting Philadelphia all riled up today, so thank God for Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing" and writer of both "The Social Network" and "A Few Good Men" (and, in the braver-man-than-I would-be department, reputed one-time dater of Maureen Dowd). Comes now Sorkin with the argument that Sarah Palin's moose killing depicted on Sarah Palin's Alaska was dispicable and thus that makes her no better than...well, guess who:

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don't relish the idea of torturing animals. I don't enjoy the fact that they're dead and I certainly don't want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn't do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I'm able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I've tried and tried and for the life of me, I can't make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I'm able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho (expletive deleted)heads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

C'mon, Aaron -- what do you really think here? (We can handle the truth!) 

Let me be clear, I'm posting Sorkin's piece here because I think it's provocative (and hey, it involves an "area man"!), not because I agree with all of it. The truth is that Sorkin has no idea what kind of suffering that his New York strip steak or his bomber jacket went through, and that makes it harder to claim the high moral ground, but he also makes a valid point in that Palin seemed to be killing a moose mainly to entertain people and make money, which is also the purpose of, um. dogfighting, no?

I think I'm going to have to let you guys sort this one out. 

Only in America:

Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.

“It will come to a few dollars a week,” said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, “but it is an increase.”

To the wealthiest Americans, however, an assortment of breaks is available.

I'd say more about this but I'm heading out to buy my copy of "The Coming Insurrection."

Elizabeth Edwards was a political spouse for the 21st Century -- smarter and maybe more driven than than her eventual cad of a husband, facile in the ways of the Internet, a Facebook friend to thousands of admirers but truly known by few if any. She was, quite simply, one of the most compelling figures on the American political stage, and no one was ready for her to exit stage left, But when it was announced yesterday that she had weeks to live, one feared that meant hours. She died today.

Jonathan Alter, a cancer survivor who came to know Edwards, wrote a eulogy that was everything she would have wanted, both touching and brutally candid:

Americans love nothing more than to build up their politicians and other celebrities before ripping them to pieces. And so it bears repeating that these people are people, too. The culture kicked Elizabeth Edwards when she was already down. Now everyone is sad and sorry but it’s too late.

The United States announced that it will host World Press Freedom Day -- just as soon as we hunt down and assassinate Julian Assange. In addition to Lierberman's selection as MC, corporate sponsors include Amazon.com and MasterCard -- it's everywhere you want to be!

One of the facets of the May 2011 event:

Highlighting the many events surrounding the celebration will be the awarding of the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize at the National Press Club on May 3rd. This prize, determined by an independent jury of international journalists, honors a person, organization or institution that has notably contributed to the defense and/or promotion of press freedom, especially where risks have been undertaken.

Seriously, I can'think of anyone who fits that description better than Assange -- I hope he gets it. Especially now that we know Assange is a man determined to put everything out in the open!

Writing a story tonight so blogging will be light!

You've probably heard it a million times: Elections have consequences. Do they ever! In 2008, the coalition that elected Barack Obama and a sizable Democratic majority had little doubt that one consequence would be a dramatic shift on climate change, that after eight years of denial from the Bush administration there would be some concerted governmental effort to tackle global warming. Not only did no such thing happen, but now the political winds have pulled a 180.

Instead of legislation aimed at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States, some leaders of the incoming GOP majority have called for McCarthy-style hearings going after leading climate change scientists, seeking to prove that the scientific findings that have been peer-reviewed and widely accepted were in fact manipulated to deceive the public. A centerpiece of such an investigation would be the hacked emails that became the debunked scandal called "Climategate" on the right.

There's good reason to believe that "Climategate" will be re-bunked by the House GOP majority in 2011.

But there's been virtually no publicity about who exactly would lead such a witch hunt. There's mounting evidence that the task will fall to one of the congressional icons of the Tea Party Movement, Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, who is in line to become the chairman of the Investigations and Oversight panel of the House Science Committee. Broun -- who was virtually unknown until he made one of the first major Obama-Hitler comparisons even before the 44th president was inaugurated -- isn't just one of the increasing number of Republicans who questions the sciene of climate change, but he has taken to the House floor to declare global warming "a hoax."

Initially, speculation had been that the high-profile soon-to-be chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, California Republican Darryl Issa, might launch a major probe of the hacked emails, since he is also a global warming skeptic and had been critical back in 2009 of Democrats for failing to investigate the scientists who sent them. Since the election, Issa has said his panel will likely probe allegations of waste and abuse in some of the most costly federal programs; the science of global warming, Issa said, would likely be left to the Science Committee. Issa told The Hill: “A lot of it will, rightfully so, fall to the Science Committee. We are not a committee of jurisdiction on the science of it."

Some environmentalists seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. They were apparently unaware that the chief GOP prober on the Science Committee is a representative who makes Issa and some of his Republican colleagues look like Bill Nye the Science Guy when it comes to environmental issues. To Broun, a belief in gloabl warming isn't just wrong but part of a conspiracy.

At least that's he told the John Birch Society.

Broun's spokeswoman, Debbee Keller, didn't return my phone call seeking to learn more about Broun's plan for the science subcommittee in 2011. That's no surprise there, as increasingly Tea Party-linked figures simply ignore the "lamestream media." Broun's office never once answered my calls when I investigated the congressman and his extreme right-wing connections for my recent book, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama. In the chapter on Broun as poster boy for the increasing radicalism of the Republicans in Congress, I wrote about his ties to an event called the National Liberty Unity Summit, which also featured the radical Oath Keepers, a Tea Party activist scandalized by his misspelled N-word sign, and an Oklahoma City bombing conpsiracy theorist. Broun was only member of Congress to speak at a Second Amendment pro-gun march on Washington, and a Broun congressional staffer moderated an Atlanta event linked to the neo-secessionist League of the South. In frustration over Obama's health care plan, Broun later referred on the House floor to "the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

But some of Broun's most outrageous statements pertain to climate change. In October 2009, Broun spoke in Atlanta at a black-tie gala of the John Birch Society, and it was there that he suggested that climate change theories were part of a New World Order conspiracy to destroy America, one that was even linked to a Republican president, George H.W. Bush; Said Broun:

They used to talk about global warming -- y’all might remember a few years ago they were talking about an ice age was coming. It’s the same folks, the folks who want to change America, want to rule America. They want to change us to a New World Order. President George Herbert Walker Bush, remember, very openly said he wanted to have a New World Order. And all of these things are a progression of their outward efforts to destroy America, to destroy our freedom ... The John Birch Society is trying very hard to get the right people elected to Congress. There are very few of us --very few.

Except there's more of them with the 2010 election. Meanwhile, Broun has said more about his climate change theories on the floor of the House:

Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus. … And who’s going to be hurt most [by ACES] the poor, the people on limited income…the people who can least afford to have their energy taxes raised by MIT says $3100 per family. … This bill must be defeated. We need to be good stewards of our environment, but this is not it, it’s a hoax! … [APPLAUSE.]

Broun, a physician who in the years before his election to the House from northeastern Georgia only made house calls, has already shown a willingness since his election to Congress in a 2007 special election to question science-related programs that disagree with his far-right philosophy in which very few things that government does is authorized by the Constitution. "The federal government has no business setting nutritional standards and telling families what they should and should not eat," he said recently in arguing against food-safety legislation. One has to wonder where Broun and his conspiracy theories will go once he and his GOP colleagues have the votes, come January, to issue subpoenas and grill witnesses.

Indeed, the incoming Republicans have already said they will kill  the House Select Committee on Global Warming -- a clear signal that climate change denial will rule on Capitol Hill for the next two years. Indeed, the reversal of fortune -- coming in one of the warmest years on record -- and the growing  possibility of  decent scientists being dragged before hostile committee hearings to defend their work is a powerful symbol of our coming dystopian government. But nothing is more frightful than the notion that the environmental future of the planet may fall to a faithful follower of Brother John Birch. 

Turns out there was an extra enticement that brought ex-Phillie Jayson Werth to the nation's capital. In order to stimulate Washington's sluggish baseball economy, President Obama and his nemeses (nemisi?) in the GOP leadership announced tonight a deal to reduce Werth's federal income tax over the next two years. With the slugging right-fielder slated to make $36 million playing for the Nationals in 2011 and 2012, the compromise announced last night by Obama should mean an extra roughly $1.6 million that will be borrowed from China to pay Werth -- which apparently was the factor that tipped the deal to Washington and away from the perennially contending Boston Red Sox.

One side effect of the deal is that to make the arrangement pass Constitutional muster, the offer must be extended to all Americans making more than $250,000 a year, which will cost the federal treasury roughly $100 billion -- but after the loss of home-run bashing Adam Dunn to the White Sox, Washington is willing to overpay the Chinese banks to make sure that Nats' fans know their city is serious about winning.

For the heck of it, they also decided to cut payroll taxes for regular schlubs like the rest of us.

Who better than Ezra Klein to analyze?

So is this a good deal? It's a lot better than I would've told you the White House was going to get if you'd asked me a week ago. There's some new stimulus in the form of the payroll-tax cut and the expensing proposals. The older stimulus programs that are getting extended -- notably the unemployment insurance and the tax credits -- probably would've expired outside of this deal. The tax cuts for income over $250,000 are a bad way to spend $100 billion or so, and the estate tax deal is really noxious.

And it represents a correct prioritization of stimulating the economy over reducing the deficit. It's not the most effective stimulus you could imagine: The deal amounts to the White House throwing some bad money after good.

Which apparently is the best you can hope for out of Washington these days.

Who said it?

Our country is challenged economically as never before.  You know, people talk about American exceptionalism and how there's sort of this automatic for America.  Yes, we are exceptional, but we're exceptional when we do exceptional things, when we behave exceptionally.  We're not doing that today. We're locked down into a gridlock status where other countries are racing by us.  I'll give you an example.  Over the next 20 years, $600 billion is going to be invested in green technology and green energy.  New jobs.  New jobs that could be for Americans.  Ninety percent of that investment's going to be in other countries.

Answer to come later.Hiut: It wasn't Bryce Harper.

UPDATE: The answer is Sen. John Kerry, who in future world where Ohio no longer exists would be midway through his second term about now. Homestly, it's hard to imagine what kind of president Kerry would have been -- his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been exactly identical to Bush's surge and Obama's whatever, but beyond that I can't remember a single thing Kerry promised to do, except not be George W. Bush. You gotta bring more to the table than that.

There's very few headlines that have the ability to truly surprise anymore -- but was actually pretty shocking to learn late this afternoon that free agent Jayson Werth is leaving the Phillies for a lucrative-beyond belief seven-year, $126 million deal....with the Washington Nationals. That means will be seening the scruffy right-fielder 19 times a year for the foreseeable future. Almost all of the speculation had focused on Werth and his towering shots aiming for the Green Monster in Fenway Park -- I had not poured over every word of the coverage but I was not aware that the Nats were even in the ballpark for Werth. Wow.

I glanced at the comments on Philly.com and most were what you'd expect, about how awful the Nationals are and that Werth isn't going to change that. Perhaps. The Nationals have truly stunk their entire existence in Washington (not that Montreal was much better) and I have to believe they'll still be pretty stinky in 2011. But that could change in 2012. I think Phillies fans should be concerned about what's happening in the nation's capital, and not just because of the corrupt and inept people running the government there.

It didn't seem as if any of the Philly.com commenters have heard of Bryce Harper (pictured at top). Shame on them. The future National is nothing less than the Tiger Woods (hold the jokes, alright) of baseball, groomed to be a superstar at a young age and putting up ridiculous numbers at every level he's played, most recently the Arizona Fall League. He should arrive in D.C. in 2012 -- the same year that we learn whether the Nationals' other phenom, Stephen Strasburg -- remember him? -- recovers from Tommy John surgery. Adding those two players into an everyday lineup with Werth and Ryan Zimmerman won't only make the Nats competitive, but will make the team attractive to other free agents.

The 2012 Phillies will hopefully have some new blood but certainly could be older and may be without Roy Oswalt or even, unlikely as it sounds, Jimmy Rollins. That said. I still think the Phillies will put themselves in a position to win in 2012 and beyond, but it won't be by standing pat. On the other hand, this is the same advice we've all been giving Barack Obama, and he hasn't listened.

One more quick observation: The obscene size and length of Werth's contract shows how silly it was to speculate that the Phils would keep him.