When the Bush administration talks about education, it always uses the word accountability. The rest of the time, it prefers to avoid the subject. Case in point: the Pentagon is asking for a large slush fund for foreign military assistance, entirely at the discretion of the Pentagon, with none of those pesky restrictions based on human rights, drug production, support for terror, etc that are supposed to apply to regular foreign aid (until Bush signs the waiver). Also unaccountable are businesses who injure their employees through repetitive stress; Bush has a plan to deal with it and, surprise, it’s entirely voluntary.

Also unaccountable, as in accountable to a court of law, is the treatment of POWs in Guantanamo. The latest plan is to bring in Pakistani intelligence officers to “interrogate” the prisoners.

The Taiwanese, worried that they are falling behind in teaching their populace English, have assigned the task to their garbage trucks, which will now broadcast simple phrases in English such as “How much does a pound of cabbage cost?”

In a case which has medical ethicists as excited (in a creepy way) as only medical ethicists can be, a lesbian couple (that’s not the issue), nay a deaf lesbian couple, has been having children through artificial insemination deliberately designed to be deaf. They’re those weird type of deaf people who think of it as some sort of lifestyle choice. One commentator asked if it was not the job of parents to ensure the most advantages for their children. One of the parents gave an interesting response, though, that black people in America are worse off than deafs, but no one complains about people deliberately choosing to have black children. Of course, the whole issue could have been avoided if they’d been able to *adopt* a deaf kid rather than making another one.