• The new curriculum calls for teaching only the period from 1500 to the 21st century.
  
• Students will no longer study such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, William the Conqueror or Joan of Arc.
  
• "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" will not be mentioned.
  
• The development of democratic government in Greece and the fall of the Roman Empire will be skipped.
  
• Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and Confucius are not to be found in the new curriculum.
  
• Great civilizations like ancient Egypt will no longer merit study, and the concept of feudalism will not be discussed.
  
• Teachers will spend two or three weeks discussing the foundation of our country, with the remaining time devoted to studying events from 1876 to the present.
  

• That thing where some people own other people won’t be mentioned at all.
  
• That flag that is a symbol of Southern heritage that liberals, northerners, and other traitors object to won’t be explained at all. It will already exist at the beginning of history.
  
• The only reasons that will be given for Negroes to feel that they have been badly treated in the South or that Affirmative Action is justified will be something to do with drinking fountains and bathrooms.
  

The misguided rationale behind the hastily prepared revision is that we teach too much history in high school. The solution? Eliminate 40 percent of the current coursework.

Imagine a similar approach with math. Teach half the multiplication tables and test only the half that is taught. Surely scores would rise and the headlines would scream that math scores improved! But students suffer when perception becomes more important than learning.

As head of advising for biology majors at the University of Georgia, I will recommend that we not give advance placement credit for college-level introductory biology, regardless of test score, to students who take biology in Georgia high schools.

A student who wants to be a science teacher or go to medical, dental or other graduate school will have to retake intro biology here.

Much of the state's 800-page curriculum was adopted verbatim from the "Standards for Excellence in Education," an academic framework produced by the Council for Basic Education, a nonprofit group. But when it came to science, the Georgia Education Department omitted large chunks of material, including references to Earth's age and the concept that all organisms on Earth are related through common ancestry. "Evolution" was replaced with "changes over time," and in another phrase that referred to the "long history of the Earth," the authors removed the word "long."

[T]here is almost certainly discussion underway on whether or not to axe Cheney. From a political point of view, it makes a lot of sense. Get rid of him and you get rid of the guy who is believed to be the puppet master, the ideologue, the one who got us into Iraq, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if he takes tacit blame for a number of mistakes (he's also the villain in O'Neill's recent book) and then exits stage right, taking criticisms with him. A tearful farewell at the Republican convention coupled with the surprise announcement of Rudy as VP would be political dynamite for Bush and a disaster for the Democrats.

"I believe there is a very clear understanding that Saddam Hussein continued to pose a threat," Ashcroft said.
"Weapons of mass destruction, including evil chemistry and evil biology, are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States, but also to the world community," he said. "They were the subject of UN resolutions."

Sources with knowledge of the case tell TIME that behind closed doors at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, nearby the Capitol, a grand jury began hearing testimony Wednesday in the investigation of who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists.

"All evidence suggests" that Bush doesn?t arrive at ANY conclusions independently. During the campaign of 2000, we were told that Bush would be our first "CEO president." Sure, he didn't know many, you know, facts, and sure, he wasn't a very good, you know, reasoner, but he'd surround himself by good advisors. And recently we found out that he doesn't even read the papers, but gets his information from those advisors, too. Leading one to wonder: why, exactly, does Bush need to be a part of the decision-making process at all? Either he follows the advice of his advisors to the letter, in which case he is basically irrelevant to the process or he deviates from their advice in which case the decision is made by the uninformed person rather than the informed people.

Would you feel better if you knew that Bush made the decisions or if he didn't? It's a tough one, and it strikes at the heart of this next election. We elect a president, not a cabinet. As such, we elect someone because we trust their ability to make the decisions that come across their desk. If Bush isn't actually making the decisions then he has, in a strange way, subverted the way we choose our government by having us choose a spokesperson and not a president.

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort. Further details about the plan and the space agency's revised budget will be announced in NASA briefings next week and when the president delivers his FY 2005 budget to Congress.

DENVER (AP) - A 24-year-old Army sergeant was removed from an American Airlines flight after an inert land mine was found in his checked baggage, the Transportation Safety Administration said.

TSA screeners noticed the land mine Friday, pulled the bag from the luggage system at Denver International Airport and confiscated the mine, TSA spokesman Mike Fierberg said. No flights were delayed. The soldier, whose name was not released, could face civil penalties for trying to put a prohibited item aboard a flight, Fierberg said. No criminal charges would be filed, he said. The man was released by police, but the airline refused to allow him aboard his flight to Dallas, Fierberg said.

Q Could you confirm or knock down reports out of the Middle East that the President may go to Libya next year?

MR. DUFFY: I don't have any updates on the President's schedule at this time.

Q Can you assure us he's not going this week, though?

MR. DUFFY: I don't have any updates on the President's schedule.

Q That was a joke.