Michael B. Duff

Above all, I urge parents of high school juniors and seniors not to see their kids as SAT and ACT scores and G.P.A.s, but as creative, unpredictable, unprogrammable teenagers with their own gifts.

Turns out the top was actually in 1979, during the hostage crisis and the oil shock.

"The man does not know anything about economics, he does not know anything about currencies, interest rates or about what makes the world go round. All he knows about, is printing money. And he maes mistake after mistake, after mistake. I defy you to find a single time in the last 6 years he has been in Washington, when he has ben right about anything."

There are, of course, lots of other differences between the U.S. and the U.K. But such a drastic difference in policy ought to produce results large enough to outweigh them. If the current position of the U.S. administration and its economists is correct, their policy should decrease unemployment by a substantial amount while the U.K. policy increases it by a comparable amount.

Best review ever.

Another entry in our "Republicans adopting libertarian rhetoric" series. As I've said many times, I didn't think the Tea Party had the power to change the American public, but they might have the power to change the Republican Party. I think this is a symptom.

Today's upcoming report by the White House's fiscal commission is expected to include recommendations to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut Medicare benefits — two policy prescriptions that will be met with deep opposition from Democrats and some Republicans — according to a source who has been briefed on the proposal.

Ireland's financial troubles loomed large Wednesday as investors – betting that the country soon could join Greece in seeking an EU bailout – drove the interest rate on the country's 10-year borrowing to a new high.

A group of protesters broke into the headquarters of Britain's governing Conservative party headquarters in London Wednesday and set off flares before being forced out of the building, CNN's Atika Shubert reported from the scene.

Conventional wisdom holds you should watch your mouth on Facebook, especially in matters concerning coworkers and bosses. But the National Labor Relations Board now says that you're more entitled to protection when dissing your boss, particularly if you do it to coworkers. In other words, your speech is protected under the law if it falls into one of the touchiest categories of oversharing.

And what does it suggest about the company? Well, first it suggests that Google is still an awesome place to work. Given that employee retention has been a problem, it also suggests that Google is now going the extra mile to keep its employees happy. Lastly, it suggests that the company's financial performance continues to be very strong.

An oddity of modern life is that experts run everything, nothing they do works, and obvious repeated failure makes no difference. Education is an everyday example. Students learn nothing and act badly, but no matter how bad things get nothing can be done. After all, the responsible way to deal with problems is to consult the experts, and the experts certainly aren't going to make themselves the issue, so nothing can happen.

I hear this is on TV, too…somewhere.

A Connecticut woman who was fired after she posted disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook has prompted a first-of-its-kind legal case by federal authorities who say her comments are protected speech under labor laws.