"The accompanying story by June Kronholz is, as the picture suggests, almost uniformly admiring. Although it doesn't address what happened to the real Braveheart, Scottish rebel William Wallace, who was hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered in 1305 for rising up against the British crown."

One commenter brings the discussion back into the current millennium: "I don't want Rhee to be beheaded, I just want her to resign."

Since Rhee took office in 2007, it's become quite trendy to follow the fiery Chancellor around for awhile and then write a breathless profile about her crusade to fix D.C.'s schools. C'mon, Education Next, all the cool kids are doing it. For interested readers, here's a sampling:

September 2007: "Can Michelle Rhee Save DC Schools?" Washingtonian.com.

October 2007: "A hard road to hoe: teaching poor children." The Economist.

August 2008: "An Unlikely Gambler." Newsweek.

November 2008: "Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge." TIME.

November 2008: "The Lightning Rod." The Atlantic.

January 2009: "Is Michelle Rhee the new face of education reform?" Christian Science Monitor.

March 2009: "Education's Ground Zero." Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

(Note: Most of them are "almost uniformly admiring.")

The American Enterprise Institute's financial woes, Campus Progress' smear campaign, and creationists at the Smithsonian below the jump.

• The Washington Indepenent's Dave Weigel has a bang-up story out today about the belt-tightening at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The think tank most famous for providing George W. Bush with intellectual justification in the lead-up to the Iraq War has lost funding from General Motors and the Carnegie Foundation, let go of several scholars, and killed the print version of its political magazine, The American.
• Ross Douthat of The Atlantic will be taking Bill Kristol's spot at the New York Times. As one twitterer said, it's hard to find someone in the political sphere who doesn't think this is a good idea. Douthat bleeds red wine and wafers, sure, but he's brilliant, curious, and upstanding. Which is more than anyone could say for his predecessor or the trouble-makers at Campus Progress, who have dug up Douthat's college journalism clips and excerpted the most offensive bits in hopes of...Well, I haven't figured out what they hope to achieve besides showing Douthat's stellar journalistic development over the last eight years.
• If this lede doesn't prime you for a laugh, I don't know what will: "Every winter, David DeWitt takes his biology class to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, but for a purpose far different from that of other professors. DeWitt brings his Advanced Creation Studies class (CRST 390, Origins) up from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., hoping to strengthen his students' belief in a biblical view of natural history, even in the lion's den of evolution. Whole thing here, courtesy of WaPo's Steve Hendrix.
• Also, Wayne Garcia of Tampa's Creative Loafing has a great update from yesterday's CL bankruptcy case, in which someone--can't say who--tells a fib or two about the state of company morale.

Alright, folks. I'll catch you later.

Nat Hentoff, 50-year veteran of the motherfucking Village Voice, has joined D.C.'s--nay, the world's--very own Cato Institute as a senior fellow (H/t to Tom at Fr33 Agents). This news is over a week old, and I'm simply flabbergasted that I haven't heard about it until now. After all, it's not every day that a well-known liberal gadfly decides to hang his hat on a libertarian rack--perhaps that's why no one made a big to-do? Here's Hentoff on the big move:

"Becoming a senior fellow of the Cato Institute – from whose publications I've often quoted – enables me to continue following the advice of my earliest mentor, Duke Ellington, who told me never to be caught up in a musical or any other categories," said Hentoff. "Duke said that it's always the individual's expression that defines his identity. All these years later, if I had to describe myself, it would be as an uncategorizable libertarian – and that's why I'm delighted to be at the Cato Institute, where freedom rings."

For more on Hentoff's Duke Ellington reference, check out Alan Bock at the OC Register.

Arthur Delaney reports in his cover story for this week (aptly named "Watchmen," in homage to Alan Moore) on the effectiveness of crime cameras. This snippet illustrates just one of the cameras system's many flaws:

In February 2007, two men were shot in broad daylight on the 1600 block of Euclid Street NW, well within the purview of a camera. The camera had panned away from the incident. Third District Commander Larry McCoy told the Washington Times that the footage showed “nothing that’s going to close the case out.”

Retired Lt. Michael Smith was repeatedly frustrated by the cameras’ attention span. “You always have those cases,” he says. “You get a glimpse of people running away, you get the suspect running away. Sometimes you’ll see people hanging in the area and it panned away and then it will turn back and it’s complete pandemonium because somebody fired off rounds. The camera is constantly panning.”

There's something of a kerfuffle going on in the beltway blogosphere (but only there, because these sorts of disagreements aren't real/based in reality) over libertarian economist Arnold Kling, who compared the passing of the stimulus bill to having his home ransacked by thugs. The American Prospect's Adam Sewer and Vanity Fair's James Wolcott saw race-baiting, and suggested Kling only used the thug metaphor because Barack Obama is black. Sewer and Wolcott are kind of like the liberals who knew, just absolutely knew, that the conservatives would try to invoke fears of miscegenation during the election (when in fact, the only people to stir up those fears were, well, "non-racist" liberals). The Atlantic's Megan McArdle responds here, and Reason's Nick Gillespie responds here.

Gawker published an e-mail conversation I had recently with a cordial Atlantic staffer. I forwarded the e-mail and my brusque commentary to vent about the the shittiness of unpaid internships. Sure, there are plenty of publications that staff armies of unpaid coffee-getters and google taskers, but this one struck a particular chord of indignation: The Digital Media Internship.

An unpaid position, Atlantic Media Company's spring 2009 Digital Media Internships offer high achieving college juniors, seniors, and recent graduates of all ages a unique opportunity to be involved in the creation and launch of new digital media products leveraging the power of The Atlantic magazine brand.

"High achieving"? Hmm...I guess they'll need some incentive to keep coming back. Achievement is key!

Oops! Looks like this page is outdated:

Interns are paid at a rate of $10.00/hour. Although we are flexible regarding school and other part-time work requirements, interns are expected to commit to 32-40 hoursweek on a consistent schedule. College credit will be awarded if desired.

The original description continues:

Digital Media Internships are unpaid. We are flexible regarding school and other part-time work requirements, but we expect interns to work at least 40 hours a week, on a consistent schedule. In addition, should your university allow it, we would be pleased to have students use the internship for college credit.

"Flexible"? My google calendar tells me that full semester course load + 40 hours = not flexible at all.

I know that newsrooms are crunching, staffers are getting laid off, and that it's just a dreadful moment to be pursuing journalism, but at what point do internships with august publications become, frankly, exploitative?

Side note: Several publications have separate internship programs for minority representation---fair enough. But how about separate programs for college students who aren't endowed with parental checkbooks and who, gasp, pay for their own rent? Please, pay me for my services!

(Full disclosure: This internship is unpaid.)

Brrrr.

This week's shocker: Erik actually enjoyed "One Ring Circus" from the Post magazine's wedding week edition. Wonder what the Sexist would say....

Meanwhile, the burning question: will the In Towner ever see "the warm side of [our] divide"? Tune in next week to find out....

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