Tom and Raghu and Virtue Boy

Today, the SOCCCD community received a delightful email from SOCCCD's head of "Public Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations," Tracy Daly:

Sharing Education Perspectives

Clerk of the Board Thomas A. Fuentes and Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur were special guests at a luncheon recently featuring former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.

Dr. Bennett served for seven years in President Reagan’s Administration. He is currently a fellow of the Claremont Institute, an author and host of the daily syndicated radio program “Bill Bennett’s Morning in America.”

Plus he’s a philosopher.

Wikipedia reminds us that Bennett, the nation’s self-appointed morality guru, has had some embarrassing moments:

In 2003 it became publicly known that Bennett was a high-stakes gambler who reportedly had lost millions of dollars in Las Vegas. As a Catholic, Bennett was not prohibited from gambling, but some felt it conflicted with his public image as a leading voice for conservative morals. Criticism elevated in the wake of Bennett's publication, The Book of Virtues, in which he argued for self-discipline—an attribute often at odds with problem gambling.

Evidently, Bennett’s gambling days are over.

Then there was this:

On September 28, 2005, in a discussion on Bennett's Morning in America radio show, a caller to the show proposed the idea that the Social Security system might be solvent today if abortion hadn't been permitted following the Roe v. Wade decision. He said aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but the crime rate would go down."

Well, yeah, there's that. Gosh.



Water boarding? Yoo isn't around to discuss

DAN CHMIELEWSKI says check this out:


Nate Jackson says watch this: Part 3 of 4: