Outstanding performance

LITTLE ROCK — Anyone recall that column awhile back about Fayetteville’s Haas Hall Academy?

It’s the public school of about 300 students in grades 8 through 12 that convenes in a remodeled former Italian restaurant and beside Maggie Moos ice cream shop.

Well, its founder and director, Martin Schoppmeyer, got some interesting news the other day. The Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville recently published its 2010 Outstanding Educational Performance Awards highlighting the state’s highest achieving schools.

Turned out there was only one school in the state to rank either No. 1 or No. 2 in all four categories examined, algebra I, geometry, biology and 11th-grade literacy.

Yep, it was that little educatorium in a leased space that cost the taxpayers very little, especially when compared with the scores of millions of public dollars being spentelsewhere on palatial bricks and mortar.

Haas Hall offers us a lesson about effective teaching with such astounding results. Kinda reminds me ofthat 1986 film about the tiny hamlet of Milan, Ind., called “Hoosiers.” But Shoppmeyer doesn’t look anything like Gene Hackman.

Omission

Some exciting news for atheists and Wiccans. For the third time in about a month, President Obama, has failed to include any mention of the Creator in quoting the Declaration of Independence.

Most Americans who completed the seventh grade prbably learned that the founders of this nation clearly wrote into the declaration that “All Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life,Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

But the president has said that our citizens are endowed “with certain rights,” failing to recite the passage correctly and acknowledge that Americans’ rights are a gift from their Creator.

The president first chose to strip God from our founding document on Sept. 15 when speaking to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. He did so again on Sept. 23 at a fundraiser in New York City. He repeated it yet a third time the other night at in Rockville, Md., when speaking to Democratic donors.

What’s that they say about the third time for anything? His omissions of the specific credit to God in our declaration can no longer be called unintentional.

If our rights do not come to us from our creator, then they must come to us from transitory government, which certainly oughta tickle all nonbelievers. And we all should know that whatever transitory government gives to people, it can take away in punishment if that government doesn’t favor the way you act or think.

Incidentally, how’s all that big smiley, TelePrompTery, cardboard Greek-Temply, beer-summity hope and change working out for ya?

Cheating

Did you hear about that female voter in Las Vegas who went to cast an early ballot, only to see it pop up on the screen wrongly completed as a vote for Sen. Harry Reid and all other Democrat candidates?

This sort of thing also is being reported elsewhere. I heard of some man who reported virtually the same thing happening with his own precompleted early electronic ballot.

So watch yourselves in those machines, folks. Make sure your ballot reads exactly as you intend to cast it before “pulling the lever.”

Those of any political persuasion who try to rig our sacred election process (including those who would would disenfranchise our servicemen) oughta be elected to 10 years as a cell block leader in federal prison without parole.

No comment

As written earlier this week, I believe that veteran Appeals Court Judge Karen Baker of Clinton is clearly the best choice for our state Supreme Court come Tuesday. That said, I did feel a minuscule twinge of “ouchy!” for her political opponent, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, last week.

Fox was named as a third party in a response to a Lonoke County divorce case that originally was filed on Oct. 12 by lawyer Lauren Hamilton against her husband, Shane.

Fox, who also is married, was identified in Shane Hamilton’s amended counterclaim as the person with whom his wife claimed to be having an affair. Lauren Hamilton is Fox’s former law clerk.

Later, Fox wouldn’t admit or deny anything, instead telling a reporter that he wouldn’t discuss his personal life. Lauren Hamilton didn’t return a reporter’s phone calls for the news story that ran Tuesday in this paper.

The only questions I have, purely in the public interest, about this icky mess is whether Fox has heard any cases in his courtroom involving Mrs. Hamilton or members of her current law firm, and if so, why, and how did those cases turn out?

Asked about that, Fox responded that this was a matter “between litigants.”

Seems to me an odd response from a Supreme Court candidate. I suspect others within his profession might have the same legitimate questions.

Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.