I’m continuing on this week’s theme of padding my “links” list over to the left. For some reason, today I had less trouble locating a decent blog than I did yesterday. Perhaps my standards have dropped, but I don’t think so.

Critical Mass is everything an academic blog should be: thought provoking, engaging, challenging, but not arcane. In contrast to yesterday’s entry, Looka!, Critical Mass is all about its author, Erin O’Connor. While Erin quotes liberally from her sources, she also offers her own commentary and invites response from her readers.

Today, for example, she’s writing about the seventh- and eighth-grade reading list for Worcester Public Schools, quoting at length an article by Michelle Malkin decrying the inclusion of Tupac Shakur’s posthumous book of poetry. Rather than take the easy lob Malkin offers (e.g. “you want to go to Worcester and start teaching eighth graders?”), O’Connor muses at length about what an appropriate reading list for this age child might be. As the father of a 12-year-old myself, I appreciate O’Connor’s understanding that the problem of what to put on a summer reading list isn’t as simple as Malkin makes it seem. I only wish I could offer O’Connor’s level of insight on a daily basis.

It’s unprecedented, I know — two posts in one day — but I just had to comment on Bush’s comment about John Edwards.

As the headline indicates, when asked to compare Cheney to Edwards, Bush’s response was “Dick Cheney can be president.”

O-kay. Here are some off-the-top-of-my-head responses:

• Holy shit! He can? Things are worse than I thought!
• You mean he isn’t already?
• Mr. Bush — is there something you’re not telling us about your health situation?
• Great — then I’ll be buying 500 more shares of Halliburton
• You dying would be about the only way a Dick like that could become president
• So … then instead of the “White House,” we’d have what — a “White Undisclosed Location”?

Enough already. That was fun, though!