ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, october 17, 2010 INSIDE How to prevent
another Darfur George Clooney and John Prendergast explain. B5
BOOK WORLD, B6-8 Home improvementBill Bryson’s frenetic foray into the history of housing. B6
The spoken word Three books on how languages dominate or die. B6 Beck’s brain Inside the theories, speeches and appeal of the Fox News host. B7
5 We did our best. Now it’s up to you. by Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee S
ince June 12, 2007, we have had the honor and privilege of work- ing with the students and fami- lies of this city as the first mayor and chancellor to lead the Dis-
trict of Columbia Public Schools under mayoral control. It was with heavy hearts but also optimism for the future that we announced Wednesday our mu- tual agreement with D.C. Council Chair- man Vincent Gray: It is time for us to step aside and time for the city to move forward with new leadership for our schools.
We have enjoyed each and every mo- ment of our tenure. Even in times of stark disagreement, you, the citizens of Washington, have inspired us with your strong beliefs and your willingness to fight for the children of this community. When the two of us began this jour-
ney together, we made a pact with each other. We pledged that we would always put children first and make decisions that would be in their best interest, even when — especially when — we knew it would cause consternation among adults. This pact was our true north. In
many ways, it cut through the hard choices to something clear and simple: We would fight for the right of every parent to promise and provide their children an excellent education. We would insist on a school system that backed up that promise. We would en- sure that children received the skills and knowledge they needed to do any- thing they wanted in life. During the 2006 mayoral campaign,
everyone in the city agreed on one thing: The schools needed to be fixed. Your mandate drove us every day for the
past 3½ years. We’ve made tremendous strides. On
the nation’s gold standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, we’ve gone from being the worst-per- forming school district in the country to a force of 46,000 children who lead the nation in gains — with some of the greatest advances coming from our stu- dents of color, students receiving spe- cial-education services and students for- mally learning the English language for
schools continued on B2
Randi Weingarten responds to last week’s school reform manifesto. B2
R C U T 2010
I
JUSTICE BRENNAN Liberal Champion By Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 674 pp. $35
David J. Garrow, a senior fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, is the author of “Bearing the Cross,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
E O N by Jay Weiner
t is Wednesday, Nov. 3, in the wee hours of the morning after election night. From Chicago to Las Vegas, from West Virginia to Colorado, exhausted campaign managers are on their BlackBerrys and iPhones, talking, e- mailing and texting with election lawyers and party operatives in Demo- cratic and Republican bunkers in Washington. The word on everyone’s lips? “Recount.” As the sun rises, final returns will begin to trickle in from the most re-
mote precincts and the most disorganized counties. Problems with provisional bal- lots will emerge in some states. Issues with absentee ballots will develop in others. Disputes will crop up; battle lines will be drawn. And a recount — or two or three — will arise somewhere, throwing the results of the 2010 midterms into doubt and leaving the fate of the House, or more likely the Senate, up in the air. We all remember 2000. But it also happened in 2008, when the recount in Minne-
sota’s Senate race between Democratic challenger Al Franken and Republican in- cumbent Norm Coleman helped nail down the 60th and (if only for a brief time) fili- buster-busting seat for the Democrats. The process took eight months and showed that Franken won by 312 votes out of nearly 3 million cast. Six months after he was sworn in, Franken voted for national health-care reform. The recount affected pol- icy and changed history.
recount continued on B4
Jay Weiner, a staff writer at
MinnPost.com, is the author of “This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount.”
Which midterm votes could end in a recount battle? Six contests to watch. B4
You know it’s coming. A candidates’ survival guide for races that won’t be over on Election Day.
BOOK REVIEW The original activist judge by David J. Garrow W
illiam J. Brennan Jr. served on the Su- preme Court from 1956 to 1990 and came to be seen as “the very symbol of judicial activism.” As Seth Stern and Stephen Wer- miel write in this superb, definitive and
long-awaited biography, based in part on extensive in- terviews that Brennan gave to Wermiel, he also became “perhaps the most influential justice of the entire twen- tieth century.”
Brennan was a 50-year-oldRoman CatholicDemocrat and a seven-year veteran of the New Jersey state courts when Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower— or, more truthfully, Attorney General Herbert Brownell — chose him for the Supreme Court. As a state jurist, Bren- nan “had certainly not developed anything resembling a coherent judicial philosophy,” and his first five years on the top court exhibited no consistent approach. By 1962, however, in tandem with Chief Justice Earl
Warren, Brennan had begun to mold a solid liberal major- ity that revolutionized constitutional interpretation with regard to reapportionment, freedom of speech, privacy and the rights of criminal defendants. Stern and Wermiel reveal, however, that even in the mid-1960s, Brennan’s young law clerks were crafting much of the language for the justice’s most important opinions, such as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,which transformed libel law.
brennan continued on B5 ANDY BLENKUSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS Brett Favre, sexty beast by Stephen Rodrick O
n a humid morning in May, I stood with Brett Favre out- side a barn on his Mississippi farm. “Farm” is probably the wrong word — it’s more like a
Stephen Rodrick is a contributing editor for New York magazine and Men’s Journal. favre continued on B4
feudal kingdom. There are 465 acres, two homes, fishing ponds, deer stands and a bench memorializing a brother- in-law who was killed in an ATV acci- dent on the property. “I don’t know if I should play again,” Favre said, wiping tears out of his eyes. “Every time I leave here, something bad happens.” I’d spent the day before with Favre and his agent-protector James “Bus” Cook for a magazine profile I was writ- ing. Our time together revolved around Favre’s annual Wrangler commercial shoot, as well as a media firestorm that seemed critically important at the time. The morning I arrived, Favre confessed to ESPN that he would need ankle sur- gery if he were going to play again. He communicated with the sports network via a handheld device, apparently his preferred instrument of professional suicide. Cook’s office reverberated with phone calls from reporters and the
Minnesota Vikings, the quarterback’s current employer. A frustrated Cook told me his client was a “drama queen,” which seemed about right. By the time I left town, Favre had talked about vodka black- outs, a Vicodin addiction, his father’s meanness and the fact he probably would need a cane before he turned 50. He ran down the Green Bay Packers, his longtime team. He ran himself down for his annual Hamlet act (this was the third or fourth season in which he vacil- lated between playing or retiring). He was the opposite of the Jordanesque in- scrutable sports icon. Here was a guy confessing all in advance. This makes the Text de Favre allega-
tions seem as preordained as they are baffling. Favre is a coarse guy who has copped to every indiscretion imagin- able short of bad tipping at Applebee’s, and he is simply joining a long tradition of sports stars sinking into the moral primordial ooze. Only this time, the me- dia-industrial complex is joining him. Where to start? How about with a
hazmat shower? On one side you have the married Favre, old enough to be a
B DC MD VA B
myths about Sarah Palin. B3
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