Hot off the Press: “Somethin’ jumped up and bit me” edition

The governor of Arizona signed a bill banning the teaching of ethnic studies: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethnic-studies-20100512,0,5313151.story. Here's my question: would teaching the mostly Anglo history of the US be considered ethnic studies?

There is a Greek moment in the US' future: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/economy/12leonhardt.html?hp. I especially like this part of the article:

As societies become richer, citizens tend to want better schools, better medical care and other government services. This country is following that pattern, but without paying the necessary taxes. That combination has us on a course to Greece-like debt.

As a rough estimate, the government will need to find spending cuts and tax increases equal to 7 to 10 percent of G.D.P. The longer we wait, the bigger the cuts will need to be (because of the accumulating interest costs).

Seven percent of G.D.P. is about $1 trillion today. In concrete terms, Medicare’s entire budget is about $450 billion. The combined budgets of the Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation and Veterans Affairs Departments are less than $600 billion.

Inundated and annoyed by Birthers' constant requests for Obama's birth records, the Department of Health in Hawaii has been given permission to "ignore repeated requests from people who have had a request answered in the last year": http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/politics/14hawaii.html?hp. Though it's not a total restriction of information, it is unfortunate the government needed to resort to this kind of information clamp-down because of a few paranoid nationalists.

The Field of Dreams is for sale: http://gazetteonline.com/breaking-news/2010/05/13/for-sale-field-of-dreams.

Bad news for ash trees in Iowa: the Emerald Ash Borer has crossed the Mississippi into the Hawkeye State: http://iowaindependent.com/34062/confirmed-emerald-ash-borers-in-iowa. According to this CRG article, it could take years before the pest may make its way to the CR-IC area: http://gazetteonline.com/breaking-news/2010/05/14/no-emerald-ash-borer-panic-in-cedar-rapids. More coverage from the DMR: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100515/NEWS/5150338/Ash-tree-killing-beetle-scuttles-into-northeast-Iowa.

A journalist with an odd last name goes in search of his ancestral roots: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mozingo-first-20100516,0,4419674.story. This is part one of a series.

Another Beer O' Clock post from CRG sports writer Marc Morehouse: http://gazetteonline.com/blogs/on-iowa/2010/05/15/beer-o-clock-cuz-finals-have-wiped-me-out. He seriously needs to work on his beer photography skills.

A junior soccer club in The Netherlands has banned players of foreign decent because their parents are not as active in the organization as the native Dutch: http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2541611.ece/Dutch_football_club_bans_non-native_children. There seems to be more and more ethnic and cultural tension in western Europe.