What’s on your mind? I prefer to keep discussions in the comments so everyone can learn from them. If it’s something private, please comment again and I will contact you directly. Or, you can email me through my “about” page.

Last time I looked at my property tax bill, I pay a hefty amount for our public school system, so it isn’t free by any means. Our public schools also just received an award for drastically improved test scores. They beat my generation’s scores for the first time ever.

I wouldn’t disrespect public schools on my blog just because you, I or anyone home schools their children. I went to public school, graduated with honors, got a 29 on my ACT when the highest score was a 31, and graduated from the premiere public land grant and sea grant university in my state with a degree in chemistry. I would put my education up against anyone’s.

A public education doesn’t mean a poor education. Public school is a choice just like private school and home school. Parents must have the right and freedom to choose the best education for each of their children. Some of my home school buddies here home school one or two children and may send one to public school and another to private school. They did what was best for each particular child. There is no one way that works for everyone, there are many, and parents need the flexibility to choose.

My son has watched Hannity and O’Reilly once, decided they were full of bullpuckey and massively fact-free on nearly every point they made, and chose by himself to watch Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. He’s also heard all he cares to hear of Rush Limbaugh. Where we live there is no shortage of right-wing extremist nut job TV and radio. Getting anything on the liberal side is solely up to MSNBC. I balance it with NPR. You can’t even be a moderate here without being dissed for it, let alone a liberal or progressive. That I homeschool my son has me listed under the left-wing liberal pinko commie set anyway.

You may not like Maddow’s style, but I think she’s exceedingly intelligent (you don’t graduate from Stanford in 3.5 years with honors and become a Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D. by being a dumbass). If you aren’t paying close enough attention, you miss the satire of a point or you don’t understand the reality and facts behind the humor. If you listen to her, she makes a lot of sense, and teens like her because she can explain complex issues so they can relate to them as well as understand them.

I also find far more depth on her show than on any other. Over the past two days, she has spent over 45 minutes on President Obama’s candidate for the Supreme Court, 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Maddow spent most of that time examining Sotomayor’s opinions, how many have been appealed to the Supreme Court and how many were overturned. She also spent a lot of time interviewing law professors and specialists on the Supreme Court on Sotomayor’s opinions compared to the decisions of the Supreme Court. Will Sotomayor have trouble being confirmed? Will she move the court to the left or right? How might her background affect her decisions? What is her judiciary experience? Nobody else has spent half that much time on these issues.

Maddow follows her stories for long periods of time and reports updates as they become available, even if it’s been months since a story broke. She’s also one of the few liberals who cares deeply about the wars we’re in, the soldiers fighting it, and the military in general. She is a liberal, but her father is a retired Air Force officer and she was raised in a middle class, conservative family. She’s also spent entire shows just on the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. Entire shows. Nobody else does that and I find it a national treasure to get that much depth on a subject.

If you think Maddow is dippy, you’re not paying attention, or you’re a conservative and will never agree with her no matter what. She may appear immature but that means you missed her point. And when it comes to handling tough guests and potentially explosive situations, she has the brains to stop an explosion, very unlike everyone else on cable TV news. Her show is intense, but civil. There may be disagreements, but honest debate is respected and fighting isn’t permitted. She can even debate civilly with Pat Buchanan.

That may be what you don’t like. Her show is significantly different in format with no guests yelling over each other. I personally can’t stand that, and it’s why I don’t watch Hardball and the Ed Show. It’s also why I don’t watch anyone on Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh. They are anything but fair and balanced. And Limbaugh is nothing short of a megalomaniac. They get into dueling guests or insulting callers on nearly every segment of every show.

NPR is far more Maddow-like than all the others, or maybe it’s the other way around since NPR came first.

Olbermann is a liberal version of Bill-O, but if you check his facts, he actually gets them right and he cracks me up. Bill-O wouldn’t know a fact if it bit him in the butt, and he never lets the facts get in the way of him spewing his own misguided ideology. Don’t get me started on Glenn Beck…