Nothing seems to be private anymore. Google street view, red light cameras, cell phones with built in video cameras … You better watch your behavior, because it’s very possible that someone is watching. 

Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, the government can secretly spy on us, without a warrant. They can check our records, spy on us, find out what library books we’ve checked out, and peruse our browser history, in order to find information on possible terrorist attacks.

Between segments of some important sports game on Sunday (the Super Bowl, was it?) viewers were treated to what might as well be known as national commercial day.  From naked M&Ms to a nearly naked David Beckham, the Super Bowl commercials for 2012 made us giggle and ogle. 

During halftime, one two-minute long commercial sparked immediate controversy across the interwebs -- Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler commercial. The celebrated actor announced that in addition to it being halftime at the Super Bowl, “it’s halftime in America too.”

He continued: 

Since Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education in 1980, teacher performance has improved, students are smarter, and parents couldn’t be more pleased with the education their children are getting at state-run institutions that they didn’t pick themselves, but were assigned to based on zip code.

Just kidding.

None of those things happened. While there are definitely good teachers out there, lack of competition combined with a practical inability to fire incompetent teachers has lead to complacency across the spectrum. From rubber rooms for sex-offending teachers still collecting paychecks to bloated salaries and pensions for educational administrators all over the nation, public schools are getting a bad rap.