Minnesota Taxpayer’s League President Phil Krinkie, also known as “Dr. No Heart and No Brain”, made some pretty controversial comments at a recent educational conference.

Among the ideas he discussed, was high school class sizes of 100, 200 or more. It would make them similar to college and would remove special needs students from the regular school system.

“There are hundreds, thousands of children in our public schools today that we are babysitting, we are warehousing them,” said Krinkie.

Krinkie would move high need children to special schools.

“Let’s not forget the purpose of the K through 12 system: to benefit the majority of the children in terms of their educational progress,” Krinkie said.

You know, Phil Krinkie is right.  Our should strive to benefit only the majority of students. Given that premise, I have a great new school financing plan. We’ll identify the smartest 55% of students in our public high schools (using standardized tests of course, everyone LOVES standardized tests) and then ship off the other 45% to government run factories where they can make furniture and licence plates. We’ll use the money from the factories to fund our schools (which will require significantly less funding now that 45% of the students are not attending anymore).

Think of how much we could cut taxes! In fact, if we follow Krinkie’s advice and make the average class size something in the neighborhood of 100-200, we would save so much on teacher salaries that we might even make a profit off the whole system.

Imagine a school that currently has 1000 students and 30 kids to a class. Lets assume that each teacher makes $40,000 a year (just for the sake of argument). That works out to over $1.3 million in teacher salaries. What a waste. If we employ the Krinkie plan, the school now only has 550 students and 5 teachers, bringing the cost down to $200,000 a year. If we further assume that each kid in the factory can make 4 licence plates a day (if 4 seems low to you, remember, these kids aren’t that bright, thats why they are in the factories in the first place) and that each licence plate generates a profit of $5. Those kids would be generating $9000 a day, which would pay for their school’s annual budget in just 23 days. Brilliant!

But seriously folks, Krinkie’s remarks prove two things (both of which many of us have known for a long time)

1) Phil Krinkie is crazy.

2) The Taxpayers League advocates a positively un-Minnesotan agenda which seeks to undermine the very things that have made Minnesota a great place to live and raise a family.

Now back to my 20 page legal memo due tomorrow…

Five years ago, Paul Wellstone was in a tough reelection battle and George W. Bush was pushing us down the path to war. In a speech given just a month before Election Day, Paul announced that he would vote against the use of force resolution. Many pundits predicted it was the end of his political career. But Paul confounded conventional wisdom and surged in the polls. In fact, five years ago today, Paul Wellstone was on his way to victory.

We all know, however, what happened five years ago today.

In the years since Paul’s untimely death, the war in Iraq has gone from shock and awe to quagmire. We’ve had Abu Ghraib and IEDs and sectarian violence. We’ve seen billions of dollars of deficit spending and our country’s reputation sullied perhaps beyond repair. Most horrifically, we’ve watched thousands of our brave men and women give their lives, and seen even more horribly wounded. So much has happened over these past five years, its almost unreal.

It was not, however, inevitable.

Standing on the floor of the United States Senate five years ago, Paul Wellstone predicted that a war in Iraq would cost us a fortune in blood and treasure. He predicted that oil prices would rise and that Al Qaeda would use U.S. intervention as a recruiting tool. He predicted that our reputation around the world would suffer and so would our war on terror and our efforts in Afghanistan. He predicted “a years-long effort to stabilize Iraq after an invasion.”

Its sad, because this whole nightmare could have been avoided if more people had listened. But its also inspiring, because it shows what is possible in our political system. It is still possible for a good man to be elected to the world’s most deliberative body and for that man to make decisions not based on what is politically expedient for him, but rather what is right for his country.

As we enter the Presidential primary season, I think its important to remember what Paul said and did five years ago. We shouldn’t settle for excuses and apologies. We should elect someone who, five years from now, will make us as proud of them as I am of Paul.

Take a few moments today to listen and remember Paul Wellstone.

Larry Craig doesn’t use MSP to change flights anymore.

Sen. Larry Craig is still traveling back to his home state of Idaho these days — his published schedule has him heading back this Thursday. But one thing about his travel plans is different since his widely publicized arrest: Sources tell us he’s now connecting through the Denver airport. He’s apparently had enough embarrassment in Minneapolis to last a lifetime.

The MSP bathrooms are safe once more.