You've got to wonder how long it will take the nation to recognize the role that poverty is playing in inner-city children's education.According to Associated Press, a new report says that in urban public school systems throughout the country, the graduation rate is only about 50 percent, way lower than the rate for students in suburban and rural schools.The report was published by America's Promise Alliance, an organization founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Its findings mimic those familiar to people in the Greater Rochester area.Seems to me you can draw one of only two conclusions. Either teachers

It's a bit outside of the Rochester region, but the 61st Senate District is drawing some interest from "Baby" Joe Mesi, a boxer familiar to local fight fans. Mesi plans to seek the Buffalo-area seat as a Democrat, say news reports. So does Erie County Legislator Michele Iannello. Mary Lou Rath, a Republican, holds the seat but is retiring.If Mesi wins and Majority Leader Joe Bruno keeps his seat, it might be fun to see a fight in a nonpolitical arena. Bruno is a boxer himself, and a New York Times article from 2000 says he's never lost a fight.

In today's Washington Post, EJ Dionne assesses the potential damage that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are inflicting on one another. And he suggests that Clinton's campaign "needs to examine not what this fight has done to Obama but what it is doing to her. "For all Democrats," writes Dionne, "the worst thing that has happened since January is the tarnishing of the Clinton brand. Clinton haters: Don't laugh. The truth is that when this whole thing began, the vast majority of Democrats -- including Obama supporters -- and a fair number of independents had largely positive views of Bill

City schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard recently discussed measures he is taking to help at-risk students to graduate. If graduation was to take place today, Brizard says, he is sure that at least 42 percent of city school students will graduate. That is up from the number of students who graduated last year. Or is it? Accurate reporting of graduation rates has been a problem for public schools nationwide. President Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind act has put pressure on schools to meet grade-level testing standards, and it was expected to drag graduation rates into the light. The problem: states

On salon.com this morning: Mark Benjamin assesses John McCain's "Vietnam obsession." McCain has frequently warned against "the mistakes of Vietnam" in weighing the United States' role in foreign conflicts, writes Benjamin. But on Iraq, he's drawing the wrong conclusion about what those mistakes were.

On cnn.com: In "King's Final Crusade: the Radical Push for a New America," John Blake says Martin Luther King's plan for his Poor People's Campaign "was so revolutionary, it alarmed many of his closest advisers.""The campaign's goal," writes Blake, was to "force the federal government to withdraw funding for the Vietnam War and commit instead to abolishing poverty." 

In today's New York Times: A report on the 2003 Justice Department memo that gave military interrogators "broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning detainees and argued that wartime powers largely exempted interrogators from laws banning harsh treatment." The memo was released on Tuesday as a result of pressure by the American Civil Liberties Union. You can link to the Times' article and the full text of the memo here. 

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and NPR's Morning Edition is running a series this week related to King's death. This morning's segment, available online: an interview with the Reverend Samuel Billy Kyles, who was present as King gave his "Mountaintop" speech in Memphis the night before his death.Also available on the NPR website: links to a video segment of that speech and the full text of the speech.In today's Washington Post: a powerful piece by former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, the nation's first African-American senator. Brooke notes that while there has been progress

What started out as one of the most exciting presidential races for Democrats in decades has begun to feel heavy, almost preoccupied. The back and forth between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has uncovered relatively small differences between the two candidates. But it seems to have put a floodlight on issues like racism and sexism. The race between two highly qualified candidates, one an African-American man and the other a white woman, has shown that racism is still alive and well in America. And that many Americans, including many women, aren't eager to accept intelligent, powerful women in leadership

When Bill Clinton left office, it wasn't under a dark cloud of humiliation. It wasn't the disgrace that former Governor Eliot Spitzer faced. Most Republicans hated Clinton before he even took office, so nothing really changed there. And among Democrats, Clinton's approval ratings rose. The old Bill Clinton was youthful and eternally optimistic. Downing a couple of Big Macs and then jogging on the White House lawn was the kind of contradiction we loved about Bill Clinton. He was human.Clinton's post-presidency appeal has always been looked upon as the Democrat's most valuable asset. Some people even argued that Al Gore

From today's New York Times: "Schools in Hartford and 22 of its suburbs would be encouraged to open more classroom seats to children from outside their neighborhoods in order to increase racial diversity, under a tentative settlement reached Friday in a decades-old desegregation case." The settlement, the latest development in Sheff v. O'Neill, is for an entirely voluntary plan. The goal: "to get at least 41 percent of Hartford's minority students into schools where enrollments are no more than three-quarters minority," the Times story says. Connecticut state legislators and a state court would have to approve the plan.A Cheektowaga school's

State of the City speeches can be as much pep rally as substantive discussion. They do, though, give mayors a chance to talk both about progress and problems. And while Mayor Bob Duffy undoubtedly will address both in his State address tonight, the serious stuff is in the problems.We've had plenty of good news recently; Paetec's headquarters, the Rhinos' rescue, more downtown housing development.... But this city's problems are enormous, and our resources for dealing with them are limited.One of the toughest decisions city officials face right now is how to spend the Community Development Block Grant funds. The mayor is recommending

While Democrats are still squaring off over who will be the presidential candidate - Senator Barack Obama or Senator Hillary Clinton - Republican Senator John McCain has taken the opportunity to lay out some of his campaign's message. He wants to stay in Iraq, and he's questioning the leadership skills of both Democrats, who say they will begin bringing US troops home once in office.But how? Clinton may have a little more play here than Obama. She's never said her vote for the war was wrong, presumably to avoid looking weak on national defense. And if she changed strategy once

David Petraeus, the commanding general in charge of multinational forces in Iraq, spent much of yesterday answering questions from US senators, including the three presidential candidates. Some of what was said was a rerun of Petraeus' trip to Capital Hill about a year ago, advocating the Bush Administration's troop surge, which was intended to stabilize the country long enough for a political solution to take hold. That hasn't happened. Petraeus asked senators to put the troop pullout on pause for part of the summer so he could re-evaluate the situation. Whoever is elected to be the next US president could

Rochester area Representatives Randy Kuhl and Louise Slaughter are frequently on opposite sides of an issue, and on the Petraeus-Crocker hearings in Congress this week, they couldn't be farther apart. In a press release issued just after noon, Kuhl warned against "a precipitous withdrawal" from Iraq which, he said, "will create both a humanitarian disaster and a national security crisis."Kuhl made it clear that as he campaigns for re-election, he'll be supporting President Bush's Iraq policies. "Too many current and aspiring members of Congress are quick to ignore and refute the guidance of the two men who know the most

A McCain- Rice ticket would beat a Clinton-Obama ticket - or an Obama-Clinton ticket in New York State, according to a new Marist Poll. "Forty-nine percent of registered voters in New York State support a John McCain/Condoleezza Rice ticket compared with 46 percent who support Hillary Clinton as president and Barack Obama as vice president," the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion is reporting. "The Democrats don't fare any better in New York with Obama at the top of the ticket as president and Clinton as vice president."Democratic activists in Myanmar are asking for international observers for that country's May

From Iraq: The New York Times is reporting that a top aide to Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr has been killed. Only sketchy information is available, but the aide's death seems certain to threaten the shaky cease-fire that al-Sadr has overseen.While the presidential race and Iraq are dominating the discussion for many of us, NPR reminded us this morning of another major news development: a growing international food crisis. Shortages of such staples as rice, and the resulting high prices, have caused riots in Haiti and Egypt. Demand for ethanol and other biofuels is a major contributor, World Bank President Robert

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says that that the US military is "very, very stretched," and the next president "will have to continue to draw down at some pace." However, he said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" today, the next president will not "have the flexibility of just saying, ‘We're out of here, turn off the switch, turn off the lights, we're leaving.'" Powell also said he believes that the situation in Afghanistan "in some ways is more difficult than Iraq."A summary of the interview and a link to the video are available on the ABC

Add to the list of key topics needing more discussion in this presidential campaign: welfare reform. Today's Times notes that Bill Clinton's reform measure, supported by his wife, takes on new importance as the national economy weakens. Being hit especially hard by the economic downturn are the working poor, who will most need a strong safety net.

TV ad wars in Pennsylvania between Senators Obama and Clinton are heating up. Obama is outspending Clinton at a rate of 2 to 1 according to most reports, and his ability to saturate the state's media markets with his messages is attributed to a narrowing gap in the polls.Some of his ads are also running on Spanish language stations.Clinton still leads, but it could be a dead heat by the time Pennsylvanians go to the voting booth on April 22.