READS: Thursday, February 15 is...

Fiesta de Menendez (St. Augustine, FL)

I have no idea what that's about, and the web doesn't appear to know either, so we'll move on.

UPDATE: From Commenter NotATurtle:

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in the mid-1500s. He was born on February 15.

So there you go.

I'll start off with the day-late read: I had never heard of Queah's blog before yesterday, when a Google Alert popped up to let me know she had written something about Ed Fallon. Turns out it was a Valentine's Day collection of quotes on the gay rights movement. It's worth a read. I've seen some of these quotes before but most were new to me.

According to the Register, 50 Iowans have applied to fill one of as many as four spots that could open up on the Board of Regents. The Register has an article on it and the full list. There's no one on the list that I'm exceptionally excited about. The story also mentions that Culver is encouraging another 10-15 people to apply. I'd be curious to see that list.

The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque has been awarded $8 million in Vision Iowa money as part of a plan to expand. I'm torn on this. I've been to the museum, and it's great. Laura and I spent most of a day there and I'd do it again. But $8 million seems like an awful lot of money.

Finally, the Iowa legislature handed down a massive disappointment yesterday. A quick history lesson: Last year, after five straight years of giving Iowa schools allowable growth rate of 2 percent or less, the state legislature finally approved 4 percent allowable growth. A Democratic movement to raise it to 6 percent didn't come up with the votes. Democrats across the state campaigned on the issue of doing more to fund education.

Then they came back to Des Moines and voted unanimously to do 4 percent again. Furthermore, every single Democrat in the Iowa House voted against an amendment that would have made it six percent.

It already appears that campaign promises for local control have been forgotten. Now they're passing the same education bill we complained about last year and calling it progress. There's little positive one can say about that.

KL