1. Buy a Paperweight

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Bottom Story of the Day
“Al-Qaida Leader Urges Holy War Over Prophet Film”–headline, Associated Press, Oct. 13

1. Buy a Paperweight
“Tips to Keep Your Heating Bill Down”–headline, WTOP-FM website (Washington), Oct. 15

Longest Books Ever Written
“WHY IT MATTERS: Terrorism”–headline, Associated Press, Oct. 15

Not-So-Great Expectations
“The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race,” reports CBS Radio’s Tampa affiliate:

On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent.

“Many community activists” are “infuriated,” the station reports, picking up a Palm Beach Post story that quotes Juan Lopez, a middle-school “magnet coordinator,” as saying: “To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base.”

Of course, that’s exactly what the University of Texas and many other institutions of higher education do under the rubric of “affirmative action.” Lopez must be hoping Abigail Fisher prevails in her lawsuit against UT.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has an op-ed from Nicholas Carnes, an assistant professor of public policy at Duke University, who complains that presidential candidates are too rich–and he doesn’t just mean Mitt Romney:

By Election Day, that choice has usually been made for us. Would you like to be represented by a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire businessman? Even in our great democracy, we rarely have the option to put someone in office who isn’t part of the elite.

Of course, many white-collar candidates care deeply about working-class Americans, those who earn a living in manual labor or service-industry jobs. Many are only a generation or two removed from relatives who worked in those fields. But why do so few elections feature candidates who have worked in blue-collar jobs themselves, at least for part of their lives? The working class is the backbone of our society, a majority of our labor force and 90 million people strong. Could it really be that not one former blue-collar worker is qualified to be president?

We’re curious what proportion of the Duke faculty is made up of former blue-collar workers.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”