Michelle Rhee Fired on Civilians in Fallujah?

Sally Kohn's bio at The Huffington Post begins: "Sally Kohn has been called 'the progressive answer to Glenn Beck.'" A specimen of her handiwork posted at FoxNews.com today proves she deserves the title, and then some.

Topped by the utterly exhausted headline "Can You Read This? Thank a Teacher," what starts out as a pretty typical "teachers are under-appreciated and underpaid" piece quickly jumps to some fine bizarro-Beckian conspiracy blackboarding. Big business "wants to hoard even larger shares of our national wealth" as part of its "all-out assault on government." A key player in this evil scheme is devil's handmaiden and former head of D.C. school Michelle Rhee (read all about her here). The equation is simple, you see:

Teachers want to improve our nation's public education system. Big business and people like Michelle Rhee want to destroy public education and government as a whole and reap greater profits for themselves. 

But the award for ad hominem non sequitor of the day goes to….

Rhee is blaming teacher's unions to disguise her real agenda -- privatizing our nation's public education system so that big business can make a dime off your children. (It's no accident that Rhee is linked to the vehemently anti-public education Betsy Prince DeVos, whose brother Erik Prince founded Blackwater.)

Note the fine use of the weasel word "linked" there. The primary link between Rhee and DeVos is: They agree that teachers unions are too powerful. As such, they are both affiliated with various groups working to reduce union power. Such a link is indeed "no accident." They agree on a policy position! Conspiracy!

As for the connection between school reformers and disgraced military contractors, you have to get pretty deep in the anarcho-libertarian weeds before a discussion about limiting the influence of teachers unions veers into endorsement of private provision of defense services. Trust me, I've spent a lot of time in darkest depths of the libertarian jungle and I've never once glimpsed Michelle Rhee (or Erik Prince, for that matter) in the foliage plotting an all-out assault on government.

Via alert reader Sparky.