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.