Columnist Jonah Goldberg has a not-so-modest proposal to get rid of public schools:

[O]ne of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell remembers Richard Rorty, while the U.S. Naval War College's Christopher J. Fettweis declares the Iraq war lost, and lays out what that means. Erika Schickel reminds the South Coast Air Quality Management District that humans have a "prehistoric jones" for fire.

The editorial board calls for immediate peace talks in Iraq, serious energy reform in the Senate, and a payroll system that actually works for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Letter writers respond to Sally Denton's assessment of how Mitt Romney's Mormonism will impact his campaign. See why Robert P. Sechler of Seal Beach thinks "an analogy between Romney and John F. Kennedy is a bucket with some big holes."

Online, in this week's dust-up, publisher Kurt Hanson and attorney Jay Rosenthal discuss the economics of online music. Today they ask if webcasting should be open to hobbyists, or just those who can make money for labels and artists.

Magazine editor Michael Patrick Leahy writes this week's blowback, critiquing coverage of the Creation Museum in Kentucky.