It's always wise to remember, if a quote is too perfect to be true, it probably isn't. Examples abound on Facebook and in viral emails. And occasionally you can find an example in the Star's Letters to the Editor.

The Star's editorial staff should have caught this one, and if they decided to publish it anyway, at least they should have included a note under it. The last letter in Friday's Star has a quote the writer states is from "Cicero, 55 BC." It's a beaut. And it's a phony.

“The Budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome will become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.” 

That perfect-for-conservatives quote should have set off the editors' crap detectors—light flashing, sirens screaming. All it takes is a quick internet search to find the words didn't come from Cicero. The top three Google hits name the source. It's from a 1965 novel, A Pillar of Iron, by Taylor Caldwell. And even there, it's different from what's in the letter. The lines in the novel aren't spoken by Cicero. They're the fictional words of another character, Antonius, paraphrasing Cicero, meaning the wording in the Star "quote" had to be tweaked a bit. And the last sentence is a reworking of Caldwell's words, mainly for the purpose of replacing the Caldwell/Cicero/Antonius phrase, "the mob" with a more acceptable "people."

But I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Star. Louisiana Representative Otto Passman read the phony quote into the Congressional Record in 1968. It appeared in a letter in the Chicago Tribune in 1971. And if you go onto the Forbes website, the bogus quote is at the top of the "Thoughts on the Business of Life" page.

According to a number of sites, there is an actual Cicero quote that Caldwell probably built on to create the passage in her novel: “The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.” The problem is, it's not nearly as sexy. Nothing about refilling the treasury, reducing public debt or getting people off the public dole. (BTW, I wasn't able to locate this quote on anything that looked like a scholarly site, so I can't be certain it's accurate.)

Bonus Bogus Lincoln Quote: In 2011, our once-state-senator Al Melvin put up a series of tweets quoting Lincoln making all kinds of conservative-friendly statements. The problem is, the quotes were made up in 1916 and 1917 and had been debunked long before they got into Melvin's hands. They were being quoted so often by Republicans over the years that the RNC warned its speakers, "Do not use them as Lincoln’s words!" Reagan, apparently, didn't get the memo. He included them in a speech at the Republican National Convention.

Governor Doug Ducey and Senate President Andy Biggs must have been deprived of Sesame Street as children. Maybe their parents had something against any broadcasting that labeled itself "public." "Only free enterprise television for you, Doug and Andy. None of that socialist public TV propaganda!" What a shame.

You remember Sesame Street, right? Where children are valued over everything else, even by the grouchiest muppet? According to the Wikipedia entry on Oscar the Grouch, which, in this one instance, I will trust without outside confirmation,

Oscar openly admits that he does not like anything or anybody that is nice, except young human children (the only people that he can actually act nice to without facing ridicule from his fellow Grouches).

Not so Ducey and Biggs, who think it's OK to preside over the only state without a health insurance program for children whose parents make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford medical care. Before 2010, 45,000 Arizona children were in the KidsCare program. After cuts to the program (which happened, not coincidentally, at the same time education funding was cut below the level mandated by the voters), less than 1,000 are in the program. 

Remember that Sesame Street song, "One of these things is not like the other"? See if you can spot the "not like the other" element among the items in a Ducey statement about KidsCare.

“What we want is to make sure we are investing in our kids, we’re protecting them and we have a structurally balanced budget."

The story about House Speaker David Gowan's ruling that reporters who want to be on the floor with legislators have to submit to extensive background checks has been all over the news. Last I heard the ruling was still in effect Monday, and the reporters have all refused to submit. Gowan said he's asking for the background checks because, 9/11. Ridiculous. Everyone knows the reason is to take revenge against Capitol Times reporter Hank Stephenson who wrote about Gowan's misuse of state vehicles, which meant Gowan had to refund $12,000 to the state and is under investigation. Because Stephenson has a trespassing violation on his record, he would be barred from the floor under the new rules. This is a clear act of journalistic suppression by Gowan, letting reporters know they better not do any investigative journalism that uncovers improprieties committed by him or his buddies. 

The Capitol Times editor, Jim Small, wrote a piece saying this is the third time Gowan has gone after Stephenson because of his story. The first time was Jan. 8 of this year.

On Jan. 8, four hours after the story about Gowan’s use of fleet vehicles was published, Grisham rescinded the Capitol Times’ access to the media gallery on the opening day of the legislative session.

When I called [House Republican spokeswoman Stephanie] Grisham to get an explanation, she made no bones about the fact that the paper’s access had been pulled because of the story. She accused the paper of working for Chandler attorney Tom Ryan, who was quoted in the original story saying he intended to file a complaint against Gowan and the others for misusing the state vehicles.

“This can be worked out with attorneys. I’m not going to go any further,” she said before hanging up the phone in the middle of my follow-up question.

Pulling access from the Capitol Times, whose main reason for existence is to report on the Capitol, is a blatant and unquestionable act of revenge, especially since Grisham told the paper it had seats in the gallery the night before the story was published.

A month later, the Republicans went after Stephenson again.

Message from Diane Ravitch about Opt Out from Shoot4Education on Vimeo.

The Opt Out movement, which encourages parents to pull their children out of the yearly standardized testing regimen, is alive and well, though you wouldn't know it in Arizona. Two opt out bills were proposed and went down during this year's legislative session, and our Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Arizona children cannot legally opt out of the test. That's not entirely true, but opting out is difficult enough, it hasn't caught on here in a big way like it has in some other states.

The video above is a two minute talk by Diane Ravitch about why high stakes tests are problematic and why parents should consider opting their children out of the test. Ravitch is an educational historian and researcher who has written a number of books, including her very influential 2010 book, The Death and Live of the Great American School System. She is currently the President of the Network for Public Education, an organization that promotes progressive education and fights against the privatization agenda of the "education reform" movement.

The Issues page on Donald Trump's campaign website is, well, special. It's a series of short videos, most under a minute. The Economy: 26 seconds. The Military: 23 seconds. Illegal Immigration: 56 seconds.

One of the longer videos—a minute, 21 seconds—is on our "Broken Education System." You can watch it for yourself, but for those of you who prefer the written word, the complete text is below.

Without education you cannot have the American Dream. Some people say the American Dream is dead. I don’t disagree with them. The American Dream is dead. But we’re going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before. But again, without education, you can’t do that. So we’re getting rid of Common Core. We’re taking Common Core, it’s going to be gone. There won’t be education from Washington DC. There’ll be education locally, the love of parents, the love of these people that love their children and they’re in the area. That’s what we’re gonna do. We’ll have school boards, and we’ll have local. We’re not going to have it through Washington. So Common Core is dead, and we’re going to take education and we’re going to make it local. We’ll save money. Our education will be much better. Do you know in the world today we’re ranked number 30. Number 30. So we’re at the bottom of the list, and yet per pupil, we pay the most. You look at other countries, Denmark, Sweden, China, Norway. These are countries that are right at the top, and they spend much less money than us. So we’re going local, it’s going to be great, and we’re going to spend less money, and we’re going to move up that list very, very rapidly.

The average fifth grader could get all that in one watching, even if he/she missed a thought or two the first time around, since they're all repeated three times. Most of it is pure Trump: "Some people say the American Dream is dead. I don’t disagree with them. The American Dream is dead. But we’re going to make it bigger and better and stronger than ever before." But one sentence, my favorite, is downright Sarah Palin-esque: "There’ll be education locally, the love of parents, the love of these people that love their children and they’re in the area." Sarah couldn't-a said it any better. You betcha.

So. Education, good. Common Core, bad. Local, good. Washington, D.C., bad. Other countries rank high and spend less. If we go local and spend less, we'll move up the rankings.

The only time Trump gets specific is when he talks about spending and our international ranking. He's basically right about spending. We spend more on education than almost everyone else. On testing, he gets one thing right and the rest wrong. True, our ranking on the latest international PISA test is around 30 (In another video on the page, he says our ranking is 28, but nobody ever said Trump was a numbers guy). According to him, that puts us at the bottom of the list, which is incorrect. We're right in the middle. That's still not great, but it's not the bottom.

Let's look at the scores of the countries he says are "right at the top" on the latest PISA test in 2012. (You can follow along on the official website.) First, Sweden. It's two places below us. The U.S. outscores Sweden in all three categories, Math, Reading and Science. Norway is six places above us, with slightly better scores in Math and Reading but a lower score in Science. Denmark is eight steps above Norway, mainly because it scored very high in math. In Reading, it's a tad lower than the U.S., and in Science, a tad higher.

Yes, Tucson, it's finally time—Time to fill out your Best of Tucson® Ballot.

You'll notice some new categories, you'll miss some old ones. So it goes.

Everything is pretty much the same, with one major exception: We're only accepting nominations for local institutions. We've been back and forth on this issue, but it all comes down to celebrating Tucson.

We're celebrating our people who make our city great. We're celebrating Tucson's best. We're celebrating Tucson.

Go vote. This write-in, vote-for-who-ever-you-want round of balloting will close on May 15. Then, we'll compile a list of your top 5 (local) nominations, and create a finalists ballot to determine the winners.

As always: You're required to fill in something for 30 categories for your ballot to count. If you don't have an opinion, leave the space blank. 

Any questions?

Did Thursday night's screening of Citizen Four and Q&A with Glenn Greenwald get you worked up all over again about the NSA?

Well, tonight the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences is hosting a panel on the issue—and Edward Snowden is videoconferencing in from Russia to be a part of the conversation.

The details:

The competing stresses posed by balancing government intrusion and individual rights in pursuit of a safe society will be the topic of a panel discussion featuring MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, journalist Glenn Greenwald and former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden presented by the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Chomsky and Greenwald will appear in person while Snowden will videoconference from Russia. Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, will act as moderator for the discussion.

Tickets to the event are sold out, but you can watch the livestream on The Intercept tonight (Friday, March 25) from 5 to 7 p.m., or catch up with a recording of the conversation on Monday, March 28 when it is posted to the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences website. 

Glenn Greenwald doesn't really like other journalists. 
"I tend not to have the highest opinion of other journalists, although there are a lot of really good ones," he told the Loft Cinema's audience at a special Q&A following the screening of Citizen Four on March 24. "You know, there are very narrow narratives that are permitted in mainstream media outlets. And that's why independent media and independent theaters like this one are so critical to being heard." 

If you didn't know, Greenwald is the reporter who initially broke the news sharing documents that proved the National Security Association, under the Obama administration's orders, had been collecting cell phone records off millions of Verizon users phones, among other companies—including Microsoft, Apple and AT&T—communication records. You can read Greenwald's other stories and op-eds about NSA privacy infringement and general national security here. 

Throughout his 30-minute Q&A Greenwald repeatedly stressed he wasn't the hero—he just broke the story. The real hero was Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and whistleblower who leaked the documents to him.


"With nothing more than an act of courage—an act of confidence—he changed the world," Greenwald said. "[He showed] the power of the individual to stand up to justice."

The Republic ran a story, picked up by the Star, about a study saying Phoenix is the worst city in the country at retaining its college grads. It turns out the study forgot one minor major detail. Phoenix is the home of the University of Phoenix which has students all over the country. Naturally, lots of them don't end up living in the Phoenix area since they never set foot in the city while they attended college. Take them out of the equation, and Phoenix moves up considerably. It's a terrific example of why results of studies, in education and elsewhere, can't be taken at face value. "Buyer Beware" is always the best policy.

The original study concluded that only 36.3 percent of college grads stayed in the Phoenix area, last in the nation and less half the top rate for large metro areas of 77.7 percent. It's even worse when the study only looks at grads of four year colleges: 18 percent retention for Phoenix, eight points below the nearest city and one quarter the retention rate at the top of the scale.

Here's the problem with the Phoenix numbers.

MAG [Maricopa Association of Governments] claims Brookings used data pulled from LinkedIn profiles to determine where students of Arizona and other institutions were living today. That included all of the online students from University of Phoenix and Grand Canyon University — more than 200,000 students in 2014 alone — into the category of Arizona residents while students.
 
[Anubhav Bagley, MAG’s data guru] said only 8,400 University of Phoenix students of its 187,000 enrollment are Arizonans. Over the past 15 years, University of Arizona and Arizona State University between them graduated over 284,000 students.

The authors of the original study went back and revised the Phoenix data to 56 percent retention for all colleges and 41 percent for four year colleges, moving Phoenix out of the bottom ten metro areas. But they didn't change their original report, they just stuck an "UPDATE" about some "good suggestions" they received at the bottom. It's not referenced in the original, so unless you read the report to the end, you'd never know they revised the numbers. 

In response to this post, Rothwell and I received a number of good suggestions about how to deepen and refine our analysis in the future. Several pointed out that Phoenix is home to the University of Phoenix, with its large online student body, many of whom don’t live in the Phoenix metro. When Rothwell redid the numbers taking this into account, Phoenix's retention rates improved to 56 percent for two- and four-year institutions and 41 percent for four-year institutions.

The Republic ran another article noting the error in the original study. I haven't seen a similar correction in the Star.

On the list of political offenses, this one doesn't rank very high, but hey, I'm an old English teacher, and "Thou Shalt Not Copy" is one of the commandments in my code of classroom conduct. The same commandment applies in the worlds of journalism and publishing.

Ben Carson published an op ed on February 26 about the patriotism of "our brothers and sisters in the Territories of American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.” Trump used the same wording in an op ed he published on March 9. And that's only the beginning. The two columns share about half of their language. Clearly, without any room for doubt, the Trump column lifted specific wording and the general concept from Carson's column. You can see the two columns side by side here.

I'm sure neither Trump nor Carson penned their op eds. I don't know if either of them even bothered to look at what was published under their names. Someone in the campaigns probably decided it was a good idea to pen a column, and some staffer wrote it. Trump picked up Carson staffers when he left the race, so one of them might have done the cut-and-paste from what was already on the Carson hard drive, with a few variations.

Trump's not the first political or academic plagiarist, and he won't be the last. Still, when Joe Biden didn't bother to attribute part of a speech he gave to the original speaker awhile ago, it cost him big time. It might have even cost him a chance at the presidency. Rand Paul got caught copying stuff straight from Wikipedia and other online sources without attribution, but he never got far enough in his presidential bid for it to come back to haunt him. Authors get their hands slapped for this kind of thing and lose prestige and credence which they have to earn back, if they can.

Will the Trump campaign word theft matter? Of course not. Next to the stuff he's gotten away with so far, this is like taking an extra M&M out of a candy bowl without asking first. The guy is good enough, he might even work it into his speeches and get cheers for his efficiency. "Who has time to make sure every word I say is mine? How PC can you get? There's just not enough time. I'm too busy Making America Great Again. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A." (The crowd goes wild.)