Buddy can you spare $50,000?: Mark O'Keefe of the Newshouse News Service delivers a detailed article about U.S. Government funded exchange programs. The poster boy is Yousef Jabareen who is getting 50,000 taxpayer dollars a year to pursue a doctorate in human rights law (sic) at Georgetown's law center under an exchange program for Arab Israelis. It seems the taxpayers have paid the freight for over 700,000 exchange students over the years and are only kicking in a quarter of billion this year. Needless to say, the do-gooders can't let that rest and have bills in Congress to raise the ante. Teddy Kennedy introduced "the Cultural Bridges Act (that) would provide an extra $75 million to exchange programs with Islamic countries, and another $20 million for new programs bringing teen-agers from Muslim countries to study in U.S. public high schools". Curiously enough, the "exchanges" all seem to be one way - there is no discussion of any US citizens getting handouts to study overseas. I guess we have run out of needy students in this country and have to find them somewhere else.

And Teddy really ought to avoid bridges and teen-agers.