BCS Season

I am a little tired today after staying up after midnight for the past three nights watching some of the best college football of the season in the four BCS bowls. Each of the four games, Notre Dame vs. Ohio State, West Virginia vs. Georgia, Pen State vs. Florida State, and the Southern California vs. Texas provided excellent competition. The players really left everything that they had on the field.

I was a little disappointed with Notre Dame’s play against OSU. On offense the team did not really seem to be in synch with many dropped passes and way too little protection for the quarterback. Our defensive line was unable to get any pressure on OSU’s quarterback and the lack of blitzing meant that Troy Smith and his receivers had plenty of time to pick apart our secondary. On the positive side, Darius Walker had a number of great runs and showed that he can be a huge threat when he is healthy.

On the other hand, I was not disappointed at all with last night’s Rose Bowl. Texas and USC put on a great competition for the National Championship. I was impressed with Vince Young’s ability to make some tough passes, but was even more impressed with the way he seemed to effortlessly gain yards when scrambling away from USC’s defense. These teams were so evenly matched, and had both had such success during the regular season that there can be no doubt that these two teams were the best in the nation. Congratulations to Texas for their victory!

Deciding to Withdraw Medical Care

I liked this post detailing concerns making decisions about how and when to withdraw medical care. In medical care, as in all other aspects of life, we constantly find ourselves required to make choices about how to allocate finite resources most effectively. The questions that Julian asks help to clarify the difference between economic justice and resource allocation that often become confused in the actual decision making process and in general debate:

There's one question about economic justice, whether someone has a share of resources we think is adequate to give someone a fair range of real options—to put food on the table and also, if she wants it, provide for medical insurance. There's a distinct question about how we react once people have disposed of just shares as they see fit and still find themselves in dire medical straits.

Compelling Interest?

Travis and Dobber posted an interesting collection of opinions about obsticales to enhanced school choice. Clearly everyone in this group believes that increased choice is imperative in the education market, but it seems that the group breaks into two divisions based on whether they believe that society, through government, has an interest in insuring that every person has some minimum level of education.

So, here is the question for you guys, does society, through government, have a compelling interest in guaranteeing that every person has a minimum level of education?

If the answer is yes, then tax funded charter schools and voucher programs are an appropriate solution to providing competition to government run schools. However, if the answer is no, then the tax funded primary and secondary education system should be privatized.

Thoughts…