Patterson’s departure will leave an elocutionary void in the sausage-making drill that is S.C. politics, friends and colleagues say.

Over the years, Patterson’s use of black dialect, often laced with well-placed invectives, has helped him to make his point and needle his opponents.

“They would call that ebonics in this day and age,” Patterson said. “But we didn’t have that terminology back in those days.”

Those who know Patterson and agree with his politics — such as his seatmate of 34 years, state Sen. John Matthews, D-Orangeburg — say Patterson’s departure will leave “the little man” voiceless in what they say are the increasingly hostile halls of the General Assembly.

- "Telling it like it is: elected as a firebrand, Patterson retires as a statesman", The State, 4/27/08

In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace.

But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.

At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

A measure that will give high school students who have been bullied more freedom to transfer and play sports moved closer to becoming law Wednesday.

The House Education Committee passed a proposal by Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, that allows students in such situations to become eligible immediately for athletics at their new schools. The measure moves to the full House for debate.

Erickson submitted the bill in February in response to a case involving Lauren Gentry, a star softball player at Battery Creek High who transferred to Beaufort High to escape harassment from an ex-boyfriend.

The S.C. High School League’s executive committee has twice denied her eligibility to play softball, citing a rule that students who change from one public school to another without a change in address cannot play sports for one year.

The committee ruled in March that Gentry’s case didn’t meet its hardship exemption, and Gentry missed her senior season of softball after being Battery Creek’s most valuable player in 2007.

“Our process, in this instance, failed Lauren Gentry,” Erickson said Wednesday.

If South Carolina is serious about K-12 assessment, lawmakers need to look to the successfully model of private schools across the state. These schools employ commercially developed, off-the-shelf standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford 10 test. Such tests cost a fraction of the PACT and allow for speedy, specific, and diagnostic results for each child. They are also being used by public schools in other states to meet NCLB requirements.

It would be harder to think of two more different societies than Germany in 1945 and contemporary Iraq. The former -- despite Hitler and the Third Reich -- had a long tradition of law, order, constitutional government and civic society to draw on in rebuilding democracy. Nor was it riven by deep-rooted ethnic and sectarian religious tensions that erupted to the surface once the dictator's iron fist was removed. And although Germany certainly had hostile neighbors -- especially to the communist East -- the threat they posed served to create, not crack, political cohesion.

Yet in looking at Iraq over the past five years, it's hard not to find poignant echoes of the post-WWII experience and to wonder whether a better knowledge of that history might have helped prevent some basic errors. Or even -- because there may be some small crumb of comfort for optimists here -- that it's too soon to declare that the mission has failed. Sen. John McCain's 100-year horizon for a U.S. presence in Iraq may be stretching things. But let's not forget that the postwar occupation of Germany lasted for a full decade.

In 1945, the Allies had a carefully thought-out plan for what would follow victory. For two years before his forces crossed the German frontier, Eisenhower and his staff at Allied headquarters worked on detailed plans for the occupation. The lines of command were clearly drawn, and everyone agreed that the military would be in charge. Thousands of soldiers were trained in the tasks of military government. Compare that with the chaotically devised schemes for Iraq that were cobbled together at the last minute amid squabbling between the Pentagon and the State Department. Or with the confused and confusing mandate handed to the hapless Jay Garner, the first administrator of postwar Iraq, to devise a comprehensive plan for its administration in a matter of weeks.

Critics of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq point to the decisions by L. Paul Bremer, Garner's replacement, to dismiss Baathists from public office and to dissolve the Iraqi army as critical and disastrous turning points that created a vast legion of the unemployed and disaffected. Yet in 1945, the Allies implemented a similarly draconian policy in Germany. They dissolved the Nazi Party, carried out a thorough purge of Nazis in public office and even abolished the ancient state of Prussia, which they believed was at the root of German militarism. Millions of Wehrmacht soldiers languished in prisoner-of-war camps while their families struggled to survive.