As the city of Denver prepares for this week's Democratic convention, numerous Hollywood celebs are planning to attend in support of Barack Obama and to advocate for pet issues. Gushes Variety,

When Barack Obama accepts the nomination before some 75,000 people at a Denver stadium on Thursday, he'll be surrounded by a contingent of average Americans from all walks of life --- just not Hollywood performers, musicians and other famous figures who have so publicly championed his candidacy.

So what, exactly, will be the role of celebrity during the week of the Democratic National Convention?

Families USA is at it again and as usual the liberal media are dutifully parroting their rhetoric. The liberal, pro-universal healthcare advocacy group recently released a report attacking President Bush’s budget proposal for Medicaid. In the report, Families USA Director Ron Pollack asserted that Bush’s proposed budget decreases funding for Medicaid. Like last time, Families USA has released state-specific studies showing that Bush’s supposed Medicaid cuts would cause the individual state to lose so many jobs and so much money. Local newspapers took the bait. There’s just one problem: President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal does not cut funding for Medicaid. In fact it calls for an increase in Medicaid spending by $12 to $13 million as compared to the expected spending for 2008. The decrease in the president’s budget proposal is not really a decrease at all. What the president is proposing amounts to a slightly smaller annual average growth rate for Medicaid spending (7.1 percent) than the projected annual average growth rate of 7.4 percent over the next five years. (More information here).

The Denver Post gave us a fine example -- not that they meant to -- of why every year our schools are turning out more semi-literate kids with over inflated egos. To the Post, of course, it's all good news that being poor in the Denver School Districts now qualifies a kid to be placed in the "gifted students" programs. To the Post this new classification "makes things more equitable" in those gifted programs. Why, it's giving minorities a "lift," you see? Of course, there isn't a word out of anyone in Denver if whether or not any of these kids suddenly classified as "gifted" students actually have any gifts that might prove them worthy of their politically motivated status.

In the typically empty fashion so popular among our ideologically left infested school administrations the country over, it's merely a matter of quotas and economic stats by which we measure success, not any true educational achievement. If your program for gifted students doesn't have enough of the right race of children (or the minority du jour) why then it must be obvious that the program is a failure. So, instead of improving the overall education for all students in order to bring minority students up to snuff so as to qualify them for entrance into a gifted program, the Denver Schools are just going to "add points" to the tests for kids merely because they are "poor," or if "English is their second language."

Voila, more "gifted" kids abound in Denver.

Do student journalists understand the difference between free speech and common sense? If they are at Colorado State University, the answer appears to be a resounding no. According to the Associated Press, the editorial staff of the student-run Colorado State University newspaper The Rocky Mountain Collegian published an editorial which in its entirety read'Taser This... F*** Bush'. Then the student staff claimed that it was all about free speech,

Colorado journalists and politicians who fell in line and attempted the bogus "Food Stamp Challenge" probably didn't anticipate that a Colorado blogger would call them out, and then call their bluff. But that is exactly what happened.

In June, Colorado Freedom Report's Ari Armstrong challenged those in that state's media and political class who swallowed the claim that Food Stamp recipients can't get by on $21 per person per week (even though, as syndicated columnist Mona Charen and yours truly noted back in April, the right number is between about $27 and $36, depending on family size) to pay $10 to a charity of Mr. Armstrong's choice for every dollar under $1,080 ($6 a day for 180 days) that he and his wife combined spent on food in a six-month period.

(Picky, picky -- The Armstrongs were even tougher on themselves than they needed to be, as there are 184 days in the six-month August 2006 - January 2007 time period involved. They could have used $1,104 as their benchmark.)

Nonetheless, Armstrong had only two people take up his challenge: