As an encore to last week's "Giving up on God," Parker is now endorsing a federal subsidy for a daily supply of newspapers to high-school students, which will make students smarter and — Bonus!— save the newspaper industry with your tax dollars.

This plan is necessitated, according to Parker, by an abysmal performance by American voters on an Intercollegiate Studies Institute civics quiz (the average score was 49).

Right, because what corrects a left-leaning public school education lacking in respect for America's founding fathers, documents, and principles better than a daily dose of the New York Times, whose circulation and ad revenue will have been artificially inflated by the government in circumvention of the very free-market system of which many Americans are sadly ignorant? Yeah, that'll do the trick.

Clearly she didn't read P.J. O'Rourke in this week's Standard, or she would have known why newspapers don't deserve a bail-out.

I'm all for young Americans getting a better civic education, but why not do that through assigning readings readily available in all public schools? The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, and the Federalist Papers are undoubtedly sitting under a thick layer of dust, while "Dylan has Two Mommies" and the companion study guide to "An Inconvenient Truth" are widely distributed.