Barbed Opinion

Spellings Lets Loose With Strong Words on Agency’s First-term Officials

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has come out swinging, and her tough stances are rankling some former officials in her department.

In an April 24 op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle , President Bush’s second-term education secretary excoriated first-term Department of Education officials for their decisions surrounding the agency’s public relations arrangement with commentator Armstrong Williams. ( "Report: Williams Contract a Waste, But Didn’t Break Law," April 27, 2005.)

“There are moments in life where one is left mouth agape at how decisionmakers can show a lack of critical judgment,” she wrote in the Chronicle . “This...