Obama takes a hit for preaching bilingualism

It's hard to believe that conservatives would lash out at candidate Barack Obama over his suggestion that American children should learn languages... but they did. It's rather silly considering there have been numerous grants promoting language learning from the State Dept--specifically in Mandarin, Arabic, and Farsi--as a way of ensuring there are enough people available to work for the government doing translation in "politically critical" languages! Admittedly, Obama only knows a small amount of Indonesian as his second language, but I'm pretty sure he could catch up with some Pimsleur training! Any effort to reach out to children and broaden their horizons should be commended.