SCOUTING REPORT | Failure or freedom, pet cemetery, South Dakota's elite runner

A weekly digest of interesting local, state, national and even international developments

Advocacy groups and politicians love to grade the successes or failures of various governments and their officials. Report cards are an easy – if not entirely honest – way of making a point to the public about issues they care about. Most of us, through our education experiences, understand an A from an F.

But in the advocacy industry, a world filled with billions of dollars aimed at manipulating public opinion, report cards aren’t what they were when you were in school. It’s understood that if you aced your algebra test, you conquered an objective mathematical skill.

Advocacy report cards are a different animal. A grade of F might mean failure to some. And freedom to others.