President Obama’s controversial speech to the nation’s school children is today at noon. Schools in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties have the green light from administrators to show it and parents who object can get their children excused from participating.

Our Kimberly Miller breaks down the local situation here.

Many conservatives and Republicans were critical of the speech last week, with Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer accusing the president of trying to indoctrinate America’s youth with “socialist ideology.”

Redistributionist economic policies are nowhere to be found in an advance copy of the speech released by the White House. The “birther” movement, however, might pounce on the fact that Obama mentions his childhood years in Indonesia. And those who oppose an expanded government role in health care might find significance in the leader of the free world advising students to wash their hands to minimize the spread of flu.

Read the entire text after the jump….

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The Wall Street Journal‘s conservative editorial page says federal educrats appear to be “aggrandizing” President Obama with the curriculum they’ve suggested to accompany Obama’s Tuesday address to the nation’s school children. But even the right-tilted WSJ editorial board says Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer was “overwrought” in his criticism of the speech.

Read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, our Laura Green reports that Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie county schools will all allow students to hear the Obama speech. Palm Beach County Schools Supe Art Johnson says parents can send a written request to excuse their students from the broadcast.

The partisan dustup over President Obama’s planned nationwide address to schoolchildren next week has inspired some speculation about what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot:

What if this were a Republican president, perhaps one named Bush, trying to drum up support for one of his programs? Would liberal school administrators even allow the kids to watch it? Would Democratic parents pull their children from the classroom that day?

Well, maybe we don’t have to guess. It turns out that then-President George H.W. Bush made a nationally televised speech to students on Oct. 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C., urging them to “make it your mission to get a good education” and to “block out the kids who think it’s not cool to be smart.” (The president’s sound bite of the day was apparently, “I can’t understand for the life of me what’s so great about being stupid.”)

Update: As a Palm Beach Post reader has helpfully pointed out, then-President Ronald Reagan spoke live to students nationwide in May 1986. And it seems that the first President Bush also made a 15-minute televised speech in 1989 urging students not to use drugs.

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Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, already controversial with his rank-and-file for actions including his preemptive endorsement of Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate, has now stirred a national ruckus by criticizing President Obama’s plans to speak to the nation’s schoolchildren in a televised address Sept. 8.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the president will:

… speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.

Sound like the makings of a Norman Rockwell-meets-Horatio Alger, made-for-the-Hallmark-Channel moment? Not to Greer, who issued a news release accusing Obama of carrying out a much different agenda — one that starts with “social-” and ends with “-ism”: (more…)

During his “telephone town hall” meeting on health insurance reform Wednesday night, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, fielded questions on abortion, illegal immigrants, whether there should be a government-run “public option” and whether the proposed overhaul would constitute a drift toward Marxism or socialism.

Klein’s office said about 6,460 people listened in. Seventeen people asked questions during the 70-minute teleconference.

Click here to read an article on the event.

More detailed excerpts are available after the jump….

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