"Childrens do learn." -- George W. Bush

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, there was another embarrassing gaffe yesterday from the linguistic mangler-in-chief:

Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

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During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?"

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush's diction in the official transcript.

Of course it did. Rewriting history -- literally, in this case -- is one of the things the White House does best. It takes a massive effort, one imagines, to turn truth into truthiness, all for the sake of a president who long ago was left way behind.