ABC dropped "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" to twice a week in the current season because four times a week was overkill, but the franchise continues to suffer. Now ABC isn't even sure they'll bring it back next year. I was a dedicated "Millionaire" fan (I was on the "phone-a-friend" list for a guy who was one of the contestants on the third show, but he didn't make it to the hot seat), but even I haven't been watching it this year.

That's not because the show stinks, but because the programming stinks. There are only two hours per week: Monday night at 7PM CT (opposite David E. Kelley's excellent "Boston Public") and Thursday night at 8PM CT (opposite CBS's "CSI"). If there was still a Sunday night showing, I'd probably watch it. Maybe even a Tuesday night one, though Fox's "Undeclared" has really grown on me. What's more, one of these two "Millionaire" hours is always some completely stupid and hokey "special edition" (supermodels, comedians, Disney characters with interpreters, what have you). Real people are only on once per week, if that, and there's no way to watch it and keep track of it.

I still say they should have left it as a sweeps-only miniseries four times per year.

"Class, don't call Phillip dumb just because you hear all his bad grades read out loud." Slate's Dahila Lathwick, my favorite Supreme Court correspondent, covers the trivial matter before the US Supreme Court yesterday, where the justices were asked to decide if a classroom policy of reading grades out loud so they can be recorded violates a student's privacy. The plaintiff, from right here in the entirely-forgettable Oklahoma town of Owasso (of about ten people from Owasso I've ever known, about eight of them were insufferably arrogant), says that her learning-disabled son was harassed by classmates since the teacher had the class grade each other's papers and read the results out loud.

Yes, it's a trivial case, and yes, it should never have reached SCOTUS. The more important question to me: Why are school districts and, amazingly, the teacher's unions (whom I generally support) fighting tooth-and-nail for the right to expose a child's grades to the rest of his class? Why is anyone resisting the idea that grades are confidential? If you're a "D" student or an "A" student, what makes it anyone's business other than that of your teacher or your parents?