Secretary of Education

I heard Charlie Rose interview Secretary of Education Arne Duncan the other day. Duncan has good ideas about education, but he might want to take a refresher course in grammar before he makes too many more public appearances.  

On two different occasions in the interview Duncan used "I" as the first person objective case. I don't remember the exact quotes, but in one case he said that his mother had a big influence on "my brother, sister, and I."  There is another problem with that construction, but I'll leave that as an exercise.

Flesh out vs flush out

Flesh out: put some meat on the bones by providing more details.

Flush out: drive from hiding by forays into possible hiding places.

When applied to plans, legislation, and so forth, these metaphors have different meanings, but I think that some people fail to distinguish between them. 

For example, someone might say, "Secretary Geithner has given an overview of how he wants to deal with the bad paper that banks are holding but I'd like to see that plan flushed out."  The speaker probably means fleshed out, but maybe Secretary Geithner is hiding details that he already knows but doesn't want to say. In that case, the flushing metaphor might be appropriate.