Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on November 10, 2006, 11:08:33 AM
-
All:
There's a thread of the same name in the other forum, but at the moment I'm too durn lazy to bring it over. That said, the following makes the need for this thread quite clear. :evil:
TAC,
Marc
==============================
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-11-10T021338Z_01_N09494500_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-PLEDGE.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.
The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates -- prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.
"America is the one thing I'm passionate about and I can't let them take that away from me," 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.
"The fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible," Zoldos said, adding she would attend every board meeting to salute the flag.
The move was lead by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.
The ban follows a 2002 ruling by a federal appeals court in San Francisco that said forcing school children to recite the pledge was unconstitutional because of the phrase "under God." The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ruling on procedural grounds but left the door open for another challenge.
"That ('under God') part is sort of offensive to me," student trustee Jason Bell, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. "I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that 'under God' was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology."
Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn't want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. "Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge," he said.
Martha Parham, a spokeswoman for the Coast Community College District, said her office had no standing on the student board and took no position on the flag salute ban.
"If their personal belief is that they don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the district certainly isn't going to dictate what they do," she said.
More than 28,000 students attend the community college, located in conservative Orange County, California, south of Los Angeles.
-
EDITORIAL: More campus thought police
Another example of political correctness run amok
The agents of political correctness who police the nation's college and university campuses generally use shame and scorn to beat down free expression deemed offensive by the tiniest minority.
But sometimes, institutions aren't content to merely marginalize those who fail to embrace a worldview that emphasizes the rights of groups over those of individuals. Rather than engage these free spirits in open debate in a classroom setting -- isn't that what college is all about? -- administrators seek to re-educate these malefactors on the proper way to think.
Michigan State University has taken the multicultural mantra of indoctrination to a new extreme. Students whose speech or behavior is deemed inappropriate for a university setting are ordered to complete, at their own expense, the school's Student Accountability in Community Seminar.
This program bills itself as an "early intervention" for those who take "any action of obscuring, concealing, or changing people's perceptions that result in your advantage and/or another's disadvantage." In other words, any behavior that might make someone feel bad. Seminar participants have included students who've argued with professors or cracked offensive jokes -- constitutionally protected free speech.
Once enrolled in the seminar, students are forced to complete written questionnaires about their behavior, sometimes several times, until an instructor believes the student has taken "full responsibility" for his actions. If a student refuses to enroll in the seminar, the university won't let the student register for classes, a de facto act of expulsion.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting free expression, civil rights and educational freedom on college campuses, has demanded that Michigan State University dismantle the program.
"As bad as it is to tell citizens in a free society what they can't say, it is even worse to tell them what they must say," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said in a news release. "Michigan State's program is an immoral and unconstitutional program of compelled speech, blatant thought reform, and pseudo-psychology."
The university has told FIRE that the program is under review. We were unable to secure further comment from Michigan State officials.
The existence of seminars such as Student Accountability in Community is an affront to the values that institutions of higher education should hold dear. Universities should aspire to give students the intellectual skills and information to discuss issues and refute arguments, not shelter them from the kinds of ideas and expressions that roam free outside campus walls.
But Michigan State has gone an unconstitutional step further, seeking not only to protect students from ever having their feelings hurt, but to control students' collective conscience.
This is a model for the kind of education colleges and universities should never offer.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Dec-18-Mon-2006/opinion/11456949.html
-
The National Football League refused to run a recruitment ad for the U.S. Border Patrol in last week's Super Bowl program, saying it was "controversial" because it mentioned duties such as fighting terrorism and stopping drugs and illegal aliens at the border.
"The ad that the department submitted was specific to Border Patrol, and it mentioned terrorism. We were not comfortable with that," said Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the NFL. "The borders, the immigration debate is a very controversial issue, and we were sensitive to any perception we were injecting ourselves into that."
The NFL's rejection didn't sit well with Border Patrol agents, who called it a snub of their role in homeland security and said it was "more than a little puzzling."
"The NFL missed a golden opportunity to reach countless patriotic citizens who want to answer the call to help prevent another terrorist attack on American soil," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the agency's nonsupervisory personnel.
Border Patrol agents are assigned to protect the country's borders with Mexico and Canada between the ports of entry. The agency is trying to boost its force to 18,000, a goal President Bush outlined last year in a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation.
Other major leagues have had no problems running the ad, a Border Patrol spokesman said. It has been accepted to run in programs for the upcoming NBA All Star Game and the NCAA Final Four, as well as in Pro BullRider magazine, the spokesman said.
The NFL's snub came to light last week during Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's testimony before a congressional panel. Mr. Chertoff said the ad was rejected, "much to my chagrin."
Mr. Aiello said that the NFL offered the department a chance to run a generic recruiting ad, similar to ads the U.S. military runs, but that the league never heard back from it.
"We proposed a more generic recruiting ad for the department that didn't highlight the borders, which brings up the immigration issue and the immigration debate. That's controversial," he said.
That position stands in stark contrast to the ongoing debate in Congress, where among all the thorny issues related to immigration, the one that wins near-unanimous agreement is the need for more boots on the ground.
"Since almost every American favors securing our borders and the overwhelming majority of legislators on both sides of the immigration debate support significant increases in the number of Border Patrol agents, it is extremely difficult to imagine how those issues could be perceived as controversial," Mr. Bonner said.
He said the NFL's decision appeared to be an attempt to try to avoid upsetting the emerging market of football fans in Latin America.
===========
The Super Bowl program is produced by the NFL, which printed about 200,000 copies this year, Mr. Aiello said.
The Border Patrol ad asks for "the right men and women to help protect America's southwest borders." It lists duties as preventing "the entry of terrorists and their weapons," blocking "unlawful entry of undocumented aliens" and "stopping drug smuggling."
The ad does not mention the ongoing immigration debate in Washington or touch on contentious subjects such as amnesty, a guest-worker program or legalization.
Mr. Bush has promised to double the size of the Border Patrol, which stood at 9,000 when he took office. His budget proposal calls for funding for 3,000 new agents in fiscal 2008 alone.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham, who oversees the Border Patrol, told The Washington Times last year that an aggressive recruiting effort by the agency had resulted in "no want for applicants."
Mr. Basham said the ongoing attrition rate for the Border Patrol of about 4 percent was significantly down from previous years and meant that 6,800 new agents would have to be hired and trained to fill the 6,000 slots sought to boost the agency's numbers to 18,000 and to make up for losses from attrition.
To meet the president's goal, Mr. Basham -- who once led the federal law-enforcement training center -- said the agency had reduced the total number of days trainees attend the academy, "but not the training they receive." He said the overall training schedule was reduced in October from 92 to 81 days.
-
City Journal
Free Inquiry? Not on Campus
And the college speech police threaten the liberty of us all.
John Leo
Winter 2007
Remember when the Right had a near-monopoly on censorship? If so, you must be in your sixties, or older. Now the champions of censorship are mostly on the left. And they are thickest on the ground in our colleges and universities. Since the late 1980s, what should be the most open, debate-driven, and tolerant sector of society has been in thrall to the diversity and political correctness that now form the aggressive secular religion of America’s elites.
The censors have only grown in power, elevating antidiscrimination rules above “absolutist” free-speech principles, silencing dissent with antiharassment policies, and looking away when students bar or disrupt conservative speakers or steal conservative newspapers. Operating under the tacit principle that “error has no rights,” an ancient Catholic theological rule, the new censors aren’t interested in debates or open forums. They want to shut up dissenters.
In October, for instance, a student mob stormed a Columbia University stage, shutting down speeches by two members of the Minutemen, an anti-illegal-immigration group. The students shouted: “They have no right to speak!” Campus opponents of Congressman Tom Tancredo, an illegal-immigration foe, set off fire alarms at Georgetown to disrupt his planned speech, and their counterparts at Michigan State roughed up his student backers. Conservative activist David Horowitz, black conservative columnist Star Parker, and Daniel Pipes, an outspoken critic of Islamism, frequently find themselves shouted down or disrupted on campus.
School officials seem to have little more interest in free speech. At Columbia this fall, officials turned away most of a large crowd gathered to hear former PLO terrorist-turned-anti-jihadist Walid Shoebat, citing security worries. Only Columbia students and 20 guests got in. Colleges often cite the danger of violence as they cancel controversial speeches—a new form of heckler’s veto: shrinking an audience so that an event will seem unimportant is itself a way to cave to critics. In 2003, Columbia, facing leftist fury at the scheduled speeches of several conservatives (myself included), banned scores of invited nonstudents who had agreed to attend. Though some schools cancel left-wing speakers, too—including Ward Churchill and Michael Moore, or abortion-supporters Anna Quindlen and Christie Whitman at Catholic universities—right-of-center speakers are the campus speech cops’ normal targets.
Official censorship—now renamed speech codes and antiharassment codes—pervades the campuses. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently surveyed more than 300 schools, including the top universities and liberal arts colleges, and found that over 68 percent explicitly prohibit speech that the First Amendment would protect if uttered off campus. At 229 schools, FIRE found clear and substantial restriction of speech, while 91 more had policies that one could interpret as restricting speech. Only eight permitted genuine free expression.
A 2002 New York Times article reported that today’s college kids seem more guarded in their views than previous generations of students. The writer suggested several possible explanations—disgust with partisan politics and uncivil debates on cable news shows, perhaps, or simple politeness. A more likely reason is that universities have made honest disagreement dangerous, making students fearful of saying what they think.
Much campus censorship rests on philosophical underpinnings that go back to social theorist Herbert Marcuse, a hero to sixties radicals. Marcuse argued that traditional tolerance is repressive—it wards off reform by making the status quo . . . well, tolerable. Marcuse favored intolerance of established and conservative views, with tolerance offered only to the opinions of the oppressed, radicals, subversives, and other outsiders. Indoctrination of students and “deeply pervasive” censorship of others would be necessary, starting on the campuses and fanning out from there.
By the late 1980s, many of the double standards that Marcuse called for were in place in academe. Marcuse’s candor was missing, but everyone knew that speakers, student newspapers, and professors on the right could (make that should) receive different treatment from those on the left. The officially oppressed—designated race and gender groups—knew that they weren’t subject to the standards and rules set for other students.
Marcuse’s thinking has influenced a generation of influential radical scholars. They included Mari Matsuda, who followed Marcuse by arguing that complete free speech should belong mainly to the powerless; and Catharine MacKinnon, a pioneer of modern sexual harassment and “hostile environment” doctrine. In MacKinnon’s hands, sexual harassment became a form of gender-based class discrimination and inegalitarian speech a kind of harmful action.
Confusing speech and action has a long pedigree on the PC campus. At the time of the first wave of speech codes 20 years ago, Kenneth Lasson, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, argued that “racial defamation does not merely ‘preach hate’; it is the practice of hatred by the speaker”—and is thus punishable as a form of assault. Indeed, the Left has evolved a whole new vocabulary to blur the line between acts and speech: “verbal conduct” and “expressive behavior” (speech), “non-traditional violence” (Lani Guinier’s term for strong criticism), and “anti-feminist intellectual harassment” (rolling one’s eyeballs over feminist dogma).
Campus censors frequently emulate the Marcusian double standard by combining effusive praise for free speech with an eagerness to suppress unwelcome views. “I often have to struggle with right and wrong because I am a strong believer in free speech,” said Ronni Santo, a gay student activist at UCLA in the late nineties. “Opinions are protected under the First Amendment, but when negative opinions come out of a person’s fist, mouth, or pen to intentionally hurt others, that’s when their opinions should no longer be protected.”
In their 1993 book, The Shadow University, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate turned some of the early speech codes into national laughingstocks. Among the banned comments and action they listed: “intentionally producing psychological discomfort” (University of North Dakota), “insensitivity to the experience of women” (University of Minnesota), and “inconsiderate jokes” (University of Connecticut). Serious nonverbal offenses included “inappropriate laughter” (Sarah Lawrence College), “eye contact or the lack of it” (Michigan State University), and “subtle discrimination,” such as “licking lips or teeth; holding food provocatively” (University of Maryland). Later gems, added well after the courts struck down campus codes as overly broad, included bans on “inappropriate non-verbals” (Macalaster College), “communication with sexual overtones” (Lincoln University), and “discussing sexual activities” (State University of New York–Brockport). Other codes bar any comment or gesture that “annoys,” “offends,” or otherwise makes someone feel bad. Tufts ruled that attributing harassment complaints to the “hypersensitivity of others who feel hurt” is itself harassment.
Brockport, which banned “cartoons that depict religious figures in compromising situations,” “jokes making fun of any protected group,” and “calling someone an old hag,” helpfully described for students what does not constitute sexual harassment: “non-coercive interaction(s) . . . that are acceptable to both parties.” Commented Greg Lukianoff of FIRE: “The wonder is that anyone would risk speaking at all at SUNY Brockport.”
Despite numerous court decisions overturning these codes, they have proliferated. College officials point to the hurt feelings of women or minorities as evidence that a violation must have occurred, in part because they want to avoid charges of racism, sexism, and homophobia— an overriding fear in today’s academe, where diversity offices can swarm with 40 or 50 administrators. The Clinton administration’s commissioner of civil rights in the Department of Education, Norma Cantú, reinforced this trend by interpreting racial and sexual harassment broadly, with an implied threat to withhold federal funds if universities didn’t vigorously counter it. In 2003, the DOE office of civil rights issued a weary clarification, explaining to universities that harassment doesn’t mean merely feeling offended. The letter has had little effect on the censoring fervor of the campuses, however. Occidental College officials soon found a student radio shock jock guilty of sexual harassment for using various crude terms on the air, calling one student a “bearded feminist” and another “half man, half vagina.” On many a campus, tastelessness equals harassment.
Georgia Tech went so far as to ban “denigrating” comments on “beliefs,” which would make almost any passionate argument over ideas a violation. Needless to say, the targets here are usually conservative. Ohio State University at Mansfield launched a sexual harassment investigation of a research librarian, Scott Savage, for recommending the inclusion of four conservative books, including popular works by David Horowitz and ex-senator Rick Santorum, on a freshman reading list. Two professors had complained that one of the books, The Marketing of Evil, by journalist David Kupelian, was “homophobic tripe” and “hate literature.” This may have been the first time that a campus charged that a book recommendation qualified as sexual harassment. After a burst of publicity and a threat to sue, the university dropped the investigation.
Student censors regularly spirit away whole print runs of conservative student newspapers, almost always without reproof from administrators. Over the years, campus officials, including a few university presidents, have even encouraged such stealing. After repeated thefts of the Dartmouth Review, an official egged on the thieves by calling the paper “litter” and “abandoned property.” In a commencement speech, former Cornell president Hunter Rawlings III praised students who seized and burned copies of the conservative Cornell Review in retaliation for printing a gross parody of Ebonics.
Once in a blue moon, a college president vigorously defends free speech. At Northern Kentucky University, president James Votruba rebuked and suspended a tenured feminist professor, Sally Jacobsen, who led a group that demolished a campus-approved right-to-life display. Jacobsen cited two justifications: her deep feelings and her alleged free-speech right to tear down displays that offend her. “I did invite students to express their freedom of speech rights to destroy the display if they wished,” she said. “Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it.”
But far more typical than Votruba was Washington State University president V. Lane Rawlins, who hailed the disruption—and subsequent cancellation—of an intentionally offensive student play that irritated blacks, Christians, Jews, gays, and others. Rawlins defended the disrupters, saying that they had “exercised their rights of free speech in a very responsible manner.” Later documents showed that the university had actually organized and financed them. In the real world, such a revelation would have cost Rawlins his job. But on today’s campus, it passes without comment, in part because students can point out, with perfect moral justification, that forcing the cancellation of speeches and stealing newspapers are just logical extensions of campus speech codes.
Nothing makes the campus censors angrier than someone who dares to question race and gender preferences, especially if he uses satire to do it. That’s why the anti-affirmative-action bake sales that conservative students have sponsored at many schools—white male customers can buy cookies for $1, with lower prices for women and various minorities—have provoked such ferocious responses from campus authorities.
Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, provides a typical example. A Republican club there staged a bake sale, and several students then said that they felt offended. This amounted to a powerful argument, since hurt feelings are trump cards in the contemporary campus culture. (At the University of Wisconsin, for example, a black student testified in defense of the faculty speech code, complaining bitterly that a professor had used the word “niggardly” while teaching Chaucer. “I was in tears,” she said. “It’s not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid.”)
Next came the usual administrative scramble to suppress free speech while expressing great respect for it. The university charged the club with a violation of the student code and threatened sanctions. The students folded under administrative pressure and apologized. When the Republican club president refused to back down, club members asked him to resign, and he did. The students’ retreat was understandable, if not very courageous. The university in effect was trying them for bias, with the likelihood that a notation of racism would become part of their academic record and follow them to post-college job interviews.
The College Republicans at Northeastern Illinois University canceled an announced affirmative-action bake sale after the administration threatened punishment. Dean of students Michael Kelly announced that the cookie sellers would be violating university rules and that “any disruption of university activities that would be caused by this event is also actionable.” This principle—politically incorrect speakers are responsible for attacks on them by students who resent their speech—is dear to campus censors’ hearts. The university didn’t view itself as engaging in censorship—and double-standard censorship at that, since it freely allowed a satirical wage-gap bake sale run by feminists. Absurdly, Kelly said that the affirmative-action sale would be fine—if cookie prices were the same for whites, minorities, and women. Other administrators complained that differential pricing of baked goods is unfair, thus unwittingly proving the whole point of the parody.
Schools will use almost any tactic to shut the bake sales down. At the University of Washington, the administration said that the sponsor had failed to get a food permit. At Grand Valley, the university counsel argued that the sale of a single cupcake would convert political commentary into forbidden campus commerce. At Texas A&M, the athletics director argued that a satirical bake sale would damage the sports teams by making it harder to recruit minorities.
-
One of the PC campus’s worst excesses in suppressing unwanted speech is the drive by gays and their allies to banish or break Christian groups for their traditional beliefs on sexuality. Some 20 campuses have acted to de-recognize or de-fund religious groups that oppose homosexuality (as well as nonmarital sex), often accusing them of violating antidiscrimination rules—that is, refusing to let gays be members, or allowing them to belong but not serve as officers. The language of many policies would require a Democratic club to accept a Republican president, a Jewish group to allow a Holocaust-denying member, or a Muslim organization to accept a leader who practices voodoo.
About half of the attempts to move against Christian clubs have failed. The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill dropped its move against a Christian club three days after getting a friendly warning letter from FIRE. “UNC couldn’t defend in public what it was willing to do in private,” said FIRE president Alan Charles Kors. “If an evangelical Christian who believed homosexuality to be a sin tried to become president of a university’s Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Alliance, the administration would have led candlelight vigils on behalf of diversity and free association.”
Such Marcusian double standards—freedom for me, but not for thee—now have a beachhead in the law, thanks to the legendarily left-wing Ninth Circuit. In response to a “Day of Silence” sponsored by the Gay-Straight Alliance at his Poway, California, high school, Tyler Harper wore a shirt that proclaimed, on the front, “Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned,” and on the back, “Homosexuality Is Shameful/Romans 1:27.” The school principal ordered Harper to take off the shirt. Harper refused, and sued. He argued that the purpose of the “Day of Silence” was to “endorse, promote and encourage homosexual activity” and that he had a First Amendment right to use his T-shirt message as a rebuttal.
When the Poway case reached the Ninth Circuit, Judge Stephen Reinhardt and his colleague Judge Sidney R. Thomas argued in a two-to-one decision that it is permissible to exclude T-shirt messages from First Amendment protection if they strike at a “core identifying characteristic of students on the basis of their membership as a minority group”—with minority status conveyed by categories “such as race, religion, and sexual orientation.” This ruling, unless the Supreme Court takes it up and overturns it, creates a large new category of viewpoints that the First Amendment doesn’t safeguard, at least within the Ninth Circuit. Based on the loose language—“such as” could apply to numerous groups—criticism of illegal aliens might now lack First Amendment protection, says UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh. Presumably, too, one can no longer criticize any minority religious opinion, such as the Islamic view that cartoons mocking Mohammed are out-of-bounds. But pictures of Christ in urine would be perfectly fine, since Christianity remains America’s majority faith.
Some on the left applaud such Marcusian hairsplitting, arguing that First Amendment “absolutists” must learn to “balance” free speech and special protections for vulnerable groups. But in dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski expressed “considerable difficulty understanding the source and sweep of the novel doctrine the majority announces today”—nothing in state, federal, or common law supports it, he noted.
To understand the rising disrespect for free expression in the U.S., Kozinski might have been better off looking to Canada and Europe, both a bit ahead of us—if that’s the right phrase—in embracing PC censorship.
Despite stated respect for free speech in its national constitution, Canada now has a national speech code and judges and elites eager to expand it. The Canadian Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings stating that the government may limit speech in the name of worthwhile goals, such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony, or promoting sexual equality. The state may now seize published material judged to “degrade” or “dehumanize” any group.
What free-speech supporters would regard as horrendous abuses have become commonplace. In 1997, for instance, the mayor of London, Ontario, ran afoul of Canada’s Human Rights Code for refusing to declare a Gay Pride day, citing her Christian beliefs. The British Columbia College of Teachers refuses to certify teacher education programs at Christian universities if they urge students to abstain from premarital sex, adultery, or homosexual sex. The province’s hate-speech laws use extremely broad language, criminalizing statements that “indicate” discrimination or that “likely” will expose a group or one of its members to hatred or contempt.
Ted Byfield, editor of the now-defunct Alberta Report, violated that province’s human rights law by publishing an article noting that some children were grateful for the education they received at the government’s residential schools for Indians, much despised by multiculturalists and admittedly abuse-plagued. An injunction against the Alberta Report forbade stories on partial-birth abortions after Byfield ran a story quoting unnamed nurses and official documents saying that some babies subject to the procedure at a Calgary hospital were born alive and deliberately allowed to starve to death.
Canada has become “a pleasantly authoritarian country,” observes Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Robert Martin, a constitutional law prof at the University of Western Ontario, is harsher: Canada is now “a totalitarian theocracy,” he says, devoted to the secular state religion of political correctness.
Things are no freer across the pond. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties announced that it would prosecute any priests found distributing or quoting the pope’s words forbidding gay marriage. In England, author Lynette Burrows drew a police investigation for saying on a talk show that she opposes homosexual adoption. An Oxford student fared worse after a night out to celebrate the end of exams. Stopped by a mounted policeman, he drunkenly quipped, “Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?” Unfortunately, the humor-free local constabulary arrested the young man under the Public Order Act for making homophobic remarks.
By law, 11 European nations can punish anyone who publicly denies the Holocaust. That’s why the discredited Holocaust-denying British historian David Irving went to prison in Austria. Ken Livingstone, London’s madcap mayor, drew a monthlong suspension for calling a Jewish reporter a Nazi. A Swedish pastor went through a long and harrowing prosecution for a sermon criticizing homosexuality, finally beating the rap in Sweden’s supreme court.
Naturally enough, Muslims want to play the same victim game as other aggrieved groups. The French Council of Muslims says that it’s considering taking France Soir, which reprinted the Danish cartoons, to court for provocation. When French novelist Michel Houellebecq said some derogatory things about the Koran, Muslim groups hauled him into court, which eventually exonerated him. The late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote an angry anti-Muslim book, meant to waken the West to the gravity of the threat posed by Islam. Her prosecution in Italy for writing the book was pending when she died in October.
Much of Europe has painted itself into a corner on Muslim-driven censorship. What can Norway say to pro-censorship Muslims when it already has a hate-speech law forbidding, among other things, “publicly stirring up one part of the population against another,” or any utterance that “threatens, insults or subjects to hatred, persecution, or contempt any person or group of persons because of their creed, race, color, or national or ethnic origin . . . or homosexual bent”? No insulting utterances at all? Since most strong opinions can seem insulting to someone—can hurt someone’s feelings—no insults means no free speech.
Chafing under First Amendment restrictions, many censorship-prone American leftists look longingly toward successful speech control up north or overseas. That’s what they want right here.
We are very lucky to have the First Amendment. Without it, our chattering classes would be falling all over themselves to ban speech that offends sensitive groups, just as Canadian- and Euro-chatterers are doing now. We know this because our campus speech codes, the models for the disastrous hate-speech laws elsewhere, were the inventions of our own elites. Without a First Amendment, the distortions and suppressions of campus life would likely have gone national. Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, and many rap artists would be in jail, or at least facing charges.
The cause of free speech can no longer expect much help from the American Civil Liberties Union, more concerned today with civil rights and multicultural issues than with civil liberties and free speech. True, the ACLU still takes some censorship cases—it led the fight against the first wave of campus speech codes circa 1990, for instance. But the rise of the ACLU’s internal lobbies or “projects,” such as the Lesbian and Gay Project and the Immigrants’ Rights Project, has made the organization look more and more like a traditional left-wing pressure group, with little passion for the First Amendment. The ACLU is also following the money: funds flow in because the group responds to concerns of feminist, gays, and other identity groups, not because of its historical defense of free speech and civil liberties.
These days, the ACLU visibly stands aloof from obvious First Amendment cases—such as the college speech and harassment codes—and even comes down on the anti-free-speech side. Consider the group’s stance in Aguilar v. Avis Rent-A-Car System, a case involving ethnic epithets aimed by supervisors at Latino employees of Avis in San Francisco. A California court ruled that Avis had permitted a hostile environment. The California Supreme Court, abetted by both the northern Californian and the national ACLU, agreed, and upheld the lower court’s startling speech restriction: prior restraint on workers’ speech, forbidding a judge-made list of specific words. These words, not yet revealed or promulgated, will soon be taboo in every California workplace, even outside the earshot of Latino employees, and even if they are welcome. As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff wrote: “This may be the broadest and vaguest restriction of speech in American legal history.”
Even with the ACLU, the mainstream media, school officials, and much of the professorate AWOL, the speech police haven’t gone unopposed. Just ask former Clinton official Donna Shalala. As chancellor of the University of Wisconsin in the late eighties, she proved a fervent early advocate of campus speech restrictions. Though Shalala occasionally praised free speech, she and her team imposed not only a full-fledged student speech code, later struck down in federal court, but also a faculty code that provoked the first (and so far, only) pro-free-speech campus campaign strong enough to repeal such repressive restrictions. The Wisconsin faculty code was a primitive, totalitarian horror. Professors found themselves under investigation, sometimes for months, without a chance to defend themselves or even to know about the secret proceedings. One female professor said: “It was like being put in prison for no reason. I had no idea what it was that I was supposed to have done.”
A small group of free-speech-minded faculty formed the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights (CAFR). The group asked for help from the Wisconsin chapter of the pro-free-speech National Association of Scholars, which enlisted as speakers such celebrated allies as Alan Dershowitz and National Journal columnist Jonathan Rauch.
The First Amendment forces got a lucky break when the university signed a foolish contract with Reebok, in which it received millions of dollars in exchange for the use of the company’s footwear by campus sports teams. The contract included a clause forbidding negative comments on Reebok products by any “University employee, agent or representative.” The clause greatly irritated the anticorporate campus Left, which had usually been lukewarm or indifferent to free-speech concerns, helping convert some of its members to the anti-speech-code side. Later, a strong defense of free speech by a homosexual professor, called a traitor to his identity group for his courage, brought in other campus leftist allies. CAFR was amazed at how quickly many would-be censors backed down when confronted with controversy and threatened lawsuits. Wisconsin rescinded its faculty code—the first university to do so without a court order.
New national groups have joined the fight for free speech on campus (and off), among them the Center for Individual Rights, the Alliance Defense Fund, and FIRE, the most relentless of the newcomers. FIRE usually starts a campaign with a polite letter to a university president, noting that some policy is either unconstitutional or a clear violation of civil liberties. If it doesn’t get the change it wants, it will then write to trustees, parents, and alumni, and take its case to the media.
FIRE now has an extensive network of campus free-speech “spies,” as its cofounder, Harvey Silverglate, jauntily calls them (Alan Charles Kors, the other cofounder, prefers “concerned members of the community”). The organization is seeking new ways to open up closed campus systems, too, such as suing administrators as individuals, which FIRE believes will get their full attention. Another new tactic is to publicize what colleges spend on fighting for unconstitutional speech codes. Most of all, FIRE is trying to show stubborn administrators that the era of hiding gross civil liberties violations behind a PC wall of silence is over: the group wins more than 95 percent of its cases.
Political correctness took hold when there were 40 radio talk shows, three networks, and no bloggers. Today, the cross-referencing of PC outrages among bloggers, radio talkers, and rights groups makes it hard to run an old-fashioned repressive campus. University presidents now understand that their reputations do not rest entirely with the PC platoons. Donna Shalala escaped Wisconsin with her reputation intact. Sheldon Hackney, former president of Penn, did not. (I named my own annual award for the worst college president, the “Sheldon,” in his honor.) When he stepped down from the Penn presidency, he didn’t become the head of a major foundation, as many expected; instead, he wound up returning to Penn as a professor. Other reputations hang in the balance. Lee Bollinger, a First Amendment expert (and affirmative-action advocate), was invisible during the free-speech debates at Michigan and is almost as recessive today as president of Columbia. But it is getting harder for the Hackneys and Bollingers to waffle.
Perhaps the battle to release the campuses from the iron grasp of PC will take decades, but the struggle for free speech is being fought—and won—now.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_free_speech.html
-
One of the PC campus’s worst excesses in suppressing unwanted speech is the drive by gays and their allies to banish or break Christian groups for their traditional beliefs on sexuality. Some 20 campuses have acted to de-recognize or de-fund religious groups that oppose homosexuality (as well as nonmarital sex), often accusing them of violating antidiscrimination rules—that is, refusing to let gays be members, or allowing them to belong but not serve as officers.
Free speech doesn't mean we have to give a platform to bigots. How is any of this different from de-funding a campus KKK group, or ordering a student to remove an anti-semitic t-shirt?
-milt
-
Does this mean you support banning t-shirts supporting Hamas and Hezbollah because of their known anti-semitism?
-
Does this mean you support banning t-shirts supporting Hamas and Hezbollah because of their known anti-semitism?
I guess I'd have to see the particular shirt before I decide.
But why are you asking me this question, rather than asking buzwardo if he would back the rights of Hamas and Hezbollah to wear "politically incorrect" t-shirts? I want to know if these supposed crusaders for free speech will stand up for campus anti-semites and other such groups or if they only support the gay bashers.
-milt
-
Well, because I didn't see anything from Buzwardo supporting censorship-- indeed the opening sentence of his posted piece was "Remember when the Right had a near-monopoly on censorship?"
Hamas & Hezbollah go quite a bit further than your replacement of "anti-semitism" with "politically incorrect". They want to wipe out the Jews of Israel-- which sounds rather anti-semitic to me.
Also, you interject a separate albeit related point when you talk about defunding the KKK-- we are talking here about free speech.
Lastly, I reject the inflation of homosexuality to the same status as race. I reject the notion that it is/should be a thought crime to disapprove of homosexuality.
-
Lastly, I reject the inflation of homosexuality to the same status as race.
Tell it to some gay teenager who's taunted and gets called "faggot" or worse every day at school. If anything, it's religion (which is 100% choice, unlike race or sexual preference), that shouldn't be at the same status as race.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, but these groups who "condemn" homosexuality are no better than the other bigots our country has dealt with in the past and history will judge them just as harshly.
-milt
-
1) My point about homosexuality is that as a legal matter people should be free to hold whatever opinion they want to.
2) I invite you to respond to my other points.
-
I agree with Crafty, and would like to add that you should be allowed to hold what ever opinion you like on anything, the real issue is the effect that it has on the rest of your life and interaction with other people.
Do you hold a opinion of such dislike towards something to the extent that you are rude when faced with it?
Or do just advoid it where possible, and when not be polite till you may seperate yourself from it?
Jason
-
From SB_Mig on another thread in this forum:
Anne Coulter just called John Edwards a "faggot". Again, many people might agree with her sentiments, but there is probably a large segment of the population who would consider her words offensive, dangerous, or inciteful.
Anne deserves credit for at least being self-consistent. The whole idea behind the conservative opposition to "political correctness" is that other people's feelings about the use of a word are irrelevant if you feel is the word is an objective, accurate description, right? It cracks me up that so many people who agree with 99% of Anne's rantings all of a sudden want to distance themselves from her over this. If Anne were around during the 60s, she'd be complaining about the word "nigger" no longer being acceptable in polite company.
IMO, Anne deserves a lot more pity than hate. The more incendiary and f-d up her rantings get, the more her friends and supporters just tell her "keep it up!" because they consider it oh-so cute and amusing. If any of these people really cared about her, they'd be encouraging her to seek professional help for what are clearly some pretty serious psychological problems.
Rog
-
There is an "objective, accurate" word: "homosexual". "Faggot" is a word for starting fights or being mean for the hell of it.
I used to like AC-- she has written some brilliant, withering and witty rants in the past, but for quite some time now for me she has become a caricature of what she was and has lost my respect.
-
It's not like this is the first time AC has said outright racist and/or blatantly offensive stuff, but she just keeps getting invited to speak at all kinds of conservative circle-jerks and making appearances in "liberal media" outlets like MSNBC.
It's the same thing every time she drops one of these bombs. A bunch of high-profile conservatives make a public show of acting shocked and declare that she's "gone too far this time", but at the end of the day she's still their darling because she can express all the racist, hateful stuff a lot of them really think but don't ever want to say.
Four posts in one day... I guess I'm just in a mood.
-
Weapons to go offstage
Trachtenberg cites Virginia Tech attack
Courtney Long
Staff Reporter and Copy Editor
Jeffrey White/Photography Editor
Sarah Holdren ‘08, speaking Thursday before the opening of ‘Red Noses,’ protested new restrictions on using weapons in campus plays.In Other News
In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.
Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.
According to students involved in the production, Trachtenberg has banned the use of some stage weapons in all of the University’s theatrical productions. While shows will be permitted to use obviously fake plastic weapons, students said, those that hoped to stage more realistic scenes of stage violence have had to make changes to their props.
Trachtenberg could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
“Red Noses” director Sarah Holdren ’08 said she first heard about the changes in a phone call from a friend as she arrived at the Off-Broadway Theater on Thursday morning. At the theater, technical director Jim Brewczynski told her about the new regulations. The pair then met with Trachtenberg, who initially wanted no stage weapons to be used in the show, Holdren said, though she later agreed to permit the use of obviously fake weapons.
In a speech made before last night’s opening show of “Red Noses,” Holdren said that Trachtenberg’s decision to force the production to use wooden swords instead of metal swords will do little to stem violence in the world.
“Calling for an end to violence onstage does not solve the world’s suffering: It merely sweeps it under the rug, turning theater — in the words of this very play — into ‘creamy bon-bons’ instead of ‘solid fare’ for a thinking, feeling audience,” she said. “Here at Yale, sensitivity and political correctness have become censorship in this time of vital need for serious artistic expression.”
Holdren said she is primarily worried about the University’s decision to place limitations on art, rather than the specific inconvenience to her production.
“I completely understand that the University needs to respond to the tragedy, but I think it is wrong to conflate sensitivity and censorship,” she said in an interview. “It is wrong to assume that any theater that deals with tragic matter is sort of on the side of those things or out to get people; they’re not — they’re out to help people through things like this. I want my show and all shows to be uplifting to people. That’s why I’m upset about this — it’s not because my props were taken — it’s about imposing petty restrictions on art as the right way to solve the problems in the world.”
Brandon Berger ’10, who plays a swordsman in the show, said the switch to an obviously fake wooden sword has changed the nature of his part from an “evil, errant knight to a petulant child.”
“They’re trying to make an appropriate gesture, but they did it in an inappropriate way — they’ve neutered the play,” he said. “The violence is important to what it actually means. What these types of actions do is very central — it is not gratuitous.”
Susie Kemple ’08, an actress in the show, said Trachtenberg’s way of dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre was not beneficial to the students’ own mourning process.
“It is problematic because all of us were incredibly shocked by the events at Virginia Tech,” Kemple said. “We turn to extracurriculars in our grief [and] the Yale administration makes the healing more difficult. None of the shows are about massive gun violence — this show is about showing and explaining the human experience.”
Berger also said he finds the ruling inconsistent because forms of stage violence that do not involve weapons — such as hangings — are still permitted.
“Red Noses” will end its run Saturday night.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20843
-
Moving GM's post and SgtMac's response to this thread-- Marc
===================================
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/21/sf-chronic-oakland-pizzeria-owner-tragically-shoots-armed-robber/
This is why the "Chronic" and the SF bay area are such a joke.....
sgtmac_46
Newbie
Posts: 26
Re: SF Chronic: Oakland Pizzeria Owner “Tragically” Shoots Armed Robber
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2007, 08:44:08 PM »
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote from: G M on April 21, 2007, 05:06:36 PM
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/21/sf-chronic-oakland-pizzeria-owner-tragically-shoots-armed-robber/
This is why the "Chronic" and the SF bay area are such a joke.....
What I found truly offensive was this piece of garbage
Quote
“There is definitely a balance,” said Officer Roland Holmgren, department spokesman. “This thing had potential — who knows where the suspects were going to take the situation? But by no stretch of the imagination are we agreeing with or justifying what the owner did.”
Holmgren said, “We’re not saying that we want citizens to go out there and arm themselves and take the law into their own hands. We want citizens to be good witnesses, to be good report-takers and to identify suspects.”
The shooting has left two families traumatized, Holmgren said. “There are no winners in this whole case,” he said.
As a police officer myself, I found this little bureaucratic weasel offensive as an example of my profession in the extreme. 'There are no winners in this whole case"....except the storeowner, society and the gene pool. Where is SF recruiting their officers from? Straight out of the BERKLEY?!
“We want citizens to be good (little sheeple) witnesses, to be good report-takers and to identify suspects (and be victims, if necessary....but for god sake don't fight back!).”
I'll let the late good Colonel Jeff Cooper speak my reply.
"We continue to be exasperated by the view, apparently gaining momentum in certain circles, that armed robbery is okay as long as nobody gets hurt! The proper solution to armed robbery is a dead robber, on the scene.”-Jeff Cooper
"The police cannot protect the citizen at this stage of our development, and they cannot even protect themselves in many cases. It is up to the private citizen to protect himself and his family, and this is not only acceptable, but mandatory.”-Jeff Cooper
Where I come from, our police department would have given the store owner a medal.
Aspiring raper? pffffft
-
For what it's worth ...I think the current PC situation can be summed up in one, horribly depressing phrase:
We as a society have, in our complacency, allowed common courtesy to be replaced by forced tolerance.
Because something is ...you don't HAVE to like it, but it can still be.
You or I can say something that the other doesn't agree with. It's no big deal ...it actually can lead to a good conversation.
Don't feel that you are owed anything ...cause you inherently deserve NOTHING! Earn it.
Freedom of speech applies to all ...not just your "special" group.
And, in the words of the great social philosopher, George Carlin ...if you don't like it, there are two knobs on it. One turns it off ...and the other one changes the channel.
Just my opinion. Carry on. I'll be in the area all day.
-
You Can't Ring Her Bell
Ye shall abstain from wearing a ring inscribed with the Biblical admonition that "ye should abstain from fornication"
That was the ruling of a British High Court earlier this month against 16-year-old Lydia Playfoot, a teenager who took her West Sussex secondary school to court for banning her from wearing her chastity ring. The school has a strict anti-jewelry policy. But Ms. Playfoot, a Christian, could not help but notice the school's tolerance for Muslim and Sikh students, who were allowed to wear their headscarves and Kara bracelets.
Ms. Playfoot argued the ring was a religious symbol protected under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects "freedom of thought, conscience, and religion." The High Court didn't agree. Judge Michael Supperstone held that "whatever the ring is intended to symbolize, it is a piece of jewelry." Ms. Playfoot's publicity was largely positive in the beginning, but recent news reports have accused her parents of seeking controversy for the sake of a chastity ring campaign they run. A British tabloid also revealed that a key staffer in the campaign is a lingerie model and the live-in girlfriend of a minor right-wing British politician. The staffer had been jailed once for harassing the family of a child who accused singer Michael Jackson of molestation.
If all this makes Britain sound increasingly like Southern California, the legal bottomline remains: The law in Britain has turned decidedly against Christian chastity rings, but hijabs continue to be protected. Nor would many be optimistic about Ms. Playfoot's chances on appeal, given another indicator of Britain's bizarre ideas about freedom in schools. Winston Churchill's grandson, Parliament Member Nicholas Soames, is currently battling against the "madness" of a recent government move to drop Gandhi, Hitler, Stalin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Churchill from mandatory history lessons for 11-14 year olds. The government's rationale? Teachers and schools need more flexibility and "freedom."
Political Journal WSJ
-
Cautious criticism
A Growing Number Of Activists Are Hesitant To Decry Female Genital Mutilation
Zosia Bielski
National Post
Saturday, August 25, 2007
CREDIT: Simon Maina, Agence France-Presse
Two Kenyan girls sit near a knife used for female genital mutilation in Nyamira, west of Nairobi. "There are good reasons within the society for the operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Janice Boddy, a University of Toronto professor.
CREDIT: Michael Kooren, Reuters
Somali author Ayaan Hirsi Ali has publicly criticized the act of female genital mutilation. The practice can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and death.
Academia's fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women's rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice.
Where feminists rallied against the operation from the pages of Ms. magazine in the 1970s, today's critics are infinitely more cautious, with most suggesting that the Western world butt out until Muslim African communities are ready to reconsider what they are doing to their daughters.
The shift in attitudes about the practice-- which in the worst of cases involves the carving out of a woman's clitoris and inner labia and can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and even death -- comes at a time when high-profile victims of the operation such as writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and model Waris Dirie, both Somalis, have launched very public campaigns against the practice.
The issue is so explosive, it has two names -- female genital mutilation, or FGM, to those most vociferously opposed to the practice; and female genital cutting, or FGC, to those in the less-condemning camp.
The latter includes the chair of anthropology at the University of Toronto, who has written a new book on the subject. Although not prepared to defend what she calls FGC, Janice Boddy defends women who undergo the operation and want the practice to continue in future generations.
"There are good reasons within the society for the operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Prof. Boddy, author of Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan.
Working through British and Sudanese archives, she looks at the history of FGC in that country, particularly European colonial interactions with the practice, from British nurses attempting to re-educate Sudanese midwives in the 1920s, to the country's outlawing of the practice in 1946 amid Western pressure.
"It isn't a happy situation by any means. I wouldn't want it to continue. But I think that up until this point, the West has not been particularly helpful in the way that it's gone about trying to assist in the eradication," Prof. Boddy says.
Prevalent in, though not exclusive to, Muslim societies, particularly in Sudan, Somalia, northern Kenya and parts of Ethiopia and Indonesia, female genital mutilation takes on its most severe form in infibulation, or pharaonic circumcision.
This can involve the removal of both the clitoris and inner labia with crude instruments such as razors. The entire vagina is then sewn up with thread, or fastened with thorns.
In this way, a woman's virginity -- considered especially important by Muslim men--can be proven before her father is paid the bride price.
The Sudanese, Prof. Boddy argues, are a fiercely guarded culture, one that sees the practice as a defence of their people against intruders, and, astonishingly, as protection against injury.
"The cultural context in which this practice takes place supports the idea of enclosing the body against harm," she writes in her book. The social body is closed against intrusion from the outside by marriages between relatives. People marry cousins ... The kinship system is quite closed. That image of the defensive society, the defensive social body, is carried over into this idea of defending the physical body.
"The idea of closing the womb, which is the most precious organ of the female body, is very highly supported by other kinds of practices."
Although not outlined in the Koran, FGM is so ingrained in cultural norms that it will not be easily eradicated, she says.
Rather, the West must support local counsellors (she names the international women's rights organization Rainbo as one) working on the ground with women to change their notions of marriageability.
The professor also says she would like to see "more science" in the arguments against FGM -- she takes issue with how often it causes shock and death. To a degree, she also aligns feminists who are ardently opposed to the operation with British imperialists.
Today, Prof. Boddy says, the battle cry is human rights. Back then, it was colonial notions of civilizing the other. It's a stance that pits her against many critics, including the World Health Organization, which called for the absolute abolition of the practice in the 1970s.
The human rights group Amnesty International considers FGM a form of violence against women, and the end result of discriminatory attitudes and beliefs. But even their representatives are careful when speaking of the operation.
"The motivation is not one of malice or desire to hurt but really to make sure that the daughter is taken care of," says Cheryl Hotchkiss, women's rights campaigner with Amnesty International Canada.
"But what needs to be examined from a human rights perspective is why is it that in order for a woman to live a good life does she have to undergo such an extreme experience?
"It's entirely conceivable that a woman may willingly subject herself to it, but our question is, did she willingly subject herself to it because there were so few options to it? That's a core issue."
Prof. Boddy's book has received criticism for leaving Sudanese men out of her discussion. In focusing on the way women perform, perpetuate and desire the practice (since it ensures marriageability), critics say she fails to address the ostracism and potential violence women may face unless they submit.
But these are Western discourses, Prof. Boddy says, arguing that in Sudan, it is women who have power in the domestic sphere.
"You can abhor the sin, but you can love the sinner," she concludes. "I don't want them to receive the blame from the West for doing what they think is in the best interests of their daughters because otherwise they won't be marriageable."
Ms. Hotchkiss says the key lies in changing those notions of desirability, likely through a combination of state law, grassroots efforts and intervention by the medical community.
"[These societies] see women's bodies used as the holders of tradition ? That's still because the society sees women's bodies as not their own. They see them as a tool.
"What Amnesty's desperately trying to get across, along with women's human rights activists the world over, is that women's bodies are their own and they need the right to say what is and what isn't going to happen to them."
zbielski@nationalpost.com
-
An interesting history of PC:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236&hl=en
-
Colorado Springs School Bans Tag on Playground, Citing Conflicts
Thursday , August 30, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. —
An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.
"It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.
Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.
Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn't object.
In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.
-
The Massacre of Innocence
A stunning new book shows how elite culture made the Duke rape hoax possible.
BY ABIGAIL THERNSTROM
Thursday, September 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Privileged, rowdy white jocks at an elite, Southern college, a poor, young black stripper, and an alleged rape: It was a juicy, made-for-the-media story of race, class and sex, and it was told and retold for months with a ferocious, moralistic intensity. Reporters and pundits ripped into Duke University, the white race and the young lacrosse players at the center of the episode, and the local justice system quickly handed up indictments. But as Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson show in "Until Proven Innocent"--and as the facts themselves would show when they finally came to light--it was a false story, a toxic controversy built on lies and bad faith.
There was plenty of wrongdoing, of course, but it had very little to do with Duke's lacrosse players. It was perpetrated instead by a rogue district attorney determined to win re-election in a racially divided, town-gown city; ideologically driven reporters and their pseudo-expert sources; censorious faculty members driven by the imperatives of political correctness; a craven university president; and black community leaders seemingly ready to believe any charge of black victimization.
"Until Proven Innocent" is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions--legal, educational and journalistic--that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair--the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline--was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture's most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America's supposed racial divide.
A bit of college-age stupidity triggered the sequence of events. The co-captains of the Duke lacrosse team held a house party in Durham, N.C., on March 13, 2006, and hired two strippers from an escort service for the occasion. The women who showed up--Crystal Mangum and Kim Roberts--happened to be black.
It turned out that Ms. Mangum--although the public would not learn of such details until very late in the life-span of the scandal--had a serious alcohol and narcotics problem. She had been diagnosed as bipolar and had spent a week in the state mental hospital the previous summer. Having arrived at the party late, she did not start dancing until midnight. Time-stamped photos show that her performance lasted only four minutes. By 12:30 she had passed out, as she often did--it was later discovered--at the Durham night club where she worked as an "exotic dancer." The other dancer, Ms. Roberts, eventually drove her to a grocery store and asked for help, and the security guard there called the police, who assumed that Ms. Mangum was "passed-out drunk."
In the custody of police, Ms. Mangum said nothing about a rape. (Ms. Roberts called the rape charge a "crock" when she first heard of it, until District Attorney Michael Nifong bribed her to say otherwise by reducing a bondsman's fee--from an earlier conviction--by roughly $2,000.) Ms. Mangum, fearing recommitment to a mental hospital, landed on rape as the explanation for her incoherent and generally woeful condition when she was prompted by a nurse-advocate at a mental-health processing facility. There was no medical evidence to substantiate the charge.
In a series of interviews with prosecutors, Ms. Mangum drew wildly different and implausible pictures of the alleged rape. DNA tests from swabs taken the night of the incident revealed that she had had recent sexual contact with as many as four men, none of whom were Duke lacrosse players. Defense lawyers discovered this damning detail only after combing through more than 1,800 pages of documents released by the district attorney months after the testing was done. The DNA cover-up was only one of the procedural travesties that eventually cost Mr. Nifong his job and law license and (last week) earned him a one-day jail sentence.
In two photo-identification lineups, Ms. Mangum couldn't identify anyone as her rapist. On a third try--before which Mr. Nifong announced to her that all the photos that she was about to see were of Duke lacrosse players--she suddenly fingered three: David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann. It was apparently of no consequence to Mr. Nifong that the lineup violated basic departmental rules and that none of the men she identified bore the slightest resemblance to the descriptions she had given police.
Time-stamped photos--at the party and at an ATM--along with cellphone and taxi records showed indisputably that Mr. Seligmann could not have participated in the 30-minute, three-orifice gang rape and vicious beating of which Ms. Mangum accused the three players. Messrs. Evans and Finnerty did not have such air-tight alibis, but each cooperated fully with the police, even offering to take lie-detector tests, and there was not a shred of evidence against them. The district attorney branded the defendants as "hooligans," but others--like Messrs. Taylor and Johnson here--described them in glowing terms, as earnest, hard-working students.
The state attorney general--after an agonizing yearlong investigation, culminating in Mr. Nifong's removal from the case--determined in April 2007 that Messrs. Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann were innocent of all charges. Nothing--absolutely nothing--had happened at the party. The players' innocence had been apparent to their own attorneys from the outset. It should have been apparent to Mr. Nifong, too, given all the exculpatory details he knew. But he was desperate to win a close primary election and needed black votes, so he proceeded with an unjustified prosecution and publicly vilified innocent young men.
In this fundamental injustice, he was aided and abetted by others in Durham. Richard Brodhead, the president of Duke, condemned the lacrosse players as if they had already been found guilty, demanded the resignation of their coach and studiously ignored the mounting evidence that Ms. Mangum's charge was false. He was clearly terrified of the racial and gender activists on his own faculty. Houston Baker, a noted professor of English, called the lacrosse players "white, violent, drunken men veritably given license to rape," men who could "claim innocence . . . safe under the cover of silent whiteness." Protesters on campus and in the city itself waved "castrate" banners, put up "wanted" posters and threatened the physical safety of the lacrosse players.
The vitriolic rhetoric of the faculty and Durham's "progressive" community--including the local chapter of the NAACP--helped to intensify the scandal and stoke the media fires. The New York Times' coverage was particularly egregious, as Messrs. Taylor and Johnson vividly show. It ran dozens of prominent stories and "analysis" articles trying to plumb the pathologies of the lacrosse players and of a campus culture that allowed swaggering white males to prey on poor, defenseless young black women. As one shrewd Times alumnus later wrote: "You couldn't invent a story so precisely tuned to the outrage frequency of the modern, metropolitan, bien pensant journalist." Such Nifong allies--unlike the district attorney himself--paid no price for their shocking indifference to the truth.
Ms. Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the recipient of a 2007 Bradley Award. You can buy "Until Proven Innocent" form the OpinionJournal bookstore.
-
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/09/06/the-horrors-of-political-correctness/
Note the absence of outrage from the left and the non-coverage from the MSM.
-
Columbia's Priorities
Next week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's Holocaust-denying president, who has said that "Israel must be wiped off the map," will be in New York for the U.N. General Assembly session. As the titular leader of a U.N. member state, Ahmadinejad is entitled to visit the city for this reason. But he is not entitled to something else he received, namely an appearance to speak at Columbia University, where he will be introduced by none other than Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president.
Yesterday Bollinger put out a statement defending his decision to authorize the event, and it was filled with high-minded rhetoric:
Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.
But there is one little problem here. As Bill Kristol points out:
As Columbia welcomes Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia students who want to serve their country cannot enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Columbia. Columbia students who want to enroll in ROTC must travel to other universities to fulfill their obligations. ROTC has been banned from the Columbia campus since 1969. In 2003, a majority of polled Columbia students supported reinstating ROTC on campus. But in 2005, when the Columbia faculty senate debated the issue, President Bollinger joined the opponents in defeating the effort to invite ROTC back on campus.
The original decision to kick ROTC off campus was the product of 1960s anti-Americanism, but the ostensible reason the policy continues is objection to the law, signed by President Clinton, that prohibits open homosexuals from serving in the military. Apparently some ideas are so odious that they are unworthy of answering "through the powers of dialogue and reason."
So, what is Ahmadinejad's regime's policy on homosexuals in the military? We don't know, but according to Human Rights Watch, Iran is not a terribly friendly place for gay civilians:
On Sunday, November 13, the semi-official Tehran daily Kayhan reported that the Iranian government publicly hung [sic] two men, Mokhtar N. (24 years old) and Ali A. (25 years old), in the Shahid Bahonar Square of the northern town of Gorgan.
The government reportedly executed the two men for the crime of "lavat." Iran's shari'a-based penal code defines lavat as penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts between men. Iranian law punishes all penetrative sexual acts between adult men with the death penalty. Non-penetrative sexual acts between men are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are punished with death. Sexual acts between women, which are defined differently, are punished with lashes until the fourth offense, when they are also punished with death.
If the U.S. military executed homosexuals instead of merely discharging them, perhaps Bollinger would welcome ROTC back to Columbia.
-
No Free lunch
There was a Chemistry professor in a large college
that had some Exchange students in the class.
One day while the class was in the lab the Prof
noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept
rubbing his back And stretching as if his back hurt.
The professor asked the young man what was the
matter. The student told him he had a bullet
lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting
communists in his native country who were trying to
overthrow his country's government and install a new
communist government.
In the midst of his story he looked at the professor
and asked a strange question. He asked,
'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for
the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.
'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in
the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs
find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free
corn. When they are used to coming every day, you
put a fence down one side of the place where they
are used to coming. When they get used to the fence,
they begin to eat the corn again and you put up
another side of the fence. They get used to that
and start to eat again. You continue until you have
all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the
last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn,
start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the
gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom.
They run around and around inside the fence, but
they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the
free corn. They are so used to it that they have
forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves,
so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly
what he sees happening to America. The government
keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and
keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of
programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for
unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies,
payments not to plant crops (CRP),welfare, medicine,
drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms
- just a little at a time.
One should always remember 'There is no such thing
as a free Lunch!' Also, 'You can never hire someone
to provide a service for you cheaper than you can
do it yourself.
Also, if you see that all of this wonderful
government 'help' is a problem confronting the
future of democracy in America, you might want to
send this on to your friends. If you think the free
ride is essential to your way of life then you will
probably delete this email, but God help you when
the gate slams shut!
-
I don't believe the Iranian loon being allowed to speak at Columbia is about freedom of speech at all.
It's more about a liberal campus' political agenda. They hate Bush and that's it - period.
Maybe they could have made a deal. Bush gets allowed to speak - uninterrupted at Iran's most prostegious university and the speech is broadcast accross all of Iran to all Iranians.
-
Demon Rummy
September 25, 2007
A premier U.S. university invites a controversial international figure to speak on campus. The faculty is outraged. "Speaking truth to power," the professors denounce the legitimacy conferred on a murderous tyrant. That is what largely did not happen yesterday after Columbia welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Morningside Heights. That is, however, what is now happening at Stanford, and the man the faculty views as a tyrant is -- Donald Rumsfeld.
While Columbia President Lee Bollinger opines about "the powers of dialogue and reason," the Stanford faculty has mobilized against the appointment of the former Defense Secretary to a fellowship at the Hoover Institution, a conservative research center affiliated with the Palo Alto university. Mr. Rumsfeld will join a study group exploring terror and ideology in the post-9/11 world.
Mr. Rumsfeld's experience in these matters can't be denied. And though his politics may differ from the professoriate's, this would seem to make his "perspective" more valuable to a university dedicated to the exchange of ideas -- especially one, as its motto has it, where "the wind of freedom blows."
Something else altogether is blowing now. A group of self-described faculty "instigators" calls Mr. Rumsfeld "fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, [and] disinterested enquiry." Their petition has garnered more than 3,000 professor, student and alumni signatures.
English professor Robert Polhemus drafted an unofficial platform for the faculty opposition that calls the Hoover appointment "contemptible" and argues that Mr. Rumsfeld lacks "intellectual and academic experience and/or some measure of achievement." The psychologist Philip Zimbardo tolerantly noted, "They can have any fascist they want there [at Hoover], and they do."
So in the interests of "robust debate," a school is obliged to provide a public forum to the leader of a repressive terrorist regime. But the mere presence of an American with more than three decades of public service -- most recently dedicated to combating such regimes -- is beyond the pale? Stanford's only saving grace so far is that its administration isn't bending to this faculty intimidation.
All ideas are not created equal, and the beliefs of Messrs. Rumsfeld and Ahmadinejad are certainly not. Rather, these two case studies into the academic mindset contrast priorities. They confirm, if more confirmation were needed, that the modern academy's commitment to "intellectual freedom" too often fails to distinguish between those who defend freedom and those who would squash it.
-
:roll: :roll: :roll:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/23/83652/6735
Why I Have A Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
by sallykohn
Sun Sep 23, 2007 at 05:50:02 AM PDT
I know I'm a Jewish lesbian and he'd probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon...
sallykohn's diary :: ::
Okay, I admit it. Part of it is that he just looks cuddly. Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight. I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog. Sort of. With smaller eyes. But that’s not all…
I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding.
...Monday, when Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University in New York, I’ll be listening. Maybe with a bottle of wine and some soft music playing in the background. If I can get past the fact that, as a Jewish lesbian, he’d probably have me killed, I’ll try to listen for some truth.
-
In my view it is nonsense about his invitation to speak being about freedom of speech. I believe he was invited because it was expected, and hoped, he would say things to embarrass a Republican President despised by liberal academics.
Again we see that the left's hatred of Republicans is greater than even their hatred of those who dream of disposing of all Jews.
Even Hitler would be invited if he could be counted on to say somethng bad about Bush.
Ann Coulter couldn't have said it any clearer about this:
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi
-
And what an impression of the American mindset this man will take away from the experience!!!
-
Academic Inquisitors
By CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS
October 16, 2007; Page A20
As if losing the presidency of Harvard for hinting that there might be a biological explanation for the preponderance of men in academic science wasn't enough, Lawrence Summers now appears to be persona non grata elsewhere too.
A few weeks ago the University of California, Davis rescinded an invitation for him to speak. More than 150 faculty members signed a petition protesting his appearance, saying Mr. Summers "has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia." Davis ecology Professor Maureen Stanton was "appalled and stunned that someone like Summers would be invited to speak."
Ms. Stanton and her allies want pariah status for anyone who dares to suggest a biological basis for difference. Yet the scientific literature on why men and women enter different fields is legitimate, robust, complex and fascinating. What is appalling is that leading academic institutions would try to shut down the discussion and get away with it. Almost.
Last week, the American Enterprise Institute brought together top researchers on sex differences, ranging from the strongly feminist Brandeis women's studies scholar Rosalind Barnett to AEI scholar and co-author of "The Bell Curve," Charles Murray. The discussions were heated, but civil. No one got mad, fled the room weeping, or nearly fainted.
Ms. Barnett opened by reminding the conference of the history of prejudice against women in the sciences. Though significant gains have been made, she pointed out that there are still "invisible walls" that hold women back. Another speaker, Richard Haier, professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledged the long history of prejudice, then presented slides that must give pause to even the most fervent biology denier.
Using the latest and most advanced MRI brain imaging technology, he demonstrated that male and female brains have strikingly distinct architectures and process information differently. Mr. Haier reminded us that "there is so much we do not know and so much yet to discover about brain biology and sex differences, and perhaps even career choices."
Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor at Cambridge University and one of the world's leading experts on autism, had an intriguing hypothesis. Autism is far more common in males than females. Those afflicted with the disorder, including those with normal or high IQ, tend to be socially disconnected and clueless about the emotional states of others. They often exhibit an obsessive fixation on objects and machines.
Sound like anyone you know?
Mr. Baron-Cohen suggests that autism may be the far end of the male norm -- the "extreme male brain," all systematizing and no empathizing. He believes that men are, on average, wired to be better systematizers and women to be better empathizers. He presented a wide range of correlations between the level of fetal testosterone and behaviors in both girls and boys from infancy into grade school to back up his belief.
Harvard cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke, another speaker, noted that Mr. Baron-Cohen's theory is not settled science. She is right, of course.
Yet the current configuration of the workplace fits Mr. Baron-Cohen's theory: Women dominate in empathy-centered fields such as early childhood education, social work and psychology, while men are over-represented in the "systematizing" vocations such as car repair, oil drilling and electrical engineering.
Others debated the pros and cons of research on "unconscious bias" and the effects of stereotypes on test takers. So it went. No one present could doubt the importance of the debate or the significance of the evidence from both sides. The audience was captivated as experts played with the politically incorrect notion that male and female brains may be markedly different.
Unfortunately, the deniers of differences between the sexes are on the march with powerful allies. In the fall of 2006, the National Academy of Sciences released a recklessly one-sided study, now widely referred to as authoritative, titled "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." According to the report, differences in cognition between the sexes have no bearing on the dearth of women in academic math, physics and engineering. It is all due to bias. Case closed. The report calls on Congress to hold hearings on gender bias in the sciences and on federal agencies to "move immediately" (emphasis in original) to apply anti-discrimination laws such as Title IX to academic science (but not English) departments. "The time for action is now."
No it is not. Now is the time for scholars in our universities and in the National Academy of Sciences to defend and support principles of free and objective inquiry. The chronically appalled must not have the last word.
Ms. Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
WSJ
-
“Perpetual adolescence is not just a cultural drag, but also dangerous to our way of life... The leveling of adult authority over the past half century or so was accompanied by a leveling of cultural authority. This brought on the age of multiculturalism, a time when Western Civ (like the adult) no longer occupies its old pinnacle atop the hierarchy of cultures. The multiculti conception of equally valuable cultures (except for the West, which is deemed the pits) depends on a strenuous non-judgmentalism. This non-judgmentalism expresses itself in a self-censoring adherence to political correctness. Such non-judgmentalism, such PC self-censorship, is infantilizing because it requires us to suppress our faculties of analysis and judgment.” —Diana West
-
Mi Casa, Sue Casa
Nancy Pelosi tries to force the Salvation Army to hire people who can't speak English.
Monday, November 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
It's been less than a week since New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver's licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a moderate Republican from Tennessee, is dumbstruck that legislation he views as simple common sense would be blocked. He noted that the full Senate passed his amendment to shield the Salvation Army by 75-19 last month, and the House followed suit with a 218-186 vote just this month. "I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it's discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, 'I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job,' " he told the Senate last Thursday.
But that's exactly what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is trying to do. In March the EEOC sued the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required its employees to speak English on the job. The requirement was clearly posted and employees were given a year to learn the language. The EEOC claimed the store had fired two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish on the job. It said that the firings violated the law because the English-only policy was not "relevant" to job performance or safety.
"If it is not relevant, it is discriminatory, it is gratuitous, it is a subterfuge to discriminate against people based on national origin," says Rep. Charles Gonzalez of Texas, one of several Hispanic Democrats in the House who threatened to block Ms. Pelosi's attempts to curtail the Alternative Minimum Tax unless she killed the Alexander amendment.
The confrontation on the night of Nov. 8 was ugly. Members of the Hispanic Caucus initially voted against the rule allowing debate on a tax bill that included the AMT "patch," which for a year would protect some 23 million Americans from being kicked into a higher income tax bracket.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a moderate from Maryland, was beside himself. Congressional Quarterly reports that he jabbed his finger on the House floor at Joe Baca, the California Democrat who chairs the Hispanic Caucus, and yelled, "How dare you destroy this party? This will be the worst loss in 10 years."
Mr. Baca was having none of it. "You see this on the [voting] board?," he yelled back. "This is against me. This is against me personally." Luckily for Democrats, C-Span's microphones did not pick up the exchange. But it was audible to reporters in the press gallery. They also heard Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois say that English-only efforts were symbolic of "bigotry and prejudice" against those who speak other languages.
After testy negotiations, the Hispanic Caucus finally agreed to let the tax bill proceed after extracting a promise from Ms. Pelosi that the House will not vote on the bill funding the Justice and Commerce Departments unless the English-only protection language is dropped. "There ain't going to be a bill" with the Alexander language, Mr. Baca has told reporters.
Sen. Alexander says that if that's the case, "thousands of small businesses across America will have to show there is some special reason to justify requiring their employees to speak our country's common language on the job." He notes that the number of EEOC actions against English-only policies grew to some 200 last year from 32 a decade ago. In an attempt at compromise, he has offered watered-down language that would still allow the EEOC to file many actions, but he says House Democrats rejected it.
Mr. Alexander says his battle is about far more than what language is spoken on a shop floor. "The EEOC actions turn diversity, our greatest strength, against the interests of our common future as Americans," he told me.
The late Albert Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers, once pointed out that public schools were established in this country largely "to help mostly immigrant children learn the three R's and what it means to be an American, with the hope that they would go home and teach their parents the principles in the Constitution and the Declaration that unite us."
Mr. Alexander says that noble effort is in danger of being undermined: "We have spent the last 40 years in our country celebrating diversity at the expense of unity. One way to create that unity is to value, not devalue, our common language, English."
The battle over Mr. Alexander's amendment is about whether a consensus that used to unite liberals and conservatives in this country can continue to hold. If it can't, expect the issue to become a flashpoint in the 2008 elections. Republicans have their political problems with Hispanics over some of their approaches to illegal immigration, but they may be nothing compared to the problems Democrats have if they continue to cave in to their anti-assimilation extremists.
WSJ
-
22 Ways To Be A Good Democrat THIS IS NOT SO HARD -- EVEN A CAVE MAN CAN DO IT....
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. Nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.
4. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.
5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical documented changes in the earth's climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV's.
6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.
7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach fourth graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
9. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.
10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ" for financial gain only.
12. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and A.G. Bell.
15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
16. You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice person.
17. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
18. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.
19. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
20. You have to believe that illegal Democrat Party funding by the Chinese Government is somehow in the best interest to the United States .
21. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.
22. You have to believe that it's okay to give Federal workers the day off on Christmas Day but it's not okay to say "Merry Christmas."
__________________
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/A..._christmas_nay
Democrats who supported a House resolution to honor Ramadan voted against a similar resolution to honor Christmas and Christianity last night.
18 Democrats voted “nay” or “present” on a resolution to “recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.” An eagle-eyed Republican House staffer points out that those same members, with one exception, voted to “recognize the commencement of Ramadan,” a Muslim religious observance in October.
Nine Democrats voted against the Christmas resolution. They are: Rep. Gary Ackerman (N.Y.), Rep. Yvette Clarke (N.Y.), Rep. Diane DeGette (Colo.), Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.), Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.), Rep. Robert Scott (Va.), Rep. Pete Stark (Calif.) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Calif.).
Another nine Democrats chose to vote "present." They are: Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.), Rep. Rush Holt (N.J.), Rep. Donald Payne (N.J.), Rep. Allyson Schwartz (Pa.), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Rep. Peter Welch (Vt.) and Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.).
Each of them supported the Ramadan resolution except for Rep. Lee, who did not vote
-
DEMOCRATS SUE PENCIL MANUFACTURERS
For the past thirty years America's public schools have been producing students who are increasingly less educated. Democratic politicians across the country feel that pencil manufacturers are the ones responsible for creating this education crisis and are filing lawsuits against them.
One of the cities suing the pencil industry is Oakland, California. Said one Democratic City Councilwoman in Oakland, "It is an undisputed fact that 99% of all American public school students use pencils on a daily basis. These pencils are faulty because they allow students to spell words incorrectly, as well as commit grammatical and mathematical errors. It is time that pencil manufacturers be held accountable for their role in producing inferior students."
The City of Atlanta is also suing pencil manufacturers. The Mayor of Atlanta told BNN, "The pencil makers currently have technology available to put 'Student Safety Devices' on their products. But they refuse to do it. These 'Student Safety Devices' would prevent students from committing academic errors and help them to be better pupils . Our lawsuit is designed to send a message to pencil producers that we will no longer allow them to victimize the children in our school district."
Pencil manufacturers, however, claim that their products do not cause students to commit academic errors. Said Lawrence McDowell of the Sanford Pencil Company, "A pencil is an inanimate object. It is a tool which a student uses at his or her ability level. In the hands of an intelligent and educated student it can be used for producing excellent academic work. In the hands of a lazy student, who watches nine hours of television a day, a pencil is used to produce inferior academic work. The pencil is not responsible for creating either the excellent work or the inferior work."
The Mayor of Atlanta disagrees with McDowell. Said the Mayor, "That defense is straight out of the National Pencil Association (NPA) handbook. We are trying to do something that will help our students perform better in school. But it is obvious that all they care about is their profit margin."
While the lawsuits against the pencil manufacturers move forward, Democrats on Capital Hill are planning to introduce 'Pencil Control Legislation' that would require every pencil to have a 'Student Safety Device' installed. Republicans, who have traditionally sided with the National Pencil Association are showing signs that they may cave to public pressure and vote with Democrats on this bill.
More on this story as it unfolds.
-
British Government Reports: Playing with toy weapons helps the development of boys
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why boys should be allowed to play with toy guns
By LAURA CLARK AND SARAH HARRIS
Playing with toy weapons helps the development of young boys, according to new Government advice to nurseries and playgroups.
Staff have been told they must resist their "natural instinct" to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers.
Fantasy play involving weapons and superheroes allows healthy and safe risk-taking and can also make learning more appealing, says the guidance.
It conflicts with years of "political correctness" in nurseries and playgroups which has led to the banning of toy guns, action hero games and children pretending to fire "guns" using their fingers or Lego bricks.
But teachers' leaders insisted last night that guns "symbolise aggression" and said many nurseries and playgroups would ignore the change.
The guidance, called Confident, Capable and Creative: Supporting Boys' Achievements, is issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
It says some members of staff "find the chosen play of boys more difficult to understand and value than that of girls." This is mainly because they tend to choose activities with more action, often based outdoors.
"Images and ideas gleaned from the media are common starting points in boys' play and may involve characters with special powers or weapons.
"Adults can find this particularly challenging and have a natural instinct to stop it.
"This is not necessary as long as practitioners help the boys to understand and respect the rights of other children and to take responsibility for the resources and environment."
The report says: "Creating situations so that boys' interests in these forms of play can be fostered through healthy and safe risk-taking will enhance every aspect of their learning and development."
It cites a North London children's centre which helped boys create a "Spiderman House" and print pictures of the superhero from the internet.
This led to improvements in their communication, ability to develop storylines in their play and skills in drawing, reading and writing.
The guidance is aimed at boosting boys' achievement. They often fall behind girls even before starting school and the trend can continue throughout their academic careers.
Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said: "The guidance simply takes a commonsense approach to the fact that many young children and perhaps particularly many boys, like boisterous, physical activity."
"Although noisy for adults such imaginary games are good for their development as well as good fun."
But Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The real problem with weapons is that they symbolise aggression.
"The reason teachers often intervene when kids have toy guns is that the boy is usually being very aggressive. We do need to ensure, whether the playing is rumbustious or not, that there is a respect for your peers, however young they are."
Chris Keates, general secretary of the The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) union said: "Many parents take the decision that their children won't have toy weapons."
Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.
She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
-
Amateur dramatics group ordered by police to use plastic swords - and keep them under lock and key
An amateur dramatic group performing "Robinson Crusoe" has been ordered to lock up its PLASTIC swords - over health and safety fears.
Members of the Carnon Downs Drama Group are staging the pantomime which features several swashbuckling sword fights using toy cutlasses.
But the actors have been told the props - including a plastic spear and toy gun which fires a flag with the word 'bang' - are classed as "replica weapons".
Police have warned the troupe, based in Truro, Cornwall, the fake arms must be kept in a secure case in a "locked room" with restricted access.
As well as informing officers they had no "malicious intent" the group were told to notify the fire brigade and make adequate arrangements for security.
Organisers also had to appoint a named individual responsible for the prop weapons who must accompany them whenever they are moved.
The amateur players have been told all of the procedures form part a risk assessment in line with new legislation affecting film, stage and TV productions.
Director Linda Barker said: "In some scenes pirates are hitting each other with frying pans and sauce pan lids but there's no problem with them.
"We've got several wooden and plastic swords, two plastic spears and gun which cost £2 from a joke shop. But now we need to keep them locked away and fill out all sorts of forms.
"You can't have a play like this without a fight scene and you can't have a fight scene without a sword. It's ridiculous."
Co-director Elaine Gummow says she was told about the laws by the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.
She said: ""There was an article in a recent magazine about the use of weapons in productions.
"It told members that they had to carry out and follow new health and safety guidelines if any weapons, including replica weapons, are used on stage.
"It would be impossible to stage it without the use of a few swords and cutlasses, as well as a traditional pop-gun which emits nothing more than a flag which says 'bang'.
"It all seems a bit absurd but it is perhaps a sign of the times - health and safety is everywhere. All of us see there's a serious side to this, but I really don't think we pose a threat."
Cast member Steve Cleaver added: "It seems rather absurd and totally silly that pirates would not have weapons."
The Association advised members to contact local police and make them aware of their 'weapons' stash.
Devon and Cornwall police urged the Carnon Downs group to keep the props locked away.
PC Nigel Hyde, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said the props are classed as replica weapons and are considered dangerous.
He said: "I gather we've made a note and it seems a bit unusual. But other forms of replica weapons have been used to carry out crimes and the consequences have been serious."
The version of Robinson Crusoe is a traditional panto with a Cornish flavour and is set in Falmouth harbour.
It runs from January 22 and to January 26 at the Perran Ar Worthal Memorial Hall at Perranwell near Truro.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
-
Burglars have rights too, says
[British] Attorney General
by By Melissa Kite and Andrew AldersonA fresh row broke out last night about the rights of householders to fight back against intruders after the Government's most senior lawyer defended the rights of burglars.
Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, flew in the face of the Prime Minister's pledge to look again at the law with a view to giving homeowners more rights when he said that existing legislation was adequate.
He said that criminals must also have the right to protection from violence, prompting David Davis, the shadow home secretary, to accuse the government of being dangerously split on the issue.
Lord Goldsmith's intervention came as Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, dismissed fears that giving homeowners greater freedom when tackling burglars would lead to an "arms race" that would put them in greater danger.
He denied that a change in the law, which currently gives homeowners the right to use "reasonable force" when tackling intruders, would encourage burglars to become more aggressive.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Sir John - who last weekend came out in favour of the Right to Fight Back campaign, launched by this newspaper two months ago - said: "I am convinced that enabling householders to use whatever force is necessary will discourage burglars.
"The fact that a would-be intruder knows a householder can respond without the fear of being prosecuted will undoubtedly deter criminal acts." Sir John, who will step down next month after five years as commissioner, said fellow police officers were confident that it would act as a deterrent.
"We are on the ground," he said. "We smell it, we see it, we hear it. We know what we are talking about."
Last week, Tony Blair told the House of Commons that he would look at strengthening the law and a Tory MP has introduced a private member's bill to do so.
Lord Goldsmith, however, appeared to take issue with the Prime Minister's pledge to act. "We must protect victims and law abiding citizens," he said.
"But we have to recognize that others have some rights as well. They don't lose all rights because they're engaged in criminal conduct."
Mr Davis said: "They certainly do lose quite a lot of rights. The Government ought to make up its mind. The Prime Minister says one thing and the Attorney General says another.
"Of course all human beings have rights, but when somebody enters your home to commit a crime they give up a large portion of them."
Some critics of a change in the law have voiced concerns that burglars will feel they have to carry guns, knives and other weapons to protect themselves from householders.
Sir John, however, did not see this as a problem. "I have confidence in the good judgment and common sense of the public in knowing how far they should go."
He said that householders should be able to use whatever force is necessary even if - in exceptional circumstances - it involved killing the intruder.
He spoke of his regret about the repercussions over the verdict on Tony Martin, the farmer who shot dead one burglar and seriously injured another during a break-in at his farm in August 1999.
There was a public outcry when Martin was found guilty at Norwich Crown Court and sentenced to life in prison. The charge and sentence were later reduced to five years for manslaughter.
Sir John did not suggest that the jury had reached the wrong verdict, but added: "The Tony Martin case is unfortunate because it has skewed the debate [on the public's right to protect their home]. But it is a fact that burglars have acted with greater confidence since the Tony Martin verdict and that has to be a matter of regret."
Lord Goldsmith, however, warned of the dangers of using the Martin case to make bad law: "There are very few cases that have given rise to this problem. Besides Tony Martin, there's only one I know about.
"It's always possible to extrapolate from one case and think that something is happening across the country when it isn't."
Mr Blair's announcement of a review of the law came three days after the Conservative Party threw its weight behind a new parliamentary attempt to win more rights for householders to protect them from burglars.
The Telegraph revealed last weekend how Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP, would introduce a Private Member's Bill to change the law in favour of homeowners.
In an article in this newspaper today, Mr Mercer described Mr Blair's promise to consult before taking action as a "classic delaying tactic".
Michael Howard, the Tory leader, yesterday praised this newspaper's campaign. "I pay tribute to the highly effective campaign run over so many months by The Sunday Telegraph. It was the first newspaper to highlight this crucial issue and its persistence has been a key factor in winning this change to the law and in forcing Tony Blair's U-turn," he said. "We now need to ensure that Patrick Mercer's bill gets through parliament. The Sunday Telegraph's continued vigilance will be crucial in ensuring this."
-
I have seen this crap firsthand. I went to a state school, therefore I was surrounded by a cross section of an international and national population. I found it odd, not that students didn't want to have a strong, extreme opinion, but that they were hesitant to have an opinion at all. Also that upon forming an opinion, the general population feels the need to make sure it's okay to have that particular opinion. Sure the "university" or academy is supposed to be sensitive and accommodating, but shouldn't it also press the issue of "Man have some balls and make a statement without a 'weasler' in it!". After graduating I saw the same thing to a smaller extent in the "real world". This eventually helped me figure out that maybe it's not only the colleges, but it's the 90% rule. A generalization of course but give it a second...
90% of the world are sheep, the other 10% are shepherds and wolves.
(that's kind of cool, because dogs work for shepherds and are related to wolves)
or 90% of the world doesn't give a crap and 10% do. 90% of the world does no possess the attributes to ....... but 10% do. Fill in the blank.
So, another conclusion I reached is that people need to be lead, they WANT to be lead. People are like dogs, they need discipline. Children are like puppies and need to be broken - or else they turn into very bad dogs. I think Cesar Milan is onto something when he says "There are no bad dogs, only bad owners". I think this applies to 90% of the children. There are no bad kids only bad parents. Behavior is taught, we can't know something we didn't see first. There is no apriori knowledge (Screw you philosophers who are going to tell me that my computer doesn't actually exists). I'm not advocating the "Choke Chains for Children" program, but it's okay to tell your kid NO. I love the DBMA philosophy for this reason, it resonates with the "spare the rod spoil the child" parable. Maybe it's a stretch to see that... I don't know... maybe I'm the 1% that's out of my gourd? Actually I see all issues as being related, so no it's not a stretch.
PS Thanks for putting up this category of P(i)C. I hope it was an invitation and not meant to have a discussion about another discussion that involved some PC or PiC. AND if anyone's offended I'm not sorry. Look at the name of the category. How liberating is that?
-
MS:
No worries, your post is fine.
yip!
CD
-
UK - Teachers not to assume children have hetero parents
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't say mum and dad... teachers told not to assume pupils have heterosexual parents
By LAURA CLARK - More by this author » Last updated at 10:48am on 30th January 2008
Teachers should not assume that their pupils have a "mum and dad" under guidance aimed at tackling anti-gay bullying in schools.
It says primary pupils as young as four should be familiarised with the idea of same-sex couples to help combat homophobic attitudes.
Teachers should attempt to avoid assumptions that pupils will have a conventional family background, it urges.
It goes on to suggest the word "parents" may be more appropriate than "mum and dad", particularly in letters and emails to the child's home.
When discussing marriage with secondary pupils, teachers should also educate pupils about civil partnerships and gay adoption rights.
The guidance - produced for the Government by gay rights group Stonewall - will be formally launched today by Schools Secretary Ed Balls.
It states that children who call classmates "gay" should be treated the same as racists as part of a "zero tolerance" crackdown on the use of the word as an insult.
Teachers should avoid telling boys to "be a man" or accuse them of behaving like a "bunch of women".
This sort of rebuke "leads to bullying of those who do not conform to fixed ideas about gender", the guidance states.
At the same time, schools should encourage gay role models among staff, parents and governors. Homosexual staff should be able to discuss their private lives after the consultation with the head teacher.
In advice to gay staff, it states: "School culture and ethos determines how open staff are about their private lives, and you should therefore seek advice and guidance from your head."
The Department for Children, Schools and Families commissioned Stonewall to write the guidance jointly with lobby group Education Action Challenging Homophobia.
It says that pupils aged four to seven should "understand that not all pupils have a mum and a dad" and learn about different family structures. Advice to teachers of 11 to 14-year-olds states: "Schools should make efforts to talk inclusively about same-sex parents, for example, avoid assuming all pupils will have a "mum and dad". "When schools discuss marriage, they may also discuss civil partnership and adoption rights for gay people."
In a section on engaging with parents, it asks schools: "Do you talk about 'parents' instead of assuming all pupils have 'mum or a dad'?" The advice goes on to urge teachers to challenge every derogatory use of the word gay to avert homophobic attitudes. Examples include "those trainers are so gay", "that pencil case is so gay" or "you're such a gay boy".
One primary teacher quoted in the guidance said: "We hear 'gay' as a term of abuse every single day. The children may not know exactly what it means, but they know they are using it as an insult. That's why we need to tackle it at this stage."
Controversy over the semantics of the word erupted two years ago when the BBC ruled that Radio One DJ Chris Moyles was not being offensive to homosexuals by using the word "gay" to mean "rubbish". The advice says: "It is important for all staff to challenge pupils, explaining the consequences of using 'gay' in a derogatory way.
"It might be time-consuming at first, but a consistent 'zero-tolerance' approach to such language is central to achieving progress and an environment in which being gay is not thought of as being inferior."
It adds: "Schools need to make it clear to pupils that homophobic comments are as serious as racist comments, and homophobic incidents are as serious as other forms of bullying."
Teachers should use every curriculum subject to nip discriminatory attitudes in the bud. English lessons for teenagers, for example, could focus on the emotions of the gay Italian soldier Carlo in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The guidance is being published five years after the repeal of Section 28 - the law which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools.
Ministers promised the move would make no difference to the teaching of homosexual matters but some critics have claimed the gay lobby is having a growing influence on pupils. Next month is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, where pupils learn about apparently gay figures from history including Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde and James Dean.
Mr Balls, who will launch the anti-bullying guidance at a Stonewall conference today, said: "I am proud the Government and the department are being robust about this. "It is our view that every school should have a clear policy on tackling all forms of bullying, including homophobic bullying."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
-
“The truth is, we are supposed to be taking in individuals from other cultures, not other cultures in their wholeness. That is what American openness is supposed to represent. But we are so far gone that the men who lead us... are not even aware of this. But once again we see the continuum between universal values and multiculturalism. Since human beings can’t live without culture, multiculturalism—that is, to be taken over by other cultures—is the fate of any country unwilling to assert its own culture. Some people are wary of talking of an American culture because they associate it with race. This is erroneous. Culture transcends race. It unites people of different backgrounds. Whether it be Louis Armstrong or Aaron Copland, they are both part of American culture.”—Carol Iannone
-
Mrs. Obama and the Tuskegee Superstition
By JAMES TARANTO
June 19, 2008
In February 2007, we noted a rare instance of agreement between this column and the New York Times editorial page. The topic was whether 11- and 12-year-old girls should be vaccinated for the human papillomavirus. HPV is sexually transmitted and is believed to cause 70% of all cases of cervical cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, this year 11,070 new cases of cervical cancer are expected to be diagnosed, and 3,870 women are expected to die of the disease. Do the arithmetic: Had the HPV vaccine been administered to these women when they were girls, some 7,749 would have been spared cancer and 2,709 would have died later of some other cause.
"Social conservatives object that the vaccine will encourage promiscuity," the Times wrote last year, "but it seems farfetched to believe that protection from cervical cancer will change any girl's behavior." That seems right to us--and even if the vaccine has some marginal bad effect on sexual behavior, several thousand cancer deaths a year seems a high price to pay to avoid it. Even the Times editors thought cancer prevention an important enough goal to abandon their usual liberal keep-your-laws-off-my-body orthodoxy when it comes to matters gynecological.
Now, as blogger Tom Maguire notes, the subject of HPV vaccination has come up in a different context: yesterday's New York Times story about Michelle Obama's "subtle makeover." Maguire cites an anecdote from Mrs. Obama's work at the University of Chicago Medical Center, a story that, in Maguire's words, is "ludicrously presented as a sympathetic and positive story of her professional efforts":
She also altered the hospital's research agenda. When the human papillomavirus vaccine, which can prevent cervical cancer, became available, researchers proposed approaching local school principals about enlisting black teenage girls as research subjects.
Mrs. Obama stopped that. The prospect of white doctors performing a trial with black teenage girls summoned the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the mid-20th century, when white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease.
"She'll talk about the elephant in the room," said Susan Sher, her boss at the hospital, where Mrs. Obama is on leave from her more-than-$300,000-a-year job.
This isn't the first time the Tuskegee experiment has come up during the presidential campaign. In April the Obamas' then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, explained his belief that the U.S. government had invented AIDS as a tool of genocide against black people: "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."
The Tuskegee outrage was real. But the notion that the Tuskegee experiment--which began in the Jim Crow era (1932) and ended in 1972, eight years after the Civil Rights Act became law--reflects the attitudes of American governmental and medical institutions today is an urban legend, a superstition--and potentially a deadly one.
The Times's account suggests that girls in Chicago were denied potentially lifesaving vaccinations because Michelle Obama pandered to racial paranoia instead of standing up for the truth. Is that why they pay her the big bucks?
-
Do you think it is okay to use high schoolers no matter what gender for medical experiment? The idea of using non-adults for medical experiments bothers me. Also they wouldn't have known it was lifesaving at that point there could have been serious side effects.
-
I could be mistaken, but it reads to me that the vaccination was already approved ("became available") and the girls were sought out to generate data over time to compare to girls who did not take the vaccine.
-
Scottish schools ban Father’s Day cards
Fear of embarrassing children of single mothers or lesbians prompts move
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4188170.ece
Kathleen Nutt
Christian references have been removed from Christmas cards and school sports days excised of competitiveness. Now Father's Day has become the latest event to fall victim to the forces of political correctness.
Last week thousands of children were prevented from making Father’s Day cards at school to avoid causing embarrassment to classmates who live with single mothers and lesbian couples.
The politically correct policy in the interests of “sensitivity” over the growing number of lone-parent and same-sex households, has been quietly adopted by schools across Scotland.
It only emerged this year after a large number of fathers failed to receive their traditional cards and gifts last Sunday.
While primary children are banned from making cards for their fathers, few schools impose similar restrictions in the run up to Mothering Sunday.
The ban has been introduced by schools in Glasgow, Edinburgh, East Renfrewshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Clackmannanshire.
Currently, some 280,000 children in Scotland live in single parent households, accounting for just 7% of the total.
Tina Woolnough, 45, from Edinburgh, whose son Felix attends Blackhall primary, said a number of teachers at the school had not allowed children to make Father’s Day cards this year.
“This is something I know they do on a class-by-class basis at my son Felix’s school,” said Woolnough, who is a member of the school’s parent-teacher council. Some classes send Father’s Day cards and some do not.
“The teachers are aware of the family circumstances of the children in each class and if a child hasn’t got a father living at home, the teacher will avoid getting the children to make a card.”
Family rights campaigners have condemned the policy as “absurd” and claimed it is marginalising fathers.
“I’m astonished at this, it totally undermines the role and significance of fathers whether they are still with the child’s mother or not,” said Matt O’Connor, founder of Fathers For Justice. “It also sends out a troubling message to young boys that fathers aren’t important.”
Alastair Noble, education officer with the charity Christian Action, Research and Education, added: “This seems to be an extreme and somewhat absurd reaction. I would have thought that the traditional family and marriage are still the majority lifestyles of people in Scotland. To deny the experience of the majority just does not seem sensible.”
Victoria Gillick, the family values campaigner, accused schools of politicising a traditional fun activity for children.
“Children like making things, and making things for someone is great fun. I wouldn’t call it politically correct, I’d just call it stupid,” she said.
“It seems quite unfair to deny those children whose parents are together and who want to make cards from enjoying the experience. Stopping children from making Father’s Day cards is reinforcing the fact that some fathers are not there, it’s actually drawing attention to the issue.”
Local authorities defended the move, saying teachers needed to act sensitively at a time when many children were experiencing family breakdown and divorce.
“Increasingly, it is the case that there are children who haven’t got fathers or haven’t got fathers living with them and teachers are having to be sensitive about this,” said a spokesman for East Renfrewshire council. “Teachers have always had to deal with some pupils not having fathers or mothers, but with marital breakdown it is accelerating.”
Jim Goodall, head of education at Clackmannanshire council, said: “We expect teachers and headteachers to apply their professional skills and behave in a common sense manner. They have to be sensitive to the appropriate use of class time and the changing pattern of family life. We trust our staff to act sensibly and sensitively.”
A spokesman for South Ayrshire council said: “We are aware of the sensitivities of the issue and wouldn’t do anything that would make any child feel left out or unwanted in any way.”
Edinburgh city council said the practice on Father’s Day cards was a matter for individual schools.
-
CAIR's Traitorous Cop Ally
By Paul Sperry
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, June 25, 2008
If the Taliban catches an American spy, they slit the informer's throat. If we catch a pro-Taliban spy, he gets a slap on the wrist after getting a letter from a Muslim pressure group urging leniency. Who says we're winning this war?
Last month, Taliban fighters claimed to have killed a "female U.S. spy" for helping American forces in Afghanistan. Once all the evidence against the alleged spy was gathered, they slit her throat with a knife.
Compare that with the kid glove treatment of Sgt. Muhammad Weiss Rasool, a Muslim cop in the nation's capital who tipped off the target of an FBI terrorism investigation into a pro-Taliban mosque.
Despite his arrest, confession and recent conviction in federal court, Rasool, an Afghan immigrant, will do no jail time and will continue to collect a paycheck from taxpayers pending the results of an internal-affairs probe by the Fairfax County Police Department outside Washington.
Rasool took an oath to protect this country several years ago when he joined the FCPD, which is the largest force in Virginia and a key partner with the FBI in investigating major terror cases in the Washington area, including the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.
But Rasool put his religion ahead of his adopted country when he alerted a fellow member of his mosque that he was under federal surveillance. At his Muslim brother's request, he searched a police database and confirmed that FBI agents were tailing him.
When agents went to arrest the target early one morning, they found him and his family already dressed and destroying evidence. They knew they had a mole and worked back through the system to find Rasool.
That's when agents discovered the police sergeant had breached their database at least 15 times to look up names of other contacts, including relatives, to see if they showed up on the terrorist watch list. (As part of post-9/11 data-sharing, local police now have access to classified federal case files on terrorists maintained within the NCIC, or National Crime Information Center system.)
Rasool's actions "damaged the integrity of the NCIC system and jeopardized at least one federal investigation," U.S. prosecutors said in court papers filed last month. "The defendant's actions could have placed federal agents in danger."
Rasool, 31, at first claimed he didn't know the terrorist target. He confessed only after hearing a recording of his message for the suspect, who was a cleric in his local Taliban-sympathizing mosque. Rasool finally pleaded guilty to illegally searching a federal database.
Despite his subsequent conviction, however, Fairfax County has left him on the force, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. The leniency afforded Rasool is unprecedented, given how he copped to the crime – and not just any crime, but one that betrayed his fellow officers and country.
It also contrasts starkly with the recent handling of other Arab and Muslim government employees caught breaching classified databases.
The city of Rochester, N.Y., for example, summarily fired a Muslim 911 operator, Nadire Zenelaj, well before she was formally charged last month with illegally searching the names of hundreds of friends in the terrorist watch list. And as part of a federal plea deal, Lebanese national Nada Prouty resigned from the U.S. government after confessing she accessed a restricted FBI database to see if relatives were being investigated for terrorist activities.
Unlike these alleged spies, however, Rasool has a powerful patron in Washington -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which lobbied on his behalf during his prosecution.
"I have always found Sgt. Rasool eager to promote a substantive relationship between the Fairfax County Police Department and the local Muslim community," wrote CAIR Governmental Affairs Coordinator Corey Saylor in a letter to the federal judge, who ended up denying prosecutors the jail time they requested for Rasool. (He got off lightly with a fine and two years probation.)
Indeed, Rasool acted as CAIR's representative on the police force, and even worked with the group to kill a successful counterterror-training program within the department.
Rasool and other Muslim officers tied to CAIR claimed the course taught by the respected Higgins Center for Counter Terrorism Research portrayed Islam in a bad light. CAIR phoned Fairfax County Police Chief David Rohrer to complain, and the chief canceled the training in 2006.
That same year, Rohrer spoke at CAIR's annual fundraising dinner in Washington, crediting the group with "helping police departments to better understand the Muslim community."
But the chief was being used -- by the Islamist enemy. It turns out his aggrieved sergeant at the time was under federal investigation for aiding and abetting terrorists. And so was CAIR -- the group from whom Rohrer was accepting phone calls and on whom he was conferring legitimacy. In fact, U.S. prosecutors at the time were adding CAIR to a list of co-conspirators in a terror scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.
Yet CAIR and Rasool teamed up to persuade the politically correct Rohrer to nix the anti-terror training, which included counterintelligence measures to help police guard against the very infiltration from terror supporters and facilitators that has taken place on Rohrer's watch.
Sadly, the chief appears more concerned about protecting the force from charges of "Islamophobia" than Islamist penetration.
Rasool, still on paid leave, says he hopes to be permanently reinstated. If so, it would mark a humiliating defeat in our battle against the growing Islamist 5th column in America. Rasool has a dangerous religious conflict, and should never wear the uniform again.
Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. He can be conacted at Sperry@SperryFiles.com.
-
:x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x
-
LONDON, July 7 (UPI) -- Toddlers who say "yuck" when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior, a British government-sponsored organization says.
The London-based National Children's Bureau released a 366-page guide counseling adults on recognizing racist behavior in young children, The Telegraph reported Monday.
The guide, titled Young Children and Racial Justice, warns adults that babies must also be included in the effort to eliminate racism because they have the ability to "recognize different people in their lives."
The bureau says to be aware of children who "react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying "yuck."
"Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships," the guide says.
Staff members are advised not to ignore racist actions and to condemn them when they occur.
-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ith-plank.html
A pensioner who used a piece of wood to chase away a gang of teenagers who had been throwing stones at his home is facing a jail term after being arrested and charged with possessing an offensive weapon.
Sydney Davis, 65, a father-of-two, dialled 999 when his home in the Pinehurst area of Swindon, Wilts, came under attack.
But when police failed to turn up over the next two hours he decided to take action himself.
He grabbed a section of wood from a broken-up sofa lying in his front garden and chased the youths down the street - just as police officers finally arrived.
Mr Davis, a retired builder, was astonished when police arrested him while allowing the gang to run to safety.
The householder now faces a court appearance and a potential prison term of six months if convicted.
Mr Davis, whose windows have been smashed five times in the last eight months, branded the law "a colossal ass".
He went on: "This is Britain gone mad. Just what in the world is this country coming to when the police arrest people like me for protecting their own property?
"The police say they want to reduce crime, yet they let evil little toe-rags like this off. Then they prosecute hard-working, upstanding residents like me.
"There is simply no way we can shake off this problem of 'Yob Britain' if the legal system fails to protect the everyday person".
Mr Davis' difficulties began on July 2 when a gang started throwing stones, stick, mud and eggs at a number of homes.
His wife, Pauline, 42, and their sons, Peter, seven, and James, five, cowered behind the sofa as the windows were hit by a flurry of missiles.
"My wife called the police at 6pm, but they just kept on throwing stones through my back gate.
"I left the back door open to stop them smashing it. Suddenly a really big rock came crashing into the kitchen. I just grabbed the wood, which was the nearest thing I could find, and chased them off.
"The police turned up just as I was chasing them. As a result I was arrested, but they didn't arrest any of them."
Mr Davis was handcuffed, taken to a local police station and later charged.
Wiltshire Police confirmed both the charge against him and the fact that no one else had been arrested in connection with the incident.
The householder is expected to appear before local magistrates later in the month.
-
Duplicating here my post on the Islam in America thread.
Shame on the FBI!
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/10/whose-afraid-to-say-honor-killing.html
-
Senior SOF Editor Don McLean on “Political Correctness”: ”…a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
-
Words associated with Christianity and British history taken out of children's dictionary
Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy and British history have been dropped from a leading dictionary for children.
Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:47PM GMT 07 Dec 2008
Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.
But academics and head teachers said that the changes to the 10,000 word Junior Dictionary could mean that children lose touch with Britain's heritage.
"We have a certain Christian narrative which has given meaning to us over the last 2,000 years. To say it is all relative and replaceable is questionable," said Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment at Buckingham University. "The word selections are a very interesting reflection of the way childhood is going, moving away from our spiritual background and the natural world and towards the world that information technology creates for us."
An analysis of the word choices made by the dictionary lexicographers has revealed that entries from "abbey" to "willow" have been axed. Instead, words such as "MP3 player", "voicemail" and "attachment" have taken their place.
Lisa Saunders, a worried mother who has painstakingly compared entries from the junior dictionaries, aimed at children aged seven or over, dating from 1978, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007, said she was "horrified" by the vast number of words that have been removed, most since 2003.
"The Christian faith still has a strong following," she said. "To eradicate so many words associated with the Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools who use it."
Ms Saunders realised words were being removed when she was helping her son with his homework and discovered that "moss" and "fern", which were in editions up until 2003, were no longer listed.
"I decide to take a closer look and compare the new version to the other editions," said the mother of four from Co Down, Northern Ireland. "I was completely horrified by the vast number of words which have been removed. We know that language moves on and we can't be fuddy-duddy about it but you don't cull hundreds of important words in order to get in a different set of ICT words."
Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington College, a leading private school in Berkshire, said: "I am stunned that words like "saint", "buttercup", "heather" and "sycamore" have all gone and I grieve it.
"I think as well as being descriptive, the Oxford Junior Dictionary, has to be prescriptive too, suggesting not just words that are used but words that should be used. It has a duty to keep these words within usage, not merely pander to an audience. We are looking at the loss of words of great beauty. I would rather have "marzipan" and "mistletoe" then "MP3 player."
Oxford University Press, which produces the junior edition, selects words with the aid of the Children's Corpus, a list of about 50 million words made up of general language, words from children's books and terms related to the school curriculum. Lexicographers consider word frequency when making additions and deletions.
Vineeta Gupta, the head of children's dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: "We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it – but we produce 17 children's dictionaries with different selections and numbers of words.
"When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don't go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as "Pentecost" or "Whitsun" would have been in 20 years ago but not now."
She said children's dictionaries were trailed in schools and advice taken from teachers. Many words are added to reflect the age-related school curriculum.
Words taken out:
Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe
Dwarf, elf, goblin
Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar
Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade
adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren.
Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow
Words put in:
Blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, analogue
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, creep, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate,
EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro
Apparatus, food chain, incisor, square number, trapezium, alliteration, colloquial, idiom, curriculum, classify, chronological, block graph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...ictionary.html
-
The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008
Posted December 2008
Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark.
1
Scott Gries/Getty Images"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. … Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now." —William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006
Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol was hardly alone in thinking that the Democratic primary was Clinton's to lose, but it takes a special kind of self-confidence to make a declaration this sweeping more than a year before the first Iowa caucus was held. After Iowa, Kristol lurched to the other extreme, declaring that Clinton would lose New Hampshire and that "There will be no Clinton Restoration." It's also worth pointing out that this second wildly premature prediction was made in a Times column titled, "President Mike Huckabee?" The Times is currently rumored to be looking for his replacement.
2
CNBC"Peter writes: 'Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?' No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out. … Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly! Don't be silly!" —Jim Cramer, responding to a viewer's e-mail on CNBC's Mad Money, March 11, 2008
Hopefully, Peter got a second opinion. Six days after the volatile CNBC host made his emphatic pronouncement, Bear Stearns faced the modern equivalent of an old-fashioned bank run. Amid widespread speculation on Wall Street about the bank's massive exposure to subprime mortgages, Bear's shares lost 90 percent of their value and the investment bank was sold for a pittance to JPMorgan Chase, with a last-minute assist from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
3
ERIC CABANIS/Getty Images"[In] reality the risks to maritime flows of oil are far smaller than is commonly assumed. First, tankers are much less vulnerable than conventional wisdom holds. Second, limited regional conflicts would be unlikely to seriously upset traffic, and terrorist attacks against shipping would have even less of an economic effect. Third, only a naval power of the United States' strength could seriously disrupt oil shipments." —Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007
On Nov. 15, 2008 a group of Somali pirates in inflatable rafts hijacked a Saudi oil tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude in the Indian Ocean. The daring raid was part of a rash of attacks by Somali pirates, which have primarily occurred in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates operating in the waterway have hijacked more than 50 ships this year, up from only 13 in all of last year, according to the Piracy Reporting Center. The Gulf of Aden, where nearly 4 percent of the world's oil demand passes every day, was not on the list of strategic "chokepoints" where oil shipments could potentially be disrupted that Blair and Lieberthal included in their essay, "Smooth Sailing: The World's Shipping Lanes Are Safe." Hopefully, Blair will show a bit more foresight if, as some expect, he is selected as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence.
4
Spencer Platt/Getty Images"[A]nyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of 'recession.'" —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008
The day after Luskin's op-ed, "Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line," appeared in the Post, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the rest is history. Liberal bloggers had long ago dubbed the Trend Macrolytics chief investment officer and informal McCain advisor "the Stupidest Man Alive." This time, they had some particularly damning evidence.
5
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images"For all its flaws, an example to others." —The Economist on Kenya's presidential election, Dec. 19, 2007
The week before Kenya's presidential election, the erudite British newsweekly ran an ill-conceived editorial praising the quality of the country's democracy and predicting it might "set an example" for the rest of the continent. If only. The ensuing election was rife with examples of voter fraud and ballot-stuffing. What followed was a month of rioting and ethnic bloodshed that left more than 800 dead and 200,000 displaced. The carnage ended in a messy power-sharing agreement between President Mwai Kibaki and his challenger Raila Odinga, leaving the country deeply divided and its government delegitimized.
6
Brad Barket/Getty Images"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will enter the Presidential race in February, after it becomes clear which nominees will get the nod from the major parties. His multiple billions and organization will impress voters—and stun rivals. He'll look like the most viable third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. But Bloomberg will come up short, as he comes in for withering attacks from both Democrats and Republicans. He and Clinton will split more than 50% of the votes, but Arizona's maverick senator, John McCain, will end up the country's next President." –BusinessWeek, Jan. 2, 2008
No part of this prediction from BusinessWeek's "Ten Likely Events in 2008" turned out to be even remotely true. After weeks of hints and press leaks, Bloomberg declared he would stay out of the race, saying that Barack Obama and John McCain showed signs of displaying the "independent leadership" needed to govern effectively. After overturning New York's term-limits law, Bloomberg seems likely to run for a third term as mayor instead.
7
Sean Gallup/Getty Images"There is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet." —Walter Wagner, LHCDefense.org
Scientist Walter Wagner, the driving force behind Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is making his bid to be the 21st century's version of Chicken Little for his opposition to the world's largest particle accelerator. Warning that the experiment might end humanity as we know it, he filed a lawsuit in Hawaii's U.S. District Court against the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the LHC, demanding that researchers not turn the machine on until it was proved safe. The LHC was turned on in September, and it appears that we are still here.
8
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images"The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months." —Arjun Murti, Goldman Sachs oil analyst, in a May 5, 2008, report
The vaunted predictive powers of Murti, dubbed the "oracle of oil" in a glowing New York Times profile, failed him this time. Oil prices peaked in July at about $147 a barrel before beginning a long decline. Thanks to a decrease in demand because of the global recession, prices are now nearing the $40 mark, and some experts even see $25 as a possibility next year.
9
VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images"It starts with the taking over of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which has already happened. It goes on to the destruction of the Georgian armed forces, which is now happening. The third [development] will probably be the replacement of the elected government, which is pro-Western, with a puppet government, which will probably follow in a week or two." —Charles Krauthammer, Fox News, Aug. 11, 2008
Krauthammer immediately followed this inaccurate forecast (Russia eventually agreed to a cease-fire and pulled out its troops several weeks later, leaving Mikheil Saakashvili's government in place) by predicting that Ukraine would be next on Russia's hit list and suggesting that the United States station troops there. As for Saakashvili, his approval rating was at 76 percent in September.
10
Mario Tama/Getty Images"I believe the banking system has been stabilized. No one is asking themselves anymore, is there some major institution that might fail and that we would not be able to do anything about it." —Henry Paulson on National Public Radio, Nov. 13, 2008
The U.S. Treasury secretary entered November with guns blazing. After much hemming and hawing before Congress a month earlier, he came out with what he called his "bazooka" —a $700 billion mandate to scoop up bad assets from troubled banks. By mid-November, he had already discharged $300 billion in munitions, albeit mostly via the kind of direct equity stakes he had rejected earlier. Unfortunately for Paulson, shortly after his vote of confidence, Citigroup's stock price plunged 75 percent in one week, closing below $5 for the first time in 14 years.
-
And So It Starts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/...z?c111:H.R.40:
Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (Introduced in House)
HR 40 IH
111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 40
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 6, 2009
Mr. CONYERS (for himself and Mr. SCOTT of Virginia) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.
(a) Findings- The Congress finds that--
(1) approximately 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies that became the United States from 1619 to 1865;
(2) the institution of slavery was constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned by the Government of the United States from 1789 through 1865;
(3) the slavery that flourished in the United States constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of Africans' life, liberty, African citizenship rights, and cultural heritage, and denied them the fruits of their own labor; and
(4) sufficient inquiry has not been made into the effects of the institution of slavery on living African-Americans and society in the United States.
(b) Purpose- The purpose of this Act is to establish a commission to--
(1) examine the institution of slavery which existed from 1619 through 1865 within the United States and the colonies that became the United States, including the extent to which the Federal and State Governments constitutionally and statutorily supported the institution of slavery;
(2) examine de jure and de facto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, and social discrimination;
(3) examine the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the discrimination described in paragraph (2) on living African-Americans and on society in the United States;
(4) recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission's findings;
(5) recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission's findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1) and (2); and
(6) submit to the Congress the results of such examination, together with such recommendations.
SEC. 3. ESTABLISHMENT AND DUTIES.
(a) Establishment- There is established the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans (hereinafter in this Act referred to as the `Commission').
(b) Duties- The Commission shall perform the following duties:
(1) Examine the institution of slavery which existed within the United States and the colonies that became the United States from 1619 through 1865. The Commission's examination shall include an examination of--
(A) the capture and procurement of Africans;
(B) the transport of Africans to the United States and the colonies that became the United States for the purpose of enslavement, including their treatment during transport;
(C) the sale and acquisition of Africans as chattel property in interstate and instrastate commerce; and
(D) the treatment of African slaves in the colonies and the United States, including the deprivation of their freedom, exploitation of their labor, and destruction of their culture, language, religion, and families.
(2) Examine the extent to which the Federal and State governments of the United States supported the institution of slavery in constitutional and statutory provisions, including the extent to which such governments prevented, opposed, or restricted efforts of freed African slaves to repatriate to their homeland.
(3) Examine Federal and State laws that discriminated against freed African slaves and their descendants during the period between the end of the Civil War and the present.
(4) Examine other forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed African slaves and their descendants during the period between the end of the Civil War and the present.
(5) Examine the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4) on living African-Americans and on society in the United States.
(6) Recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission's findings.
(7) Recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission's findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4). In making such recommendations, the Commission shall address among other issues, the following questions:
(A) Whether the Government of the United States should offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of the United States for the perpetration of gross human rights violations on African slaves and their descendants.
(B) Whether African-Americans still suffer from the lingering effects of the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4).
(C) Whether, in consideration of the Commission's findings, any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.
(D) If the Commission finds that such compensation is warranted, what should be the amount of compensation, what form of compensation should be awarded, and who should be eligible for such compensation.
(c) Report to Congress- The Commission shall submit a written report of its findings and recommendations to the Congress not later than the date which is one year after the date of the first meeting of the Commission held pursuant to section 4(c).
, , , ,
-
http://therecorderonline.net/2009/02...-presentation/
Quote:
Professor Called Police After Student Presentation
Posted by admin on 2/24/09
For CCSU student John Wahlberg, a class presentation on campus violence turned into a confrontation with the campus police due to a complaint by the professor.
On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007.
Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have been stopped earlier in many of these cases. He also touched on the controversial idea of free gun zones on college campuses.
That night at work, Wahlberg received a message stating that the campus police “requested his presence”. Upon entering the police station, the officers began to list off firearms that were registered under his name, and questioned him about where he kept them.
They told Wahlberg that they had received a complaint from his professor that his presentation was making students feel “scared and uncomfortable”.
“I was a bit nervous when I walked into the police station,” Wahlberg said, “but I felt a general sense of disbelief once the officer actually began to list the firearms registered in my name. I was never worried however, because as a law-abiding gun owner, I have a thorough understanding of state gun laws as well as unwavering safety practices.”
Professor Anderson refused to comment directly on the situation and deferred further comment.
“It is also my responsibility as a teacher to protect the well being of our students, and the campus community at all times,” she wrote in a statement submitted to The Recorder. “As such, when deemed necessary because of any perceived risks, I seek guidance and consultation from the Chair of my Department, the Dean and any relevant University officials.”
Wahlberg believes that her complaint was filed without good reason.
“I don’t think that Professor Anderson was justified in calling the CCSU police over a clearly nonthreatening matter. Although the topic of discussion may have made a few individuals uncomfortable, there was no need to label me as a threat,” Wahlberg said in response. “The actions of Professor Anderson made me so uncomfortable, that I didn’t attend several classes. The only appropriate action taken by the Professor was to excuse my absences.”
The university police were unavailable for comment.
“If you can’t talk about the Second Amendment, what happened to the First Amendment?” asked Sara Adler, president of the Riflery and Marksmanship club on campus. “After all, a university campus is a place for the free and open exchange of ideas.”
-
Great Orwell's ghost! :-o
-
Makes me wonder what exactly was told to the campus police.
-
“If you can’t talk about the Second Amendment, what happened to the First Amendment?” asked Sara Adler, president of the Riflery and Marksmanship club on campus. “After all, a university campus is a place for the free and open exchange of ideas.”
:lol:
I hope my kids choose a two year college and learn a skill- other than being professionally offended.
-
Live Not By Lies
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolhenitsynLies.htm
window.google_render_ad();
Solzhenitsyn penned this essay in 1974 and it circulated among Moscow's intellectuals at the time. It is dated Feb. 12, the same day that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next day he was exiled to West Germany. The essay is a call to moral courage and serves as light to all who value truth.
At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read samizdat, and sometimes when we gather in the smoking room at the Science Institute we complain frankly to one another: What kind of tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us? Gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and destruction at home. Propping up remote, uncivilized regimes. Fanning up civil war. And we recklessly fostered Mao Tse-tung at our expense—and it will be we who are sent to war against him, and will have to go. Is there any way out? And they put on trial anybody they want and they put sane people in asylums—always they, and we are powerless.
Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and consume us both and our children—but as before we still smile in a cowardly way and mumble without tounges tied. But what can we do to stop it? We haven't the strength?
We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today's modest ration of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our descendants—but just don't disturb our fragile existence. We lack staunchness, pride and enthusiasm. We don't even fear universal nuclear death, and we don't fear a third world war. We have already taken refuge in the crevices. We just fear acts of civil courage.
We fear only to lag behind the herd and to take a step alone-and suddenly find ourselves without white bread, without heating gas and without a Moscow registration.
We have been indoctrinated in political courses, and in just the same way was fostered the idea to live comfortably, and all will be well for the rest of our lives. You can't escape your environment and social conditions. Everyday life defines consciousness. What does it have to do with us? We can't do anything about it?
But we can—everything. But we lie to ourselves for assurance. And it is not they who are to blame for everything—we ourselves, only we. One can object: But actually toy can think anything you like. Gags have been stuffed into our mouths. Nobody wants to listen to us and nobody asks us. How can we force them to listen? It is impossible to change their minds.
It would be natural to vote them out of office—but there are not elections in our country. In the West people know about strikes and protest demonstrations—but we are too oppressed, and it is a horrible prospect for us: How can one suddenly renounce a job and take to the streets? Yet the other fatal paths probed during the past century by our bitter Russian history are, nevertheless, not for us, and truly we don't need them.
Now that the axes have done their work, when everything which was sown has sprouted anew, we can see that the young and presumptuous people who thought they would make out country just and happy through terror, bloody rebellion and civil war were themselves misled. No thanks, fathers of education! Now we know that infamous methods breed infamous results. Let our hands be clean!
The circle—is it closed? And is there really no way out? And is there only one thing left for us to do, to wait without taking action? Maybe something will happen by itself? It will never happen as long as we daily acknowledge, extol, and strengthen—and do not sever ourselves from the most perceptible of its aspects: Lies.
When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: “I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.” But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.
And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me.
This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our inaction. It is the easiest thing to do for us, but the most devastating for the lies. Because when people renounce lies it simply cuts short their existence. Like an infection, they can exist only in a living organism.
We do not exhort ourselves. We have not sufficiently matured to march into the squares and shout the truth our loud or to express aloud what we think. It's not necessary.
It's dangerous. But let us refuse to say that which we do not think.
This is our path, the easiest and most accessible one, which takes into account out inherent cowardice, already well rooted. And it is much easier—it's dangerous even to say this—than the sort of civil disobedience which Gandhi advocated.
Our path is to talk away fro the gangrenous boundary. If we did not paste together the dead bones and scales of ideology, if we did not sew together the rotting rags, we would be astonished how quickly the lies would be rendered helpless and subside.
That which should be naked would then really appear naked before the whole world.
So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether consciously, to remain a servant of falsehood—of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one's family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies—or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect both by one's children and contemporaries.
And from that day onward he:
Will not henceforth write, sign, or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth.
Will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation not in the presence of many people, neither on his own behalf not at the prompting of someone else, either in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, not in a theatrical role.
Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.
Will not cite out of context, either orally or written, a single quotation so as to please someone, to feather his own nest, to achieve success in his work, if he does not share completely the idea which is quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue.
Will not allow himself to be compelled to attend demonstrations or meetings if they are contrary to his desire or will, will neither take into hand not raise into the air a poster or slogan which he does not completely accept.
Will not raise his hand to vote for a proposal with which he does not sincerely sympathize, will vote neither openly nor secretly for a person whom he considers unworthy or of doubtful abilities.
Will not allow himself to be dragged to a meeting where there can be expected a forced or distorted discussion of a question. Will immediately talk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film showing if he hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda.
Will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which information is distorted and primary facts are concealed. Of course we have not listed all of the possible and necessary deviations from falsehood. But a person who purifies himself will easily distinguish other instances with his purified outlook.
No, it will not be the same for everybody at first. Some, at first, will lose their jobs. For young people who want to live with truth, this will, in the beginning, complicate their young lives very much, because the required recitations are stuffed with lies, and it is necessary to make a choice.
But there are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest. On any given day any one of us will be confronted with at least one of the above-mentioned choices even in the most secure of the technical sciences. Either truth or falsehood: Toward spiritual independence or toward spiritual servitude.
And he who is not sufficiently courageous even to defend his soul—don't let him be proud of his “progressive” views, don't let him boast that he is an academician or a people's artist, a merited figure, or a general—let him say to himself: I am in the herd, and a coward. It's all the same to me as long as I'm fed and warm.
Even this path, which is the most modest of all paths of resistance, will not be easy for us. But it is much easier than self-immolation or a hunger strike: The flames will not envelope your body, your eyeballs, will not burst from the heat, and brown bread and clean water will always be available to your family.
A great people of Europe, the Czechoslovaks, whom we betrayed and deceived: Haven't they shown us how a vulnerable breast can stand up even against tanks if there is a worthy heart within it?
You say it will not be easy? But it will be easiest of all possible resources. It will not be an easy choice for a body, but it is the only one for a soul. Not, it is not an easy path. But there are already people, even dozens of them, who over the years have maintained all these points and live by the truth.
So you will not be the first to take this path, but will join those who have already taken it. This path will be easier and shorter for all of us if we take it by mutual efforts and in close rank. If there are thousands of us, they will not be able to do anything with us. If there are tens of thousands of us, then we would not even recognize our country.
If we are too frightened, then we should stop complaining that someone is suffocating us. We ourselves are doing it. Let us then bow down even more, let us wail, and out brothers the biologists will help to bring nearer the day when they are able to read our thoughts are worthless and hopeless.
And if we get cold feet, even taking this step, then we are worthless and hopeless, and the scorn of Pushkin should be directed to us:
Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom?
Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash.
-
War By Any Other Name
Obama's new terminology has started a trend.Article
By JOE QUEENAN
WSJ
The Obama administration has come under intense criticism for replacing the term "war on terror" with the emaciated euphemism "overseas contingency operations," and for referring to individual acts of terror as "man-caused disasters."
This semi-official attempt to disassociate the administration from the fierce rhetoric favored by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has enraged Americans on both the right and left. Many feel that such vaporous bureaucratese is a self-emasculating action that plunges us into an Orwellian world where words have no emotional connection with the horrors they purport to describe.
Yet, if the intention of the Obama administration is to tone down the confrontational rhetoric being used by our enemies, the effort is already reaping results. This week, in a pronounced shift from its usual theatrical style, the Taliban announced that it will no longer refer to its favorite method of murder as "beheadings," but will henceforth employ the expression "cephalic attrition." "Flayings" -- a barbarously exotic style of execution that has been popular in this part of the world since before the time of Alexander -- will now be described as "unsolicited epidermal reconfigurations." In a similar vein, lopping off captives' arms will now be referred to as "appendage furloughing," while public floggings of teenaged girls will from here on out be spoken of as "metajudicial interfacing."
A Taliban spokesman reached in Pakistan said that the new phrasing was being implemented as a way of eliminating the negative associations triggered by more graphic terminology. "The term 'beheading' has a quasi-medieval undertone that we're trying to get away from," he explained. "The term 'cephalic attrition' brings the Taliban into the 21st century. It's not that we disapprove of beheadings; it's just that the word no longer meshes with the zeitgeist of the era. This is the same reason we have replaced the term 'jihad' with 'booka-bonga-bippo,' which has a more zesty, urban, youthful, 'now' feel. When you're recruiting teenagers to your movement, you don't want them to feel that going on jihad won't leave any time for youthful hijinks."
Central Asia is not the only place where the coarse terminology of the past is being phased out. In Darfur, the words "ethnic cleansing" are no longer in use, either by rebels nor by the government itself. Instead, the practice of targeting a particular tribe or sect or ethnic group for extinction is being called "unconditional demographic redeployment." In much the same spirit, the archaic term "genocide" -- so broad and vague as to be meaningless -- has now been supplanted by "maximum-intensity racial profiling."
"We've got problems here, sure, just like any other society," explains a high-ranking Sudanese official. "But we're not talking about Armenia 1915. We're not talking about the Holocaust. The Eurocentric term 'genocide' gives people the wrong idea. And it really hurts tourism."
Another very positive sign that global rhetoric is being turned down a notch is the decision by the North Korean government to refer to its offshore nuclear tests as "intra-horizontal aqua-aeonic degradation simulations."
"You start throwing around terms like 'nuclear testing' and you scare the hell out of the Japanese,' says a Hong Kong-based expert in East Asian euphemisms. "It's why the expression 'people's liberation army' always worked so much better as a recruiting device than 'mass murderers.'"
Another hopeful sign of a subtle cooling of heated diplomatic rhetoric is an official directive by the Hugo Chavez administration instructing journalists to stop using the term 'nationalizing oil fields.' Last week, the more graceful term "petrolic resource reapportionment" began to appear in prominent Venezuela media, along with "amicable annexation."
Yet perhaps the most encouraging sign of all is in Mexico, where vigilante groups have announced that they will no longer use the term "death squads" to describe their activities. Instead, death squads will be identified as "terminus-inducing claques," "free-lance resolution facilitators," and "off-site impasse adjustors."
Finally, in yet another determined effort to disassociate itself from the bellicose imagery favored by the Bush administration, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will no longer employ the term "bad guys" to describe al Qaeda.
"It's juvenile, it's demeaning, and it's judgmental," says a high-ranking administration spokesman. "From now on, the bad guys will be referred to as 'the ostensibly malefic.' We'll get back to you when we have a new term for 'the good guys.'"
Mr. Queenan, a satirist and freelance writer, is the author of numerous books. His memoir, "Closing Time," will be published this month by Viking.
-
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2512787,00.htm
07/05/2009 16:19 - (SA)
Berlin - The German government wants to tighten gun laws and ban paintball games in response to a school shooting in which 16 people were killed in March, coalition sources said on Thursday.
Experts from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners had agreed to ban paintball games, in which players shoot at each other with pellets containing paint, the sources said.
The governing parties say games like paintball trivialise violence and risk lowering the threshold for committing violent acts, the sources said.
Infringements to the new rules, which the cabinet hopes to pass before a general election in September, could incur fines of up to €5 000, the sources said.
Previous incidents
A 17-year-old shot dead 15 people in the southwestern town of Winnenden, before killing himself in March, stunning many Germans and leading politicians to call for tighter gun rules.
The teenager had shot many of his victims in the head with his father's legally registered pistol. His father, a member of a shooting club, had 15 guns at home - fourteen were locked in a gun closet as required by law but the pistol was in the bedroom, officials have said.
Germany toughened its gun laws in 2002 after 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser shot dead 16 people, mainly teachers, and himself at a high school in the eastern German city of Erfurt.
The changes raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 from 18 and required gun buyers under 25 to present a certificate of medical and psychological health. Gun laws already required applicants to pass rigorous exams that can take up to a year.
The new rules would also grant authorities more rights in conducting checks with people owning guns, the sources said.
Sources in the SPD said the parties were also moving towards on agreement on the creation of a nationwide weapons register and were considering setting up biometric security locks for weapons stores.
- Reuter
-
What a ____! :roll:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEGmkjv8R8
-
Holder: Whites and Ministers will not be protected by proposed hate crimes legislatio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://muffledoar.blogspot.com/
Attorney General Eric Holder testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 25 and gave startling testimony that means Christian ministers and whites will not be protected under the hate crimes statute proposed by the Department of Justice. Holder says that the proposed statute would only protect “traditional” victims of hate crimes, and then he goes on to name a series of Democratic Party constituencies.
Senator Sessions asks Holder about the scope of the protected classes. (Beginning at 58:43 – running through 60:09) Sessions presents a hypothetical where a minister gives a sermon, quotes the Bible about homosexuality and is thereafter attacked by a gay activist because of what the minister said about his religious beliefs and what scripture says about homosexuality.
Holder: “Well the statute would not necessarily cover that. On the other hand, I think the concern that actually has been expressed is if the action was reversed. . . . We are talking about, if in fact the person, we are talking about crimes that have a historic basis. Groups who have been targeted for violence as a result of their skin color, sexual orientation, that is what this legislation is designed to cover. The fact that someone might strike somebody as a result of pure speech, again, . . . we don’t have the indication that somebody was motivated to strike at somebody because they were in one of these protected classes. That would not be covered by the statute.”
Later, Senator Tom Coburn asks Holder if the muslim radical who killed army recruiter Pvt. Long committed a hate crime. Holder’s equivocation was disturbing. “There is a certain element of hate in that, I suppose.” He would suppose. You can see him “suppose” at minute 73:00.
Then Holder goes on to list the only groups intended to be protected by the proposed law. This is racial identity politics taking a sinister turn. Holder explicitly says the proposed law only protects classes “where there is a history” of violence against those groups. “What we are looking for here in terms of expansion of the statute are instances where there is a historic basis. See, groups of people who are singled out for violence perpetrated against them because of who they are. I don’t know if we have the same historical record to say members of our military have been targeted in the same way that people who are African American, people who are Jewish, people who are gay, have been targeted over the many years.” (minute 73:00-74:00)
Based on Holder’s testimony, it is clear that the law would not protect white victims who were attacked because of their race by racial minorities. Holder’s testimony explicitly excluded prosecution of the gay activist who attacks a Christian minister or priest because of his sermon on homosexuality, but the legislation protects the gay activist when he is attacked. This is a dangerous development to our laws and our nation. One of the most fundamental principles in the founding of this nation was that all are created equal. A bloody Civil War was fought to sustain it. No group enjoys privileged status over the other. Once the Department can decide to protect certain individuals for crimes, and not others, those not protected will lose faith in the system. Loss of faith in the system is more than a simple inconvenience. Confidence that laws are enforced fairly and equally preserves peace and prosperity. Lawlessness ensues when the law is perceived as a weapon against certain groups for the benefit of other groups. It is not enough to simply point to a bundle of statistics or history, or to Matthew Sheppard, to justify unfairness in the law.
__________________
If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
-
Our family enjoys the products (but not the prices!!!) at the neighborhood Whole Foods supermarket.
Often there are petitioners/fundraisers of various left-liberal-new agey causes there.
My wife reports that today there was someone a little different. :lol: A couple of Lyndon LaRouchers with a giant sign with a picture of His Glibness with a Hitler mustache and a caption about impeaching him over his "Nazi health plan". My wife tells me there was quite an uproar from the clientele. :lol: The police were called! :lol: They were entering the store as it was time for my wife to leave. I will look into this tomorrow :lol:
PS: For the record LR is fascist scum incarnate and I strongly suspect him of being a front for nefarious interests. Still, quite a chuckle to hear of the sheeple getting in a snit over free speech.
-
Yeah, we get them hanging about my work on a regular basis. I refuse to dodge 'em, and when they try to engage I start asking 'em what drugs the Queen of England is dealing these days and why they no longer hyperventilate about the Trilateral Commission. Gets them to shouting epitaphs toot sweet, which shows their true colors as far as I'm concerned.
-
NYT
NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.
Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.
“It just seems unfair,” Zachary said, pausing as he practiced writing lower-case letters with his mother, who is home-schooling him while the family tries to overturn his punishment.
Spurred in part by the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, many school districts around the country adopted zero-tolerance policies on the possession of weapons on school grounds. More recently, there has been growing debate over whether the policies have gone too far.
But, based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, “regardless of possessor’s intent,” knives are banned.
But the question on the minds of residents here is: Why do school officials not have more discretion in such cases?
“Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously,” said Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother, who started a Web site, helpzachary.com, in hopes of recruiting supporters to pressure the local school board at its next open meeting on Tuesday. “He is not some sort of threat to his classmates.”
Still, some school administrators argue that it is difficult to distinguish innocent pranks and mistakes from more serious threats, and that the policies must be strict to protect students.
“There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the president of the Christina district’s school board. He defended the decision, but added that the board might adjust the rules when it comes to younger children like Zachary.
Critics contend that zero-tolerance policies like those in the Christina district have led to sharp increases in suspensions and expulsions, often putting children on the streets or in other places where their behavior only worsens, and that the policies undermine the ability of school officials to use common sense in handling minor infractions.
For Delaware, Zachary’s case is especially frustrating because last year state lawmakers tried to make disciplinary rules more flexible by giving local boards authority to, “on a case-by-case basis, modify the terms of the expulsion.”
The law was introduced after a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.
In Zachary’s case, the state’s new law did not help because it mentions only expulsion and does not explicitly address suspensions. A revised law is being drafted to include suspensions.
“We didn’t want our son becoming the poster child for this,” Ms. Christie said, “but this is out of control.”
In a letter to the district’s disciplinary committee, State Representative Teresa L. Schooley, Democrat of Newark, wrote, “I am asking each of you to consider the situation, get all the facts, find out about Zach and his family and then act with common sense for the well-being of this child.”
Education experts say that zero-tolerance policies initially allowed authorities more leeway in punishing students, but were applied in a discriminatory fashion. Many studies indicate that African-Americans were several times more likely to be suspended or expelled than other students for the same offenses.
“The result of those studies is that more school districts have removed discretion in applying the disciplinary policies to avoid criticism of being biased,” said Ronnie Casella, an associate professor of education at Central Connecticut State University who has written about school violence. He added that there is no evidence that zero-tolerance policies make schools safer.
Other school districts are also trying to address problems they say have stemmed in part from overly strict zero-tolerance policies.
In Baltimore, around 10,000 students, about 12 percent of the city’s enrollment, were suspended during the 2006-7 school year, mostly for disruption and insubordination, according to a report by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. School officials there are rewriting the disciplinary code, to route students to counseling rather than suspension.
In Milwaukee, where school officials reported that 40 percent of ninth graders had been suspended at least once in the 2006-7 school year, the superintendent has encouraged teachers not to overreact to student misconduct.
“Something has to change,” said Dodi Herbert, whose 13-year old son, Kyle, was suspended in May and ordered to attend the Christina district’s reform school for 45 days after another student dropped a pocket knife in his lap. School officials declined to comment on the case for reasons of privacy.
Ms. Herbert, who said her son was a straight-A student, has since been home-schooling him instead of sending him to the reform school.
The Christina school district attracted similar controversy in 2007 when it expelled a seventh-grade girl who had used a utility knife to cut windows out of a paper house for a class project.
Charles P. Ewing, a professor of law and psychology at the University at Buffalo Law School who has written about school safety issues, said he favored a strict zero-tolerance approach.
“There are still serious threats every day in schools,” Dr. Ewing said, adding that giving school officials discretion holds the potential for discrimination and requires the kind of threat assessments that only law enforcement is equipped to make.
In the 2005-6 school year, 86 percent of public schools reported at least one violent crime, theft or other crime, according to the most recent federal survey.
And yet, federal studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another by the Department of Justice show that the rate of school-related homicides and nonfatal violence has fallen over most of the past decade.
Educational experts say the decline is less a result of zero-tolerance policies than of other programs like peer mediation, student support groups and adult mentorships, as well as an overall decrease in all forms of crime.
For Zachary, it is not school violence that has left him reluctant to return to classes.
“I just think the other kids may tease me for being in trouble,” he said, pausing before adding, “but I think the rules are what is wrong, not me.”
-
Faith & Family
"Peter Vidala was being harassed at work-subjected, over and over again, to views he found offensive. When he finally spoke up, he was fired. It's an illustration of the double standard that often prevails when it comes to same-sex 'marriage.' Vidala was a deputy manager at a Brookstone store in Boston's Logan Airport. Last August, a manager visiting from another store told Vidala she was planning to 'marry' her female partner. Vidala said he 'quickly changed the subject.' As a Christian, he considered homosexual behavior immoral, and same-sex 'marriage' an 'oxymoron.' The woman's comments made him uncomfortable. But the visiting manager didn't get the message-or maybe she did. She talked about her wedding plans over and over. Vidala later told Fox new she was goading him into commenting on her relationship. Vidala said, 'By the fourth time she mentioned it, I felt God wanted me to express how I felt about the matter. So I did.' He told her, 'Regarding your homosexuality, I think that's bad stuff.' He also reported that he had intended to tell her he would prefer she not bring up the subject at work, but she just started laughing. And then she told him, 'Get over it ... keep your opinions to yourself.' She then complained to human resources, and Vidala was fired. Why? Because by 'imposing' his beliefs on her, it constituted 'harassment.' So pummeling a junior-level Christian employee with endless comments he finds offensive is OK. But making a single critical comment to a lesbian senior-level employee is a firing offense. Even more disturbing is the reason Brookstone gave to back up its decision. In Massachusetts, same-sex 'marriage' is legal. So a lesbian employee can prattle on about her wedding plans without harassing anyone. The implications of this are frightening. If same-sex 'marriage' is foisted upon other states, then expressing disagreement with it-or even criticizing the homosexual lifestyle-could become a firing offense for everyone. If employers had taken this attitude 90 years ago, people could have lost their jobs for disagreeing with laws forbidding women from voting! This is how far the gay agenda has come in this country. Any disagreement is portrayed as hatred and harassment. And the victim-as in this case-is often a Christian. Peter Vidala's firing will have one beneficial effect, at least. It will help the rest of us understand why same-sex 'marriage' laws are like no other. Oppose them beforehand or speak out afterward, and you will be punished." --author Chuck Colson
-
Village Academic Curriculum: SJSU Suspends Blood Drives
In February 2008, then-president of San Jose State University Don Kassing suspended all blood drives on campus. In response to a complaint from an employee, Kassing concluded that the blood drives violated the university's non-discrimination policy because the FDA does not accept blood from men who have had sex with other men. The University's new president, Jon Whitmore, recently decided to continue Kassing's ban on blood drives. Apparently believing that "inclusiveness" is more important than the collection of life-saving blood, Whitmore's decision is a disturbing example of political correctness run amok.
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the risk of accepting blood from men who have engaged in homosexual sex is substantial. Even if HIV positive men don't donate blood, the risk of HIV transmission from potential donors with a history of homosexual sex is 200 times higher than for first-time blood donors, and is 2,000 times higher than for repeat blood donors. Moreover, HIV can be hard to detect in the early stages of infection, even with modern testing techniques. Because there are more than 20 million transfusions of blood or blood products every year, an error rate as minuscule as one in one million can devastate many innocent lives.
Whitmore's policy has real, and devastating, consequences. According to the Red Cross, every blood donation can help to save up to three lives. Blocking blood drives at SJSU leaves the local blood bank to struggle with critical shortages. None of this seems to matter to the caring, compassionate Whitmore and other radical inclusivists. Rather than put the well being of millions of innocent patients first, they would rather kowtow to radical homosexual activists who eschew any responsibility for their own behavior.
-
PC is the same thing as Newspeak mentioned in Orwell. It is a constantly shifting target so that people are focused on the words they use instead of what they are saying. A nasty trick, and the mental dissonance of a lot of liberals is because they are about the newest fashion in PC/Newspeak rather than what is actually being said. Getting lost in the process rather than the result. That explains health care, welfare, and a whole bunch of entitlement programs. A prograsm is a process you can tweak forever and not necessarily get good results out of, and it also is convienient to blame for the non-performance. Reform in many ways is a large scale of rearranging the process so the bureaucrats are happy going thru and reaaranging letterhead and wording to comply with the newest reform. PC is the grasroots driver of that, so buried in words and changes that the goal is lost.
Every time I have some one get into my face about PC I NEVER talk to them again, and that is the other function of PC is to shutdown communication because if you can't think in it, you can't reason, and it changes often enough that no one ever does. Yes, I fall for an aspect of it, but at the same time I CAN think and recognise what is being done.......I just can't talk to a politician or media type without walking into a field of landmines.
Sorry about the rant- but I recently went to read some direct copy of the us code- anyone done that lately? It is unreadable for someone who can read at a college graduate level because thwere is no "Plain text" every sentance is split up by annotations of where, when why, how and by who under what authority that a change was made from what type face and using what mandated ink on proper acid free low environmental impact paper..............
I will finally stop now, good grief...........
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma3CNRehvwk&feature=player_embedded#!
-
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/05/17/the-shrine-of-multiculturalism-now-sacrificing-lives-in-the-name-of-appeasement/
(http://media.hotair.com/greenroom/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/appeasement.jpg)
-
That reminds me; I gather that May 20th is draw a picture of Mohammed Day, which was organized in the aftermath of the South Park dhimmitude. Can someone direct me to the URL of where I can find some of the classic Mohammed cartoons? I want to choose one for our front page on the 20th.
Thank you.
-
http://michellemalkin.com/2006/01/30/support-denmark-why-the-forbidden-cartoons-matter/
-
What a ____! :roll:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEGmkjv8R8
Terms of use violated...........
-
Wow, just wow.
For those who don't remember this clip, it was of Senator Boxer laying into a General for calling her "Ma'am", instead of "Senator". She really came off looking quite bad.
If I have this right, it now it looks like Youtube has participated in sending this embarassment to a powerful Progressive politician down the memory hole.
Wow, just wow :cry: :cry: :cry: :x :x :x
We fight for our country, to protect and preserve our Constitution.
-
Undocumented Imam's Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism
NEW YORK - Charges of racism, sexism, and religious discrimination filled the air this afternoon outside the just-completed Cordoba House, the gleaming new $100 million 15 story mosque and Islamic cultural center near the ruins of New York's World Trade Center, following a tense 5-hour standoff prompted by the mosque's refusal to host a wedding between a lesbian African-American woman and her blind white transgendered partner.
Over 200 NYPD officers and multicultural crisis counselors were bused to the site to quell the simmering 17-way tensions between Muslim, Black, LGBT, immigrant, disabled, and lawsuit community activists. The scene was punctuated by outbursts of pushing and shoving, including a brief confused intramural scuffle among members of Reverend Louis Farrakan's Nation of Islam, but the only serious injuries reported was a hernia suffered by a legal aide distributing plaintiff's briefs. The incident resulted in one arrest, a 7-year old girl who was seen operating a lemonade stand without a permit.
According to witnesses, the standoff began at 11 AM EDT when Eleanor Davis, 38, and her partner Mary Markowicz, 43, entered Cordoba House and requested the use of the mosque for a wedding ceremony. They were escorted from the building, but quickly returned with a 9th District Court of Appeals injunction ordering the mosque's Imam to perform the ceremony, citing the US Supreme Court's Kelo and Proposition 8 decisions. They were barred at the door by security guards who countered with their own injunction citing First Amendment religious protections.
Following the incident, Davis, who is African-American, called a press conference on the sidewalk in front of the Cordoba House to complain of racial and gender discrimination. She was eventually shoved from the podium by Abdul Mohammed-Haq, the Mosque's controversial Yemeni Imam who is currently battling a federal deportation case against the ICE, who countered with complaints of profiling discrimination by Davis and Markowicz. Within minutes the streets in front of the center were filled with chanting protesters from the Gay, Muslim, Black and handicapped communities. A disaster was narrowly averted when the Reverend Al Sharpton's limousine rammed a parked EMS ambulance before it could careen through the crowd.
Amid the growing crisis, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a SWAT team of negotiators from the city's Multicultural Affairs Office parachuted to the scene. A brief truce was reached when negotiators pointed out to the Imam Markowicz's status as a pre-op transexual, obviating his religious objections to performing a same-sex marriage. But tensions erupted again after Markowicz - who is legally blind - tried to enter the mosque with a seeing-eye guide dog.
Multicultural Paratroopers eventually persuaded Markowicz to leave his/her dog outside the mosque during the ceremony. Cordoba House officials reluctantly agreed to allow the couple inside for continued negotiations, but a brief melee ensued after Markowicz lit a marijuana cigarette in the lobby. Mohammed-Haq angrily demanded that police arrest him/her for violating New York's anti-smoking ordinance, but Markowicz quickly produced a prescription for medical marijuana for his/her glaucoma condition. In turn, he/she demanded police arrest Mohammed-Haq for violating the National Health Care Access Act, and for failure to post braille No Smoking signs. The angry Imam was restrained by police before he could unsheathe his scimitar, and lodged a complaint against Davis and Markowicz for violating New York's official Immigration Sanctuary Act.
As the center lobby filled with police, community leaders and lawyers, filing charges and counter-charges, a near-riot erupted outside when wedding reception catering trucks began arriving from Porky's 34th Street Barbecue and Midtown Liquors.
By late afternoon, federal, state, city, and borough courts reported over 1400 lawsuits filed related to the incident. Mayoral Spokesperson Karen Sternthal said that Bloomberg would be seeking emergency federal funding for an Appelate Judge troop surge to cope with the load, but expressed hopes that a "peaceful, mutually agreeable, transfat-free resolution" could be worked out between all parties.
"The good news is that this will be all worked out right here in New York," noted Sternthal. "And there's no other place this open minded."
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk...eapalooza.html
-
By JAMES TARANTO
It would appear that the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof read our column Thursday on "Islamic affirmative action," thought the concept might be unclear to some people, and decided to offer himself up as an example. If we had wanted to satirize the attitude, we could hardly have done better than his column in yesterday's Times titled "Message to Muslims: I'm Sorry."
Here's how it begins:
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That's reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I'm going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
Kristof's central example of "the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness" is the wave of reader complaints against the Portland (Maine) Press Herald over a Sept. 11 human-interest story on local Muslims celebrating Eid, the end of Ramadan, which led to a groveling apology from the paper's editor-publisher.
As we noted Thursday, there is no reason to think that the complaining readers were bigots or nuts. The worst that can be said about them is that they were a bit ignorant: They mistook a coincidence of timing for Islamic affirmative action. (This misunderstanding might have been avoided if the Press Herald's Eid story had explained the workings of the Islamic calendar and this coincidence with Sept. 11.)
Podcast
James Taranto on Kristof's apology.
.Kristof draws a false and offensive equivalence between Islamic extremists and American "extremists." The latter, when something in the newspaper offends them, complain in a "courteous and polite" fashion, according to the Portland editor. The former, as in the case of cartoonist Molly Norris, issue religious edicts threatening death. (President Obama, champion of the First Amendment for Muslims, remains conspicuously silent about Norris's plight.)
We agree with Kristof that the Portland publisher's apology was a pathetic overreaction. But no one is in hiding as a result of the complaining Mainers--not the publisher, not the reporter who wrote the story, not the Muslim leader who was profiled in the Sept. 11 piece and "said that as an American Muslim, he has a sense of belonging that eclipses the hostility of the Rev. Terry Jones, the pastor in Florida who threatened to burn copies of the Quran," according to the Press Herald.
The important thing to understand here is that Islamic affirmative action only incidentally concerns Islam or Muslims. It is really about the moral exhibitionism of liberal elitists like Kristof, who love trumpeting their enlightenment and open-mindedness and sneering at the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. It never occurs to them that in doing so, it is they who are acting like bigots.
Like moral idiots, too. Consider this passage from Kristof's column:
Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.
How balanced, how even-handed. Kristof condemns extremists on both sides! Except that "their" extremist is a mass murderer, while "ours" merely talked about engaging in offensive symbolic speech. Kristof doesn't note that Jones's Koran-burning plan was condemned by almost all Americans, or that whatever harm it did could have been ameliorated had the media--including Kristof's paper--refrained from publicizing it.
In another attempt at balance, Kristof acknowledges a string of Islamic outrages: "theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God's bidding." He does not list any comparable actions by American "extremists," because there aren't any.
Kristof concludes:
But I've also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I'm sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
Fair enough. But what about gentle American souls--the kind of people who take offense at the idea of building a fancy "Islamic center" adjacent to the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity, or who complain politely to a newspaper that offends their sensitivities? In slandering them as bigots, nuts and extremists, Kristof lumps them in with al Qaeda. He owes Americans, not Muslims, an apology.
Islamic Group Honors Non-Muslim Jew-Hater
While Molly Norris lives in fear for her life, Helen Thomas is set to make a public appearance next month, the Hill reports:
[American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic] will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
CAIR is honoring Helen Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va.
Helen Thomas is not Muslim; like President Obama, she is reported to be a Christian. So why is CAIR honoring her lifetime of "achievement"? Well, remember her parting message to Jews: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. . . . They should go home." It is difficult to understand CAIR's decision to honor Thomas as anything other than an endorsement of these hateful views.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM&feature=player_embedded#!
-
Also politically incorrect, the Wash. Post and others pulled this regularly scheduled cartoon that made it onto their website called "Where's Muhammad?" http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/nq/2010/10/03/
At first glance, the single-panel cartoon he drew for last Sunday seems benign. It is a bucolic scene imitating the best-selling children's book "Where's Waldo?" A grassy park is jammed with activity. Animals frolic. Children buy ice cream. Adults stroll and sunbathe. A caption reads: "Where's Muhammad?"
Miller's cartoon is clearly a satirical reference to the global furor that ensued in 2006 after a Danish newspaper invited cartoonists to draw the prophet Muhammad as they see him. After the cartoons were published, Muslims in many countries demonstrated against what they viewed as the lampooning of Islam's holiest figure.
What is clever about last Sunday's "Where's Muhammad?" comic is that the prophet [sic] does not appear in it. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/10/027438.php
-
:lol: :lol: :lol:
-
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/10/16/greg-gutfeld-bashes-wapo-pulling-mohammed-cartoon
JON SCOTT, HOST: You know, cartoon strips have been around since, well, even longer than Cal [Thomas] has been writing his column, and have been used to poke fun at everything including politicians, even religions – except for one. Here’s “Red Eye” host Greg Gutfeld.
GREG GUTFELD: So the Washington Post removed the October 3 “Non Sequitur” cartoon from its rag. The reason? It mentioned, not showed, Mohammed. There wasn’t even a picture of him anywhere. But the Post and some other papers still pulled it.
Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander asked his style editor why, and he said, “It seemed a deliberate provocation without a clear message.” He added that “the point of the joke was not immediately clear.”
Yeah, the reason is ambiguity. Weasel. Anyway, here’s the cartoon. Yeah, that’s really outrageous. And so here we see another callow editor making a cowardly decision based on a fear of upsetting religious fanatics, a fear he can’t even admit to his co-workers. Which leads me to my only point: why is it that the media keeps reminding us that we shouldn’t exaggerate the threat of a small group of radicals, but then completely changes tact when it comes to their own personal safety?
Think about it: if the average Joe expresses anxiety over Islamic fundamentalism, they’re called Islamophobes. But if an editor removes a comic in which Mohammed isn’t even present, that’s not honest to Allah Islamophobia?
Look, the media can’t have it both ways. They cannot criticize the public for concerns over Islam and then pull this stunt over a fear they may get stabbed in front of a Starbucks. If their governing principle in the newsroom is fear, then they should admit it and get the hell off our backs for feeling pretty much the same way.
For “Fox News Watch,” I’m Greg Gutfeld.
Read more: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/10/16/greg-gutfeld-bashes-wapo-pulling-mohammed-cartoon#ixzz12dIEAOIt
-
Kyra Phillips on CNN, the cable nanny network while reporting on the mosque that had a garbage can filled with bacon to insult the members called the unkonw culprit a "punk". If an artist puts Jesus in urine or another puts bacon outside a synague does she call them a punk.
Her additional point was that actions like this "punk" actually causes harm to the reputation of the US. These things can be transmittede around the world on youtube in seconds giving radical Islamists reason to want to kill us.
Never mind no one would even know about it if not for CNN.
And besides, I don't recall hearing Christains who upon learing that Jesus was in urine is thus grounds for Christains to rome around the world and murder all non Christains.
I don't recall Israelis who when seeing on youtube a swatiska on the side of a synoguage running around screaming holy war and calling for decapitation of every goy they can get their hands on.
Philips is not a favorite of mine. This is the same gal who tells the founder of the Black Panthers that it was an "honor" to have him on her show.
thanks for listening,
I feel better.
-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zasAMvuy18&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zasAMvuy18&feature=player_embedded
-
NY appeals court OKs ex-sailor's terror conviction
Published December 20, 2010
NEW YORK – A federal appeals court Monday upheld the conviction of a former Navy sailor serving a 10-year prison sentence after he leaked details about ship movements to a London-based Web site operator that supported attacking Americans.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected defense arguments seeking to overturn the 2008 conviction of Hassan Abu-Jihaad of Phoenix. He was a signalman aboard the USS Benfold who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2002.
Abu-Jihaad was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in New Haven, Conn., after he was convicted on charges that he disclosed classified national defense information. Prosecutors at trial had labeled him a traitor. A message for comment left with Abu-Jihaad's defense lawyer was not immediately returned Monday.
In upholding the conviction, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was constitutional and was used properly in the investigation to obtain evidence related to overseas communications.
Abu-Jihaad was accused of leaking details of ship movements to London-based Azzam Publications, an organization that in 2001 maintained web sites that openly espoused violent jihad against the U.S., the appeals court said.
The leaked information included the makeup of his Navy battle group and a drawing of the formation the group would use to pass through the dangerous Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in April 2001. The ships were not attacked.
In 1997, Abu-Jihaad changed his name from Paul Raphael Hall to Hassan Abu-Jihaad, the surname of which translates to "Father of Jihad," the appeals court said.
"This curious choice appears not to have raised any concern in the United States Navy when, in January 1998, Abu-Jihaad enlisted," the appeals court said. It said the Navy cleared Abu-Jihaad to receive classified national defense information from 1998 to 2002.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/20/ny-appeals-court-oks-ex-sailors-terror-conviction/
-
It's worth noting not only that the War on Christmas has continued, but now federal regulators have joined the wrong side. Christians should get far more aggressive in fighting back, because the Constitution is on their side.
Various outlets have reported throughout December that regulators from the Federal Reserve told privately-owned banks that they can’t have Christmas displays. It’s illegal for government agents to do that.
The Federal Reserve is a public-private hybrid. In one sense, it’s a private bank with money reserves, and also serves as a clearing house for checks and wire transfers from other banks.
In another sense, it’s a government agency. It was created by Congress and its board members are appointed by the president of the United States. It determines the money supply in the economy and sets interest rates. The Fed has regulatory authority over every bank in the United States. And its regulations and orders carry the force of law.
One such order violates the U.S. Constitution. One Fed regulation, called Regulation B, disallows “words, symbols … and other forms of communication” that “suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.” That regulation is okay in many circumstances, but not all.
A bank in Oklahoma City displayed Bible verses and had a cross on the tellers’ counter. Some bank workers also wore “Merry Christmas” buttons. Fed regulators visiting the bank said that these displays violated Regulation B, and ordered them removed. A similar situation is unfolding in Nebraska. The American Exchange Bank of Lincoln has also been told to discontinue religious displays.
This is outrageous. Government actors—as that’s what Fed regulators are whenever they give an order to a privately-owned bank—cannot order a private person (and a corporation is a “person”) or the individuals working there not to engage in religious expression. To the extent that Regulation B suggests anything to the contrary, that regulation (and any order based on it) is unconstitutional.
The Constitution is firmly on the side of these banks and private citizens. Bruce Smith is an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), one of the foremost religious-liberty organizations in America, which litigates countless cases nationwide defending religious expressions. About this bank situation involving the Fed, Smith says, “It’s ridiculous that people have to think twice about whether it’s okay to publicly celebrate Christmas. An overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas and are opposed to any kind of censorship of it.”
It’s unfortunate that the War on Christmas hasn’t gotten much attention this year. With the understandable focus on massive deficit spending and other economic issues, such as the tax-extension deal (loaded with hundreds of billions of dollars in new deficit spending) and the defeated $1.2 trillion omnibus, there hasn’t been a big media appetite for the ongoing secularization of American society.
Yet that’s exactly what we’ve seen. Christmas parades where renamed “holiday parades” this year, despite the fact that Christmas remains a federal holiday officially recognized by this nation. And in the midst of this increasingly anti-Christian bias, we see the inexcusable action of federal regulators telling private banks and citizens that they cannot freely celebrate Christmas.
No federal order or regulation can trump the U.S. Constitution. It’s time for Christians to reengage in this fight for religious liberty. Stop playing defense. Go on offense. Make a New Year’s resolution that next Christmas will see people unapologetically celebrating the birth of Christ, and an uncompromising legal fight against any government officer who tries to stop it.
Ken Klukowski
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html
A discussion of the edit of the Twain classic.
Critic’s Notebook
Light Out, Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You
-
A surprisingly piece sensible from Pravda on the Hudson (POTH). I had not thought of this point on my own:
"Never mind that attaching the epithet "slave" to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape."
-
A surprisingly piece sensible from Pravda on the Hudson (POTH). I had not thought of this point on my own:
"Never mind that attaching the epithet "slave" to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape."
That was the line that led me to share it here.
-
I never forgot how my sixth grade teacher showed us a watered down picture of the following *true* picture in our history book. In the book the picture shows the guys on the trains waving bouqettes of flowers! The teacher told us that this was BS (He probably said it more nicely) and in the real picture the guys were holding whiskey bottles. He was absolutely correct. When the East and West transAmerica railroad line was finished these guys (many were Irish I understand) were getting sloshed on whiskey not throwing flowers at each other. But when I was in sixth grade in the sixties political correctness would not allow school grade children to see the "great men of the American West" drinking booze - I suppose.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/1869-Golden_Spike.jpg
-
The interesting "Story of US" on cable pointed out many of the railroad crews were Irish. They were apparently drinking while working - even when they were using dynamite to blast through rock to lay the tracks.
Some of them apparently wished they had been holding flowers after the many reported accidents including blowing themselves to bits. I thought of the above famous photo when I heard this. Hell they didn't need Al Quaida.
-
The village of Berkeley, Ill., 15 miles west of Chicago, is small enough to proclaim its population (5,245) on its welcome sign. It is also small enough to escape mention in the national news -- most of the time.
But the village, which, according to The Washington Post, is majority African-American and Hispanic, has attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. The department is suing the Berkeley School District on behalf of a former teacher.
Here are the facts: Safoorah Kahn, 29, was hired to teach middle school math in November 2007. According to her lawyer, she was happy in her job, which included preparing sixth- through eighth-graders for state tests, and running the "math lab." After nine months on the job, Kahn requested a three-week leave of absence in order to perform the hajj -- the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are obliged to undertake at least once in their lives if they can afford it.
Employers are required by law to honor requests for religious accommodations provided that they do not impose "undue hardship" on the employer or other employees. Berkeley officials maintained that a three-week absence in December -- which would have denied the school its only math lab instructor right before exams -- was unreasonable and was not covered by the teachers' union contract. They denied her request. Kahn decided to make the trip anyway and submitted her resignation.
She also submitted a letter of complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that the school board's refusal to grant the 19-day leave amounted to religious discrimination.
"They put her in a position where she had to choose," her lawyer, Kamran A. Memon, told the Post, and this revealed "anti-Muslim hostility."
The town's former mayor disagreed. "The school district just wanted a teacher in the room for those three weeks," said Michael A. Esposito. "They didn't care if she was a Martian, a Muslim or a Catholic."
Now the Justice Department has taken up her case. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez explains that he took the case in part to combat "a real head wind of intolerance against Muslim communities" and that Kahn's lawsuit seeks to ratify the "religious liberty that our forefathers came to this country for." Perez has spoken before of his belief, shared by Attorney General Eric Holder, that "our Muslim-American brothers and sisters" have been the victims of a post-9/11 backlash.
Now we see how Perez and Holder can assert that Muslim-Americans are suffering a "backlash." If they can see religious discrimination in Kahn's case, it's no wonder they see it under every mattress.
Reality check: Many first-year employees get no vacation days or time off. Teachers, depending upon their union-negotiated contracts, may get some. But to suggest that refusing a three-week leave at a crucial time of the school year is "discrimination" is just perverse. It's reaching to find a base motive for an obviously sensible decision.
Kahn's departure to fulfill a religious obligation that she has a lifetime to satisfy left her students bereft at a critical time. Doesn't Islam also forbid breaking a contract or leaving children in the lurch? Besides, Kahn is 29. The next scheduled hajj that will fall during a school vacation will be in eight years. Kahn will, God willing, be fully capable of making the trip then. But why accommodate your students and your employer when you can sue?
The selfishness of Kahn's behavior was so blatant that even The Washington Post was moved to look for other motives in the Justice Department's decision. "The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to maintain good relations with Muslims -- while endorsing tough anti-terrorism tactics."
This is the same month in which the Obama administration admitted that it won't be closing Guantanamo after all. And President Obama has deployed unmanned aerial vehicles pretty aggressively over Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is this a way to placate Muslim-Americans who may be unhappy about the war on terror?
It may be. Or it may just be another example of the reflex to genuflect before all claims of discrimination -- no matter how baseless. The United States government is asking for back pay, reinstatement, and money damages for Safoorah Kahn. When you elect a liberal Democrat to the White House, this is what you get.
-
Part One
One of the legends of St. Valentine says that he was a priest arrested by Roman Emperor Claudius II for secretly performing marriages. Claudius wanted to enlarge his army and believed that married men did not make good soldiers, rather like Halsted’s feelings about surgical residents. But Valentine’s Day is about love, and if you remember a romantic gut feeling when you met your significant other, it might have a physiological basis.
It has long been known that Drosophila raised on starch media are more likely to mate with other starch-raised flies, whereas those fed maltose have similar preferences. In a study published online in the November issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators explored the mechanism for this preference by treating flies with antibiotics to sterilize the gut and saw the preferences disappear (Proc. Nad. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2010 Nov. 1).
In cultures of untreated flies, the bacterium L. plantarum was more common in those on starch, and sure enough, when L. plantarum was returned to the sterile groups, the mating preference returned. The best explanation for this is revealed in the significant differences in their sex pheromones. These experiments also support the hologenome theory of evolution wherein the unit of natural selection is the “holobiont,” or combination of organism and its microorganisms, that determines mating preferences.
Mating gets more interesting when you have an organism that can choose between sexual and asexual reproduction, like the rotifer. Biologists say that it’s more advantageous for a rotifer to remain asexual and pass 100% of its genetic information to the next generation. But if the environment changes, rotifers must adapt quickly in order to survive and reproduce with new gene combinations that have an advantage over existing genotypes. So in this new situation, the stressed rotifers, all of which are female, begin sending messages to each other to produce males for the switch to sexual reproduction (Nature 2010 Oct. 13). You can draw your own inference about males not being needed until there’s trouble in the environment.
As far as humans are concerned, you may think you know all about sexual signals, but you’d be surprised by new findings. It’s been known since the 1990s that heterosexual women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles because of pheromones, but when a study of lesbians showed that they do not synchronize, the researchers suspected that semen played a role. In fact, they found ingredients in semen that include mood enhancers like estrone, cortisol, prolactin, oxytocin, and serotonin; a sleep enhancer, melatonin; and of course, sperm, which makes up only 1%-5%. Delivering these compounds into the richly vascularized vagina also turns out to have major salutary effects for the recipient. Female college students having unprotected sex were significantly less depressed than were those whose partners used condoms (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2002;31:289-93). Their better moods were not just a feature of promiscuity, because women using condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence. The benefits of semen contact also were seen in fewer suicide attempts and better performance on cognition tests.
So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.
======================================
Part Two
http://healthwise-everythinghealth.blogspot.com/2011/04/prominent-surgeon-resigns-over-semen.html
-
Two Black females beating a white female reason unknown in MCD's. Now let's see the ACLU pick this case up as hate crime. The other night on Smirkonish radio he was discussing the absolutely absurdity of "hate" crime legislation. A crime is a crime. The idea that kid in Rutgers is under federal prosecution for hate crimes because he humiliated a gay who commited suicide. If the guy where not gay than it is not as bad? SMirkonish gave the answer well hate crimes apply to everyone but white males. The caller said, well yes. Well this case is a white girl. So does she qualify? On the other hand she is attacked by girls so I guess not.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ec0_1303444048
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/calif-teacher-punishes-students-for-saying-god-bless-you/
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uxoWto09Oyg
-
WSJ
Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Academic Mob Rules
Instead of encouraging wide discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education fires a blogger..
By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story called "Black Studies: 'Swaggering Into the Future,'" in which the reporter described how "young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline." The "5 Up-and-Coming Ph.D. Candidates" described in the piece's sidebar "are rewriting the history of race." While the article suggested some are skeptical of black studies as a discipline, the reporter neglected to quote anyone who is.
Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap," at worst.
For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she "noticed that nonwhite women's experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature." Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have "played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them."
The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that "in a bid to not be 'out-niggered' [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on." (I confess I don't actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post "racist."
Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins "A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.") MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of "small-mindedness."
Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren't even available. Which didn't seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.
Enlarge Image
CloseCorbis
.At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an "invitation to debate." But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle's editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: "We've heard you," she tells my critics. "And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley's blog posting did not meet The Chronicle's basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles."
When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were "reviewing" the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.
In her Monday mea culpa, Ms. McMillen wrote that her previous "editor's note last week inviting [readers] to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not." I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now, having visited dozens of colleges and universities and interviewed hundreds of faculty, students and administrators. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country, most often this one, and I have written two widely reviewed books on higher education as well.
As I wrote in the book I published shortly before the Chronicle hired me, "It is not merely that [many] departments approach African-American studies from a particular perspective—an Africa-centered one in which blacks residing in America today are still deeply hobbled by the legacy of slavery. It's that course and department descriptions often appear to be a series of axes that faculty members would like to grind."
But why take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs."
Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black."
My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. Scholars like Roland Fryer in Harvard's economics department have done pathbreaking research on the causes of economic disparities between blacks and whites. And Eugene Genovese's work on slavery and the role of religion in black American history retains its seminal role in the field decades after its publication.
But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.
As Ellen Schrecker, a Yeshiva University historian, writes in her book "The Lost Soul of Higher Education," political ends were the goals of the founders of black studies. Ms. Schrecker—who is, by the way, sympathetic to these political goals—explains that the discipline's proponents "viewed these programs as contributions to the continuing struggle for racial justice, not as conventional academic courses of study."
My longtime familiarity with the absurdities of higher education did not, I confess, prepare me for this most absurd of results. The content of my post, after all, is hardly shocking; the same thing could have been written 30 years ago. And perhaps that's the most depressing part of all this. Despite the real social and economic advancement that has been made by blacks in this country, the American faculty is still stuck in the 1960s.
Ms. Riley, a former Journal editor, is author of "The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For" (Ivan, R. Dee, 2011) and "God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America" (St. Martin's, 2005).
-
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/19/outraged-parent-speaks-out-after-rhode-island-school-district-bans-father-daughter-dances/
Also
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/06/11/ny-principal-bans-god-bless-the-usa-in-favor-of-justin-bieber-song-at-kindergarten-graduation-lee-greenwood-outraged-parent-and-adorable-kindergartner-speak-out-about-the-move/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB0xWs4GVFk&feature=share
-
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2012/10/08/goodbye-to-the-army-and-marines-political-correctness-has-taken-over/
Goodbye To The Army And Marines: Political Correctness Has Taken Over
BY Herschel Smith
20 hours, 41 minutes ago
As precursors to my analysis, take note of the following inconsistencies and contradictions. First, Dr. Steve Metz, Professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in response to Sharia is coming, left this comment: “Should we worry about the creeping influence of the Boy Scout laws? More people follow that in the United States than sharia.” Note well. Steve is comparing Boy Scout law with Sharia law. This Boy Scout law – compared to this sharia law.
On the other hand, because of political correctness, in the Spring of this year, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam. The course he taught, Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism, was an elective course that Lt. Col. Dooley’s superiors judged as presenting Islam in a negative way. His superiors were persuaded to come to this conclusion after receiving an October 2011 letter in which 57 Muslim organizations claimed to be offended by the course. The fact that Lt. Col. Dooley is a highly decorated combat veteran with nearly 20 years of service under his belt apparently held little or no sway with the JCS. As a matter of fact, JCS Chairman General Martin Dempsey “personally attacked” Lt. Col. Dooley on C-Span on May 10, 2012, during a Pentagon News Conference.
Next, take note of the fact that females are now matriculating at infantry officer training at Quantico. This is certainly in line with Andrew Exum’s counsel concerning his own branch of the service: “I see no compelling reason why women should not be allowed to attend Ranger School. As far as I am concerned, if a woman really wants to run around a sawdust pit at two in the morning screaming “Ranger!” while periodically stopping to low-crawl for 50 meters, we have a constitutional — nay God-given — responsibility to allow her to do so.”
But now consider what Former Spook observes concerning women in combat MOS.
Almost 20 years ago, columnist Fred Reed published results of an Army study, comparing fitness levels among male and female soldiers. The data reaffirms that most women simply lack the upper body strength and endurance required by an Army infantryman, a Marine rifleman, or most special forces MOS’s.
The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men.
The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:
Women’s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.
In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.
Finally, take note of the undercurrents in the suicide prevention department of the DoD. We can trust our men with the most lethal weapons known to mankind, but the desire now is to give commanding officers authority over personally owned weapons. As one commenter has noted, the concept of “at risk” is subjective, which is the same reason that such medical assessments cannot ever be allowed to preclude the right to own firearms in the civilian community.
My son routinely hauled 120 pound(+) kit off the line as a fleet Marine, including his time in Fallujah, Iraq, between body armor (including SAPI plates), backpack, weapon, SAW drums plus ammunition, hydration system, and so on and so forth. Recall this picture from the assault into Helmand in the summer of 2009?
This Marine is carrying his kit plus a mortar plate. He is probably crossing the line at greater than 150 pounds.
My son trained as a fleet Marine before the age of political correctness. Strong, male Marines – not reserve Marines, but hard core regular duty infantry Marines – would need to take several shots of whiskey and 1000 mg of Ibuprofen to kill the pain prior to their twenty miles humps with full kit on 100 degree F (+) days at Camp Lejeune. Negligent discharges brought a season in the so-called “room of pain.” Laying back on the humps brought time in the room of pain. Failing to qualify well on the range brought time in the room of pain.
Fun time involved laying down to sleep in the swamp overnight at Camp Lejeune (as ordered) and having to strip naked the next morning so that your buddies could burn the leeches off with cigarettes. Or, how about that extended time at Fort A.P. Hill when the NCOs gradually removed everything the Marines had, from tent, to sleeping bag, to food, to winter clothing. Then, it was time to sleep one winter night on that outing, and there was no way to stay alive unless Marines huddled, hugged, laid down together, shivered and threw leaves over themselves for the night.
You get the picture. But my son left the U.S. Marine Corps because, in his own words, “the Corps is changing.” He couldn’t train his boot Marines the same way he was trained. He wasn’t allowed. He had initially intended to extend so that he could go to Afghanistan with his boot Marines because he felt responsible for them. But he believed that a lot of good men would perish in Afghanistan, and that he couldn’t make a difference in that. So he left, along with all of the other Marines who had experience from Iraq.
If you have some sort of androgynous, genderless vision for the armed forces – if you believe that Navy Corpsmen should be able to treat the field diseases of both men and women and understand what mud and parasites in the various different cracks and crevasses and holes of men and women do, if you believe that men and women are on equal footing pertaining to physical abilities, if you believe that machines like the ridiculous Army future combat systems robotics and the silly machines like the big dog can ever replace mules and the backs of infantry Marines, if you believe that men and women will be able to interact socially as a cohesive fighting unit without the behavior that attends the opposite sexes – I think you’re weird and creepy. Not that we can’t be friends, but just that you’re weird and creepy, at least to me. Machines cannot replace strong men, and even the Russians found out in Afghanistan that women had a higher number of lower extremity injuries than men, causing severe under-manning of forces. Exum believes that we have a constitutional and God-given duty to allow women in Ranger school. I’m a constitutional aficionado with seminary training, and I don’t think Exum can prove either of those assertions.
As for Steve Metz, he isn’t stupid, he has just let his political and religious bigotry cloud his scholarship, leading to the stupid things he said about Sharia law. But it’s okay to have Steve Metz saying those things as long as we don’t let contrary positions be taught. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?
As for the personal possession of guns by Soldiers and Marines, how about this proposition. We remove the ridiculous rules of engagement under which they operate and give them a coherent strategy, and see how our fighting men respond. If not well, then I would be willing to spend some extra dollars to help assess PTSD. But I’m betting I won’t have to spend a dime of that money.
As for the Army, I kind of expect this sort of thing. But the Marines were supposed to be different. They’re not, and political correctness proves it. It’s a sad thing to watch the diminishing of the U.S. Marine Corps, once the greatest fighting and strike force on earth, to political hackery. I hold the Commandant of the Marine Corps responsible, at least in part. I also hold responsible a public who allows this kind of thing without pulling the plug on the absurdity of the use of our armed forces for every social engineering experiment that appeals to the self-professed intellectual elites. And finally, it’s a shame that I have to mention the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the nations “intellectual elite” in the same breath. How very sad is all of this?
-
How Free Speech Died on Campus
A young activist describes how universities became the most authoritarian institutions in America.
By SOHRAB AHMARI
New York
At Yale University, you can be prevented from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on your T-shirt. At Tufts, you can be censured for quoting certain passages from the Quran. Welcome to the most authoritarian institution in America: the modern university—"a bizarre, parallel dimension," as Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calls it.
Mr. Lukianoff, a 38-year-old Stanford Law grad, has spent the past decade fighting free-speech battles on college campuses. The latest was last week at Fordham University, where President Joseph McShane scolded College Republicans for the sin of inviting Ann Coulter to speak.
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, on the battle for free speech on college campuses. Photo: Getty Images
"To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans . . . would be a tremendous understatement," Mr. McShane said in a Nov. 9 statement condemning the club's invitation to the caustic conservative pundit. He vowed to "hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed."
To be clear, Mr. McShane didn't block Ms. Coulter's speech, but he said that her presence would serve as a "test" for Fordham. A day later, the students disinvited Ms. Coulter. Mr. McShane then praised them for having taken "responsibility for their decisions" and expressing "their regrets sincerely and eloquently."
Mr. Lukianoff says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level: "This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."
I caught up with Mr. Lukianoff at New York University in downtown Manhattan, where he was once targeted by the same speech restrictions that he has built a career exposing. Six years ago, a student group at the university invited him to participate in a panel discussion about the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that had sparked violent rioting by Muslims across the world.
When Muslim students protested the event, NYU threatened to close the panel to the public if the offending cartoons were displayed. The discussion went on—without the cartoons. Instead, the student hosts displayed a blank easel, registering their own protest.
"The people who believe that colleges and universities are places where we want less freedom of speech have won," Mr. Lukianoff says. "If anything, there should be even greater freedom of speech on college campuses. But now things have been turned around to give campus communities the expectation that if someone's feelings are hurt by something that is said, the university will protect that person. As soon as you allow something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings, anything and everything can be punished."
You might say Greg Lukianoff was born to fight college censorship. With his unruly red hair and a voice given to booming, he certainly looks and sounds the part. His ethnically Irish, British-born mother moved to America during the 1960s British-nanny fad, while his Russian father came from Yugoslavia to study at the University of Wisconsin. Russian history, Mr. Lukianoff says, "taught me about the worst things that can happen with good intentions."
Growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in Danbury, Conn., sharpened his views. When "you had so many people from so many different backgrounds, free speech made intuitive sense," Mr. Lukianoff recalls. "In every genuinely diverse community I've ever lived in, freedom of speech had to be the rule. . . . I find it deeply ironic that on college campuses diversity is used as an argument against unbridled freedom of speech."
After graduating from Stanford, where he specialized in First Amendment law, he joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization co-founded in 1999 by civil-rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate and Alan Charles Kors, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to counter the growing but often hidden threats to free speech in academia. FIRE's tactics include waging publicity campaigns intended to embarrass college administrators into dropping speech-related disciplinary charges against individual students, or reversing speech-restricting policies. When that fails, FIRE often takes its cases to court, where it tends to prevail.
In his new book, "Unlearning Liberty," Mr. Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas.
"What's disappointing and rightfully scorned," Mr. Lukianoff says, "is that in some cases the very professors who were benefiting from the free-speech movement turned around to advocate speech codes and speech zones in the 1980s and '90s."
Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website, and Mr. Lukianoff's book offers an eye-opening sampling. What they share is a view of "harassment" so broad and so removed from its legal definition that, Mr. Lukianoff says, "literally every student on campus is already guilty."
At Western Michigan University, it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." That just about sums up the line "I think of all Harvard men as sissies" (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 novel "This Side of Paradise"), a quote that was banned at Yale when students put it on a T-shirt. Tufts University in Boston proscribes the holding of "sexist attitudes," and a student newspaper there was found guilty of harassment in 2007 for printing violent passages from the Quran and facts about the status of women in Saudi Arabia during the school's "Islamic Awareness Week."
At California State University in Chico, it was prohibited until recently to engage in "continual use of generic masculine terms such as to refer to people of both sexes or references to both men and women as necessarily heterosexual." Luckily, there is no need to try to figure out what the school was talking about—the prohibition was removed earlier this year after FIRE named it as one of its two "Speech Codes of the Year" in 2011.
At Northeastern University, where I went to law school, it is a violation of the Internet-usage policy to transmit any message "which in the sole judgment" of administrators is "annoying."
Conservatives and libertarians are especially vulnerable to such charges of harassment. Even though Mr. Lukianoff's efforts might aid those censorship victims, he hardly counts himself as one of them: He says that he is a lifelong Democrat and a "passionate believer" in gay marriage and abortion rights. And free speech. "If you're going to get in trouble for an opinion on campus, it's more likely for a socially conservative opinion."
Consider the two students at Colorado College who were punished in 2008 for satirizing a gender-studies newsletter. The newsletter had included boisterous references to "male castration," "feminist porn" and other unprintable matters. The satire, published by the "Coalition of Some Dudes," tamely discussed "chainsaw etiquette" ("your chainsaw is not an indoor toy") and offered quotations from Teddy Roosevelt and menshealth.com. The college found the student satirists guilty of "the juxtaposition of weaponry and sexuality."
"Even when we win our cases," says Mr. Lukianoff, "the universities almost never apologize to the students they hurt or the faculty they drag through the mud." Brandeis University has yet to withdraw a 2007 finding of racial harassment against Prof. Paul Hindley for explaining the origins of "wetback" in a Latin-American Studies course. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis apologized to a janitor found guilty of harassment—for reading a book celebrating the defeat of the Ku Klux Klan in the presence of two black colleagues—but only after protests by FIRE and an op-ed in these pages by Dorothy Rabinowitz.
What motivates college administrators to act so viciously? "It's both self-interest and ideological commitment," Mr. Lukianoff says. On the ideological front, "it's almost like you flip a switch, and these administrators, who talk so much about treating every student with dignity and compassion, suddenly come to see one student as a caricature of societal evil."
Administrative self-interest is also at work. "There's been this huge expansion in the bureaucratic class at universities," Mr. Lukianoff explains. "They passed the number of people involved in instruction sometime around 2006. So you get this ever-renewing crop of administrators, and their jobs aren't instruction but to police student behavior. In the worst cases, they see it as their duty to intervene on students' deepest beliefs."
Consider the University of Delaware, which in fall 2007 instituted an ideological orientation for freshmen. The "treatment," as the administrators called it, included personal interviews that probed students' private lives with such questions as: "When did you discover your sexual identity?" Students were taught in group sessions that the term racist "applies to all white people" while "people of color cannot be racists." Once FIRE spotlighted it, the university dismantled the program.
Yet in March 2012, Kathleen Kerr, the architect of the Delaware program, was elected vice president of the American College Personnel Association, the professional group of university administrators.
A 2010 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities found that of 24,000 college students, only 35.6% strongly agreed that "it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus." When the question was asked of 9,000 campus professionals—who are more familiar with the enforcement end of the censorship rules—only 18.8% strongly agreed.
Mr. Lukianoff thinks all of this should alarm students, parents and alumni enough to demand change: "If just a handful more students came in knowing what administrators are doing at orientation programs, with harassment codes, or free-speech zones—if students knew this was wrong—we could really change things."
The trouble is that students are usually intimidated into submission. "The startling majority of students don't bother. They're too concerned about their careers, too concerned about their grades, to bother fighting back," he says. Parents and alumni dismiss free-speech restrictions as something that only happens to conservatives, or that will never affect their own children.
"I make the point that this is happening, and even if it's happening to people you don't like, it's a fundamental violation of what the university means," says Mr. Lukianoff. "Free speech is about protecting minority rights. Free speech is about admitting you don't know everything. Free speech is about protecting oddballs. It means protecting dissenters."
It even means letting Ann Coulter speak.
Mr. Ahmari is an assistant books editor at the Journal.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/uk-couple-loses-foster-children-for-supporting-conservative-party/
-
http://washingtonexaminer.com/suspension-revoked-for-montgomery-county-6-year-old-who-made-pretend-gunshot/article/2517618#.UOubvqzIm2c
-
http://news.yahoo.com/pa-kindergartner-suspended-bubble-gun-remark-035057936.html
-
Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast
Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal..
By JUDITH E. GROSSMAN
I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women's rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.
But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of "nonconsensual sex" that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.
What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice's looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.
It began with a text of desperation. "CALL ME. URGENT. NOW."
That was how my son informed me that not only had charges been brought against him but that he was ordered to appear to answer these allegations in a matter of days. There was no preliminary inquiry on the part of anyone at the school into these accusations about behavior alleged to have taken place a few years earlier, no consideration of the possibility that jealousy or revenge might be motivating a spurned young ex-lover to lash out. Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.
In fact, Title IX, that so-called guarantor of equality between the sexes on college campuses, and as applied by a recent directive from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today's college campuses, neither "beyond a reasonable doubt," nor even the lesser "by clear and convincing evidence" standard of proof is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct.
These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as "a preponderance of the evidence." What this means, in plain English, is that all my son's accuser needed to establish before a campus tribunal is that the allegations were "more likely than not" to have occurred by a margin of proof that can be as slim as 50.1% to 49.9%.
How does this campus tribunal proceed to evaluate the accusations? Upon what evidence is it able to make a judgment?
The frightening answer is that like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, the tribunal does pretty much whatever it wants, showing scant regard for fundamental fairness, due process of law, and the well-established rules and procedures that have evolved under the Constitution for citizens' protection. Who knew that American college students are required to surrender the Bill of Rights at the campus gates?
My son was given written notice of the charges against him, in the form of a letter from the campus Title IX officer. But instead of affording him the right to be fully informed, the separately listed allegations were a barrage of vague statements, rendering any defense virtually impossible. The letter lacked even the most basic information about the acts alleged to have happened years before. Nor were the allegations supported by any evidence other than the word of the ex-girlfriend.
The hearing itself was a two-hour ordeal of unabated grilling by the school's committee, during which, my son later reported, he was expressly denied his request to be represented by counsel or even to have an attorney outside the door of the room. The questioning, he said, ran far afield even from the vaguely stated allegations contained in the so-called notice. Questions from the distant past, even about unrelated matters, were flung at him with no opportunity for him to give thoughtful answers.
The many pages of written documentation that my son had put together—which were directly on point about his relationship with his accuser during the time period of his alleged wrongful conduct—were dismissed as somehow not relevant. What was relevant, however, according to the committee, was the unsworn testimony of "witnesses" deemed to have observable knowledge about the long-ago relationship between my son and his accuser.
That the recollections of these young people (made under intense peer pressure and with none of the safeguards consistent with fundamental fairness) were relevant—while records of the accuser's email and social media postings were not—made a mockery of the very term. While my son was instructed by the committee not to "discuss this matter" with any potential witnesses, these witnesses against him were not identified to him, nor was he allowed to confront or question either them or his accuser.
Thankfully, I happen to be an attorney and had the resources to provide the necessary professional assistance to my son. The charges against him were ultimately dismissed but not before he and our family had to suffer through this ordeal. I am of course relieved and most grateful for this outcome. Yet I am also keenly aware not only of how easily this all could have gone the other way—with life-altering consequences—but how all too often it does.
Across the country and with increasing frequency, innocent victims of impossible-to-substantiate charges are afforded scant rights to fundamental fairness and find themselves entrapped in a widening web of this latest surge in political correctness. Few have a lawyer for a mother, and many may not know about the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which assisted me in my research.
There are very real and horrifying instances of sexual misconduct and abuse on college campuses and elsewhere. That these offenses should be investigated and prosecuted where appropriate is not open to question. What does remain a question is how we can make the process fair for everyone.
I fear that in the current climate the goal of "women's rights," with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice—not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.
Ms. Grossman, an attorney and mother, lives in New York City.
-
Ms Grossman, may I suggest you get rid of Ms mag and join this group:
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/04/title-ix-sexual-assault-directive-has.html
-
BoR doesn't really have a place in the college judicial board type of hearing.
That said, I appreciate much of the author's points.
-
BoR certainly does not apply to a private school, but what is the analysis here?
"These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as "a preponderance of the evidence.""
-
BoR certainly does not apply to a private school, but what is the analysis here?
"These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as "a preponderance of the evidence.""
But there is no due process constitutionally safeguarded at the college. The college is free to use "a preponderance of the evidence." And, as I said, for the most part I agree with issues being presented.
-
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/05/02/bloomberg-refused-second-slice-of-pizza-at-local-restaurant/
Politics
Bloomberg Refused Second Slice of Pizza at Local Restaurant
May. 02, 2013
Tweet
doombergNew York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was denied a second slice of pizza today at an Italian eatery in Brooklyn.
The owners of Collegno's Pizzeria say they refused to serve him more than one piece to protest Bloomberg's proposed soda ban,which would limit the portions of soda sold in the city.
Bloomberg was having an informal working lunch with city comptroller John Liu at the time and was enraged by the embarrassing prohibition. The owners would not relent, however, and the pair were forced to decamp to another restaurant to finish their meal.
Witnesses say the situation unfolded when as the two were looking over budget documents, they realized they needed more food than originally ordered.
"Hey, could I get another pepperoni over here?" Bloomberg asked owner Antonio Benito.
"I'm sorry sir," he replied, "we can't do that. You've reached your personal slice limit."
Stop and Tisk
Mayor Bloomberg, not accustomed to being challenged, assumed that the owner was joking.
"OK, that's funny," he remarked, "because of the soda thing ... No come on. I'm not kidding. I haven't eaten all morning, just send over another pepperoni."
"I'm sorry sir. We're serious," Benito insisted. "We've decided that eating more than one piece isn't healthy for you, and so we're forbidding you from doing it."
"Look jackass," Bloomberg retorted, his anger boiling, "I fucking skipped breakfast this morning just so I could eat four slices of your pizza. Don't be a schmuck, just get back to the kitchen and bring out some fucking pizza, okay."
"I'm sorry sir, there's nothing I can do," the owner repeated. "Maybe you could go to several restaurants and get one slice at each. At least that way you're walking. You know, burning calories."
Witnesses say a fuming Bloomberg and a bemused Liu did indeed walk down the street to a rival pizzeria , ordered another slice and finished their meeting.
New York's so-called "soda ban" would have limited the size of sweetened beverages served in restaurants to 16 oz (0.5 liters). The plan, backed by Mayor Bloomberg, is currently being held up by a U.S. district court.
Bloomberg has been the mayor of New York City since 2002. Theretofore he was the CEO of Bloomberg LP, the world's leading financial data firm. His personal fortune is estimated at around $27 billion.
-
Second entry of the day:
Veracity unknown and it is odd that Senator Reid is called a "congressman" but too fun to pass up :-)
========================================
It just all depends on how you look at some things...
Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher in southern California , was
doing some personal work on her own family tree. She discovered that
Congressman Harry Reid's great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse
stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share
this common ancestor.
The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the
gallows in Montana territory:
On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this inscription:
'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped
1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives,
convicted and hanged in 1889.'
So Judy recently e-mailed Congressman Harry Reid for information about their
great-great uncle.
Believe it or not, Harry Reid's staff sent back the following biographical sketch
for her genealogy research:
"Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several
years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed
away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform
upon which he was standing collapsed."
NOW THAT's how it's done, Folks!
-
Sen. Reid was a congressman back when Paul Laxalt held that Senate seat.
Very funny writing! I hope that line never gets into my obit: He "passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."
-
Bloomberg is fully deserving of this, but I have to think this one is a great spoof.
His taxi driver should give him a ride half way back, pull over, open the door, and tell him that walking the rest would better for him.
-------
The story reminds me of Scott Ott's writings on Scappleface:
Weeping First Lady Pushes Chicago to Ban Stolen Guns
April 11th, 2013 Scott Ott
First Lady calls on Chicago to ban stolen guns
First Lady Michelle Obama, in an intensely personal speech Wednesday, called for Chicago to ban stolen handguns, the most commonly-used murder weapon, in a city that tallied more than 500 murders last year.
-----
April 18th, 2013 Scott Ott
Obamacare to Cover Train Wrecks, White House Says
-----
April 1st, 2013, Obama Declares April 1 ‘Fiscal Responsibility Day’
http://scrappleface.com/
-
http://now.msn.com/school-says-deaf-boys-name-sign-looks-too-much-like-a-gun
-
Surely I am no fan of Anthony Weiner mainly because he is a liberal, but this gay infitada thing is getting really tiring. Now some gays are going after Weiner because he didn't express enough immediate moral outrage of the word "dyke" spoken by some stranger he was standing next to:
http://politicker.com/2013/06/state-legisaltors-slam-anthony-weiner-for-lack-of-moral-courage/
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/22/bill-maher-defends-paula-deen-after-firing-do-we-always-have-to-make-people-go-away/
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/24/fu-all-you-libtards-out-there-police-chief-records-explosive-and-vulgar-youtube-rants-should-he-lose-his-job/
I think he would have been better advised to stay out of uniform for this, and not shooting at an effigy of Nancy Pelosi would have been the better course of actions, but I admit to a certain immature pleasure at all of this , , ,
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/24/fu-all-you-libtards-out-there-police-chief-records-explosive-and-vulgar-youtube-rants-should-he-lose-his-job/
I think he would have been better advised to stay out of uniform for this, and not shooting at an effigy of Nancy Pelosi would have been the better course of actions, but I admit to a certain immature pleasure at all of this , , ,
Oof! I don't think this was a well thought out idea. If he wasn't identified by his title/agency, that's a bit different. He better have some sort of civil service protection and a good legal defense plan.
-
Seattle city officials: The terms 'citizen' and 'brown bag' are too offensive to say
Published by: Dan Calabrese
And don't you dare wish anyone a happy birthday.
A long time ago, I spent a couple of years working in local government. It wasn't a big city, and while the P.C. era was already underway (the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings occurred during this period), I don't recall the good folks at the Charter Township of Canton wasting much if any time on nonsense like this.
But boy do they dive into it in Seattle, as Fox News reports. The term "citizens" is too offensive because of all the non-citizens living in the city, paying taxes, blah blah blah. And as for brown bags, well, if you say that you might as well be segregating drinking fountains and lunch counters, Mr. Grand Wizard. Elliott Bronstein of the city's Office of Civil Rights explains to KIRO Radio:
"For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.
According to the memo, city employees should use the terms "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" instead of "brown bag."
Oh, and Bronstein doesn't want you wishing anyone happy birthday either, because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays, and you never know who might be within earshot so as to become offended.
I would love to know how much time and money cities spend on nonsense like this. It's not just that they pay the salaries of people like Bronstein, but typically policies like this are also reviewed by lawyers - either someone on the city attorney's staff or an outside firm that charges by the hour. You can never be sure the kind of time and resources the employees of any governmental unit might spend indulging their own little intellectual fetishes as opposed to serving the citizens, er, sorry, residents.
It's another pretty good argument for smaller government, though. A bare-bones operation doesn't have time for crap like this.
-
http://www.guns.com/2013/08/08/nyc-dept-of-education-pushes-to-ban-50-forbidden-words-from-standardized-tests/
-
http://www.dennisprager.com/columns.aspx?g=b31f3b6c-7beb-41a5-b15a-e0e1d0bd4812&url=nis-prager-n1662604
-
http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/blog/2013/09/03/to-ensure-every-child-wins-ontario-athletic-association-removes-ball-from-soccer/index.html
-
http://www.cbc.ca/thisisthat/blog/2013/09/03/to-ensure-every-child-wins-ontario-athletic-association-removes-ball-from-soccer/index.html
Ball-less captures it perfectly.
-
I like to think I do have my moments :lol: :lol: :lol:
-
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134122/China_dominates_NSA_backed_coding_contest_
China dominates NSA-backed coding contest
Chinese student, 18, wins, prompting call for earlier math and science education in U.S.
By Patrick Thibodeau
June 8, 2009 04:24 PM ET
Computerworld - Programmers from China and Russia have dominated an international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components.
Winner: Bin Jin, or 'crazyb0y.'
Whether the outcome of this competition is another sign that math and science education in the U.S. needs improvement may spur debate. But the fact remains: Of 70 finalists, 20 were from China, 10 from Russia and two from the U.S.
TopCoder Inc., which runs software competitions as part of its software development service, operates TopCoder Open, an annual contest.
About 4,200 people participated in the U.S. National Security Agency-supported challenge. The NSA has been sponsoring the program for a number of years because of its interest in hiring people with advanced skills.
Participants in the contest, which was open to anyone -- from student to professional -- and finished with 120 competitors from around the world, went through a process of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas.
China's showing in the finals was also helped by the sheer volume of its numbers, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers were finalists. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128, among others.
Of the total number of contestants, 93% were male, and 84% were aged between 18 and 24.
Rob Hughes, president and COO of TopCoder, said the strong finish by programmers from China, Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere is indicative of the importance those countries put on mathematics and science education.
"We do the same thing with athletics here that they do with mathematics and science there," Hughes said. He said the U.S. needs to make earlier inroads in middle schools and high school math and science education.
That's a point Hughes is hardly alone on. President Barack Obama, as well as many of the major tech leaders including Bill Gates, have called for similar action.
Of the participants in the contest, more than 57% had bachelor's degrees, most in computer science, and of that 20% had earned a masters degree, and 6% a PhD.
But the winner of the algorithm competition was an 18-year-old student from China, Bin Jin, who went by the handle "crazyb0y". Chinese programmers have a history of doing very well in this contest.
Mike Lydon, TopCoder's CTO, said Jin's future in computer science is assured. "This gentleman can do whatever he wants," he said.
The participants are tested in design, development, architecture, among others, but one of the most popular is the algorithm coding contest.
To give some sense of difficulty, Lydon provided a description of a problem that the contestants were asked to solve:
"With the rise of services such as Facebook and MySpace, the analysis and understanding of such networks is a particularly active area of current computer science research. At an abstract level, these networks consist of nodes (people), connected by links (friendship).
"In this problem, competitors were given the description of two such networks, but with the names of all the nodes removed from each. The networks were each scrambled up before given to the competitors. The task was to determine if the two networks could possibly be from the same group of people.
"The competitors were to unscramble and label the two networks so that if Alice was connected to Bob in one of the two networks, then Alice was also connected to Bob in the other network. This problem is known as the network isomorphism problem, and solving it for large networks is a major unsolved problem in the realm of theoretical computer science."
Lydon said the overall problem is unsolved for larger networks, and what's considered a correct answer for this problem would not be considered large enough for the solution in this case to be groundbreaking.
Two people solved the problem.
**But, American students totally dominated in the self-esteem catagory!!!
-
We got Lebron James!
We also got the best gardeners in the world!
Take that China!
-
Should this go under humor? Watch for the Huma and Anthony divorce announcement shortly after the election. I still say it was absolutely no coincidence that he tanked in NYC polls only after comparisons were being made to Hillary Bill. The machine went to work and he is cast adrift. He could get a job as host to one of those LA comedy clubs.
In any case, Carlos' dagger:
http://gawker.com/5809909/anthony-weiners-cock-shot-emerges
-
I hope this is true , , ,
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/peta-crashes-biker-gathering-not-to-be-missed/27275
-
Alas, it is not http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/leatherprotest.asp
-
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100238080/im-sorry-but-we-have-to-talk-about-the-barbarism-of-modern-islamist-terrorism/
I'm sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern Islamist terrorism
By Brendan O'Neill
The aftermath of an Islamist bomb directed at Pakistani Shiites (Photo: AFP/Getty)
In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC's yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word – terrorism – in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how new and unusual it is, how different it is even from the terrorism of the 1970s or of the early twentieth century. We owe it to the victims of these assaults, and to the principle of honest and frank political debate, to face up to the unhinged, morally unanchored nature of Islamist violence in the 21st century.
Maybe it’s because we have become so inured to Islamist terrorism in the 12 years since 9/11 that even something like the blowing-up of 85 Christians outside a church in Pakistan no longer shocks us or even makes it on to many newspaper front pages. But consider what happened: two men strapped with explosives walked into a group of men, women and children who were queuing for food and blew up themselves and the innocents gathered around them. Who does that? How far must a person have drifted from any basic system of moral values to behave in such an unrestrained and wicked fashion? Yet the Guardian tells us it is “moral masturbation” to express outrage over this attack, and it would be better to give into a “sober recognition that there are many bad things we can’t as a matter of fact do much about”. This is a demand that we further acclimatise to the peculiar and perverse bloody Islamist attacks around the world, shrug our shoulders, put away our moral compasses, and say: “Ah well, this kind of thing happens.”
Or consider the attack on Westgate in Kenya, where both the old and the young, black and white, male and female were targeted. With no clear stated aims from the people who carried the attack out, and no logic to their strange and brutal behaviour, Westgate had more in common with those mass mall and school shootings that are occasionally carried out by disturbed people in the West than it did with the political violence of yesteryear. And yet still observers avoid using the T-word or the M-word (murder) to describe what happened there, and instead attach all sorts of made-up, see-through political theories to this rampage, giving what was effectively a terror tantrum executed by morally unrestrained Islamists the respectability of being a political protest of some breed.
Time and again, one reads about Islamist attacks that seem to defy not only the most basic of humanity’s moral strictures but also political and even guerrilla logic. Consider the hundreds of suicide attacks that have taken place in Iraq in recent years, a great number of them against ordinary Iraqis, often children. Western apologists for this wave of weird violence, which they call “resistance”, claim it is about fighting against the Western forces which were occupying Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion. If so, it’s the first “resistance” in history whose prime targets have been civilians rather than security forces, and which has failed to put forward any kind of political programme that its violence is allegedly designed to achieve. Even experts in counterinsurgency have found themselves perplexed by the numerous nameless suicide assaults on massive numbers of civilians in post-war Iraq, and the fact that these violent actors, unlike the vast majority of violent political actors in history, have “developed no alternative government or political wing and displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern”. One Iraqi attack has stuck in my mind for seven years. In 2006 a female suicide bomber blew herself up among families – including many mothers and their offspring – who were queuing up for kerosene. Can you imagine what happened? A terrible glimpse was offered by this line in a Washington Post report on 24 September 2006: “Two pre-teen girls embraced each other as they burned to death.”
What motivates this perversity? What are its origins? Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to face up to the newness of this unrestrained, aim-free, civilian-targeting violence, Western observers do all sorts of moral contortions in an effort to present such violence as run-of-the-mill or even possibly a justifiable response to Western militarism. Some say, “Well, America kills women and children too, in its drone attacks”, wilfully overlooking the fact such people are not the targets of America’s military interventions – and I say that as someone who has opposed every American venture overseas of the past 20 years. If you cannot see the difference between a drone strike that goes wrong and kills an entire family and a man who crashes his car into the middle of a group of children accepting sweets from a US soldier and them blows himself and them up – as happened in Iraq in 2005 – then there is something wrong with you. Other observers say that Islamists, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the individuals who attacked London and New York, are fighting against Western imperialism in Muslim lands. But that doesn’t add up. How does blowing up Iraqi children represent a strike against American militarism? How is detonating a bomb on the London Underground a stab at the Foreign Office? It is ridiculous, and more than a little immoral, to try to dress up nihilistic assaults designed merely to kill as many ordinary people as possible as some kind of principled political violence.
We have a tendency to overlook the newness of modern Islamic terrorism, how recent is this emergence of a totally suicidal violence that revels in causing as many causalities as possible. Yes, terrorism has existed throughout the modern era, but not like this. Consider the newness of suicide attacks, of terrorists who destroy themselves as well as their surroundings and fellow citizens. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were an average of one or two suicide attacks a year. Across the whole world. Since the early and mid-2000s there have been around 300 or 400 suicide attacks a year. In 2006 there were more suicide attacks around the world than had taken place in the entire 20 years previous. Terrorists’ focus on killing civilians – the more the better – is also new. If you look at the 20 bloodiest terrorist attacks in human history, measured by the number of causalities they caused, you’ll see something remarkable: 14 of them – 14 – took place in the 1990s and 2000s. So in terms of mass death and injury, those terrorist eras of the 1970s and 80s, and also earlier outbursts of anarchist terrorism, pale into insignificance when compared with the new, Islamist-leaning terrorism that has emerged in recent years.
What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims. The question is, why? It is not moral masturbation to ask this question or to point out the peculiarity and perversity of modern Islamist violence. My penny’s worth is that this terrorism speaks to a profound crisis of politics and of morality. Where earlier terrorist groups were restrained both by their desire to appear as rational political actors with a clear goal in mind and by basic moral rules of human behaviour – meaning their violence was often bloody, yes, but rarely focused narrowly on committing mass murder – today’s Islamist terrorists appear to float free of normal political rules and moral compunctions. This is what is so infuriating about the BBC’s refusal to call these groups terrorists – because if anything, and historically speaking, even the term terrorist might be too good for them.
-
With tongue in cheek I ask when is it ok for Blacks to hunt down Chinese people on the street and beat them mercilessly. Where is the racial outrage?
http://nypost.com/2013/10/02/da-wont-charge-bike-assault-thug-in-suv-beating/
-
With tongue in cheek I ask when is it ok for Blacks to hunt down Chinese people on the street and beat them mercilessly. Where is the racial outrage?
http://nypost.com/2013/10/02/da-wont-charge-bike-assault-thug-in-suv-beating/
Most asians are too busy working hard to indulge in racial card playing. Besides, only whites can commit hate crimes.
-
Obama said he is offended by the Redskins name.
Well I'm offended by the "giants" name. I am not that tall so that has got to go.
I'm offended by the "Viking" name. Vikings were rapists, murderers, thieves, and plunderers.
What about the New Orleans "saints' . This offends me. I am Jewish but I don't see any team named after "menches".
The "buccaneers?" Weren't they pirates thieves, liars, con artists, and in general low lives?
The Houston Oilers really pisses me off. Oil is destroying our planet. Better name them the windmills.
And the "patriots?" Why they were all slave holders!
I want them all changed. I am one person who is offended! What is going on here?
-
Obama said he is offended by the Redskins name.
Well I'm offended by the "giants" name. I am not that tall so that has got to go.
I'm offended by the "Viking" name. Vikings were rapists, murderers, thieves, and plunderers.
What about the New Orleans "saints' . This offends me. I am Jewish but I don't see any team named after "menches".
The "buccaneers?" Weren't they pirates thieves, liars, con artists, and in general low lives?
The Houston Oilers really pisses me off. Oil is destroying our planet. Better name them the windmills.
And the "patriots?" Why they were all slave holders!
I want them all changed. I am one person who is offended! What is going on here?
Very funny! My red-haired daughter gets quite red-skinned after sunshine exposure or exercise. Maybe she is offended too.
One of the naming controversies related to one of America's great hockey colleges, formerly known as the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, 8-time NCAA champions. They lost the mascot, but shouldn't they lose the school and state names too. Sioux is native American and Dakota is not?? I suppose 'North' is judgmental too! We are left with no names and I suppose no scores either. Those can be most offensive.
-
'Let's Move!' Stamp Punted
"Let's Move!" Or not. According to the Postal Blog, the entire fleet of Just Move! stamps will be pulled. Here's the kicker: They're worried about the depiction of kids exercising recreational activities without proper protective gear. "With the Just Move! stamp issuance the U.S. Postal Service hoped to raise awareness about the importance of physical activity in achieving a healthy lifestyle," the report says. "However, according to Linns Stamp News, the USPS will be destroying the entire press run after receiving concerns from the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over alleged 'unsafe' acts depicted on three of the stamps..." For Michelle Obama, it's one loss after another.
-
Who was of Sioux heritage!
******Do You Know the History Behind the Name ‘Washington Redskins’?
Oct. 11, 2013 12:21pm Erica Ritz
Do you know the history of the Washington Redskins? As the issue becomes increasingly contentious — with many claiming the name is racist or discriminatory and pushing for a change — Glenn Beck tackled the issue head-on Friday.
“Ninety percent of Native Americans feel that the name isn’t offensive and shouldn’t be changed,” Beck remarked, echoing a letter written by the Redskins owner Dan Snyder to fans. “Students at primarily Native American schools all across America wear the name with pride, and say now they’re afraid they might lose the name. At Kingston Oklahoma high school, which is 58 percent Native American, the name ‘Redskins’ has been worn by its students for 104 years. In fact, ‘Redskins’ was a name first used by Native Americans.”
Glenn Beck Explains the History of the Washington Redskins
Photo via TheBlaze TV
“In 1932, the NFL team moved to the historic Fenway Park and were left under the leadership of George Preston Marshall. The very next year, Marshall changed the name to ‘Redskins.’ Why?” Beck continued. “Well that’s a good question for the president to ask … the name was changed to ‘Redskins’ to honor then-coach Lone Star Dietz, an American Sioux. So the name actually pays tribute to a great people.”
Switching to a deeply sarcastic voice, imitating those who want the name changed, Beck remarked: “But the people it pays tribute to? Oh, I guess they just don’t know any better. But Obama does. And Peter King does. And NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell does. But the majority of the Indians … don’t have a clue at all. The speech police using political correctness again to take care of these helpless, hopeless people so they are never harmed again. It’s for their own good…”
Beck said perhaps it’s not those who don’t want the name changed who are out of touch, but those “who have no connection to the Native American culture, people out there trying to draw attention to themselves.”*****
-
http://politicalblindspot.com/boy-kills-himself-after-prank/
:cry: :cry: :cry:
-
http://chicksontheright.com/posts/item/24837-that-ll-teach-her
-
Obama said he is offended by the Redskins name.
Well I'm offended by the "giants" name. I am not that tall so that has got to go.
I'm offended by the "Viking" name. Vikings were rapists, murderers, thieves, and plunderers.
What about the New Orleans "saints' . This offends me. I am Jewish but I don't see any team named after "menches".
The "buccaneers?" Weren't they pirates thieves, liars, con artists, and in general low lives?
The Houston Oilers really pisses me off. Oil is destroying our planet. Better name them the windmills.
And the "patriots?" Why they were all slave holders!
I want them all changed. I am one person who is offended! What is going on here?
The esteemed Charles Krauthammer (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-redskins-and-reason/2013/10/17/cbb11eee-374f-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_print.html):
In re the (Washington) Redskins. Should the name be changed?
I don’t like being lectured by sportscasters about ethnic sensitivity. Or advised by the president of the United States about changing team names. Or blackmailed by tribal leaders playing the race card.
I don’t like the language police ensuring that no one anywhere gives offense to anyone about anything. And I fully credit the claim of Redskins owner Dan Snyder and many passionate fans that they intend no malice or prejudice and that “Redskins” has a proud 80-year history they wish to maintain.
The fact is, however, that words don’t stand still. They evolve.
Fifty years ago the preferred, most respectful term for African Americans was Negro. The word appears 15 times in Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Negro replaced a long list of insulting words in common use during decades of public and legal discrimination.
And then, for complicated historical reasons (having to do with the black power and “black is beautiful” movements), usage changed. The preferred term is now black or African American. With a rare few legacy exceptions, Negro carries an unmistakably patronizing and demeaning tone.
If you were detailing the racial composition of Congress, you wouldn’t say: “Well, to start with, there are 44 Negroes.” If you’d been asleep for 50 years, you might. But upon being informed how the word had changed in nuance, you would stop using it and choose another.
And here’s the key point: You would stop not because of the language police. Not because you might incur a Bob Costas harangue. Not because the president would wag a finger. But simply because the word was tainted, freighted with negative connotations with which you would not want to be associated.
Proof? You wouldn’t even use the word in private, where being harassed for political incorrectness is not an issue.
Similarly, regarding the further racial breakdown of Congress, you wouldn’t say: “And by my count, there are two redskins.” It’s inconceivable, because no matter how the word was used 80 years ago, it carries invidious connotations today.
I know there are surveys that say that most Native Americans aren’t bothered by the word. But that’s not the point. My objection is not rooted in pressure from various minorities or fear of public polls or public scolds.
When I was growing up, I thought “gyp” was simply a synonym for “cheat,” and used it accordingly. It was only when I was an adult that I learned that gyp was short for gypsy. At which point, I stopped using it.
Not because I took a poll of Roma to find out if they were offended. If some mysterious disease had carried away every gypsy on the planet, and there were none left to offend, I still wouldn’t use it.
Why? Simple decency. I wouldn’t want to use a word that defines a people — living or dead, offended or not — in a most demeaning way. It’s a question not of who or how many had their feelings hurt, but of whether you want to associate yourself with a word that, for whatever historical reason having nothing to do with you, carries inherently derogatory connotations.
Years ago, the word “retarded” emerged as the enlightened substitute for such cruel terms as “feeble-minded” or “mongoloid.” Today, however, it is considered a form of denigration, having been replaced by the clumsy but now conventional “developmentally disabled.” There is no particular logic to this evolution. But it’s a social fact. Unless you’re looking to give gratuitous offense, you don’t call someone “retarded.”
Let’s recognize that there are many people of good will for whom “Washington Redskins” contains sentimental and historical attachment — and not an ounce of intended animus. So let’s turn down the temperature. What’s at issue is not high principle but adaptation to a change in linguistic nuance. A close call, though I personally would err on the side of not using the word if others are available.
How about Skins, a contraction already applied to the Washington football team? And that carries a sports connotation, as in skins vs. shirts in pickup basketball.
Choose whatever name you like. But let’s go easy on the other side. We’re not talking Brown v. Board of Education here. There’s no demand that Native Americans man the team’s offensive line. This is a matter of usage — and usage changes. If you shot a remake of 1934’s “The Gay Divorcee,” you’d have to change that title too.
Not because the lady changed but because the word did.
Hail Skins.
-
I caught this bit from CK on the BB Special Report.
Tis a rare event, but I disagree.
The team's name arose from HONORING a Native American coach. The word itself arose from translation from Native American language(s). Apparently the great majority of NA's have no objection, and many themselves use the term.
For me this is the PC progressive police on yet another pogrom and they can fcuk off.
-
CK suggests we get rid of the "red" portion of the "Redskins". And then use the "skins" portion. I am sure he contemplated but for whatever reason did not suggest the other half of the name: "reds".
I think he is trying to hard to be above it all.
On a more descriptive note we should rename Washington's team the "porkers", or the "lobbyists", or the "redistributionists", or the "elitists", or the "croneyists".
We could name them the Washington "Reds" to parallel the communist tendencies of the politburo types. Then again we already have the Cincinnati Reds which because of the association with communistm really offends ME as do the Sacramento "Kings". Didn't we have a Revolution to get rid of the King?
Maybe we could use a politically correct term. How about the Washington "gays"? How cool?
Or the Washington "undocumented"?
I could go on pointing out the stupidity of it all.
CK used to be one of my favorite opinion writers. Not lately. Too much Washington DC in his thinking, methinks.
-
The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and the NAAAAP (take a minute and you'll get this one :lol: ) are filing amicus briefs as we speak , , ,
-
NAAAAP
So if one is from Somalia, Nigeria, or say Cameroon but is not also American one cannot be a member?
One has to be both American And African?
Do white South Africans qualify? My niece is a white South African and now an American. I guess that is why it is still called the NAACP - to keep white people out!
So what do we call Nigerians? Nigerian Africans?
Can I be called a New Jersey American? (not that I want to admit I am from Jerzy)
I guess I am a Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Prussian American?
In the end we are all descended from apes from Kenya. So we are all African Americans.
-
My joke was this. The "C" of NAACP stands for "Colored". Why are people not OUTRAGED by the use of this racist term? Clearly we must demand an end to this slur and that instead they use "African American" hence NAAAAP :lol: :lol: :lol:
-
"Why are people not OUTRAGED by the use of this racist term?"
Good point. Could you imagine the political correct crowd criticizing the NAACP?
Inadvertently I hit on another point about this.
The organization isn't about "African Americans". It IS about Black people. And more specifically American Blacks.
We don't hear the organization's people's outrage over Nigerians slaughtering each other in the streets. It doesn't represent them.
Also what about Africans who are not Black. What about Egyptians? The Arab peoples of northern Africa? What about my white niece?
The whole "African-American" thing is not helpful. So is "Asian American".
This had to have started someone with the political elite liberal university types.
-
In my life I have seen the transition from "colored" to "negro" to "black" and now "African American".
I remember the transition from "negro" to "black" being explained as "Why are we called by a race and you by a color?"
This seemed, and seems, reasonable to me. Thus for me, "black" is the term-- just as I am "white". Enough! Done! and a hearty Foff to any who would seek to correct me.
-
"Enough! Done! and a hearty Foff to any who would seek to correct me."
I have many Black patients. I guess they trust and like me.
I have to admit to being a little afraid at times of how to address them. Some diseases are different with regards to prevalence or severity in Blacks vs Whites vs. Latino vs Asians. It does sometimes matter where a person is from; born, raised, how long they have resided in the US.
Hepatitis B, sarcoidosis, Helicobacter pylori, malaria, intestinal parasites, glaucoma, prostate and colon cancer, liver cancer, thalassemia, sickle cell, and others to name a few.
I was not sure to address them as African American or Black. I have no problem addressing anyone the way they wish to be addressed. I sometimes do not know which is preferred. Once I recall using AA and the patient immediately kind of grinned as though she thought it just as silly. A few times I recall pointing out a disease is more common in "Blacks" and the patient does display a bit of a change in facial expression. I try to be as sensitive to this as I can. I don't know how else to tell them the medical facts. I go with the facts and present them as they are.
Usually I use the term Black. For example when I discuss the pros and cons of doing the PSA (prostate blood test) I would make the patient aware that prostate cancer deaths are more prevalent in Blacks. Cause unknown but you need to know this.
I would not use the term colored or Negro. But do I use AA - which by the way in this case is not even accurate. Or do I use Black? I have chosen to use "black". Thank goodness there has never been any response that suggested anyone was offended. That is the last thing I would want to do.
In anthropology races were divided into Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid back in the 70's. I do not know if it still that way when examining skeletons or not.
-
http://reason.com/archives/2013/10/20/is-redskins-really-an-offensive-name-for
-
Sound and well-reasoned, and, if I may, to the best of my understanding, a bit weak on the history.
My understanding is that
a) Red skin was originally a term used by Native Americans for themselves, just as they used White Skins for the Euros.
b) the term is "offensive" only to the professionally offended, and that the great majority of native americans (90%?) could not care less;
c) in the case of the football team, the name was chosen in homage in a Native American coach who died.
-
Bill Maher Said What?
Bill Maher, by far the most liberal of the late night talk-show hosts, challenged Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to tell the truth.
Maher: "Let's be honest here. It looks like [Obama} told a lie. I think he did. Two questions: Is a lie justified if it is for something good? And two, if he hadn't told that lie, could ObamaCare have been passed? If he had come out and said, 'Yeah, some of you are going to lose your plan and you're gonna have to pay more,' do you think that law that squeaked through by that much [indicates tiny margin] would have passed?"
Schultz: "First, it was not a lie, so let me just knock that down."
Maher: "Let's be honest, some people can't [keep their plan]. And because of ObamaCare they are not able to keep it. To me that is a lie. Lie or no lie."
Schultz: "The supreme court upheld it and Obama was reelected on it. ... And we're still arguing over minutia."
Maher: "To a lot of Americans it's not minutia, and I think they are insulted when you say that. They think it is something important when the president does not square up with them. What about owning up to the plan that ObamaCare is a Robin Hood plan. It takes from the rich to make better the poor. I think he should embrace that."
(For the record, O'Care is redistributing wealth from mostly middle-class working people to subsidize insurance for those who have not made purchasing insurance a priority.)
-
Just saw my South African niece yesterday. She was married to my nephew for several yrs. Had to fight to get her green card, hire an immigration attorney and only recently gained citizenship. Interestingly she has dual citizenship (not recognized but the US). I asked her if she considers herself "African American". She said she is. But she doesn't use that label. She knew of another white African who used that on an application and literally got into big trouble for "falsifying" and trying to get a break for being a minority.
I think he should hire a lawyer and bring this up to the Supreme Court. I wonder if he could find one who would do it for the publicity and the political statement it would make.
If only she were Latino. Then she could claim "how dare anyone question my being here you bigot!".
-
He made more sense in 1968 than hope and change did in our era.
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."
"I don’t want to say too much about illegal immigration. I’m afraid my views will be reported on the Cinco O’Clock News"
On the Miranda warning: "Why should we tell kidnappers, murderers, and embezzlers their rights? If they don't know their rights, they shouldn't be in the business."
"A good many people feel that our present draft laws are unjust. These people are called soldiers."
"Sex doesn't have to be taught. It's something most of us are born with."
When originally "denying" he was running, borrowing from General William Sherman in 1884: "I will not run if nominated, and if elected I will not serve."
Presidential campaign slogan: "I've upped my standards. Now, up yours."
Presidential campaign slogan: "If elected, I will win."
Campaign supporters' rallying cry: "We can't stand Pat!"
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself...and of course the boogieman."
"I am neither left wing nor right wing. I am middle-of-the-bird."
"If either the right wing or the left wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles."
"Marijuana should be licensed and kept out of the hands of teenagers. It's too good for them."
When asked if he believed in the right to bear arms: "No, I believe in the right to arm bears."
On network censorship: "I feel proud to be living in a country where people are not afraid to laugh at themselves and where political satire is tolerated by the government, if not the television network."
On network censorship: "Censorship does not interfere with the constitutional rights of every American to sit alone in a dark room in the nude and cuss. There are realistic taboos, especially regarding political comments. Our leaders were not elected to be tittered at. For example, we're allowed to say Ronald Reagan is a lousy actor, but we're not allowed to say he's a lousy governor – which is ridiculous. We know he's a good actor. And we're not allowed to make fun of President Johnston, but if we praise him, who would believe it?"
On his political affiliation: "I belong to the Straight Talking American Government Party, or STAG Party for short."
-
Liberals Talk Race and Crime — And Hilarity Ensues!
Posted By Ann Coulter On December 5, 2013
On a break from pretending to believe they live in a country bristling with violent white racists, the Non-Fox Media have been trying to debunk stories about the “Knockout Game,” in which young black males approach random strangers and try to knock them out with one punch.
The left’s leading line of defense against the Knockout Game is to argue that young black males have always been violent, so, hey, this is nothing new.
You’re welcome, black America!
In Slate, Emma Roller wearily recounted other episodes of black-on-white violence in order to announce: “The ‘Knockout Game’ is a myth.”
Reminiscing about the flash mobs that shook many parts of the country a few years ago, Roller wrote: “I remember the summer of 2011, a story about a crowd of (black) teenagers at the Wisconsin State Fair randomly attacking fairgoers went viral as a sign of a burgeoning race war.”
So you see, stupid right-wingers, young black males have always been violent, so what’s the big deal about the Knockout Game?Your honor, my client’s not a killer; he’s a serial killer.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reached for a different example of monstrous black-on-white violence in order to dispute that the Knockout Game is anything new.
Looking like a translator for the deaf with all the air quotes he had to make for “supposed” “trend” and “Knockout Game,” Hayes compared it to what he called the fake trend of “wilding” after a mob of black youths violently attacked and raped a white woman jogging in New York’s Central Park in 1989. According to Hayes, “there never was such a thing” as wilding.
Whether the boys who were convicted of the crime did it or, as liberals now claim, a man already sentenced to life in prison did it, the Central Park jogger was brutally raped and nearly murdered by either one or several young black men. (They all did it — see Chapter 13 of my book “Demonic.”)
The following year, 1990, blacks committed 57 percent of all the violent crime against whites, while whites committed only 2 percent of the violent crime against blacks, according to the Department of Justice’s annual Victimization Report.
Thanks for the memories, Chris!
Oh, and contrary to Hayes’ proclamation, black men raping white women is something of a “trend” — at least according to FBI crime statistics. At least since 1997 (I got bored and stopped looking any farther back) blacks have raped several thousand white women every year, while white-on-black rapes have numbered between “0.0″ and “Sample based on 10 or fewer.” (See Chapter 11 of “Mugged.”)
In a particularly incomprehensible defense of black America in Mediaite, Tommy Christopher denounced the “sketchy” news reports of “the so-called ‘Knockout Game’” by citing the video of a group of black teenagers walking past teacher Jim Addlespurger, when one of the black teens steps from the group and knocks the teacher out cold, and then they all laugh about the assault as they continue walking.
But Christopher helpfully notes that a cop said this “was just a random act of violence.” So don’t worry about the Knockout Game, white people — this is mostly just ordinary, everyday black-on-white violence.
Flash mobs, wilding, day-to-day black violence — talk about damning with faint praise!
Liberals have to work so hard to avoid noticing the astronomical crime rate among young black males that their brains freeze.
Roller attributed public interest in a story about mobs of young black males attacking families at a state fair to white people’s need to validate their “fear” that black people are dangerous. (Milwaukeeans hardly even notice when mobs of whites surround their families at a state fair, punch them, kick them and smash their cars, while shouting racial slurs.)
But Roller implied that blacks engaging in violence is wildly unusual: “When a few YouTube videos are able to convince terrified white folks that young black people are dangerous, they may as well assume that all cats can play the keyboard.”
Is a disproportionate amount of keyboard playing in the country being done by cats?
According to the FBI, between 1976 and 2005, blacks, who are about 12 percent of the population, committed 53 percent of all felony murders and 56 percent of non-felony murders. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that young black men are 14 times more likely to commit murder than young white men.
White liberals know this. Blacks certainly know it. Despite the hoo-ha over George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin, most black people’s experience is not that white vigilantes are shooting them. For every one of those, there are 1,000 black teens killing other black people.
But if liberals took the first step toward sanity and admitted that young black men commit an awful lot of violent crime, they might have to ask why that is.
That’s a dangerous question for people who refuse to acknowledge the devastation of fatherless boys caused by liberal welfare policies. (See Chapter 6 of “Never Trust a Liberal Over 3″ to see how the British welfare system has created the same social disaster among hordes of white people.)
Unable to consider the obvious explanation — single-motherhood — liberals are left with nothing but genetic determinism.
So liberals defend young black males from the charge of playing a Knockout Game by telling us young black men are always violent.
Don’t worry, black America. White liberals have your back.
-
Nelson Mandela 1918-2013
Posted By David Horowitz On December 6, 2013
Mandela began as a terrorist and never turned his back on monsters like Arafat and Castro, whom he considered brothers in arms. When he was released from prison by deKlerk, he showed unexpected statesmanship, counseling reconciliation rather than revenge, no small achievement in a country in which the “liberation” movement (led by Mandela’s wife and party) placed oil filled inner tubes around the necks of former comrades and set them on fire.
But if a leader should be judged by his works, the country Mandela left behind is an indictment of his political career, not an achievement worthy of praise – let alone the unhinged adoration he is currently receiving across the political spectrum.
South Africa today is the murder capital of the world, a nation where a woman is raped every 30 seconds, often by AIDs carriers who go unpunished, and where whites are anything but the citizens of a democratic country which honors the principles of equality and freedom.
Liberated South Africa is one of those epic messes the Left created and promptly forgot about.
-
I agree we need to look at the whole picture and that the whole picture includes some rather unsavory parts. That said:
a) The system he fought as a terrorist was nasty and brutal-- I've read that parts of the American Revolution were as well;
b) He was in solitary confinement for 18 years (one visitor a year for 30 minutes, one letter every six months IIRC) and in prison for 27 years;
c) He not only came out of this a sane man, but a better man-- and as that better man, unaided by a the American Creed as MLKing was, articulated a better path, a forgiving path where a vengeful path would have been so much easier-- and divorced his nasty wife Minnie
d) elected democratically, he stepped down after 5 years, apparently not noticeably richer than when he came into office.
-
I agree we need to look at the whole picture and that the whole picture includes some rather unsavory parts. That said:
a) The system he fought as a terrorist was nasty and brutal-- I've read that parts of the American Revolution were as well;
b) He was in solitary confinement for 18 years (one visitor a year for 30 minutes, one letter every six months IIRC) and in prison for 27 years;
c) He not only came out of this a sane man, but a better man-- and as that better man, unaided by a the American Creed as MLKing was, articulated a better path, a forgiving path where a vengeful path would have been so much easier-- and divorced his nasty wife Minnie
d) elected democratically, he stepped down after 5 years, apparently not noticeably richer than when he came into office.
He set his own cause back by favoring failed economic polices and aligning with the wrong side, Soviet Union, Arafat etc. Still, as well-noted above, he was one hell of an important historic figure.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303497804579240591294656698?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
The bulk of his adult life, Nelson Mandela was a failed Marxist revolutionary and leftist icon, the Che Guevara of Africa. Then in his seventies he had the chance to govern. He chose national reconciliation over reprisal, and he thus made himself an historic and all too rare example of a wise revolutionary leader.
-
http://www.redstate.com/2013/12/06/mandela-vs-mugabe/
From the article:
It’s tough to deny the man was a communist when he was considerate enough to write us a how-to manual on being one.
Then again, context here is king. Who else was fighting to help Black South Africans get out of their ghettos? Mandela had to choose between two evils. He picked what he sincerely believed to be the lesser of two evils.
http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2013/12/what-would-you-have-done-nelson-mandela-and-american-conservatives/
From the article:
Mandela was faced with a vicious apartheid regime that eliminated all rights for blacks and gave them no hope for the future. This was a regime which used secret police, prisons and military force to crush all efforts at seeking freedom by blacks.
What would you have done faced with that crushing government?
What would you do here in America if you had that kind of oppression?
I agree we need to look at the whole picture and that the whole picture includes some rather unsavory parts. That said:
a) The system he fought as a terrorist was nasty and brutal-- I've read that parts of the American Revolution were as well;
b) He was in solitary confinement for 18 years (one visitor a year for 30 minutes, one letter every six months IIRC) and in prison for 27 years;
c) He not only came out of this a sane man, but a better man-- and as that better man, unaided by a the American Creed as MLKing was, articulated a better path, a forgiving path where a vengeful path would have been so much easier-- and divorced his nasty wife Minnie
d) elected democratically, he stepped down after 5 years, apparently not noticeably richer than when he came into office.
-
I wonder if the anti-Reagan protestors of the 1980s (or press) now understand that Reagan's determination and success in toppling the Soviet Union led directly to the fall of apartheid. Conversely, I wonder if or when Mandela understood that his choice in aligning with the worst oppressors was counter-productive in his cause to end oppression.
The New Yorker yesterday:
"Mandela’s release from prison and the collapse of apartheid were direct consequences of the demise of the Soviet Union; the South African regime could no longer rely upon its anticommunism as a counterbalance to its miserable human-rights record."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/12/mandela-and-the-politics-of-forgiveness.html
-
" wonder if the anti-Reagan protestors of the 1980s (or press) now understand that Reagan's determination and success in toppling the Soviet Union led directly to the fall of apartheid. Conversely, I wonder if or when Mandela understood that his choice in aligning with the worst oppressors was counter-productive in his cause to end oppression."
About as much as Obama understands that undermining our friends and accommodating our enemies will reverse this achievement of Reagan. Read Krauthammer's piece on the Ukraine being driven back to the Russian sphere of control. Can anyone imagine what that must be like to the Ukrainian people who only a generation ago were left mass slaughter at the hands of the Soviets?
OTOH I the New Yorker is hardly a conservative rag. Do they mention the name Reagan in the article? I will look.
-
Just as I suspected. The only mention of Reagan, of course, is not to give any credit but to point out he refused sanctions against South Africa for support of apartheid.
As for Krauthammer's article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-woe-to-us-allies/2013/12/05/cdf511ca-5de1-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html
Obama sees history through the lens of racial anger. We are all influenced by our experiences. But he is not objective.
-
The fall of the Soviet empire was certainly instrumental (if indirectly) in facilitating Mandela's release from prison. The New Yorker is correct about this, even though they don't give Reagan any credit for it. Another lesson lost entirely on the current generation of 20-somethings, who up until very recently held Obama responsible for virtually none of the current ills of this country, and generally view Reagan through a hard-leftist lens, to the extent they consider him at all. The left has successfully re-written history using the public schools and the media since Reagan left office.
I'll also concede that Mandela is a complex character. He was certainly willing to employ the most vile means to achieve his goals in the beginning, and he did partner with some of the worst oppressors in the world at the time. On the other hand, if one believes in forgiveness and redemption - and being a Christian, I do - it's arguable that he sincerely recognized the error of his ways and reformed himself before the end of his life. He was also one of the most non-narcissistic leaders I've seen in my lifetime. It's worth noting that Obama seems to be absolutely consumed by his ego and sense of self-importance. While no man can actually see into another's heart, it's my impression based upon actions, not words - that Mandela understood compassion and forgiveness - I'm not at all certain Obama does.
-
" The New Yorker is correct about this, even though they don't give Reagan any credit for it."
Truth is not the aim in the left wing publications, only an occasional, unintended consequence.
-
Nelson Mandela, Western Saint
Posted By Bruce Thornton On December 9, 2013
The passing of Nelson Mandela has been attended with the usual global encomia we have come to expect from those political leaders who have become international celebrities. Sometimes these extravagant praises and out-sized mourning surpass any real achievement. It is hard to find any justification in Princess Diana’s life for the hyperbolic praise and hysteria that saturated her funeral rites. Many another “leader of his people” or “liberator” has after his death been bestowed with dubious qualities and achievements, while his crimes and flaws are airbrushed from the narrative. That’s why George Orwell famously counseled, “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.”
Future historians may temper the current exalted judgment of Mandela, and there is much to remember as the world rushes to beatify him. His endorsement of communists and support for terrorists he made part of the struggle against apartheid should not be forgotten. Nor should be the victims of machete attacks and “necklacing,” the gruesome practice of putting around the victim’s neck a tire filled with gasoline and then igniting it, This form of lynching was a favorite of the African National Congress, of which Mandela was a member.
But after spending 27 years in prison, Mandela recognized on his release in 1990 the pragmatic reality that the dismantling of apartheid and the inclusion of the black majority in governing South Africa meant that the revolutionary justice of the sort that has ruined Zimbabwe, and the command economy beloved by Marxists, both were the road to just another form of injustice and ultimately failure. Yes, on his release he proclaimed that “we have no option but to continue” the armed struggle, but what he did was negotiate with South African president F.W. de Klerk to achieve a relatively orderly and peaceful transition to black political participation.
Upon becoming president in 1994, Mandela also avoided the actions that could have plunged South Africa into violent civil war, and the economic disintegration that would have followed the imposition of a bankrupt socialist ideology that has devastated so many African nations. He championed “truth and reconciliation” instead of payback, and economic growth rather than dirigiste snake oil, instead selling off some government-owned industries. He eschewed petty symbolic changes that would have divided black and white South Africans rather than unite them. Thus he refused demands to change the name of the national soccer team, considered by many blacks a token of apartheid, and instead supported the team as a symbol of national unity. His generous persona pacified anxious whites and earned his government international prestige.
As the National Review has pointed out, however, once he became president Mandela seemingly kept his affection for the communist tyrants and other leftist autocrats who had supported him not on principle, but as a Cold War stick with which to beat the free West. He did the global tyrant circuit, visiting Fidel Castro and other thugs, and giving them outrageous moral support that ignored their crimes and their much more brutal prisons than the one in which he had been imprisoned. As National Review writes, “He used his moral authority to buttress the prisoners’ jailers and torturers. He praised Qaddafi’s ‘commitment to the fight for peace and human rights in the world.’ (One of Mandela’s grandsons, incidentally, was named for Qaddafi.) Of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, he said, ‘There’s one thing where that country stands out head and shoulders above the rest. That is in its love for human rights and liberty.’” And he indulged the uncritical, crude anti-Americanism that is the rosary of the international left, saying of the United States, “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”
There is, however, more significance to Mandela’s life than the achievements noted by his encomiasts, or even his flaws. Like Gandhi before him, Mandela was a creation of the West. He was trained in the Western-modeled universities of Fort Hare, which was created for black Africans, and the University of Witwatersrand, which admitted some black students even under apartheid. He was influenced by anti-colonial and Marxist ideology, the origins of which lay not in tribal culture but in European civilization. He also had available the uniquely Western liberal-democratic ideals such as equality, human rights, non-violence, anti-racism, and democracy, precious little of which can be found elsewhere in Africa. His efforts against the nuclear-armed South African apartheid regime were ultimately successful because they were directed against a Western civilization that could be appealed to on the basis of those ideals and that would be reluctant to use massive violence. And this appeal created sympathetic supporters both in white South Africa and across the world, who made the cause of black South Africans their own and provided material and moral support.
Indeed, Mandela could not have succeeded against any other than a liberal-democratic Western country. His efforts would in the end have been as futile as Gandhi’s silly 1939 letter to Adolph Hitler, which begged for peace from the dictator who counseled England’s Lord Halifax, “Kill Gandhi, if that isn’t enough then kill the other leaders too, if that isn’t enough then two hundred more activists, and so on until the Indian people will give up the hope of independence.” What Mandela’s career demonstrates is the power of Western ideals which, despite the universal evils of human nature that have tarnished Western history, could transcend those brutal constants of history and effect change on the basis of principle rather than violence. From this perspective, Mandela represents the intellectual incoherence of anti-Western multiculturalism, which uses Western ideals like anti-colonialism and anti-racism to demonize the West, and ignores the unique principles of the West without which a Mandela or a Gandhi would have ended up forgotten failures.
Second, for all its brutality and injustice, in the scale of continuing global oppression and violence apartheid was not the monumental and unique evil into which Western liberal intellectuals and leftists carrying water for communist regimes made it. It’s curious that many black Africans illegally immigrated into an apartheid South Africa supposedly akin to Nazi Germany. Without that publicizing of apartheid in the West, Mandela’s efforts would have fallen on deaf ears. Just look at the relative indifference to the massive slaughters in Rwanda and the Congolese civil war, the oppression of Uighurs and Tibetans by the Chinese, the millions massacred in Sudan, or the mainstream media’s blackout of the on-going genocide of Christians in the Muslim Middle East. All that suffering, rape, torture, plunder, and murder do not gratify the endemic self-loathing of leftist Westerners that made apartheid a crime against humanity on a par with Nazism. Thus those other instances of violence are not elevated into a global cause demanding divestment, boycotts, and international shunning. No doubt many Westerners were sincerely moved by the injustice of racialist exclusion, but why haven’t we seen an equally intense reaction to the other, in many cases much worse, examples of oppression and violence?
Nelson Mandela’s achievements deserve recognition. We can even accept that the darker shadows of his portrait will be ignored. But we should acknowledge that his life is a testimony not just to his own character and deeds, but to the unique goods of Western civilization that made Mandela and his achievements possible.
-
If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings.
If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace.
–Nelson Mandela
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/comrade-mandelas-secret-life?f=must_reads
-
Nelson Mandela: The Untold Story
Posted By Jack Kerwick On December 10, 2013 @ www.frontpagemag.com
Given that the entire planet seems to be of one voice in both mourning the loss of Nelson Mandela and celebrating his life, most will find it inconceivable that anyone would think to so much as suggest that Mandela was anything less than the saint that his admirers are working tirelessly to depict him as.
But truth is truth and Mandela was no saint.
Mandela was a proponent of “democratic socialism” who, along with the South African Communist Party, unleashed a torrent of violence against his political opponents that included the bombing of government sites. He was convicted of “sabotage” and attempting to overthrow the government—charges to which he openly confessed at his trial. And in spite of having been released from prison in 1990 after serving 27 years and eventually becoming South Africa’s first black president, he remained on the United States Terror Watch list until as recently as 2008. The late Margaret Thatcher characterized Mandela’s African National Congress as a “typical terrorist organization.”
Ilana Mercer is a writer and former resident of South Africa who knows all too well about Mandela and his legacy. One of her books, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, includes a chapter chock full of interesting, but inconvenient, facts regarding the man who is now being lauded as never before.
Mercer informs us that long before apartheid came crumbling down, the government of South Africa offered to release Mandela from jail as long as he promised to renounce violence. Mandela, though, “refused to do any such thing [.]” Mercer adds that Mandela’s “TV smile has won out over his political philosophy, founded as it is on energetic income redistribution in the neo-Marxist tradition, on ‘land reform’ in the same tradition, and on ethnic animosity toward the Afrikaner.”
In 1992, two years after Mandela was set free, he was videoed at an event surrounded by members of the South African Communist Party, his own African National Congress (ANC), and “the ANC’s terrorist arm, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which Mandela led.” Courtesy of YouTube, all with eyes to see could now witness “Mandela’s fist…clenched in a black power salute” as the members of MK sang their anthem, a little song according to which they reaffirm their pledge to “‘kill them—kill the whites.’”
Mandela remained a socialist to the last, Mercer assures us, even though he cleverly—but transparently—“rebranded” it. Mandela’s was a racial socialism, a point established beyond doubt by the remarks he made in 1997. Mercer quotes Mandela insisting that “the future of humanity” cannot be “surrendered to the so-called free market, with government denied the right to intervene [.]” Mandela also declared the need for the “ownership and management” of the South African economy to reflect “the racial composition of our society” and criticized “the…capitalist system” in South Africa for elevating to “the highest pedestal the promotion of the material interests of the white minority.”
For the conceit of those Westerners who assume that Mandela’s thought is a justified response to the evils of apartheid, Mercer has just the treatment. She reminds us that Mandela and his ANC “had never concealed that they were as tight as thieves with communist and terrorist regimes—Castro, Gaddafi, Arafat, North Korea and Iran’s cankered Khameneis.” Mercer further reminds us that in addition to once cheering, “‘Long live Comrade Fidel Castro!’” Mandela referred to Gaddafi as “‘my brother leader” and Arafat as “‘a comrade in arms.’”
Moreover, though awarded by President George W. Bush in 2003 with the Medal of Freedom Award, Mercer observes that Mandela couldn’t resist issuing the harshest of indictments against America. “‘If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world,’” Mandela said, “’it is the United States of America.’” He added that “‘they,” meaning Americans, presumably, “don’t like human beings.’”
And what is Mandela’s legacy to his native South Africa? It is the purpose of Mercer’s book to show that it is nothing to write home about. “Since he [Mandela] came to power in 1994, approximately 300,000 people have been murdered.” “Bit by barbaric bit,” she writes, “South Africa is being dismantled by official racial socialism, obscene levels of crime—organized and disorganized—AIDS, corruption, and an accreting kleptocracy.”
Mercer’s book is a rarity inasmuch as it supplies us with a brutally frank account of the real South Africa that Nelson Mandela helped to bequeath to the world. While the rest of the world is busy singing hosannas to Mandela over the next few days, those of us who are interested in truth would be well served to visit it.
-
Besides choosing the wrong side and policies for foreign affairs, how bad are your economic policies when ending apartheid leads to a doubling of unemployment?
http://www.bdlive.co.za/articles/2011/06/15/unemployment-doubles-after-apartheid---analyst;jsessionid=78392164F8856F5204DF0F58B82ADFE5.present2.bdfm
Unemployment doubles after apartheid
"since apartheid ended unemployment has more than doubled from 13% to according to the broad definition to 36%"
"South Africa in labour competitiveness ... to ranks seventh lowest out of 139 countries"
I hope that is not what we are celebrating.
-
Murder and other violent crimes also skyrocketed. It's almost like the dems run that county too.
-
Next one for gays, one for illegals, one for Latinos, one for Indians, one for Asians.......
Hey what war on women? Why we voted for a museum for you gals.....
Across from the street with all the brothels.....
******House to vote on museum for women
By Mike Lillis - 03/19/14 06:00 AM EDT
House Republicans plan to vote this year on legislation promoting construction of a National Women’s History Museum, Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) office told The Hill.
The move lends enormous momentum to the years-long push to establish a memorial to women’s history near the National Mall — a proposal that’s lingered in Congress for nearly two decades without ever reaching the president’s desk.
Congressional supporters from both parties have been working behind the scenes to rally backing and pressure leaders to stage a vote on the bill this year, even as Congress’s shift into campaign mode has left little appetite for most non-essential legislation ahead of November’s midterms.
Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore said the congressman supports the bill and intends to bring it to the floor.
Museum supporters wasted no time praising the announcement, with Rep. Carolyn Maloney — a New York Democrat who’s been working on the proposal since 1998 — saying she’s “thrilled” by Cantor’s move. With top House Democrats already behind the proposal, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), Maloney predicted it will sail through the lower chamber.
“This is a huge boost to our efforts,” said Maloney, the bill’s lead sponsor. “Leadership from both parties in the House has now come out in favor of this bill, and I’m hopeful we can secure a large, bipartisan vote in favor of its passage.”
On Tuesday, the House Natural Resources Committee’s subpanel on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation will examine the bill.
The push to create a national women’s history museum comes as the role of women in politics has risen to historic heights, highlighted both by record numbers of women in Congress and the ascension of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a front-runner in the 2016 presidential race — if she chooses to run.
Maloney’s bill would establish a commission charged with examining the best way to bring a women’s history museum “on or near” the National Mall. The eight-member panel, appointed by bipartisan leaders in both the House and Senate, would have a year to report recommendations to Congress and the White House for building and maintaining the project.
A Senate companion bill, introduced last year by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), has 20 co-sponsors, including 17 of the Senate’s 20 female lawmakers.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), the House bill’s lead GOP sponsor, said she’s confident the bill will win approval in both chambers this year.
“I do think that it’s the year that it can move on the House floor and the Senate floor,” she said Tuesday by phone. “We’re hopeful that as we move to the spring that we’ll see action on this and make a women’s history museum a reality for the country.”
Using past museum commissions as a guide, the bill’s sponsors estimate the cost of the proposal to be between $1 million and $3 million. They are quick to emphasize that both the commission’s costs and those associated with constructing and maintaining the museum would be funded entirely by private contributions. Actress Meryl Streep has already donated $1 million, Maloney said.
“We know that money’s tight, and that’s why private monies will pay for this memorial, not taxpayer dollars,” Maloney said.
Some Democrats suggested GOP leaders are simply playing election-year politics with the museum bill. One leadership aide said the Republicans would embrace the proposal as a political effort to defuse the Democratic argument that their policy agenda is harmful to women.
“They’re trying to reach out to people other than white males,” the aide said. “They may try to latch onto it to show that they’re not complete Neanderthals.”
It’s unclear what level of opposition the proposal will face on Capitol Hill. The absence of offsets takes away a potential complaint from fiscal hawks, and the GOP’s aggressive effort to be more sensitive to female and minority constituents will likely discourage any significant wave of dissent, even from the most conservative ranks.
Still, Blackburn acknowledged there might be some push-back from those wondering why women should have their own spot on the Mall.
“You’re always going to hear some [say], ‘Well, if we have that, [why don’t] we have a men’s history museum?’ ” she said. “But I think what we have to do is realize that what has been highly recognized in the country is the contribution of men.
“And in part, as they were the elected leaders … that is appropriate,” she added. “But also, there are women who worked alongside them and women who have led great movements in this country, and that should be recognized.”
-
These eunuch Republicans just can't seem to stand any criticism from Democrats or the media. They consistently accept the premises of the Democrats' accusations (such as the Republicans are conducting a "war on women") no matter how ridiculous they are, and then try to prove they're not what they're being accused of by boneheaded moves like this. How pathetic. I MUST AGREE WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH IN ASKING "WHY THE HELL IS GOV. SCOTT WALKER'S INCREDIBLE SUCCESS IN WISCONSIN NOT BEING TRUMPETED FROM THE MOUNTAINTOPS BY THE REPUBLICANS AND ADOPTED AS A WAY FORWARD FOR THE COUNTRY???" For God's sake - PAUL RYAN represents Wisconsin! Where the hell has he been on this issue? Is he afraid of giving his own Governor credit? The Republican leadership appears to be hell-bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
-
Agreed.
They just don't get it. They really don't. It is about the money. Women vote Democrat for government benefits. Some may be do for abortion etc but for most it is the money.
Latinos vote Democrat for the government benefits. I really doubt that it is about immigration for most.
How do we challenge this?
With ceaseless compromise? With compassionate conservatism? What a joke is right.
-
http://www.vocativ.com/culture/society/special-ed-student-recorded-bullies-accused-felony-wiretapping/
-
Just think if this student had claimed he was bullied because he is gay. The news would be front page of all the major MSM outlets around the Western World.
Anderson Cooper would spend a week going over this.
-
http://online.wsj.com/articles/harry-reid-hates-the-redskins-1401317851?tesla=y&mod=hp_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj
Wonder Land
Harry Reid Hates the Redskins
The U.S. Senate's speech enforcers won't stop with the NFL.
By Daniel Henninger
May 28, 2014 6:57 p.m. ET
Harry Reid is the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States. He occupies a position of influence at the pinnacle of the American system of government. Of late, the senator from Nevada has become a one-man, First Amendment wrecking crew.
If like Charles and David Koch, your political opinions offend Harry Reid's ears, or if like the Washington Redskins, your taste in sports-team logos offends his eyes, Sen. Reid will use his office to try to shut you up or make you disappear.
For those who think the Kochs or the Redskins' logo are unsympathetic victims, think again. The enforcers Sen. Reid is leading will get around to you eventually. In some places, they already have.
i
Sen. Reid, with Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, outputted a letter signed by a total of 50 Democratic senators and addressed to National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. It condemns Washington D.C.'s NFL team and its owner Daniel Snyder for not abandoning the team's logo, the Redskins. The letter calls the Washington Redskins a "racial slur." Sen. Reid has accused the Washington Redskins of a "tradition of racism." The letter says "Redskins" is the equivalent of the racist remarks of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Continuing in this vein of senatorial logic, the 50 members of the world's greatest deliberative body more or less order Mr. Goodell ("Now is the time for the NFL to act") to use his power to coerce a name change for Washington's football team. Should Commissioner Goodell buckle beneath Harry Reid's gang tackle, make no mistake: That same Senate letter would go straight to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, ordering him, under the Sterling Precedent, to kill the Cleveland Indians' logo, Chief Wahoo. Were Mr. Selig to do so, there of course would be riots in the streets of Cleveland, whose single most beloved citizen is . . . Chief Wahoo.
In recent weeks, people across the political spectrum professed to be aghast when a small coterie of "offended" students shut down commencement speeches by conservatives, centrists and liberals.
At Smith College, they didn't want to hear IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. At Haverford College, they'd only let former Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau speak if he signed a letter of apology and guilt for his handling of the Occupy Cal sit-ins in 2011. How, the world of astonished adults wondered, have these students come to believe they could shut people up on any aggrieved whim?
They got it from the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and 49 senators. They got it from the many adults who think a little restriction on some speech is OK, and then cry shock when the mob goes too far. That Senate letter isn't just about the Washington Redskins. It's part of a broader, active effort to define and limit what people can say—not just in politics or sports, but anywhere anyone tries to open his or her mouth.
The New York Times, the New Republic and others have carried articles on the suppressive phenomenon known as "trigger warnings" for college courses. The idea is that professors should post warnings about course content that may "trigger" traumatic memories or thoughts in some students for a list of reasons related to feminist concerns, sex and multiple violations of social justice. Look for a letter soon from Harry Reid to Turner Classic Movies demanding trigger warnings on John Ford westerns.
Last fall at a private party at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., two athletes—one of them white, the other black—were overheard trading racial jokes during a game of beer pong. Someone reported them to the administration. Lewis & Clark convicted the students of hate speech and ordered them to undergo "Bias Reduction and Bystander Intervention Training." To their credit, 40 Lewis & Clark professors signed a letter of concern about the school's notion of due process. American academics must be worrying they may have to go underground to teach freely. We could soon see samizdat doctoral theses.
In another corner of Harry Reid's Senate sits an attempt to expand federal surveillance of "hate speech." Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts just introduced a bill called the Hate Crimes Reporting Act. Its purpose, said Sen. Markey, is "to ensure the Internet, television and radio are not encouraging hate crimes and hate speech that is not outside the protections of the First Amendment." The potential causes of offense are "gender, race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation." In other words, anything.
Sophisticates will recognize that the bill should be better known as the Shut Up Fox News and Rush Limbaugh Act (newspapers are protected from any such regulation). But on their current, unrestrained course, federally deputized talk censors would get around to cleansing and sterilizing MSNBC, too.
We are moving way past the amusements of political correctness. A creeping, even creepy, effort is under way to shut people up for a broad swath of offenses. The distance is shortening between the First Amendment's formal protections and a "Fahrenheit 451" regime for torching speech in America. The time for adult pushback is overdue.
Write to henninger@wsj.com
-
second post
http://media.washtimes.com/media/misc/2014/05/23/the-truth-about-the-redskins-name-and-logo.pdf
-
The History of Political Correctness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaBpVzOohs
P.C.
-
This is crazy. If you say something that doesn't fit the Democrat Party theme and hence their huge plans to milk this up for 2016 you are forced into public humiliation:
Oct 9, 11:32 PM EDT
Microsoft CEO apologizes for comments on women
By TALI ARBEL
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apologized Thursday night and said he was wrong for saying that women don't need to ask for a raise and should just trust the system to pay them well.
Nadella was blasted on Twitter and in blog posts for his comments, which were made earlier Thursday at an event for women in computing. Tech companies hire many more men than women. And beyond the tech industry, women are typically paid less than men.
He had been asked to give his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a raise. His response: "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along." Not asking for raise, he added, is "good karma" that would help a boss realize that the employee could be trusted and should have more responsibility.
But his comments caused an uproar online, and Microsoft posted a memo from him on its website. In it, Nadella said he answered the question "completely wrong" and that he thinks "men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it's deserved, Maria's advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask."
His interviewer at the event, Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and a Microsoft director, had told him she disagreed, which drew cheers from the audience. She suggested women do their homework on salary information and first practice asking with people they trust.
Still, his comments at the event, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, underscored why many see technology companies as workplaces that are difficult to navigate or even unfriendly for women and minorities. Tech companies, particularly the engineering ranks, are overwhelmingly male, white and Asian.
Criticized for their lack of diversity, major companies say they are trying to address the problem with programs such as employee training sessions and by participating in initiatives meant to introduce girls to coding.
Twenty-nine percent of Microsoft's employees are women, according to figures the Redmond, Washington-based company released earlier this month. Its technical and engineering staff and its management are just 17 percent female.
That's roughly comparable to diversity data released by other big tech companies this year.
"Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap," Nadella wrote in his memo to employees.
-
Think of the tragedy of it all. Not getting your cake to your specifications. Reason to be ashamed. :roll:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/01/brittant-mason-religious-freedom_n_6985892.html?cps=gravity_2429_5854777052914304546
-
https://scontent-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/11076205_877218135670748_5227244596766999904_n.jpg?oh=6ecb4a669031ba36337286d2f80431ca&oe=55DB61AE
-
By
Peggy Noonan
Updated May 22, 2015 10:34 a.m. ET
879 COMMENTS
Readers know of the phenomenon at college campuses regarding charges of “microaggressions” and “triggers.” It’s been going on for a while and is part of a growing censorship movement in which professors, administrators and others are accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, gender bias and ethnocentric thinking, among other things. Connected is the rejection or harassment of commencement and other campus speakers who are not politically correct. I hate that phrase, but it just won’t stop being current.
Kirsten Powers goes into much of this in her book, “The Silencing.” Anyway, quite a bunch of little Marats and Robespierres we’re bringing up.
But I was taken aback by a piece a few weeks ago in the Spectator, the student newspaper of Columbia University. I can’t shake it, though believe me I’ve tried. I won’t name the four undergraduate authors, because 30 years from now their children will be on Google, and because everyone in their 20s has the right to be an idiot.
Yet theirs is a significant and growing form of idiocy that deserves greater response.
The authors describe a student in a class discussion of Ovid’s epic poem “Metamorphoses.” The class read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, which, as parts of a narrative that stretches from the dawn of time to the Rome of Caesar, include depictions of violence, chaos, sexual assault and rape. The student, the authors reported, is herself “a survivor of sexual assault” and said she was “triggered.” She complained the professor focused “on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text.” He did not apparently notice her feelings, or their urgency. As a result, “the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class.”
Safe is the key word here. There’s the suggestion that a work may be a masterpiece but if it makes anyone feel bad, it’s out.
Later the student told the professor how she felt, and her concerns, she said, were ignored. The authors of the op-ed note that “Metamorphoses” is a fixture in the study of literature and humanities, “but like so many texts in the Western canon it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom.” The Western canon, they continue, is full of “histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression” that can be “difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.”
That makes them feel unsafe: “Students need to feel safe in the classroom, and that requires a learning environment that recognizes the multiplicity of their identities.” The authors suggest changing the core curriculum but concede it may not be easy. Another student, they report, suggested in her class that maybe instead they could read “a Toni Morrison text.” A different student responded that “texts by authors of the African Diaspora are a staple in most high school English classes, and therefore they did not need to reread them.” That remark, the authors assert, was not only “insensitive” but “revealing of larger ideological divides.” The professor, they report, failed at this moment to “intervene.”
The op-ed authors call for “a space to hold a safe and open dialogue” about classroom experiences that “traumatize and silence students,” with the aim of creating environments that recognize “the multiplicity” of student “identities.”
Well, here are some questions and a few thoughts for all those who have been declaring at all the universities, and on social media, that their feelings have been hurt in the world and that the world had just better straighten up.
Why are you so fixated on the idea of personal safety, by which you apparently mean not having uncomfortable or unhappy thoughts and feelings? Is there any chance this preoccupation is unworthy of you? Please say yes.
There is no such thing as safety. That is asking too much of life. You can’t expect those around you to constantly accommodate your need for safety. That is asking too much of people.
Life gives you potentials for freedom, creativity, achievement, love, all sorts of beautiful things, but none of us are “safe.” And you are especially not safe in an atmosphere of true freedom. People will say and do things that are wrong, stupid, unkind, meant to injure. They’ll bring up subjects you find upsetting. It’s uncomfortable. But isn’t that the price we pay for freedom of speech?
You can ask for courtesy, sensitivity and dignity. You can show others those things, too, as a way of encouraging them. But if you constantly feel anxious and frightened by what you encounter in life, are we sure that means the world must reorder itself? Might it mean you need a lot of therapy?
Masterpieces, by their nature, pierce. They jar and unsettle. If something in a literary masterpiece upsets you, should the masterpiece really be banished? What will you be left with when all of them are gone?
What in your upbringing told you that safety is the highest of values? What told you it is a realistic expectation? Who taught you that you are entitled to it every day? Was your life full of . . . unchecked privilege? Discuss.
Do you think Shakespeare, Frieda Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes and Steve Jobs woke up every morning thinking, “My focus today is on looking for slights and telling people they’re scaring me”? Or were their energies and commitments perhaps focused on other areas?
I notice lately that some members of your generation are being called, derisively, Snowflakes. Are you really a frail, special and delicate little thing that might melt when the heat is on?
Do you wish to be known as the first generation that comes with its own fainting couch? Did first- and second-wave feminists march to the barricades so their daughters and granddaughters could act like Victorians with the vapors?
Everyone in America gets triggered every day. Many of us experience the news as a daily microaggression. Who can we sue, silence or censor to feel better?
Finally, social justice warriors always portray themselves—and seem to experience themselves—as actively suffering victims who need protection. Is that perhaps an invalid self-image? Are you perhaps less needy than demanding? You seem to be demanding a safety no one else in the world gets. If you were so vulnerable, intimidated and weak, you wouldn’t really be able to attack and criticize your professors, administrators and fellow students so ably and successfully, would you?
Are you a bunch of frail and sensitive little bullies? Is it possible you’re not intimidated but intimidators?
Again, discuss.
By the way, I went back to the op-ed and read the online comments it engendered from the Columbia community. They were quite wonderful. One called, satirically, to ban all satire because it has too many “verbal triggers.” Another: “These women are like a baby watching a movie and thinking the monster is going to come out of the screen and get them.” Another: “These girls’ parents need a refund.”
The biggest slayer of pomposity and sanctimony in our time continues to be American wit.
Popular on WSJ
Set your profile to public to comment
There are 879 comments.
All comments will display your real name. Read our commenting rules.
NewestOldestReader Recommended
terry reed
terry reed 22 minutes ago
I am offended by ugly women.
No doubt about it... ugly women offend me...."triggers unhappy feelings and makes me uncomfortable".
In extreme cases it might traumatize me.
Too protect me from these unhappy feelings and in the Columbia University solution....
Should ugly women be required to wear the veil???
Flag ButtonShare
Douglas Finlayson
Douglas Finlayson 42 minutes ago
The metaphor is our subconscious engaging us in conversation. Ms Noonan lets hers spill out lugubriously. Those of us who enjoy dancing with Peggy's wolves and fairies can also reserve some sadness and pity for those snowflakes tormented by their anxiously noisome inner kids.
Reality becomes infinitely more beautiful when our inner children smile and engage instead of fleeing. When the monster crawls from neath the bed, throw it a treat and befriend it or just beat it off with a verbal club.
Flag ButtonShare
Gregory Swenson
Gregory Swenson 38 minutes ago
@Douglas Finlayson What?
Flag ButtonShare
1
Keith Dowling
Keith Dowling 43 minutes ago
The Oprah generation - more about feeling than thinking.
Flag ButtonShare
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/07/dear-fat-people-comedians-video-lambasting-obese-americans-quickly-goes-viral-then-youtube-shuts-down-her-entire-page/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%209-7-15%20Build-MON-LaborDay&utm_term=Firewire
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gwjJ_NXKU
-
https://www.thefire.org/yale-students-demand-resignations-from-faculty-members-over-halloween-email/
-
http://www.amherstsoul.com/post/133122838315/amherst-uprising-what-we-stand-for
-
https://www.facebook.com/SternSaxonxoxox/videos/1649547062000021/
-
https://www.facebook.com/libtardmedia/videos/vb.1631240470426637/1657963064421044/?type=2&theater
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkhUivqzWv0&feature=youtu.be
-
http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/23/political-correctness-political-cowardice/
-
but makes one politically incorrect comment and look out. She is turned into garbage by the LEFt and of course she caves in to their demands:
ttp://www.nationalreview.com/corner
-
Newt policially incorrect and therefore dis invited to Fox and friends:
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/newt-gingrich-kicked-off-fox-friends-guest-list-213509409.html
The Carlson effect.
I do agree with Karl Rove here on this :
Rove, who was Kelly’s first guest tonight, blasted Trump for squandering precious time “to spend today dedicating his hotel in Washington D.C., and complimenting Newt Gingrich on having a food fight with you last night. That was not a good use of today,” with just 13 days left to campaign, he sniffed.
Trump is opening a new hotel in DC???????? :x
-
"Trump is opening a new hotel in DC??..."
Yes. It seems like quite an accomplishment, converting an old federal building into something modern and profitable, something Hillary and the government have no idea how to do. What did she get done on her day job while running for President, sell access and state secrets?
Maybe Fox and Friends, National Review and others are just as intolerant of dissent as those on the other side.
-
"Trump is opening a new hotel in DC??..."
Yes. It seems like quite an accomplishment, converting an old federal building into something modern and profitable, something Hillary and the government have no idea how to do. What did she get done on her day job while running for President, sell access and state secrets?
Maybe Fox and Friends, National Review and others are just as intolerant of dissent as those on the other side.
Hillary has turned federal power and access into quite a lot of money.
-
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
-
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/just-say-merry-christmas
-
http://www.dailywire.com/news/23992/matt-walsh?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=112817-news&utm_campaign=modelnames
-
http://www.dailywire.com/news/23992/matt-walsh?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=112817-news&utm_campaign=modelnames
Shut up, explained the leftist.
-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/roseanne-abc-cancellation-nfl-kneeling-ban-in-defense/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-05-30&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
-
https://principia-scientific.org/study-climate-skeptics-more-eco-friendly-than-alarmists/
-
https://principia-scientific.org/study-climate-skeptics-more-eco-friendly-than-alarmists/
It is important IMHO to see this go from anecdotal to well studied. The UN IPCC people and the Paris Accords people and the liberal politicians liberal elites all can't wait to get on a global tour jet to get to a podium and tell us how evil it is to do what they do. Have any of these people heard of Skype?!
I'm quite proud of my own energy frugality, no home AC use in 20 years, near zero summer electric use, my second to the most efficient car is a Prius, I have solar and wind powered boats, and if someone leaves the milk out overnight in the winter, it's still cold in the morning. When I go a rare, full day without driving I realize I didn't get anything noteworthy done that day.
One day I was arguing climate crap with a liberal friend after sports over beers, we agreed to disagree and headed out to our cars that happened to be parked next to each other. I got into my del sol at the time and he into his Chevy Suburban. He was embarrassed and started to make his excuses, he needs to carry stuff up to the lake etc. Yeah, whatever, but you want to rule my life without my consent.
Government one size fits all regulations like 55 mph to drive across Montana or Texas don't fit all perfectly, do they?
Note also that alarmists tend to also oppose nuclear power generation, the only massive energy source known that happens to be carbon free.
Talk is cheap. Crisis? What crisis?
-
"One day I was arguing climate crap with a liberal friend after sports over beers, we agreed to disagree and headed out to our cars that happened to be parked next to each other. I got into my del sol at the time and he into his Chevy Suburban. He was embarrassed and started to make his excuses, he needs to carry stuff up to the lake etc. "
Pretty funny .
-
https://principia-scientific.org/study-climate-skeptics-more-eco-friendly-than-alarmists/
It is important IMHO to see this go from anecdotal to well studied. The UN IPCC people and the Paris Accords people and the liberal politicians liberal elites all can't wait to get on a global tour jet to get to a podium and tell us how evil it is to do what they do. Have any of these people heard of Skype?!
I'm quite proud of my own energy frugality, no home AC use in 20 years, near zero summer electric use, my second to the most efficient car is a Prius, I have solar and wind powered boats, and if someone leaves the milk out overnight in the winter, it's still cold in the morning. When I go a rare, full day without driving I realize I didn't get anything noteworthy done that day.
One day I was arguing climate crap with a liberal friend after sports over beers, we agreed to disagree and headed out to our cars that happened to be parked next to each other. I got into my del sol at the time and he into his Chevy Suburban. He was embarrassed and started to make his excuses, he needs to carry stuff up to the lake etc. Yeah, whatever, but you want to rule my life without my consent.
Government one size fits all regulations like 55 mph to drive across Montana or Texas don't fit all perfectly, do they?
Note also that alarmists tend to also oppose nuclear power generation, the only massive energy source known that happens to be carbon free.
Talk is cheap. Crisis? What crisis?
It's not about protecting the environment, it's about controlling us.
-
https://nypost.com/2023/04/23/autistic-jewish-teen-has-swastika-carved-on-his-back-in-las-vegas/
"Carved"
:roll:
-
I have not been a big fan of "hate crime"
but , yes, this is by legal definition a "hate crime"
if you ask me.
clearly anti semitic, clearly being taken advantage of due to his autism and he wears a kippah
if you prefer "scratched" rather then "carved" ok with me
with either adjective this is outrageous to me
-
I have not been a big fan of "hate crime"
but , yes, this is by legal definition a "hate crime"
if you ask me.
clearly anti semitic, clearly being taken advantage of due to his autism and he wears a kippah
if you prefer "scratched" rather then "carved" ok with me
with either adjective this is outrageous to me
https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/01/04/why-fake-a-hate-crime/
-
are you saying you think this is made up?
could be , but I don't think it likely
pretty weird to make this up and remove child from the school
and using Smollett is an interesting example to use
since he has been discredited and totally lost any credibility.
-
No other documented physical trauma aside from the "carving"? What is a viable scenario consistent with what is known? Multiple subject pin the victim down, expose the back of the victim and inflict the "carving" cleanly?
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-media-controversy-ignites-over-the-case-of-tawana-brawley
are you saying you think this is made up?
could be , but I don't think it likely
pretty weird to make this up and remove child from the school
and using Smollett is an interesting example to use
since he has been discredited and totally lost any credibility.
-
so yes, you are saying you conclude this is made up
-
so yes, you are saying you conclude this is made up
Based on the information currently available, it sure looks like a staged crime. If the victim had been beaten to a bloody pulp, then you’d need to determine if the suspects knew what the kippa meant.
-
I think most people know full well that a kippah is worn by some Jews.
if we see a lawsuit asking for much money then the possibility of this being made up
seem higher to me
or could it just be a scratch that is mostly in shape of swastika by chance and mother is inadvertently wrong
maybe
-
I think most people know full well that a kippah is worn by some Jews.
if we see a lawsuit asking for much money then the possibility of this being made up
seem higher to me
or could it just be a scratch that is mostly in shape of swastika by chance and mother is inadvertently wrong
maybe
In the NE US it’s common knowledge, in other parts not so much.
The mother or another caregiver would be my primary suspect pool.