And anti-western bias…
Category Archives: Education
Bill Whittle: Education Without Character is Dangerous (video)
Lawsuit: School administrators force 12 year old to give up her Facebook password
I am considering authoring a book called School Administrators Gone Wild simply because the volumes of the most incredible stupidity coming from public school administrators is shocking. Most parents have no idea of the scope of this problem. There are at least five civil rights groups that focus just on legal violations at schools and they are overwhelmed with more cases than they can handle (and that isn’t even including the ACLU).
Legal papers, filed by the ACLU say the 12 year old girl, “was intimidated, frightened, humiliated and sobbing while she was detained in the small school room,” while school staff and a sheriff’s deputy read her private messages…
The case has been brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and comes amid growing concern in the United States about individuals’ ability to keep their email and other online accounts secret from their school, employer and government authorities.
A number of prospective employees have complained that they were forced to hand over their passwords to Facebook and Twitter when applying for jobs.
In the Minnesota case, the 12-year-old girl, known only as RS, is said to have been punished by teachers at Minnewaska Area Middle School for things she wrote on Facebook while at home, and using her own computer.
The ACLU is arguing that her First and Fourth Amendment rights, which protect freedom of speech and freedom from illegal searches respectively, were violated.
She is said to have been punished with detention after using Facebook to criticise a school hall monitor, and again after a fellow student told teachers that she had discussed sex online.
Legal papers, filed by the ACLU say: “RS was intimidated, frightened, humiliated and sobbing while she was detained in the small school room,” while school staff and a sheriff’s deputy read her private messages.
It went on: “RS was extremely nervous and being called out of class and being interrogated.” The lawsuit says that the mother of RS had not given permission for the viewing.
A spokesman for the school district said: “The district is confident that once all facts come to light, the district’s conduct will be found to be reasonable and appropriate.”
The case highlights growing concern in the US about the extent to which supposedly private communications can be kept from those in authority.
The ACLU recently forced the Department of Corrections in Maryland to stop requiring applicants to provide their Facebook passwords when applying for jobs.
Derrick Bell: Marxism is the Foundation of Critical Race Theory (video)
Yet another Obama mentor who is an outspoken communist (anti-capitalist).
Via Verum Serum who has some more details…
Breitbart News has been exploring President Obama’s days and a student and as a teacher. I found this to be particularly bothersome:
Obama Forced His Students to Read Bell at University of Chicago Law School
California public school abuse so bad that cameras likely to be placed in classrooms
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The California State Supreme Court has ruled school districts must be responsible to reduce the risk of children being molested by staff members. Otherwise, they may face civil lawsuits.
The ruling allows districts and school administrators to be sued if it is demonstrated they were negligent in employing staff or faculty
KNX1070 legal analyst Royal Oakes says the ruling could have a significant impact on any civil cases filed against the LA Unified School District as a result of the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal.
The ruling could additionally lead to revamping of LAUSD policies regarding hiring, vetting of new or transferred employees, and improved means of employee surveillance, up to and maybe including efforts such as cameras in the classroom.
UCLA Students to be asked to declare sexual orientation when applying…..
Yet another example of how radicalized to the point of bumbling abject stupidity academia has fallen.
The next influx of UC students may be asked to state their sexual orientation.
In January, the Academic Senate recommended that upon accepting admission offers from a University of California school students should have the option of identifying themselves as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender.
The UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools had mixed reactions but agreed that the question would allow them to collect important statistical information. They recommended putting the question on the SIR forms instead of college applications to protect students’ privacy.
The news made the front page of UCLA’s campus paper Daily Bruin and is stirring controversy across UC campuses.
Sandra Fluke: Catholic Institutions Should Pay for My Sex Change!
Sandra Fluke demanded in her testimony to Congress that Catholic Universities, Hospitals and other institutions give her $3,000 worth of birth control because she goes to school at Georgetown (Catholic) University which is enough to buy so many condoms that she could have sex three times a day, every day she is in school. Fluke also wants Catholic institutions to pay for so called “morning after” abortion pills (See our previous Sandra Fluke coverage HERE).
It gets better.
Fluke, according to transcripts, also expects Catholic institutions, insurance companies, government, small businesses etc to pay for sex changes.
Sandra Fluke, Gender Reassignment, and Health Insurance
Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she’s not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.
As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years according to the Washington Post.
However, as I discovered today, birth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
The title of the article, which can be purchased in full here, is Employment Discrimination Against LGBTQ Persons and was published in the Journal’s 2011 Annual Review. I have posted a transcript of the section I will be quoting from here. In a subsection of the article entitled “Employment Discrimination in Provision of Employment Benefits” starting on page 635 of the review Sandra Fluke and her co-editor describe two forms of discrimination in benefits they believe LGBTQ individuals face in the work place:
“Discrimination typically takes two forms: first, direct discrimination limiting access to benefits specifically needed by LGBTQ persons, and secondly, the unavailability of family-related benefits to LGBTQ families.”
Their “prime example” of the first form of discrimination? Not covering sex change operations:
“A prime example of direct discrimination is denying insurance coverage for medical needs of transgender persons physically transitioning to the other gender.”
This so called “prime example” of discrimination is expounded on in a subsection titled “Gender Reassignment Medical Services” starting on page 636:
“Transgender persons wishing to undergo the gender reassignment process frequently face heterosexist employer health insurance policies that label the surgery as cosmetic or medically unnecessary and therefore uncovered.”
To be clear, the argument here is that employers are engaging in discrimination against their employees who want them to pay for their sex changes because their “heterosexist” health insurance policies don’t believe sex changes are medically necessary.
Read more HERE.
Boy 13 set on fire two blocks from school
Another argument for “separation of school and state”…
Reason 436,574 of why and how progressive secular leftist unionized education creates more problems than it solves, event in the so called “conservative Midwest”. Keep in mind that even at Bible belt central Missouri State University, Christian student Emily Booker was ordered by professors to have a homosexual experience and to lobby the state legislature in favor of same sex adoption or be expelled from school. The school expelled her and she sued in federal court and won. This kind of radicalism is not uncommon among progressive educators at all.
A 13-year-old boy who police say was doused with gasoline and lit on fire last week while walking home from school is recovering from first-degree burns to his face and head.
The boy was just two blocks from his home in Kansas City Tuesday when two teenagers began to follow him and then attacked him, his mother, Melissa Coon, said.
Police have described the suspects as black 16-year-olds, while the victim is white.
“We were told it’s a hate crime,” Coon told KTLA.
“They rushed him on the porch as he tried to get the door open,” Coon told KMBC. “(One of them) poured the gasoline, then flicked the Bic, and said, ‘This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.'”
By lighting the gasoline, the second attacker “produced a large fireball burning the face and hair” of the boy, according to a Kansas City Police Department report obtained by KCTV.
“It was pretty bad stuff,” Detective Stacey Taylor told the TV station, adding that police are concerned the boy may have suffered damage to his eyes and lungs.
Coon said her son put out the fire with his shirt and called 911 himself. He was rushed to the hospital and was treated for his injuries.
She believes the students also attend East High School with her son, and said he will not be returning to the school. She also told KMBC her traumatized family plans now plans to move.
“My 5-year-old came in and asked me, ‘Mom, am I going to get set on fire today?'” Coon said. “I was in tears.”
Orange County Register: As climate case melts, zealots resort to fraud
Respected scientist admits using false identity to obtain documents from a skeptic group.
Peter Gleick, a global warming true believer and purported scientific ethics expert, has admitted soliciting, receiving then distributing confidential fundraising and budget documents from the Heartland Institute under false pretenses, all to discredit Heartland, a free-market think tank that disputes global warming alarmism.
We await determinations of whether violations of state or federal laws on wire fraud and identity theft, and perhaps other offenses, occurred. Illinois-based Heartland has called in the FBI.
Mr. Gleick admitted the scheme in which he posed as a Heartland board member to obtain confidential files and sent them to global warming blogs as if they had been leaked by an insider. He denies, however, forging an accompanying “confidential strategy memo.” Heartland says the memo is not genuine, and there are indications it may have been created on the West Coast, where Mr. Gleick is president and founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland.
Mr. Gleick requested a leave of absence from the institute after posting his confession online, in which he said, “My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated – to attack climate science.”
Unfortunately, we are accustomed to global warming zealots making a sham of ethics as well as tarnishing science. Thanks partly to leaks of climate researchers’ emails in recent years, the global warming movement has been revealed to be a cloistered club of insiders, who bully dissenting scientists, plot to keep contrary views from being published and manipulate data.
That’s why Mr. Gleick’s antics don’t surprise us. For example, Greenpeace reportedly stole garbage from Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which also debunks global warming alarmism. The pilfered refuse showed up in media reports intended to “reveal a secret cabal I orchestrated from my basement,” Mr. Horner wrote in his book, “Red Hot Lies.”
Global warmists contend that Heartland and other critics secretly are funded by Big Oil and other fossil fuel interests. The irony is that the stolen Heartland documents reveal the small think tank’s budget of $6 million pales compared with the $26 billion in Obama administration stimulus funds pumped into global-warming friendly causes, plus the hundreds of millions spent annually by warmist-friendly groups like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.
As real life increasingly refutes the theory of global warming doom, warmists have become more shrill and desperate. Mr. Gleick’s tattered reputation is but the latest result of a movement fraught with credibility problems. Perhaps more damaging is the uncooperative climate. Despite soaring carbon dioxide emissions for 10 to 15 years, temperatures remain essentially flat or, perhaps, have even declined, depending on which standard is used.
Journal of Medical Ethics: It is ethical to murder babies after they are born
I will just deal with the objections right up front:
This is just two whacky professors…
No it is not. This is the Journal of Medical Ethics which is a peer reviewed publication. In order for this article to appear a committee of “medical and academic professionals” had to study the piece, find it credible and agree to publish it believing that it has academic and cultural value. Academic journals are written in part to promote each others work in the academic community; meaning that those who authored it and who decided to publish it had to believe that doing so would be accepted by their peers, good for their careers etc.
The Journal of Medical Ethics doesn’t speak for all doctors…
But it speaks for enough of them. This article will be presented as evidence in abortion and infanticide cases as a defense in the courts and in the elite media. It will be bandied about by radicalized professors on campus to indoctrinate and morally confuse students.
When the American Psychological Association (APA) published in its journal a piece that was a naked attempt to normalize pedophilia; Dr. Laura Schlessinger, many state legislatures, and even the Congress of the United States spoke out and passed resolutions against this until the APA retracted.
Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say.
Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.
The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.
The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article’s authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.
The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.
They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”
Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.
Law School Deans Violate Law To Skew Rankings
Ben Shapiro at Big Journalism:
Professors Morgan Cloud and George Shepherd of the Emory University School of Law have released a ground-breaking study showing that law school deans all over the country have been lying in order to obtain better rankings from U.S. News & World Report.
They write:
A most unlikely collection of suspects – law schools, their deans, U.S. News & World Report and its employees – may have committed felonies by publishing false information as part of U.S. News‘ ranking of law schools. The possible federal felonies include mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, and making false statements. Employees of law schools and U.S. News who committed these crimes can be punished as individuals, and under federal law the schools and U.S. News would likely be criminally liable for their agents’ crimes. Some law schools and their deans submitted false information about the schools’ expenditures and their students’ undergraduate grades and LSAT scores. Others submitted information that may have been literally true but was misleading. Examples include misleading statistics about recent graduates’ employment rates and students’ undergraduate grades and LSAT scores. U.S. News itself may have committed mail and wire fraud. It has republished, and sold for profit, data submitted by law schools without verifying the data’s accuracy, despite being aware that at least some schools were submitting false and misleading data. U.S. News refused to correct incorrect data and rankings errors and continued to sell that information even after individual schools confessed that they had submitted false information. In addition, U.S. News marketed its surveys and rankings as valid although they were riddled with fundamental methodological errors.
This should not shock anybody. As I wrote back in my first book, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, the U.S. News rankings are supremely flawed. They rely on how much money each school spends per student – a terrible measure of efficacy – and other professors’ rankings of the schools, which tends to benefit long-established institutions. Even seemingly sure measures, like employment rate of graduates, are problematic; as the authors of the report write, “Schools have been able to count as employed graduates with part-time, minimum wage jobs, even those not requiring legal training or a law degree.”
In any case, the schools providing the information often provide faulty or skewed information. The authors suggest that there is criminal liability for such lies and manipulations. Most commonly, law schools are:
(1) submitting false or misleading data about the LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of their J.D. students; (2) using “part-time programs” to create misleading data about the grades and LSAT scores of a school’s students; and (3) publishing false or deceptive information about their graduates’ employment rates.
Law schools do this for a simple reason – they want to boost their applicant pool, boost their prices, and make more money.
Read more HERE.
6th Circuit Court of Appeals Sides with Christian Grad Student
This is where it gets interesting, according to the evidence, the textbooks the EMU used said that councilors cannot be value neutral and that values are essential to the healing process:
Defendant Ametrano, Chair of the formal review committee that dismissed Ms. Ward from the program, assigned a book as required reading in a required course Ms. Ward took from Defendant Ametrano, which states that “[i]t is now generally recognized that the therapeutic endeavor is a value-laden process and that all counselors, to some degree, communicate their values to clients,” and that “the assumption that counseling is value-neutral is no longer tenable.”
(Ex. 8 at 73.) A true and accurate copy of excerpts from this book, Becoming a Helper by Marianne Schneider Corey and Gerald Corey and published in 2007, is attached as Exhibit 8.
This book also explains that “because the values [counselors] hold cannot be kept out of their work, they should not refuse to discuss their core values.” (Id.)
Regarding values, the book further states: “In our view it is neither possible nor desirable for helpers to remain neutral or to keep their values separate from their professional relationships. Because values have a significant impact on the helping process, it is important to express them openly when doing so is appropriate.” (Id. at 73.)
As taught by the EMU counseling department in required courses, the counseling profession understands that personal values impact a counselor’s practice, and that exposing a client to your values can be an appropriate course of action in a counseling relationship.
The other textbooks used in EMU’s own courses said that referring a client is the appropriate action when a values conflict may become an issue in the client/therapist relationship. EMU could demonstrate no rule or reason to ban or prevent Ms. Ward from asking for the referral. To be clear, in multiple instances EMU violated standard counselling practices and procedures in order to persecute Julea Ward for holding Christian beliefs.
CBN:
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a Christian graduate student expelled from Eastern Michigan University’s counseling program after refusing to provide services to a gay client.
In 2009, EMU student Julea Ward was assigned a client seeking help with a homosexual relationship.
Believing that taking on such a case would violate her Christian convictions, Ward asked the clinic to reassign the client to another counselor — a move in keeping with the school’s counseling code of ethics.
“I explained that I was a Christian and that I could not [endorse] homosexual behavior,” Ward said.
Following a formal review hearing, EMU sent Ward a letter dismissing her from the school’s graduate program.
“Rather than allow Julea to refer a potential client to another qualified counselor — a common, professional practice to best serve clients — EMU attacked and questioned Julea’s religious beliefs and ultimately expelled her from the program because of them,” said Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco, who argued Ward’s case last October.
Click here to read Ward’s complaint against EMU.
The 6th Circuit sided with Ward in a sternly-worded decision being hailed by Christian groups as a victory for free speech and religious freedom.
“A reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith,” the appellate court wrote in its opinion Friday.
“A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems… as the price for obtaining a degree,” the 6th Circuit wrote. “Tolerance is a two-way street.”
The court did not mince words in the ruling:
Here too, what did Ward do wrong? Ward was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in doing so. That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. What more could the rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion (1) does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and (2) does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faithbased issues. Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.
Romney ads blast Santorum for supporting “No Child Left Behind”, but Romney supported it too (video)
The “No Child Left Behind Act” has been a colossal failure. While the testing in the act did indeed give is a better idea of just how bad public schools are failing our children, it made the problem worse because school districts and teachers started teaching the test, and thus weren’t truly educating. This is something I have seen first hand.
Teaching is a missionary vocation. When the federal government and/or a bureaucratic and/or a union mentality is introduced that kills the missionary attitude and spirit. This is why our current public school model is failing more than it is succeeding.
Forbes: Government Education Spending Up 7 Times & Nothing To Show For It
Solyndra’s in the classroom.
Accordingly, the “investment in education” that Obama wants more (and more, and more) of is actually “federal-government-directed investment in education”. When considering whether we really want more of this, it is important to remember that it was “federal-government-directed investment in energy” that gave us Solyndra, Ener1, and Beacon Power, and that it was “federal-government-directed investment in housing” that has cost taxpayers more than $150 billion in losses (thus far) at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
So, how would we know if increased government “investment” in education was producing a return? We would see a steady rise in the ratio of GDP to “nonresidential produced assets” over time. Our GDP is produced by a combination of physical capital and human capital. Accordingly, if the economic value of our human capital were rising, the impact would show up in the numbers as increasing productivity of physical capital.
Now, here is the bad news. While total real ($2010) government spending on education increased almost 13-fold from 1951 to 2009, the measured GDP return on physical capital actually declined slightly, from 47.7% to 44.1%. This could not have happened if we were getting an appreciable economic return on our huge “investment” in education.
What follows is a “first approximation analysis”. The numbers could be done with more precision, but they are good enough to give us an idea of what the nation has been getting (actually, not getting) for its massive “investments” in education.
Assuming that about 25% of our total population is in school at any one time, average real (2010 dollars) government spending per student rose from $1,763 in 1951 to $12,209 in 2009. This is an increase of about 7 times. Assuming an average of 13 years of education per student (some go to college, some drop out of high school), this means that during this 58-year time period, we increased our real “investment” in the human capital represented by each student from $22,913 to $158,717.
More:
Also, imagine if, instead of being given a 2009 education for $158,717, an average student were given a 1967-style education for about $58,000, and $100,000 in capital with which to start his working life. This would be sufficient to start any number of small businesses. Alternatively, if put in an IRA earning a real return of 6%, the $100,000 would grow to about $1.8 million over 50 years.
The huge government “investments” made in education over the past 50 years have produced little more than “Solyndras in the classroom”. They have enriched teachers unions and other rent-seekers, but have added little or nothing to the economic prospects of students. America does not need more such “investment”.
Read more HERE.
Bill Whittle: Fed’s Education Takeover Dooms Next Generation
Federal involvement in public education makes costs skyrocket while lowering performance.
New Jersey Teachers Union on Kids in Failing Union Schools: Life’s Not Fair
In some failing unionized schools in New Jersey the kids have only a 17% proficiency rate in literature and math.
Via Real Clear Politics:
“An outrageous statement. I cannot express how disgusted I am by that statement by the head of the largest teachers union in our state. But I also have to tell you I’m not the least bit surprised, because I think it so succinctly captures what their real position is,” Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said about a union boss who makes 500K a year telling the poor “life’s not fair.”
“It’s an immoral position, and it continues to prop up abject failure in districts across our state,” Christie also said.
Econ Professor: Public Schools Have Students Brainwashed ….
The teacher asks the students to write an essay on the American Dream. 80% of them said that the government should buy them a house, pay for their college, and give them a high paying job. They also were taught nothing about capitalism or mainstream economic concepts.
Adopting Pro-Sharia Textbooks…
Via Alyssa A. Lappen:
In August 2011, a Marietta, Ga. 7th grade teacher gave a three-page homework lesson from InspirEd Educators Inc. of Roswell, Ga. to students to help them discuss pros and cons of school uniforms. “Women in the West do not have the protection of the Sharia as we do,” declared a letter from a Saudi wife named Ahlima. “If our marriage has problems, my husband can take another wife rather than divorce me, and I would still be cared for.” She’s glad that Saudi women “have the Sharia.” When parents objected to the assignment’s pro-Islam stance, the school district changed the curriculum.
In 2010, Act for America compiled research from former assistant education secretary Diane Ravitch, American Textbook Council and Textbook League on how 38 public school texts handled Islam; last month, Christian Action Network launched a national campaign warning of bias.
More….
While probably unaware of their carefully staged genesis, parents for years have vocally opposed such Islamic instructions in public schools and texts as:
- In 2005, Scottsdale, Ar. schools shelved Across the Centuries, only to introduce more offensive Islamic propaganda in TCI’s History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond.
- In 2008, a Seminole County, Fl. school let Muslim women co-opt a “family dynamics‘” talk.
- A Houston middle school sent students to a class on Islam during a periodreserved for phys ed.
- California parents have repeatedly rejected curricula and texts (including TCI’s History Alive) that sanitize Islam or teach its pillars.
- In Sept. 2010, a Wellesley, Ma. school “field trip” to a Saudi-funded Roxbury mosque taught kids how to pray like Muslims.
- In early 2010, Minnesota’s ACLU sued St. Paul’s public k-8 Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy for breaching the ban against government religious advocacy.
- Massachusetts schools adopted a Notebook by Abiquiu, N.M.’s Saudi-funded AWIRG. Pushed by Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies Center, it claims Muslim explorers discovered the New World and Native Americans had Muslim names. (In 2005, the center had received $20 million from Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talaal, who later boasted he could control global TV news.)
In Sept. 2010, the Texas Board of Education endured heavy criticism after issuing a textbook resolution asking publishers to fix the “pro-Islamic/anti-Christian half-truths, selective disinformation, and false stereotypes” that riddled textbooks. The board included four pages of notes to document “pejoratives” targeting Christians and “superlatives,” Muslims—e.g. brutal conquests of Christian lands were called “migrations” of “empire builders.” Books listed Crusaders’ massacres, but not the Muslim Tamerlane’s 1389 Delhi murder of 100,000 prisoners or his 1401 Baghdad massacre of 90,000 Muslims.
Read more HERE.
Newt Gingrich to Juan Williams: Only The Elites Despise Earning Money
North Carolina Principal Resigns For Suspending Student Who Called Teacher ‘Cute’
Remember this story? Well it appears justice has been done and the winners are parents, teachers and the kids who were exposed to this radicalized school administrator.
This wen site, but especially my old college blog (2) has countless stories of administrators gone wild. Civil rights groups such as FIRE and ADF list thousands of such cases on their web sites. The problem of radicalized overzealous school administrators (without a residue of good judgment and common sense) is nearly epidemic.
GASTONIA, N.C. (CBS Charlotte/AP) — The principal of a Gaston County school where a 9-year-old boy was suspended for sexual harassment submitted his resignation Tuesday, saying he wasn’t given a chance to apologize.
Jerry Bostic told The Gaston Gazette he could understand being written up for the suspension and having someone follow up during the school year, but he added that he was disappointed because this is how his 44 years in education ended.
“To me it’s a really sad final note to a career that I have found very satisfying and enjoy working with kids,” Bostic said. “I really don’t believe I was treated fairly.”
School officials offered an apology to Emanyea Lockett and his mother, Chiquita Lockett, after the boy was accused of calling a teacher “cute.” A statement from the system said it was determined that the fourth grader at Brookside Elementary School didn’t engage in sexual harassment. The school system said the suspension won’t count against the student, and there will be additional instructional assistance provided to the student for the classroom time missed.
“This is something that everyone needed to see, just to see what’s happening within our school systems,” Lockett told WSOC-TV.
Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon would only say that Bostic submitted his resignation. McGlohon had no further comment.
“He (McGlohon) told me he had made the decision he was going to terminate me or drop me into an assistant principal position,” Bostic said. “I admit I made some errors in what I did, but to fire me or to demote me with 44 years in it, it just doesn’t make sense. To me he was a very heartless man, and he did it because of politics.”
In 44 years of experience he still had such a complete lack of judgment, common sense, and restraint to not see what is perfectly obvious to anyone who is not radicalized by Marxist radical feminism. The real problem is that it took 44 years for this pinhead to get escorted to the door.
‘Occupy Wall Street’ Participation To Earn Class Credit At Columbia U.
Yet another college class that is essentially a course in hating America and Marxism. There are already too many of those to count anyways…..
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Columbia University will offer a new course for upperclassmen and grad students next semester. An Occupy Wall Street class will send students into the field and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, a veteran of the Occupy movement.
The course begins next semester and will be divided between class work at Columbia’sMorningside Heights campus and fieldwork that will require students to become involved with the Occupy movement outside of the classroom.
The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement” it will be run by the anthropology department.
FIRE: Harvard Fires Economics Professor over Political Article Published in India
It is really simple. Islamists blow up Hindu’s in horrible attack, professor writes piece about how to combat militant Islamists, censor happy lefties on campus totally freak, and after the Harvard Administration brags about it’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom said professor is fired. FIRE intervenes….
Details at FIRE.
Vote for Popehat’s “Most Censorious Asshat of the Year”
Popehat law blog has composed a list of the most outrageous cases of censorship and attempts of censorship from 2011. The list is revoltingly quite impressive. Readers are encouraged to vote and comment.
GO HERE.
University of Wisconsin threatens professor who stood up for free speech…and pays the price
Justice, how sweet it is. Compliments of our friends at FIRE.
Eighth Circuit Court: No Political Discrimination in Faculty Hiring
And university deans can be found personally liable…
Adam Kissel:
Because the University of Iowa law faculty may well have unlawfully discriminated against a professor because of her conservative views, the Eighth Circuit is letting this case through.
In a decision just issued today, the Eighth Circuit has held that a district court erred in granting summary judgment, based on qualified immunity, to a public law school dean in a lawsuit brought by an applicant for a legal writing or adjunct legal writing position. The suit claims the applicant, in violation of Section 1983 of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, was discriminated against on account of her political views, which are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The Eighth Circuit found that the “First Amendment prohibits a state from basing hiring decisions on political beliefs or associations with limited exceptions for policymaking and confidential positions. . . . If a state actor refuses to hire an individual because of her political associations, then the individual has suffered an adverse employment action. . . . Thus, [the applicant] suffered an adverse employment action.” The appellate court also found that “the district court erred in finding that qualified immunity protects [the dean] from liability in her individual capacity.
Newt Gingrich vs Former Attorney Generals Who Skipped Law School – UPDATED!
[Editor’s Note: I studied Constitutional Law from federal Judge Allen Sharp, I have also been instructed by Henry Abraham, the author of “Justices and Presidents”, which is the definitive text on the Justices of the Court. Newt is totally correct about this as Article III of the Constitution is clear on this issue. The UPDATE is below.]
Go to 4:50 in the video to see Newt’s position. An awesome speech by the way:
What you are about to read below a load of complete nonsense. What Newt is talking about is called Article III of the US Constitution. Congress has almost total power over the lower courts. Congress passes “Judicial Acts” for the purpose of regulating the lower courts and dealing with rogue circuits like the 9th. EVERY first year law student knows this. For a former Attorney General to talk like this is beyond astounding and is likely pure politics.
They go on as if the lower courts are all powerful and that the status-quo is fine. They were created by an Act of Congress so what? Congress cannot take another look at them? Judicial supremacy was opposed by the Founders.
EXCLUSIVE: Former Bush Attorneys General Call Gingrich Position on Courts ‘Dangerous’
Two former attorneys general under President George W. Bush have found a few things to like in Newt Gingrich’s position paper on reining in the authority of the federal courts, but other parts, they say, are downright disturbing.
Some of the ideas are “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle,” said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
In a 28-page position paper entitled, “Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution,” Gingrich argues that when the Supreme Court gets it wrong constitutionally, the president and Congress have the power to check the court, including, in some cases, the power to simply ignore a Supreme Court decision.
“Our Founding Fathers believed that the Supreme Court was the weakest branch and that the legislative and executive branches would have ample abilities to check a Supreme Court that exceeded its powers,” he argues.
Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales, in exclusive interviews with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, said they are particularly alarmed by provisions such as allowing Congress to subpoena judges after controversial rulings to “explain their constitutional reasoning” to the politicians who passed the laws.
“The only basis by which Congress can subpoena people is to consider legislation. To subpoena judges to beat them up about their decisions has only — if they are going to say that has to do with legislation they might propose, that’s completely dishonest,” Mukasey said.
“I think we have a great government, a great country because it’s built upon the foundation of the rule of law. And one of the things that makes it great and the rule of law is protected by having a strong independent judiciary,” Gonzales said.
“And the notion of bringing judges before Congress like a schoolchild being brought before the principal to me is a little bit troubling. I believe that a strong and independent judiciary doesn’t mean that the judiciary is above scrutiny, that it is above criticism for the work that it does, but I cannot support and would not support efforts that would appear to be intimidation or retaliation against judges.”
Mukasey has counseled Mitt Romney, Gingrich’s chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, but said only once, and he would do the same for any GOP candidate. He and Gonzales said they were also not happy with the Gingrich call for the power to impeach judges or abolish judgeships following any ruling considered particularly outrageous.
They were additionally very skeptical of Gingrich’s suggestion that we should just “do away with” the Ninth Circuit because of some of the left-leaning decisions from that group of jurists.
UPDATE – Some Romney supporters are trying to spin this story into something it isn’t with a series of misleading accusations and objections.
Bogus Objection #1: Newt wants to micromanage the Judiciary!
Who said anything about “Micromanaging the judiciary” – I will tell you who – NO ONE HAS.
The 9th Circuit has not been micromanaged, on the contrary these created, invented courts who are invented at the pleasure of Congress and the American people have been trying to micromanage our lives.
Judge Hamilton even tried to order the Speaker of the State House and President of the State Senate to ban Jesus from the prayer opening each session.
Newt is not saying that the judiciary should be micromanaged and he has never said anything even remotely close to that. His position paper and the video of his speech which I linked above, make it clear that the 9th and a few other judges have gotten so out of control and so radicalized that they are trying to micromanage our culture like a far left secularist oligarchy.
Creating a straw man is no way to win the point.
Bogus Objection #2: Newt wants exclusive executive control over the judiciary!
Newt is not talking about exclusive executive control. Presidents lobbied for and got those Judicial Acts passed by Congress; just like when people said “Reagan cut taxes”, it was Congress who passed that new tax legislation.
Bogus Objection #3: We should take a Burkean approach in saying are we really so hubristic as to dismantle that system and hope to create something better in its place?
This is elitist euphemistic sophistry for “we need to preserve the status-quo” and it is also pure nonsense. We dismantle some government systems and recreate them all the time, it is called Federalism and the 50 states do it on a regular basis with various legal and policy experiments.
Bogus Objection #4: Chief Justice Marshall established judicial supremacy over constitutional interpretation.
I know all about “The Great Chief Justice” John Marshall, however Marshall cannot remove Article III, nor did he intend to.
Marshall did not establish “judicial supremacy over constitutional interpretation”, he asserted that the Supreme Court had the power of “Judicial Review”; to declare certain acts of Congress and certain enforcement actions of the Executive under it’s jurisdiction to be unconstitutional. There is a significant difference between the two.
In no way was Marshall trying to assert Judicial supremacy and in no way was he trying to elevate the power of the lower courts that exist at the pleasure of Congress to a position over them in such a way to take separation of powers and toss it out the window.
Quite frankly, I am astonished at the near total lack of understanding many so called lawyers have about “Separation of Powers”. All it takes is one good read of the Federalist Papers. So either our law schools are dropping the ball or the self bias of lawyers and law professors has them believing in this supremacy nonsense.
The Judiciary was intended to be the weaker of the three branches of government. It is the duty of all branches, not the sole purview of the court, to uphold and defend the constitution, this is why the Constitution demands an oath of office to defend it for ALL of the three branches.
The way our government is supposed to work is that when one branch gets out of line, the two others can gang up on it and strip it of power when needed. This is basic 8th grade civics stuff and I am seeing political enthusiasts and pros along with some attorneys responding to this very notion as if we had told them that Martians had made a crop circle in their back yard.
Is this simply the rank intellectual dishonesty in the form of political maneuvering or has our education system failed to this degree?
[Editor’s Note – Tossing all modesty aside for just a moment. My Constitutional Law class was as intense as one would find in any law school.
Question #4 on my ConLaw final exam was:
The Great Chief Justice dies in 1801. Thomas Jefferson appoints the head of the Virginia Supreme Court to be the new Chief Justice of the United States. Explain how this likely changes every Supreme Court ruling from 1801 to 1821 (essay format start writing).
I got an A. This writer has found few attorney’s who can beat him in a game of ConLaw quiz bowl.]
Rules for the Facebook Wall!
A retired professor friend of mine, who is sick and tired of the mindless emotionalism of others passing as arguments, created a set of rules for his Facebook wall for those who follow and comment.
RULES OF MY WALL
1) Friends may feel free to contest anything I post. BUT there are rules of engagement that your must adhere to otherwise, if you do not I may either delete your utterance or in obdurate cases defriend as being a friend without redeeming significance. There is a reason why there is a “like” button but no “Dislike” If you dislike something say why specifically.
2) NO profanity or gratuitous snarl words., courtesy meet for my advanced age.
4) Do NOT comment on a post you have not read.
5) Assertions are not facts, nor words merely expressing your view point, logic.
6) If I ask a question you MUST ANSWER it BEFORE preceeding to the next assertion. E.G if you say something is “ridiculous,” I may ask you why you think that. If you assert that I “support BO,” I will definitely ask you WHAT EXACTLY I said that made you think that.
If you say you support Newt, I may ask you if you agree with him on this or that point to ascertain how much you know about your candidate. You MUST answer before making your next point.
7) No hit and run snarl word without supporting specific facts, not unsupported opinion or glittering generalizations. I will abide by these same rules on your wall and your postings.
I like these rules, especially number six. Some people use the selective ignoring of key inconvenient facts as a means of calculated aggression, some are just creatures of raw emotion and block out whatever causes cognitive dissonance.
Also on number six, lots of people say on Facebook “If you don’t agree with me” or “If you don’t support candidate X, then you are just trying to get Obama re-elected”. In most cases that is pure idiocy unless you can back it up with a very good argument.
The fact that such common sense rules are needed is an indication of something that we have lost in society. Why? In the days of the old partisan press, when each town had at least two newspapers with different points of view, people would talk about these differences at the barber shop and the soda shop thus enjoying exercise in debate of the issues of the day regularly. Today if people get half a centimeter out of their comfort zone they can just change the channel or click and button and poof the discomfort is gone. If they cannot do that they pulled the “I’m offended!” card. Pardon me, but I prefer clarity to comfort.
I had this problem with some young professors at IU; said professors could not tell the difference between the sting of an inconvenient truth presented directly and someone being uncivil and nasty. There were several times that I had to explain the difference to a professor when they made this error, which sometimes just enraged them even more.
Fortunately I published my own student newspaper which was very popular so most of the faculty feared my First Amendment ability to sound the alarm. Some Marxist professors were pretty brave until they realized I would be willing to quote them exactly in the student paper. Of course, the professor who appreciated good scholarship and legit debate had nothing to fear from me. Some students would publish grossly unfair things in the official student paper, but in my paper, which was published by older “non traditional” students, we had very high standards because we knew that the administration would use any excuse to attack us.
Study: Leftist Academics Skew History Against Republican Presidents
Call it history’s conservative curse.
According to a University of Miami study, those historical rankings of American presidents that pop up every year or so are significantly weighted in favor of Democrats, thanks to the liberal leanings of academia.
Political science professor Joseph E. Uscinski, one of the study’s authors, said the new analysis shows that the overwhelmingly liberal academic community consistently ranks Republican presidents about 10 spots lower than the public would.
“I don’t think anyone is surprised,” Mr. Uscinski told The Washington Times. “Among the political scientists and historians that I work with, Democrats outnumber Republicans 8 to 1.”
What was eye-opening, he said, was the stark difference between the historians’ assessments of Republicans and the grades given by the public.
“On average, all the Republicans get the short end of the stick,” he said. “But the one it impacts the most is [Ronald] Reagan. It’s often difficult for people to fathom why he’s ranked as low as he is.”
The University of Miami report, to be published in the scholarly journal White House Studies, looks at presidential rankings from historian Arthur Schlesinger’s seminal 1948 survey through more recent polls, including the Wall Street Journal’s 2005 list and C-SPAN’s 2009 survey.
In the C-SPAN rankings – the focus of much of the University of Miami analysis – Reagan in 2009 broke into the Top Ten, behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson.
James Madison on the General Welfare Clause
Prophetic!
Federalist Papers:
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands;they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
VIDEO: CSU students sign petition to ban Beck and Limbaugh from Radio and TV while proclaiming their support for free speech
Here are your California public school university students in action!
KMPH TV:
A video shot on Fresno State’s campus shows students signing a petition to ban conservatives like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh from radio and television.
One student can be heard saying he believes in free speech but then admits he has no idea what the First Amendment is.
Over and over students say they believe in free speech but think they can actually ban someone from saying something they don’t like.
If you thought that video was priceless, wait till you see this one…
Political Arena 