A Montgomery County Middle School teacher had a 13-year-old girl escorted from the classroom after she refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in clear violation of federal law.
Since 1943, it has been clear that children cannot be forced to say the pledge.
The school has apologized, but I am equally concerned about a position taken with the parents that has not been denounced by the school: that the school would refuse to meet with the parents if they brought an attorney. The family said that the school was adamant that, if a lawyer was present, they would not agree to a meeting. It is an outrageous policy designed to force people to forego legal counsel and I would like to know the legal and policy basis for such a rule.
For the full story, click here.
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but
I find this matter to be really something that I think I would never understand.
It seems too complex and very broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post,
I will try to get the hang of it!
Slarti:
Good post.
Gerty,
I think you’re making the very common mistake of not understanding conditional probability – i.e. the probably of one thing given another. The examples you raise don’t offer us any insight into the probability of a person being liberal if we know that they are a truther.
The only way that this would give us any information is if we asked both dems and reps if they were truthers. (Most likely none of them would be truthers.) The problem is that the truthers comprise a very small portion of the people – let’s assume that 0.1% of Americans are truthers and that there are 500 members of congress (to keep the numbers simple). Further assume that truthers are 90% liberal, 10% conservative. How many truthers do we expect in congress? We expect that there should be half a truther in congress – i.e. 1 truther would be more than we expected assuming that the sample is random (and presumably spouting conspiracy theories is not the best way to get elected to congress…). So your survey of truthers in Congress is not likely to yield any good statistics.
Again, no right leaning media figures tolerate truthers either – the right wing media would look at truthers in a very similar light as the left wing media looks at birthers. Those in the mainstream on either side avoid conspiracy theories as a rule (for the most part). Celebrities are a bigger pool, so we can say more about them. Let’s say I can think of 3,000 celebrities – we’re still only going to get about 3 truthers in the pool and we expect all of them to be liberal (expected values – 2.7 L, 0.3 C). I can think of 3 celebrities that are truthers: Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnel, and Jessie Ventura. This would be the expected result if I knew of 3,000 celebrities and truthers were split 90% L/10% C. I can’t think of any conservative celebrity truthers (if you can, please let me know) or any other liberal truthers off of the top of my head.
It is just common sense – to be a 9/11 truther, you believe that the Bush administration murdered almost 3,000 people in cold blood to further their agenda – this is not a position that is easily held by a conservative, but it not difficult to fit into the mindset of a liberal that already believes, say, that Bush and Cheney are war criminals.
Both sides have kooks, but they tend to be different kooks – at least as far as political conspiracies go. So on the right you have the John Birch society and the birthers and on the left you have the truthers. That’s why I thought the article was interesting, because it represented an example of ‘strange bedfellows’. I watched the whole press conference, and I’d be willing to bet that the A&Ef9/11T skewed heavily for Obama in the election – getting the Republicans out of the whitehouse would be necessary to end the cover-up (although by now they’re probably mad that Obama hasn’t done anything…). Finally, let’s look at a pool of 30,000 people. assuming that they were split 50/50 liberal and conservative, we would expect 30 truthers – 27 liberal, 3 conservative. In other words, in any kind of polling, we would expect liberal truthers to be hard to find and conservative truthers nearly impossible to find. Which is exactly what we see.
Regarding the man who died waiting for emergency services, while you are correct that we wouldn’t say these things in front of the man’s family, as in most things, context is important in this case. This is a legal blog – it is presumed that the legal aspects of any topic raised will be discussed. An important aspect of the law is apportioning culpability – this is not blaming the victim or implying that ‘he had it coming’, it is just a necessary step to understanding what went wrong. Think of it like this: if you were investigating a plane crash, you would have to determine if pilot error had contributed to the crash – to not confirm or eliminate this possibility would be negligent. Likewise, if we want to determine how to avoid a similar tragedy, we must ask what (if anything) this man could have done differently.
Now, isn’t it about time for my stalker to call me a “PIG” again?
“Gerty:
you are right, I would not have said anything in front of his family except my condolences for your loss.” – Byron
Once again, at the risk of upsetting Mike Spindell’s day, …I will brave his wrath and dare to respond.
I am sure that is true. Therefore it would behoove you as it would all of us to make our communications here in this public venue match the level of respect that we would show were they standing right in front of us.
“Gerty,
Before you start thinking that this disproves my assertion that the 9/11 truth movement is a left-wing conspiracy, I should point out that this poster as well as Texas Darlin and Dr. Kate are all in the PUMA* wing of the birthers, so they clearly have some left leanings (and a WHOLE lot of libertarianism…) wrapped in all the ‘neo-Constitutionalism’ that is the birther’s raison d’etre.” Slarti
Well gee Slarti, I’m not sure I can respond to your comment to me here without upsetting Mike Spindell. After all my doing so apparently disrupts his day.
But risking another dress down from an obviously superior individual, and of course the one liners from my stalker, who’s name will not be mentioned (Valdemort) to point out what a sad and nefarious character that I am, I shall try.
My first recommendation to you if you think 911 conspirators lean to the left more than the right, is to provide the names of members of Congress who feel that way. After all, with so many members of Congress, surely there should be several who believe in 911 conspiracies.
Then I would advise looking to the left leaning public media figures, i.e Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Stephen, Colbert, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, etc, and take a random sample of how many of them believe the theories, or even tolerate them on their shows.
While I’m sure there are polls out there that asked “the right question” and sampled the right demograph, the fact is I see little evidence to accept the fact that more liberals are 911 conspiracy theorists, than are conservatives. Both are at the extreme edge of the fringe, and for every liberal you show me that believes in some conspiracy, I can show you 10 shaved headed neoconservatives living in a compound outside of Twin Falls who likewise share that conviction.
Kooks are on both sides, and calling it a left or right wing phenomenon is a misnomer.
Mespo:
as long as you dont shake it more than thrice.
“Gerty,
As much as you would like to make it so this blog and/or thread is not all about you” Mike Spindell
Like I said last night. Isn’t it about time for someone to come in and blame me for all the recent crap?
Mike, my suggestion to you would be instead of continually making it about me by blaming me, you might try acknowledging the fact that all of my comments here last night, were in response to comments made TO or about me.
Perhaps rather than continually bemoaning my comments perhaps you might take the time to address those who my comments responded to. After all, I couldn’t respond to anyone if they did not initiate the conversation.
😐
Of course I’m not sure why someone elses conversation is any of your business, but since you insist on repeatedly making it your business, I suggest you at least get your facts straight, and stop with your constant haranguing on me.
Remember that old saying?
“It takes two to tango.”
SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE?
Looks like a birther-truther team up:
http://www.t-room.us/2010/02/architects-engineers-for-911-truth-hold-explosive-press-conference/
This is a post about a recent press conference by ‘Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth’ at a brand new site called ‘The T Room’ that was started by a frequent poster at ‘Dr. Kate’s View’ (and ‘Texas Darlin’ before that).
Vince,
The T Room bills itself as ‘A virtual pub for polite political discourse’. I’m tempted to put on my best behavior and find out if that’s true. 😉
Gerty,
Before you start thinking that this disproves my assertion that the 9/11 truth movement is a left-wing conspiracy, I should point out that this poster as well as Texas Darlin and Dr. Kate are all in the PUMA* wing of the birthers, so they clearly have some left leanings (and a WHOLE lot of libertarianism…) wrapped in all the ‘neo-Constitutionalism’ that is the birther’s raison d’etre.
*Stands for ‘Party Unity My Ass’ – Hillary Clinton supporters who are vehemently against Barack Obama.
Bob,
Don’t you get excited, either – I don’t think that there’s anything in this press conference that you haven’t already thrown against the wall… Although Dr. Jones is one of the speakers if you’d like to hear what he has to say.
By the way, I think I deserve bonus points for a comment that’s relevant to 3 separate threads… 😉
So far today I’ve spent the past hour going through the posts and deleting the E mails from the posts. Much of it was a waste of my time due to the trite nature of the postings. Frankly, it turns me off and limits my participation in the blog. Gerty is not stupid and he and I probably agree on certain things. However, his self indulgence is a downer and I’ve got better things to do today.
You tell him or her Mike. You do such a great job.
“Re: the subtle yet laughably obvious “evil” discussion regarding yours truly. Or is it yours Turley? Never sure there.”
Gerty,
As much as you would like to make it so this blog and/or thread is not all about you. When I wrote what I wrote you weren’t in my mind. I was responding to some discussion points raised that interested me. I’ve read all the crap (sorry but most of it is) you’ve posted here and there is nothing even vaguely approaching evil in it. Scatological and stupid attacks? Yes. Constant inane posting of content-less statements? Yes. A Troll-like self centered involvement? Yes. The desire to start puerile battles? Yes, definitely.
Evil, not in the slightest. Now please don’t reply that “poor, poor Gerty” has been unfairly picked on so much that he is quick on the trigger in taking umbrage, because that would be bullshit. You get off on your little battles and on especially trying to constantly make yourself the center of attention. In short you bore me, but being repetitive and boring is not a quality of evil that I am aware of. Perhaps if you spent more time trying to actually understand the content of what is being written, rather than hopefully searching for grounds to attack, you might fit in and make a contribution. Right now your only contribution is to turn people off.