Various sites are reporting a bizarre and troubling story that the principal of the Beaumont Independent School District’s Taylor Career and Technology Center in Texas shutdown its adult cosmetology class after concluding that one of the male students looked gay. Principal Thomas Amons is being accused of shutting down the whole program because he allegedly knew he could be charged with singling out the one student on the basis of presumed sexual orientation. An instruction. Amons is a deacon at a Baptist church.
Category: Society
Three U.S. congressmen and a high-ranking government official gathered this week to praise a man heralded for his morals and leadership. That man is L. Ron Hubbard and Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny Davis and Liz Gibson, Senior Program Manager at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, gathered to celebrate his legacy.
Continue reading “Lawmakers and Federal Official Gather To Praise Hubbard And Scientology”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
CPS Parent Matt Farmer Puts Penny Pritzker on Trial at CTU’s Stands Strong Rally
Rahm Emanuel promised to “shake up the Windy City’s schools” when he campaigned for mayor of Chicago in 2011. One of his main goals was to change the teacher evaluation process. He is a big proponent of using students’ standardized test scores in determining the effectiveness of classroom practitioners.
Continue reading “Chicago Teachers Take a Stand Against Mayor Rahm Emanuel and His Contract Demands”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I have to admit that I do not shock too easily. However, when I read an article this morning in the New York Times, I was taken back by the news. It seems that private debt collection companies across the United States have partnered with District Attorneys offices, to use the threat of criminal charges being filed against consumers in attempts to collect on alleged bounced checks to merchants. The fact that people were being threatened by collection companies did not surprise me. It was the fact that the veiled threats to the consumers were sent on District Attorney or Prosecutor letterhead that amazed me! Continue reading “Privatizing the District Attorney?”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Our memories not only serve the purpose of learning to avoid danger from past experience, they serve as the glue that holds our sense of our fleeting lives together into a linear personal narrative. For all of us most memories are specific to our direct life experiences. There are some memories though transcending personal encounters and that directly affect us as well as society as a whole. The murder of John F. Kennedy is one such experience from my life that profoundly affected me and my generation, even though all I knew of the man was third hand at best. Closer in time but equally, if not more indelible is the image of the destruction wrought on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. I would guess that almost all Americans who were alive on that day know where they were and what they were doing. This past week we passed the eleventh anniversary of this horror and innumerable solemn observances occurred throughout the nation.
I can remember one phrase that began to be used over and over from that day onward and my rising anger at the implications of that phrase. “This Changes Everything”. I’ve not been able to determine what news-person or pundit first uttered those words, but afterwards the phrase reverberated incessantly. As that fateful day passed, what took shape in the meme those words created, was that the United States had undergone an experience that changed all the rules we had purportedly lived by in dealing with the world around us. In effect it was like saying “No more Mr. Nice Guy”. Whether or not our country ever lived by the ideals it purported to live by is another question entirely. My anger rose at the overuse of this meme because I’ve spent my life wanting my country to live by a higher standard in both national and international relations. I correctly saw this meme as an attempted usurpation of this tragedy towards turning our country away from our national ideals, such as they were. As the years passed since 9/11/2001, we have watched the erosion of these America Ideals. Two murderous wars have been waged. Hundreds of thousands have died, or been maimed. Our “national treasure” depleted, torture has become legalized and with the passage of the “Patriot Act” we have watched the demolition of our personal freedom. With this anniversary, two articles appeared nationally that call into question what was really behind 9/11 and also why there was a possibility of deterring it, which was ignored by the G.W. Bush Administration. I want to discuss both of these articles and then add my own thoughts on their real context. Continue reading ““This Changes Everything””
NYC Board of Health has approved the controversial ban on sale of sugary drinks over 16 ounces. Despite objections (including on this blog) to the measure as the latest example of regulation for the Nanny State, the board passed the ban demanded by Mayor Bloomberg. The board insists that adults and parents cannot be trusted with such decisions and that health demands a ban. You absolutely, positively not order a large sugary drink . . . unless you put alcohol in it.
The Ninth Circuit has handed down an interesting ruling that reaffirms that sexual contact requires consent. What is different is that the case deals with prison sex. Former Idaho prison guard Sandra de Marti is accused of sexual harassment in groping inmate Conway Wood. The case is Wood v. Beauclair, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 18575 (9th Cir.).
After facing press accounts depicting its product as “pink slime,” Beef Products Inc. has brought a defamation action in South Dakota against ABC News Inc.and ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for damages from the coverage. Notably, the lawsuit also includes Gerald Zirnstein, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist, as a defendant. It was Zirnstein who reportedly coined the catchy phrase “pink slime” for the beef product. The company is seeking $400 million in claimed actual and consequential damages, treble damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees and costs.
Continue reading “Coming To A Court Near You: The Revenge of the Pink Slime”
“Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis, 39, has long shown remarkably bad judgment on legal matters, including his tax evasion conviction and charges of contempt. He can now add a $20 million damage award that he will have to pay casino mogul Steve Wynn — not counting possible punitive damages. The latest court loss for Francis was over an unpaid gambling bill and led to slander by Francis. He will now pay at least 10 times the amount of his gambling losses to Wynn, 70, and that is not counting a $7.5-million defamation judgment awarded by a Nevada judge this year. That is almost $30 million and counting.
Mark Christopher James Craddock, 75, will not be practicing medical any more in Australia after he prescribed chemical castration for an eighteen-year-old patient as a cure for his homosexual inclinations. Both Craddock and the teen were members of the Exclusive Brethren Christian sect.
Justin Hallman, 16, wanted to show how the United States is turning into a police state. He succeeded all too well in not only receiving an A+ in his American Government class but also allegedly a visit from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) confirming the very premise of his film posted on YouTube (below).
For years I have tried to raise international awareness of the menace of Surströmming, fermented herring. Now, Swedish police has faced the reality of Surströmming terror. The police closed off a whole street after hearing reports of a gas leak only to find a stash of fermented herring.
Continue reading “Swedish Police Shutdown Downtown Area Only To Uncover Scourge of Surströmming”
French tourist Nathalie Rollandin may have the ultimate video from San Francisco. While filming the sunset on the Golden Gate Bridge, a seagull snatched the camera out of her hands and recorded a bird’s eye view of the water and sunset.
Our erstwhile ally in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is responding to the brutal murder of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff in Benghazi on Wednesday. Stevens was reportedly suffocated to death by the attacking mob which attacked the consulate because of a small film shown in the United States that was deemed as insulting to the Muhammad. Karzai then offered his own take on the murders by denouncing the “inhuman and abusive act” of the . . . filmmakers.
Continue reading “Karzai Denounces Filmmakers for the Murder of Americans in Libya”
The Washington Post has reported on a controversy at American University involving Professor Adrienne Pine who drew complaints from her students in her class “Sex, Gender & Culture” after she breastfed her baby in class. The university has criticized Pine but the controversy has produced a national debate on the propriety of a professor bringing a baby to class and breastfeeding in front of students as she lectures.