Schools in Beaver County, Pennsylvania were shutdown on the basis for a voicemail greeting in which a student sings the theme air of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” That’s right, there appears little inquiry that is made between a call of a receptionists who misheard the lyrics of a song and a total police shutdown of a county.
We have yet another case of lunacy in our schools as part of the zero tolerance policy regarding guns. We have previously explored how teachers and school administrators are expelling or suspending students for everything from finger guns to stick figures. (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). For a prior column, click here. Now, Josh Welch, 7, was suspended for two days because he nibbled on his strawberry tart and made it look like a gun. He picked up the fearsome Danish and said “bang, bang” and a teacher reported was irate.
We have been criticizing President Barack Obama for years over the failure of his Administration to prosecute officials responsible for torture as well as the intentional destruction of torture tapes at the CIA. Now a high-ranking United Nations official is joining the condemnation of Obama and his Administration. Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights, has condemned the failure to prosecute a single person for the official torture program implemented during the Bush years. The Obama Administration has thrown the books at those who leaked the information on our torture program but Obama himself promised the CIA after his election that CIA personnel would not be prosecuted despite our obligations under international treaty.
Continue reading “U.N. Investigator Criticizes Obama For Record On Torture”
There is an astonishing story coming from Pennsylvania where the wife of Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery appears to not only pull a salary as his chief judicial aide but has reportedly pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars in referral fees from law firms who appear before her husband. In just one such referral fee, Lise Rapaport, received $821,000.
Researchers at Brown University have developed an extraordinary new device: an implant that is the first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface. You can now be your own Johnny Mnemonic. Having tried out the implant on pigs and monkeys, the researchers are ready to use it in willing human subjects. For those of us who are fans of the cult classic “The President’s Analyst,” the Brown implant seems vaguely familiar.
Continue reading “Coming To A Brain Near You: Cerebrum Communicator”
It appears that something borrowed and something blue is often the same item in some marriages in China. Chinese police are dealing with a rather novel crime: people digging up corpses to be buried with dead bachelors. They are called “ghost marriages” and four men have been arrested in this bizarre criminal enterprise.
Continue reading “Four Funerals and a Wedding: Chinese Police Crackdown On “Ghost Weddings””
For Cathy Jordan it began as a banner day. A hearing was just held unveiling the “Cathy Jordan Medical Cannabis Act,” legislation to legalize medical marijuana for people like Cathy Jordan who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease and is wheelchair-bound. Hours after a news account of the hearing was published, officers raided her home with drawn guns and seized their marijuana plants used for her illness. The police from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office insist it was a coincidence.
Lech Wałęsa won the Noble Prize for fighting for Polish independence against the Soviet bloc, a move that ultimately helped bring down the wall dividing East from West. However, he seems to have rediscovered the comfort of a wall in his latest comments calling for homosexual members of parliament to be placed behind a wall to remind them that they are a minority and should adapt themselves to smaller things.”
Continue reading “Wałęsa’s Wall: Lech Wałęsa Calls For Gay Lawmakers To Sit Behind Wall”
There is an interesting torts lawsuit out of Houston where Layne Hardin, 44, is suing Obstetrical and Gynecological Associates, PA for allegedly giving two vials of his sperm to an ex-girfriend who proceeded to have his child. She is also suing the former boyfriend. The boy is now 2 years old. Hardin says that Tobie Devall has never let him see the boy while her lawyer says that he has never asked to see the boy.
Continue reading “Texas Man Sues Ex-Girlfriend and Clinic for Theft of Sperm Used To Produce Child”
Connecticut State Rep. Ernest Hewett, a five-term Democrat from New London, is desperately trying to explain a comment made to a high school girl during a hearing on the funding of youth programs. The girl had explained that one of the youth programs had cured her of her fear of snakes. Hewett then suggested that he had a snake under the desk for her to test herself on. Hewett insisted that the comment was entirely innocent and not sexual but he has been stripped of his leadership title. On his legislative site (which is still announcing his promotion to the leadership), Hewitt posts the defining quote of his career: “Never get so high that no one can touch you, never get so low that no one will want to touch you.” It appears that no one is touching Hewitt, or his snake, this week.
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In recent years, we have heard and read a lot about the failure of public schools in the United States. “Our schools are failing” has almost become a mantra with members of the media, many of our politicians, and the advocates of school reform. I have seen few people who have questioned the assertions made by the media, elected officials, and school reformers that schools in this country are not adequately educating our youth and that our educational system is a total and abject failure.
Many of those who criticize our public education system offer charter schools and the privatization of public schools as solutions to the “education problem” in this country.
I’m a retired public school educator. I have known and am friends with many current and former public school teachers. I know that there are many fine classroom practitioners working in our public schools today…and many excellent schools where our children receive a quality education. I am aware that there are also many schools where children may not be receiving the highest quality education. (What often go unmentioned in the media are the real reasons—including poverty—why some schools in this country may be failing.)
One problem with the “our schools are failing” mantra—as I see it—is that all our schools are lumped together in one basket labeled “failing.” How did this come to be? Do we Americans really believe that NO public schools in this country provide their students with an adequate education? Do we believe that all schools need to be reformed? If not, do we believe that even the schools which are actually doing an estimable job of educating their students need to be reformed?
I think it is time we start taking a good look at the individuals and organizations that are behind the push to establish thousands of charter schools and to use taxpayer money to fund private and religious schools as the means of raising the quality of education in this country.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
You may recall the demonstrations against the NATO Summit that was taking place in Chicago in May of 2012. On May 16th, 2012, the Chicago Police Department made a military style raid on an apartment where several demonstrators were staying during the Summit.
“On May 16, 2012, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) conducted a violent midnight preemptive raid of an apartment housing 11 activists. Two of them, it would later be exposed, were actually undercover informants working on behalf of the CPD. Staying in an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, the activists were in town to protest the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, held May 20-21. The military-style raid led to the eventual charging of three of those activists in the Windy City to protest the NATO Summit with conspiracy to commit acts of domestic terrorism and other related charges – under Illinois’ terrorism statute – in the form of a legal bail proffer. It was the first time the law – passed in haste by the Illinois legislature after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks – had ever been used.” Truthout Continue reading “The NATO 3 and Free Speech”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
One of America’s greatest novels in my opinion is “The Great Gatsby” and I think many literary critics feel the same. If you’re not familiar with it, the short synopsis is that it is the tale of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious figure of self made wealth who arrives on Long Island’s North Shore, known as the “Gold Coast”, back in the “Roaring Twenties”. His life intertwines with Tom and Daisy Buchanan, a “golden” young couple with inherited wealth and the best social pedigrees. The interplay between these three leads to ultimate tragedy for Gatsby and more than a few other characters swept into the social vortex surrounding the Buchanan’s. On the last page of this magnificently crafted book, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator Nick runs into Tom and Daisy who are gaily embarking on a trip to Europe after some cataclysmic events of their causing and he says of them:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Continue reading ““The rich are not like the rest of us””
Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Not since 1415 when Gregory XII resigned to heal the so-called “Western Schism” has a Pope of the Roman Catholic Church abdicated his post as the successor to St. Peter. Now, Benedict the XVI has issued his renuntiatio citing failing health as the reason for the move. Rumors have swirled since publication in the Italian newspaper, Repubblica, (here) that the Pope resigned to diffuse a burgeoning crisis in the Curia over allegations of a gay cabal of Vatican prelates being blackmailed by male prostitutes. The Vatican flatly denies that allegation and no one has come forward to challenge that denial. Fueling the rumors are the inconvenient resignation of Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien over allegations of sexual abuse of three seminarians. O’Brien has flatly rejected those charges too, but resigned the following day saying his decision was based “on health grounds,” and that his hospitalization for cellulitis and gout at the end of 2012 was proof thereof. That’s eerily similar to Benedict’s demurrer and, coupled with several recent scandals (here) involving Vatican priests procuring gay prostitutes, have left some observers skeptical, indeed.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments (pdf) in Shelby County v. Holder, a case involving Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County, Alabama, is challenging its requirement under Section 5 to get preclearance, from either the United States Attorney General or a three-judge panel of the District Court of the District of Columbia, before making any changes to their voting rules. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court seem to be one-sided with the Justices hammering the attorneys who seem totally unprepared with counter-arguments.