| "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." |
| "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." |
Some issues aren't resolved by a popular vote: Mom says teacher let classmates vote autistic son out of class.
How can five-year-olds as a group know the difference between "the right thing" and "what I want"? Aren't the adults supposed to be teaching kindergarteners about that?
Oh, sorry. I forgot. Teaching right and wrong isn't the schools' job any more.
In this case, though, it's the adults, and not just the teachers, who refuse to get a clue:
[T]he state attorney's office concluded the matter did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse, so no criminal charges will be filed, Steele said.
An adult just told a 5-year-old boy with cognitive issues that "nobody likes you." How on God's green earth does that not rise to the level of child abuse? And how is it that the chief law enforcers in Florida can't see that?
Oh, right, they aren't pursuing "the right thing," just "what they want."
Update 2008-05-30: And another vicious teacher in Indiana. I guess such evil is appropriate for my 666th post.
If denying bodily functions, or using them as humiliation, is considered torture, then this teacher has some answering to do:
Orange County Public Schools is investigating claims that a student was forced to use a lunchbox as a toilet in front of his class at Meadowbrook Middle School.
The teacher will not be coming to school. She will be relieved of her duty with pay as the school district investigates, officials said.
"If you gotta go, you gotta go," student Quonterious Thomas told Eyewitness News in an interview Monday.
Thomas, 13, says his language arts teacher, Jameeka Chambers, gave him two options when he had to go to the bathroom at Meadowbrook Middle School in Orange County. She said he could wait until the end of class or use her lunchbox in the back of the classroom.
The sixth grader said he used her lunchbox.
"If I had waited any longer, I would have peed on myself and that would have been even more embarrassing," Thomas said, adding that his entire class of 19 students and his teacher watched.
(All emphasis added.)
Sure, the mother has questions, like "how could this happen?", but I'd like to know how this teacher's apparently unstable perception of reality went unnoticed by her mentors and bosses.
This is her first year on the job and her record is clean.
No, her record is nil. "One ice patch doth not a winter make," and less than one year on the job does not make a clean record.
If this doesn't qualify as "stupid, vicious adults," I don't know what does: Mom: Web Hoax Led Girl to Kill Herself
Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her. Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.
The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan's.
As Megan's mother put it, this is absolutely vile.
From Autauga County, Alabama, via Drudge: Student reprimanded for consoling friend who lost parent
The debate of public displays of affection in school is hitting home in Alabama. The mother of a student in Autauga County says her daughter was disciplined for simply hugging a friend...
"It was made to be something ugly and it wasn't," Muir said.
She says the hug wasn't meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend who recently lost a parent.
For doing the right thing, for doing something that I'm sure school officials would want if they were in the same grief, this girl was given a detention under the overly-broad interpretation of the district's behavioral code, prohibiting "inappropriate public displays of affection, including but not limited to embracing and kissing." What is so inappropriate about comfort for those in mourning? What problem do the school board's Bible-thumpers have with this?
If this girl's mother will do nothing beyond pointing out the obvious callousness of the district's policy, the boy's family should take up the cause in court. The district has caused him emotional damage, by stigmatizing his friend for trying to do the right thing.
The cop who wants to be coddled: Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned.
In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn't breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow.
Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall.
The boy's grandparents, named in the suit, are mystified and angry.
"The loss we've suffered, and she's seeking money?" said Richard Cosmillo, 69, the boy's grandfather. "Of course there's going to be water in the house. He was sopping wet when we brought him in."
Somehow, if Eichhorn were the drowning victim, I doubt she would want someone to put out a "Caution: Wet Floor" sign before giving her CPR.
Eichhorn last week sued Richard Cosmillo; his wife, Maggie Cosmillo; and the boy's mother, Angela Cosmillo, accusing them of negligence. They were careless, according to the suit, and allowed the home they shared to become unsafe.
With that kind of thinking, every fire department in the nation could sue the homeowners, landlords, and electrical contractors for the unsafe conditions firefighters are exposed to in a normal working day.
The baby's mother was the only one home Jan. 9, when the boy slipped out of the house and wound up in the pool, according to a police report.
She plunged in and dragged him out, carrying him inside, down a hallway and into a bedroom. She also called 911.
Eichhorn arrived a few minutes later. As she stepped into the room where rescuers were working on the boy, she slipped and went down on one knee, then stood back up, according to Richard Cosmillo.
And if Eichhorn's number 1 top priority was not helping with Joey's rescue, she had no business being in the house. Well, apparently it wasn't:
Her attorney said those benefits, paid by the city's workers' compensation carrier, were not enough.
As the story goes, when someone asked Howard Hughes how much was enough, he replied, "Just a little bit more."
If the Cosmillos had made their pool baby-proof, police would not have been called to the scene, there would have been no water on the floor, and Eichhorn would not have hurt herself, he said.
And if Eichhorn truly believed this, she would file a complaint of child neglect and endangerment with the city prosecutor.
Eichhorn does not see her job as "to serve and protect," unless she's the one being served and protected.
I knew there had to be a hole in this case big enough to fit my car: Airport battles some Muslim cabbies
MINNEAPOLIS - Officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport are proposing stiffer penalties — including suspension of an airport taxi license — to Muslim cab drivers who refuse service to passengers toting alcohol or service dogs...
Airports Commissioner Bert McKasy said the issue raised by Muslim cab drivers who say that carrying alcohol or dogs, including those that help people with disabilities, violates religious beliefs is "unfortunate."
If mere proximity to dogs is a sin in Islam, someone needs to tell some Middle Eastern nomads about this. The PBS show Nature showed a nomad with a dog on a leash in this week's episode Dogs That Changed the World: The Rise of the Dog. The clip was about 5 seconds long, roughly 20 minutes into the program.
(Update 29-Apr: The breed in question is the saluki, a sight hound, the ancestor of the modern greyhound and whippet. Part 2 of the program, Dogs that Changed the World: Dogs by Design had an extended segment on the saluki starting about 7 minutes into the program.)
I doubt the Muslim Brotherhood (or their mouthpieces, the Muslim American Society) care about the obvious truth. Using taqiyya (lying to the infidel) as their justification, they will make any claim they want about their religious beliefs, saying they are "oppressed" because we don't tolerate their intolerant ways. To them, it's irrelevant that their Muslim brothers in the Middle East have no problem keeping dogs around.
Fortunately, reasonable minds have prevailed for the time being, so the nomads will be allowed to use the taxis at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Witness one Rich Arnold, an Ohio middle school principal accused of using heavy chains on wayward students.
The school board has voted to suspend him, pending his termination. One can only hope heavy chains were involved in the procedure.
Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, an 18-year-old Iranian, dared to use deadly force to defend herself and her niece against a would-be rapist. Because of this, she has been sentenced to die by hanging. This isn't a quick, snap-the-neck hanging; it's a slow torture, in which the condemned is choked to death by gravity and the noose.
Where are the radical feminists? I haven't found one word about Nazanin's oppression from any of the following:
Well, Cameron, rape may be illegal in Iran, but self-defense is even more illegal.
Hey, Helen, I don't hear you saying a lot about Nazanin.
Susan, didn't you play a man-hater in "Thelma and Louise"? Doesn't that qualify you to speak as a radical feminist? Come on, say something about Nazanin. Anything!
I thought so. You are all hypocrites. You make the human race worse with your existence. How can you look in your mirrors?
Well, well, well. It looks like Sean Penn does some of his own torture by effigee, and of a woman, no less!
I suppose that, in his world, torture unto death is A-OK. Just not outside his world.
And where are the NOW statements condemning such hateful attitudes? As I type this, there is no mention of Sean Penn torture-by-proxy of Ann Coulter anywhere on their homepage. I guess defending a Republican woman is off-limits for them.
The Deathocrats are on record in their opposition to Life and Liberty. They just finished their trifecta, with an assault on the Pursuit of Happiness. Martha-Ann Alito broke down in tears as she watched her husband face numerous insults and false accusations from the pro-abort gun-grabber Diane Feinstein (anti-life), the traitor Patrick Leahy (anti-liberty), and the DUI-killer Ted Kennedy (who truncated Mary Jo Kopechne's pursuit of happiness).
Is this what it comes to? No human relationship is safe from assault by these losers? Alito is giving them so little ammunition, all they have left is insinuation, innuendo, and bullying. His close marriage, as evidenced by his wife's upset, is just one more reason they have to turn up the heat. His actions fly in the face of their "who cares about discipline?" philosophy, and they cannot let that stand without a fight. Their undisciplined approach resulted in dissention and contention among their ranks, with Kennedy himself as the lead bloviator.
When the Deathocrats take their cues from the shrill fringe (such as NOW, NAACP, DU, and MoveOn), they only alienate themselves from their primary base. It will cost them at the ballot box.
(Hat tip on the event: Drudge Report.)
We've got two links this morning from Drudge, about how not to fix a situation with duct tape. In these cases, the "situation" is "riding the bus to school."
The first is from Florida, in which a Pinellas County bus driver put duct tape on a kid's mouth to make him shut up. Another adult on the bus is accused of complicity in the situation.
The second is from Hawaii, where a special education student was first abused physically and verbally, then duct-taped on his head by the two adults on board. Not just his mouth, mind you.
I wonder if we can use duct tape to "fix" these morons. You know, the way we "fix" our pets.
PETA is at it again, using the old feminist trick of criminalizing fathers who provide for their children. From an article appropriately titled "PETA Tells Kids to Run From Daddy":
"PETA is trying as hard as it can to portray the ordinary angler as a demonic, sadistic, cruel killer. This is what PETA does — it paints caricatures of ordinary people to try to convince the rest of us that we shouldn't want to emulate them," said David Martosko, of the industry lobbying group Center for Consumer Freedom.
Just like 65 years ago. "We are the arbiters of culture. Fear your Jewish fathers who don't live up to our artificial standard."
I think it's time for a new legal term.
psychological kidnapping: (n.) false accusation designed to destroy an otherwise healthy relationship between a parent or guardian and his or her child.
Are school administrators getting stupider by the day?
Kids catch the principal syping on them in the bathroom, and remove the camera. One of the kids, Mac Bedo, tells his mother, Cindy Chamipion, about the camera. So who's in trouble?
The camera's ostensible purpose was to catch vandals. Whether that's true or not is immaterial; there are too many other questions that need answers:
This is why you don't let amateurs implement security. It also shows why schools should not have the "power of the parent."
(Hat tip: Drudge.)
From the east coast:
Police: N.C. State Asst. Professor Used Taser Gun On Daughter, 11
POSTED: 12:08 pm EST November 28, 2005
RALEIGH, N.C.—An N.C. State assistant professor is in trouble with the law. She's accused of using a Taser gun on her 11-year-old child.
Raleigh police charged Brenda Brizuela, 40, with misdemeanor child abuse.
Brizuela works in the Department of Zoology.
She will be out of jail on pretrial release pending trial.
I wonder if the police tased her when they arrested her.
The accused: school principal Marlene Whitby.
The victim: an 8-year-old girl purposely humiliated in every classroom of her school.
The principal is accused of using physical force on the girl, taking her by the hand from room to room and telling everyone she was a "thief and a liar."
I thought the Constitution declared the girl "innocent until proven guilty." Is it any wonder the parents are pushing back at the schools?
If indeed Whitby turns out to be such a sadistic b-tch, I suggest the stockade as a suitable punishment. I'm sure they still have one in a museum somewhere in Pittsburgh.
Update 2005-11-11: Whitby is suspended for 3 days unless she appeals. Let her appeal all she wants, and show her all the consideration she showed the 8-year-old girl.
I still say the stockade is appropriate.
It's bad enough that the parents allowed this. It's just as bad that the courts could allow it (possibly--see below) without the parents' consent.
The topic:
A 14-year-old girl whose 22-year-old husband is charged with sexually assaulting a minor has given birth to their daughter, and the man said he plans to plead not guilty in the case.
OK, so we have a borderline case of statutory rape. But note that he is her husband, meaning that someone issued a marriage license. Note also that it was with parental consent. Now, if that weren't outrageous enough:
Nebraska requires people to be at least 17 before they can marry. But Kansas does not have a minimum age as long as both parents or guardians approve or the marriage is approved by a judge, said a spokesman for Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. (emphasis added)
Or. In other words, the parents' approval is not necessary. If the judge feels like it, he/she is free to ignore the very loud objections of the parents. I suppose this is the next logical step after abolishing parental consent for abortions.
(Note: I tried to verify the existence of a law allowing this kind of judicial activism in Nebraska, but I found nothing. Given that the source here is AP, and it isn't even a direct quote, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it was fabricated.)
(Hat tip: Drudge.)
"No hugs"? I hope they make an exception for the Heimlich maneuver.
Leslee Swanson has the right idea: shower her daughter with love and affection, and dare the obviously joyless administrators to stop her. Then again, this is Oregon, where the government believes everyone should be equally miserable.
Bully on ya, Ms. Swanson.
(H/T: Drudge.)
Referring to the previous entry, this story indicates that the cop was a woman, not a guy. My bad.
But the sophistry continues. The very last sentence of the article quotes Lisa Farbstein, a Metro spokeswoman, regarding the "no eating on Metro property" policy:
Chewing is eating.
It is? You mean I eat chewing gum? Maybe we should call it "eating gum" instead?
Idiots.
This story might as well be titled Woman Arrested for Obeying Lawful Order.
All the necessary details are in the second paragraph. Pay particular attention to the order of events:
Stephanie Willett said she was eating a PayDay bar on an escalator descending into a station July 16
So she's already on the escalator,
when an officer warned her to finish it before entering the station.
She's on a time limit. Should she:
Think fast! Remember, the escalator is only so long!
Both Willett and police agree that she nodded and put the last bit into her mouth
Looks like she's opting for the first choice.
before throwing the wrapper into a trash can.
As any environmentally-conscious citizen should do.
So why wasn't this good enough? She still got arrested, handcuffed, and hauled down to the precinct. Did the cop think he couldn't let her get away without giving her a hard time? Or was he afraid she would expose him for the petty boor that he is?
I'm going to put in a "buy" order to my broker. I understand Doc Marten's is doing pretty well during the current recovery.
Well, it looks like a California Assembly official got involved in the Riordan debacle. Too bad he shot off his own mouth almost as fast as Riordan did. Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton) assumed that, with a name like "Isis," she'd be of Egyptian descent. As soon as he found out little Isis D'Luciano was a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, he dropped all notion of harping on Riordan's callousness.
The NAACP managed to sidestep the notion of ethnicity in their statement:
It is abusive to use such language toward a child, regardless the gender, race, socioeconomic background or national heritage.
Regardless. Not only have they taken a stand against persecution based on race, they even put another social divider (gender) at the head of that list. On this one, I'm with them. Assemblyman Dymally would do well to follow suit, and dump his "white people can't be victims" mentality.
That was stupid and vicious. It set a very bad example. Richard Riordan, go sit in the corner. Better yet, look in the mirror and repeat it.
I had to put up with that kind of viciousness from a bus driver when I was in elementary school. He made fun of me countless times, for being a good reader who wanted to learn things. One incident sticks out in my mind: I took an issue of "Electric Company Magazine" on the bus to read during the hour-long bus ride. When we got to the school, I had to endure taunts from the driver about "the sissy magazine." If he thought wanting to learn was such a bad idea, why the hell was he driving the school bus?
I'm usually the last one to say "think of the children," but in this case, as California Secretary of Education, it's Riordan's job to do just that. After what he did, I certainly wouldn't trust him to teach my children, or manage those who do. I wouldn't even trust him to be near my children. In view of the fact that he has derelicted his duty so severely, I propose that he resign.
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