Voting and the ID Requirement

All citizens have the right to vote.  You do not need an ID to be a citizen.

You need a license to drive because driving is not a right, not essential to being a citizen, and the citizenry have said that safety requires a license to drive ... but it doesn't have to be a photo ID. If I don't drive, then why would I pay for a license?

• Does my choice to not drive mean that I am not a citizen and cannot vote?

You need an ID to purchase alcohol because the law said so, but you do not have to have an ID to drink it (you only have to be of legal age) and again, you do not have to be a drinker to be a citizen. If I am in my 50s, why should I need an ID to purchase? If I don't drink, why do I need an ID?

• Does my choice to not drink mean that I cannot vote?

You do not need an ID to serve on a jury. If that were true, anyone could get out of jury duty by taking the bus and showing up without it. Why is jury duty a prerequisite for voting, anyway?

•  If I never get called for jury duty or never get empaneled because I don't fit the lawyer's criteria, do I lose the right to vote?

If I am old and no longer need an ID, why should I be required to purchase one just because you have this fantasy that I am someone who might commit voter fraud? If I have no other reason to have an ID other than voting, then we are talking about a poll tax.

• Is getting old a reason to lose the right to vote?

If I am too poor to own a car, or have a disease or a disability that prevents me from driving, why should I buy a driver's license?

• Is being blind or poor a reason to lose the right to vote?

If I get married and change my name, or simply decide that my real father isn't part of my life and my adopted parents' name is the one I will use, do I need to schedule things far enough in advance so that legal paperwork can be filed and processed to change my name, social security and IRS information, which then can be taken to the appropriate DMV for a new license, which then can be taken to the appropriate town clerk to change my name on the rolls? Because if I don't and the new name doesn't exactly match the old one, I can't vote.

• Is a legal name change a reason to lose the right to vote?

And think about the mechanics of voter fraud ... I show up to vote and give my name, and get checked off the list. I vote and then come back in a attempt to vote again under another name - how is that supposed to work out? Do I just pick one at random? Someone who I know is dead but somehow that information isn't known? This scenario makes it a very difficult crime to get away with and easy to get a significant fine.

If I show up and my name is already checked off, then I have to prove who I am and vote provisionally ... if there was voter fraud happening, this would be prevalent. It isn't.

Real voter fraud is more than 1 extra vote.

• It's denying the vote to huge lists of people based on criteria that have nothing to do with a citizen's right to vote.
• It's denying the vote for lack of ID which many people have no use for.
• It's denying the vote to citizens in certain categories that you wish to disenfranchise.
• It's denying the vote to classes of people who would vote for your opponent.

Why should I have to prove my identity, anyway? Are you saying that I am not a citizen if I do not have an ID?

What you should be demanding is that no one votes twice, like the "dip the finger in ink" trick. What you are actually demanding is that a large number of people not be allowed to vote at all.

That is wrong.

Some thoughts on guns and 2nd Amendment.

I responded to a friend the other day on Facebook.

The NBC link is about a murder in Texas with a chainsaw. So now in theory because they look evil and are dangerous they should be banned right. According to how politician’s look at things they should. Let’s not look at the human factor, just the tool that was used. I never said we don’t need some form of gun control, we do. What I am saying with this is that with tool no matter what its designed to do, whether it’s a car, chainsaw, hammer, screwdriver, gun, power tool, it can be and has been used to injure and or kill another human being. The gentleman in China that killed multiple people used a knife. So accordingly too the arguments over gun control, guns are dangerous in untrained hands or in the hands of the criminal, that being said this is true for all other tools out there .So it could be argued that all tools are dangerous and should be controlled. The hammer was the cause of many deaths here in the US, so we should ban them or how about cars. This is not about apples or oranges, a tool is tool no matter what its designed to do, but in the hands of HUMAN a tool can be used, whether they are untrained, a criminal, mentally incapable, to hurt other living beings. The main point being no matter the tool It takes a HUMAN to the do the deed, so why aren't we working on that instead. Why aren't they working on the human?

"They" are, but it's a tough row to hoe.

Meanwhile, various groups and hospitals are working on domestic abuse (and trying to help women out of bad situations in which they are threatened with guns daily), and police and ATF are trying to get the ability to track guns back to the store and close down the TINY % of stores that seem to be providing the 99% of guns in crime, and the background check legislation is to prevent those "flawed" humans from acquiring more guns easily, and the legislators are trying to identify the "bad" ones and pass laws to prevent them from owning a gun.

While some of these tactics may not suit you, remember that almost all of them (with the exception of the magazine limit - which is silly) were proposed by the NRA in the first place because they stood a very good chance of working to lower the gun violence, take guns out of the hands of idiots and crazies, and take some heat out of the situation and let us all breathe easier.

Back to the chainsaw - I don't care about the weapon: this man should be stripped of all rights to ever own a gun or any kind of dangerous tool. and be in Jail. Using him as a strawman doesn't help either side of the argument.

And for all of the 2nd amendment absolutists: the "original intent" was that Protestant white men were citizens, Catholic white men were tolerated, and pretty much everyone else: women, Blacks, children, Asians, Original-Americans (Indians), etc., were expected to follow orders, shut up, and be servile.

Over the last few centuries, we have interpreted, altered and re-configured the Constitution many times. If we can pass Prohibition and then come to our senses a few years later, then we have to agree that nothing is certain in this country. If we can pretend that a corporation has personal free-speech rights instead of simply being the owner's free speech rights, then we are very far from "original intent".

We have spent the last 230 years trying to improve this country and sometimes need to fix our improvements ... so what fix do you propose? What method do you have for identifying the idiots and crazies who are the "real problem"? What process do you propose to use for removing the guns of those the courts (for it will have to be they) determine shouldn't be allowed to have guns? What checks and balances will we install to make sure that no one who ISN'T on the banned list ever loses a gun?

We don't have a gun problem.

Usually cheaper than this.

We have an alcohol problem.
We have a drug problem.
We have a poverty problem.
We have a "Kids Being Stupid" problem.
We have a politics problem.
We have an anti-vaccine idiot problem.

We don't have a gun problem.

I'd really appreciate it if we could stop applying solutions that don't work to problems we don't have, creating new problems we didn't need.

I'm sure someone will claim I'm being obtuse and since few of you has my perspective, I'll be more clear.  I'm not being a pro-gun, pro-NRA stooge.  I'm not ignoring the real problems that many schools have. I'm not ignoring the problems that we do have.

And I'm not ignoring reality.

NOT one of my students, but I see
similar pictures all the time.

First, some information.  At least 50% of my students have guns in their homes. At least 25% of my students have their own guns (and a few are pink camoflage, too).  I know, because they've shown them to me. "Hey Mister, check this out.  I got this deer this weekend." (Shows me a cellphone picture of herself posing proudly with a 6-pointer and the rifle.) This is anyone from one of the seventh graders to one of the seniors.  First kill - they're typically thrilled out of their minds and showing everyone.

I won't say that everyone hunts in this state, but several schools just give up and cancel classes during the first days of hunting season. We don't, but I do get the requests for homework so they don't fall behind. I have friends who own multiple guns, some of which are loaded and lying on the windowsills of the home. It might be startling at first to see it, but the surprise quickly fades. In Brattleboro, you can see people walking down the street, naked except for boots and a hat, sometimes with a rifle over the shoulder.

The law in Vermont allows for adults to own, sell, carry a weapon with very few restrictions. Under 16 only need parental permission. It is legal to walk around with a weapon, concealed or not, except for a few places like schools and courthouses, etc.

Have we had a problem with guns in school? No.

Yes, there was a shooting in an Essex school (just outside of Burlington, the closest we can come to a city) in which a man came in during August work days to shoot his teacher girlfriend, but killed another teacher. A Jericho student killed himself. That's it, going back to the 1960s.

Have had a problem with guns, period? No.

There was a guy who shot at a tractor in the middle of a field and killed the farmer he couldn't see behind it. There was a drug dealer in Burlington. There are the occasional "hunting accidents" and other things, but nothing remotely like Adam Lanza. We have maybe five homicides a year. We DID have the farmer who was angry at the cops and crushed all eight cop cars with his tractor, though, but I don't figure that counts.

We have had more kids die from whooping cough than from school shootings. Can we shut up Jenny McCarthy instead?

Banning guns, getting all paranoid about locking doors, hiring cops, arming teachers, are all security theater .... worthless attempts to solve a problem that doesn't exist here by pretending to raise security. The problem is that they cost serious money while being worthless.

Governor Howard Dean was in favor of tighter gun control but got the NRA's A rating eight times because he refused to jump at shadows. A Canadian news program asked him why he never tried to pass any gun control laws.  He replied, "I would have, but I never found one that would work."

In the national campaign, he said,

"If I thought gun control would save lives in Vermont, I would support it. If you say “gun control” in Vermont or Tennessee, people think you want to take away their hunting rifle. If you say “gun control” New York or L.A., people are happy to see Uzi’s or illegal handguns taken off the streets. I think Vermont ought to be able to have a different set of laws than California. Let’s keep and enforce the federal gun laws we have, close the gun show loophole using Insta-check, and then let the states decide for themselves what if any gun control laws they want. We need to get guns off the national radar screen if Democrats are ever going to win again in the South and the West. Just as we resist attempts by President Bush to dictate to the states how we run our school systems and what kind of welfare programs to have, we need to resist attempts to tell states how to deal with guns beyond existing Federal law. Source: Campaign web site, DeanForAmerica.com, “On the Issues” , Nov 30, 2002

Let's spend our limited resources on applying solutions that will work to counter something that IS a problem.

Students and Social Media - Delaware gets Smart

It's not signed by the Governor yet, but Delaware may institute intelligence ...

Both chambers of the Delaware Legislature have now given unanimous approval to a bill that would keep schools from taking even a single peek at their students’ social media profiles. The prohibition applies to all the state’s students, regardless of whether they are enrolled in a public or a private school. The measure, HB 309, is one of a pair dealing with social media privacy. The other, HB 308, addresses the kind of access employers may demand of their current or potential employees, and is still being debated by lawmakers.

About freaking time. Until it happens, though, my long-standing advice to students who are required to "friend" a school employee: make a new account.

The student should have two Facebook accounts and two Twitter accounts, two of everything that the school feels like monitoring.

One, under the student's real name: nice and shiny and clean and sanitized - posts about squeaky clean and honest living, the thrill of academics, and messages to parents and family. Use this one to set up future job prospects and post photos showing one in a good light. Use this one to help your grandmother get on Facebook. "Friend" your seven-year-old nephew and be a positive influence. Dutifully give this information to the goody-two-shoes compliance officer and don't forget to friend the coach and his flunkies.

The second account, set up under a pseudonym such as "Attila the Bunny Rabbit" is the one that has all of the true friends, the honesty and the fun.

For me, this is the difference between the Math Curmudgeon and my real life. Plausible Deniability.

Texas Republicans are Against Higher-Order Thinking

Don't think for Yourself.

From the party platform:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Because nobody wants you to challenge your fixed beliefs and because everybody knows that parental authority is sacrosanct. New state motto: "Don't Think For Yourself."

Oh, and make sure you use the right books:

We believe that the SBOE ... responsibilities must include maintaining sole authority over all curricula content and the state adoption of all educational materials. This process must include public hearings.

Until such time as all texts are required to be approved by the SBOE, each ISD that uses non-SBOE approved instructional materials must verify them as factually and historically correct.

 Whose definitions of "facts" and "historically correct" are to be used is carefully not specified.

We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America’s legal, political and economic systems. We support curricula that are heavily weighted on original founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Founders’ writings.

Yup, like the math of the Three-Fifths Compromise? Of course, if we only look at the original writings and the original founding documents, we'd have to ignore the amendments like the 1st and 2nd ones, wouldn't we?

Does this make him a bad teacher?

Darren has this piece about a teacher who's living with one of his students.

Last year, Jordan Powers was just another student from Mr. Hooker's class. Now she's his live-in girlfriend. James Hooker -- the 41-year-old married father who left his wife and kids for his 18-year-old-student -- might be the worst teacher ever.

He should never have an affair with his student. Don't look for love on your class roster, even if she graduated and turned 18. There's too much baggage there. Certainly don't leave your family for the girl. He's 41 and she's 18 ... really?

It's the same as sleeping with your boss, fraternizing in the military, or looking for a wife at the family picnic. It's a bit unseemly and in practice quite problematic. Someone invariably winds up being hurt. It's illegal in most states for that reason.

However, that doesn't make him the worst teacher in the world. It makes him a bad person who happens to be a teacher.

Schools should not be policing YouTube

Huffington Post: "After two minors from Gainesville High School in Gainesville, Fla., posted a nearly 14-minute-long racist rant on YouTube, the girls are "no longer students at the school," WCJB-TV reports. Last week, eight police officers were brought to the campus in light of death threats the girls were receiving in response to their videos. The videos included comments like, "You can understand what we are saying, our accents, we use actual words. Black people do not."

The school has no business trying to regulate what is said/posted on YouTube. To say that the girls are no longer at the school and then to say that the comments were not welcome certainly makes it sound as though they were expelled for their speech. Schools are doing too much of this over-reach into the private lives of their students.

"Gainesville High School principal David Shelnutt did not go into detail on the extent of the disciplinary action taken against the girls, but did tell WCJB that their comments were not welcome at the school. "There's no place for comments like that, that video here at GHS," Shelnutt told the station. "There's no place for that in the Alachua County Public School System, and my opinion, no place for that in society in general."

Does he also expel a student who repeats what a candidate like Santorum says but in more extreme fashion, or one who repeats a Malcolm X rant? Perhaps a teacher who uses the word "nigger" in context during a class as part of a thoughtful discussion on race and Huckleberry Finn? (oh, wait ...)

Someone needs to be
the bad example.

The school needs to hire the temporary extra security but stay out of it. I know that everyone in education will disagree with me one this, but I think the constant nannying by schools has partly caused the change in who takes responsibility for children's behavior. I could see a lot of pointed teacher commentary (directed at the two girls, in class) that included "What do you expect?" and "What would you have felt if the situation were reversed?" but I don't think they should have been expelled.

This all seems to be an extension of the anti-bullying laws that do much the same thing. Having said that, however, it must be noted that many students are under the mistaken impression that they are immune to response and that anything they say in the privacy of their bedrooms is "nothing" - forgetting they are saying it to a video camera and posting it for all to see.

The parents are not blameless. The girls are minors and should not have had total and unquestioned access to all social media. Goofiness is typical and could have been over-looked, but they just found out that being racist and insulting has consequences and that being racist and insulting a second (or third) time becomes more than momentary brainlessness. I would imagine that the parent never once said anything approximating "I will occasionally check what you post, be nice."

It would have been easier than:

"While we can never take back the words and actions that these two children have said, we have to start to heal and forgive IMMEDIATELY. Stop the violent threats to our homes and our children, stop the anger, because this will solve absolutely nothing, and most importantly, look at yourself for change and love."

Interesting that she feels that she can demand anything, that people need to forgive and forget IMMEDIATELY. Maybe the girls can at least be an object lesson for others.

My daughter has gone into a severe depression from what has happened and her remorse and sorrow is beyond description.

Yes, she has become depressed because she has lost friends and someone spoke back in a nasty fashion, but she should be more depressed by the fact that she cast herself in a pit from which she will take years to climb out: peers, colleges, future employers checking her Facebook and YouTube accounts and reacting accordingly. She will live this down but not easily. A simple Google check will suffice because, while HuffPost and the TV station will not print her name, all of the kids at school will - especially those with an axe to grind. Her name will soon be linked to that video.

She wishes she could take it back, the girl said. “I’m not a racist person. I still don’t see someone and judge them because of skin color,” the girl said, but after the video, “no one is going to believe me anymore.”

And why should they? In the video, she is replying to comments about an earlier racist rant. This apology is invalid. This girl knew about and pushed as many buttons as she could and demonstrated, as clearly as anyone can, that she is racist. You know the rule "Once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, but three times is a law of nature."

All teenagers should have a chance to go through a stupid phase and grow up to realize that they really don't agree with their stupid phase. The problem is that YouTube makes it permanent.

And then you have this from Britain's Daily Mail, of all places, about two OTHER white girls:

In this latest disturbing video, the girls start by saying white students 'turn black' as soon as they enter the school, claiming you 'catch the disease'. At one point they add: 'Guys, if you're watching this video now, and you have a weave, and you're black, please be offended - because we're making fun of you.' It ends with one of the girls saying: 'Don't post this on Facebook because all our friends are black.' They chuckle, flash peace signs and say 'peace and love'.

Too late.

Difference is Night and Day

Ever notice how all the ads on TV at night are for medications for every obscure problem (including the risk of death, intestinal bloating, heart attack, lung failure, skin cancer, internal bleeding - all spoken in a cheery "don't mind me, just doing my job" voice) and all the ads during the day are for lawyers begging for clients to join their class action lawsuits for drugs that caused accidental death?

The things you notice on vacation. Truly bizarre.

On a side note, can any true science fiction fan watch that commercial for the sleep drug and not think of an alien parasite landing softly on the victims back while she sleeps?

Find love elsewhere.

Joanne Jacobs has this from Reason.com:

Reason‘s “Nanny of the Month” highlights a law that would make student-teacher sex a felony, even if the student is 18 or older. Adult ed teachers and school volunteers are included in the proposed Michigan law.

I don't have a problem with this law. Your classroom roster isn't an old-school version of match.com and isn't where you should be looking for a good time.

It's the same as sleeping with your boss, fraternizing in the military, or looking for a wife at the family picnic. It's a bit unseemly and in practice quite problematic. Someone invariably winds up being hurt. While the situation isn't as bad for the two parties, an adult education teacher whose spouse becomes the student shouldn't be teaching a spouse in a formal situation anyway.

Rather, the law seems to be trying to close the "loophole" of a teacher who points out that "his high school girlfriend juuuuust turned 18, so its okay!"

Seriously, graduation can't be that far away.

California - Tech vs Fine Arts

Broke in a broken system.

Joanne shares about California's new law.

"Music and art teachers are complaining about a new California law that expands graduation requirements: Students can take one career or technical education course in place of art, music or a foreign language, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Arts and foreign-language courses are twice as likely as vocational classes to be certified as college-prep courses, so students who choose career tech could be ineligible to go from high school directly to the University of California and California State University systems."

So here's my question ... if VoTech is what the kid wants to study, why are we so hell-bent on getting him into a college degree he'll waste his time on?

Take that woman in the picture.  She went $100,000 in debt to finance a women's studies and religious studies major at NYU and now is working as a photographer's assistant for $20 per hour. (It's obviously CitiBank's fault for giving her the loan. That's why they posed her there.)

Why?  Why should she incur that debt for such a meaningless degree?  Because she's stupid, self-centered and gullible -- she willingly took out loans without considering how she'd pay them back.

California provides a free college education to its residents (well, except for fees, but I digress.)  Why should California provide a free college education for someone like her who serves no practical benefit to the society which pays that bill?

There is nothing wrong with a life and a career without a degree. Millions of people accomplish it all the time.  They become fine upstanding members of the community and college grads look down their noses at them at their peril.

We must stop this "college for all" one-track mindset.

Some urban districts, such as Oakland Unified, San Jose Unified and East Side Union in San Jose, use UC’s college-prep curriculum as their graduation requirement.

Which is ridiculous.

Public schools should not be pretending that all kids belong in college nor should it require that all kids be ready to make that step before we're willing to let them go out and be successful.

Inappropriate at any time in any classroom.

Darren has a piece about a new California law.

Do NOT Make Me Do This
I'm sorry your kid gets seizures, but I'm a teacher and not a medical professional, and neither do I desire a career related to medicine. If I desired one, I'd already be in that field. "Duh" just isn't strong enough.

But that's what happened Thursday, when a key legislative committee voted to move forward with a bill that would let school employees who are not nurses administer epilepsy medicine to children having seizures...

He asks, "You know what my fear is? Eventually they'll make it required that I do this." To which I reply ... "Holy crap!"

I'm perfectly fine, even happy to have an epileptic in my classroom. We simply have a class discussion about what to look for, signs to pay attention to and that sort of thing. Periodically, someone would mention that T_____ was having a mild siezure and we'd watch to make sure he wasn't going to hurt himself and continue on. If he needed to be laid on the floor (most of his were mild and he'd freeze in his seat), a couple of kids would grab him and we'd all ease him down and move chairs. No histrionics, no big deal. When he came out, we'd usually send him to the nurse to nap and someone would be assigned to bring material for him. But I draw the line at administering Diastat.

Why? Big mean bastard? Well, yes, but that's not the reason. I'm a teacher, not a nurse, and I think the nurse should do her job and let me do mine? Well, yes, but not quite it. We need an additional quoted paragraph from Darren. Read:

Labor unions argue that schools should employ more nurses because it's inappropriate to ask nonmedical personnel to administer Diastat, the anti-seizure drug at the center of SB 161. Diastat is a valium gel that must be inserted into the patient's rectum with a soft-tipped syringe.

WTF? Anything that would require me to take off a kid's pants in class to administer something into the rectum ... did anyone think this through?

Walt Whitman was gay, too

But we study his work because he was a great poet. Julius Caesar most certainly indulged but that's not why we read his thoughts in Latin class, or history, or political science. I can't think of much to say about California's new law requiring mention of certain groups in history classes other than it's stupid.  Coach Brown says it better, so go read his take on it.

Fines for Truancy, by people with too much time on their hands.

I doubt that the fines for truants program will work.  As soon as you get money involved, excuses will be found in much the same way as excuses are found when students and families want to take an extended vacation or take an extra week for Spring break. Besides, if the parents couldn't make them go to school in the first place, how are they supposed to make them go to school in the second place?

Bad boy. Stop it.

It could soon cost kids (and parents) in Concord,CA upwards of $500 if the teenager continues to cut class. The mayor of Concord, Laure Hoffmeister, insists that the local police are spending too much time and effort chasing down truant kids these days.

So instead of chasing them down and bringing them back to school, they'll chase them down and give them a ticket, show up in court, give testimony, watch as the judge waves his gavel and threatens to impose the fine but never does, listen to the kid do that pretend-contrition-bullshit thing they're all so good at, and then tell the parent to bring them back to school. Because, gosh darn it, they're all such GOOD kids.

“Often they’re finding that the kid they return at 11 a.m. is back out at 12:30,” said Hoffmeister. After a series of general warnings, students and their parents would be fined $100 after the first offense, $200 after the second, and $500 after the third.

And this solves things, how?  The school has already admitted it can't keep them in the building for longer than a couple hours.

Darren has a few other implications that I won't repeat in their entirety, but just say that the schools seem to be are demanding more and more control over students' off-campus lives but accepting less and less responsibility.

On the whole, adults in the area seem to largely support the innovative and unique idea. Predictably, teenagers and students are vehemently opposed to the new proposal.

Quel surprise. The adults approve a measure that restricts teenagers. I wonder how long the ordinance will last. Probably until someone in local government has to pay the fine. This whole sorry tale brings to mind this:

Americans have long been driven by two deep longings. The first is to be left alone. The second is to tell other people what to do. On most moral issues, the easiest way out is to inflict our piety on children. All the righteous satisfaction, none of the libertarian backlash.

~ William Saletan, Slate

Won't someone PLEASE think of the Children?

Bullying is cause for Expulsion

I await the results of California's foray into social science, to whit, the new law making cyberbullying punishable by expulsion.

The bill, know as AB 746, or the Cyber Bully Prevention bill, was championed by Assemblymember Nora Campos (D-San José). It has become official California law following Governor Brown’s signature. AB 746 declares that posts made on social network sites are covered under the Education Code anti-bullying provisions and allows school officials to suspend student violators. California law allows for the suspension of a student for bullying, including bullying by electronic acts.

I'm assuming they've figured out

• how to identify the true culprit from other than circumstantial evidence. I, for example, have two facebook accounts and I recommend that students and teachers do as well. One is my squeaky-clean page, the other is anonymous. There are easy ways to set up a blog or a facebook account without much of a trail.  Police can figure it out with a judge's warrant and a bucketload of time but probably have more things on their mind than Suzy calling Jenny a "whore-slut" online. A smart kid posts the nasty, waits for reaction and then deletes it. A smarter kid posts "Hey, did you hear about what Jenny did?" The smartest bully gets everyone to unfriend the victim and bullies in the old-fashioned way by shouting things when adults aren't around.
• how to deal with a bully who just shuts up and whose parents get a lawyer. What? Did you expect any different? Are you going to subpoena something? Got some proof it was my client? His account got "hacked" and he would never write that. It didn't work for Weiner but it would for a nameless 10th grader.  Don't forget due process laws, confidentiality rules and all that.  How do you deal with accounts set to "private".  What, are they going to require accounts and passwords from every student or "friend" them all?

  

  Bullies are everywhere. The harder you look, the more you'll find.

• how to deal with the natural school administration tendency of reading a law and then interpreting everything as being applicable from the most minor to the most major. The Sledgehammer Effect.
• how to deal with the ever-slippery slope of the word "bullying" and the growing tendency of teenagers to be offended (mostly because the counselors in their lives are so anxious to tell them they are.). 
• how expulsion will help. The recent case in Massachusetts would not have been helped by expulsion of the major parties. They would simply have become more antagonistic and less public, making the situation spiral out of control that much faster.   A minor issue blown up to a major one does not resolve the issue. A major issue blown up to an expulsion case pushes the problem out of the hands of the school but doesn't solve it.
• how the same officious twerps who can't deal with problems themselves but are always running to the police (euphemistically called "School Resource Officers")  are going to deal with social media and modern technology. Hell, mine can't even set up surveymonkey polls without help.
• how to suspend or expel an already expelled student (repeat offender) or one who is not currently in school, whether graduated or bullies from one school and victims in another -- which school officials are involved?

My biggest complaint is that I can't see that school officials have jurisdiction here, but maybe this law circumvents that pesky Constitutional problem. If the kids can't get on Facebook during the day at school, then all of this must be happening at home.  This makes it a parental problem calling for a parental solution.  If the issue escalates beyond what the parents can or will handle, then it becomes a civil problem. If it escalates further, it becomes a criminal problem.

recently, the third Judicial Court

issued two simultaneous opinions to resolve how much control high schools may exercise over their students’ off-campus, online speech. In Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, the judges held that school officials cannot, “reach into a child’s home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities.”  In the two respective cases, students had been disciplined for creating MySpace profiles intended to mock their principals.  The Third Circuit ruled that schools cannot punish students’ online speech simply because it is vulgar, lewd, or offensive.

In my interpretation, if speech rises beyond that limit, as bullying can do, then it becomes a civil or criminal offense but, again, not a scholastic one. Schools are spectacularly ill-equipped to handle this issue.


Two anecdotes that color my thinking.

A says to B "That's so gay." and kid C overhears it and is convinced by counselors to be offended and everybody is called to the office, meetings with parents and kids happen, and everyone is thoroughly frustrated and it only makes the matter worse because it was only an off-hand comment in the first place. Over-reaction is all too common and makes minor matters worse and makes major bullies more retractable.

It is much better handled low-key as I witnessed about two months ago. A good friend of mine is a teacher up north and he is openly gay. Because he is my friend and he commented, the conversation appeared in my facebook feed. I saw a comment by a kid saying "That's gay!" in the normal, stupid way. My friend replied "Ahem." The kid instantly retracted it and apologized profusely, promising not to repeat the mistake. Simply done, effective and long-lasting.

Free Speech, Bullying and HighSchool Students

Link to the original.

The Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District cases were heard by the Third Circuit court this spring and summer. Yesterday, the court issued two simultaneous opinions to resolve how much control high schools may exercise over their students’ off-campus, online speech. In Layshock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, the 14-judge court delivered two landmark victories for free speech.

The judges held that school officials cannot, “reach into a child’s home and control his/her actions there to the same extent that it can control that child when he/she participates in school sponsored activities.”  In the two respective cases, students had been disciplined for creating MySpace profiles intended to mock their principals.  The Third Circuit ruled that schools cannot punish students’ online speech simply because it is vulgar, lewd, or offensive.

So here's the question for all of the schools which are trying to police bullying: if the act occurred at home, using a home computer, how can the school discipline the student for it? What if the iPhone's Facebook app is used from the sidelines of a football game? This isn't Tinker - in fact the Justices specifically said they weren't at that point - so what is an over-bearing, self-important little HIP principal to do?

More specifically, when are we as a society going to figure out what to do with our bullied children?

(Hint: Start with a visit to the home of the bully. Asking the school to do that for you is inappropriate.)

This must be a Joke: Disney applies for "Seal Team Six" trademark

Chutspah.

The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6″  was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation. Disney’s™ trademark applications for “Seal Team 6″ cover clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games and “entertainment and education services,” among other things. Of course, for all we know Disney has been working on an animated feature about a team of anthropomorphic seals in search of adventure, but given the timing of the application that seems… unlikely.

I am deeply irritated.  I have no problem with capitalism. I have no problem with war-based toys, games, entertainment, though "education services" seems a stretch.

164	85310970		SEAL TEAM 6	TARR	LIVE
165	85310966		SEAL TEAM 6	TARR	LIVE
166	85310957		SEAL TEAM 6	TARR	LIVE

I have a huge problem with this. Looking at the rest of the list, I notice that Disney is hardly alone. Applications for TEAM 6, TEAM VI, and other variations (a lot seem to be from "Jack Tracy"). Patent trolls, all of them.

It's almost enough to convince me that the USPTO should make some drastic changes. Can you imagine if Disney™ somehow received this trademark - I can't imagine they could, but who knows? What gives anyone the right, the chutzpah, the cajones, to think they could trademark the informal unit designation of any branch of this country's military. You could argue that the unit badge is prior art and all that, but doesn't this hit your gut in that place where all deeply disgusting, vile, abhorrent things hit you?

And why? Why would the Happiest Place on Earth™ want to be associated, in any way, with a group of hard men who are the sharp end of America's Sword? Disney™ can't stand it when a bunch of gays want to march down Main Street™ but bloody death is all peachy-keen?

"This takedown and these splattered brains that once belonged to the world's most notorious killers, are brought to you by Seal Team VI™ and the Happy People at Disney™. Visit Our Magic Kingdom™ today."

That's WYCDWT - Speeding Tickets

"For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos - taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp - creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle. Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket."

Judges agreed.  Booyah.

Rules? Who needs those?

Not the kid in question. I just felt you all
needed a visual to fully appreciate how
"rules governing the length of players' hair
violate their son's right to wear his hair
the way he wants."

So the basketball team has some rules. You have to wear a uniform. You can't be paid for playing. You need to be passing your classes. You need to attend at least 10 practices before being allowed to play. Lots of things all made clear up front in the extracurricular policy handbook (something set up and decided on LONG before the season). Oh, and you need a haircut.

This is too much for the kid so he sues on the grounds that girls don't have to have their hair cut to the same length, or as the story puts it so approvingly, "Obviously, the player and his parents decided to fight for his rights rather than acquiesce to the extracurricular policy's claim that a player's hair be above his eyebrows, collars and ears."

Then, they asked a few geniuses for opinions:

"I just think he should be stipulated to tie his hair up or something like that," said Anthony Johnson. "To cut it off, I think that's taking away a person's mind, body and soul sometimes."

Yup, can't fix stupid.

I had to laugh, too, when the story identified the parents as "Patrick and Melissa Hayden" but wouldn't breach confidentiality of the kid, saying "Their 14-year-old son, identified as A.H. in the lawsuit" like that protected his identity.

The Single Funniest Lede in History

Right from the front page of the Rutland Herald (VT) ...

When David Belock's car went missing, he told state police he suspected the men who delivered cocaine to his house on a weekly basis may have been responsible.

But wait, it gets better. How? Well, a man was found driving it. (There was also a passenger from Brooklyn) The driver claimed he didn't know the man in the other seat nor where the car had come from, but

When he arrived at his home, he found the man from Brooklyn in his house and the car parked in his driveway. He decided to go to the store and noticed the keys were in the ignition so he decided to take the car to the Grand Union supermarket.

And, all this time, I thought the New York Post made this kind of stuff up.
(story by Brent Curtis, Rutland Herald)

First Amendment

Not Thomas Jefferson

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1802.

http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html