Written on March 8th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Here we go
Seeking to step up enforcement of civil rights laws, the federal Department of Education says it will be sending letters in coming weeks to thousands of school districts and colleges, outlining their responsibilities on issues of fairness and equal opportunity.
As part of that effort, the department intends to open investigations known as compliance reviews in about 32 school districts nationwide, seeking to verify that students of both sexes and all races are getting equal access to college preparatory curriculums and to advanced placement courses. The department plans to open similar civil rights investigations at half a dozen colleges.
While it is certainly a noble goal to make sure that schools are providing equal access, this seems more like a way of placating a certain segment of the US population which believes that there is rampant racism and discrimination everywhere. Except against Black and female conservatives, of course. We can expect the report to conclude, after the DOE is done interfering with the way schools operate, that there is rampant racism and discrimination occurring, and it is Bush’s fault. Speaking of Bush’s fault
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is to announce the initiatives in a speech on Monday in Selma, Ala., where on March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers were beaten by Alabama state troopers.
Mr. Duncan plans to say that in the past decade the department’s Office for Civil Rights “has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating gender and racial discrimination and protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities,” according to a text of the speech distributed to reporters on Sunday.
It continues, “We are going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement.”
And we all know that “in the past decade” is code word for “Blame Bush.”
This is exactly the kind of thing Democrats and left leaners do not understand: rights are derived from the people, not the government. The government should follow the people, not dictate behavior.
Crossed at Pirate’s Cove
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Written on March 5th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Good thing the Nanny State jumped on this quickly!
To the little boy’s mother, it was just a 6-year-old boy playing around.
But when Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials said it was no laughing matter.
They suspended Mason until Friday, saying the behavior made other students uncomfortable, said Erin Jammer, Mason’s mother.
Whew! That made everyone safe, eh? Just because “He’s only six and he doesn’t understand any of this” is no reason to take action against this violent child, who is probably anti-IRS, too. And this wasn’t the first time he displayed this behavior! I bet he makes crayon posters comparing Obama to the Joker, as well!
Speaking of actual crazies, the NY Times has their story about the Pentagon shooting, and just can’t be bothered to make the connections
A gunman described by police officials as well-dressed, well-educated and well-armed for his minute-long shootout with police on Thursday just outside the Pentagon has died from his wounds.
Law enforcement officials said they still had not determined a specific motive for the gunman, identified as John Patrick Bedell, 36, but officials said he “had issues” and that there were records of previous brushes he had had with law enforcement officials.
Seeking clues for what prompted the suspect to open fire at a Pentagon entrance, police and F.B.I. investigators were examining a series of Internet postings thought to have been his work.
Still looking, eh?
Messages posted on the Web under the username JPatrickBedell seemed to share some biographical details with the shooter and pointed to a distrust of the military and the government at large. “I am determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions,” the user wrote, referring to the suicide of an Army officer in 1991.
So, a Truther. Kudos to Charles Johnson for finding more about Bedell’s Trutherism, bad boy for going the normal route and attempting to insinuate that Bedell was a right winger by writing “Another anti-government loon?”, as well as writing that Bedell is “a devotee of libertarian icon Ludwig Von Mises.” His brain washed followers took the hint, and ran with it.
The Times provides more
A 2006 arrest report for a man identified as John Patrick Bedell, then 33 years old, appeared to connect to the user JPatrickBedell, who wrote: “My desire for justice led me to violate what I think is one of the most unjust laws, cannabis prohibition, by growing 16 cannabis plants on my balcony in Irvine, CA from March 2006 to June 2006.”
And a pot user. He was also an anti-Bush nutter (via Patterico). I wonder, how will the media attempt the LGF spin to paint him as someone on the right?
Crossed at Pirate’s Cove
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Written on March 4th, 2010 by adminno shouts
Here we go: Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets
Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.
My first thought when I caught the headline and first paragraph (above) on my iPhone news app (Fluent News) was “please, no. Do not combine anti-Darwinism with anti-AGW. Let the science or lack thereof stand on their own merits.” As I have written, and said, time and time again, one of the things I hate the most about what the climate alarmists have done is incorporating every real environmental issue with global warming. We forget the real reasons. Manatees (I’m a big donor) must be saved from climate change, not boats going too fast in areas that are restricted. Coral must be saved from AGW, not polluted waters. The Amazon must be saved from globull warming, not pollution and deforestation. So, the real issues are not addressed anymore.
That said, the reality
In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”
The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects.
Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.
This is what Excitable Chucky Johnson call “stealth creationism,” and, in some small cases, he is correct, however, what exactly is wrong with teaching all sides of an issue? Not all those bills, or others, are telling or allowing teachers to teach religious tenets, or even Intelligent Design (funny how the same liberals had no problem with teaching Islam in schools, something that happened quite a bit after 9/11, as lefties tried to teach “tolerance” and “multiculturalism”). Should not kids be taught the good and bad of scientific theories? Should they not be provided with all the facts from all sides, to allow themselves to make a rational, intelligent decision on where they stand? Or, are our schools simply to be used as indoctrination centers, much as in North Korea and Hitler’s Germany?
James D. Marston, director of the Texas regional office of the Environmental Defense Fund, said he worried that, given Texas’ size and centralized approval process, its decision on textbooks could have an outsize influence on how publishers prepare science content for the national market.
“If a textbook does not give enough deference to critics of climate change — or does not say that there is real scientific debate, when in fact there is little to none — they will have a basis for turning it down,” Mr. Marston said of the Texas board. “And that is scary for what our children will learn everywhere.”
A perfect example of which side is actually anti-science. It is “scary” that children be presented with all sides of a scientific argument.
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Written on March 2nd, 2010 by adminno shouts
If you don’t think it’s alarming that the President of the United States is a left-wing community organizer with no serious qualifications, who has spent his entire life surrounded by anti-American communist nutjobs, what if you were to learn that the president is a left-wing community organizer with no serious qualifications who has spent his entire life surrounded by anti-American communist nutjobs and who has a drinking problem?
Barack Obama should not only try harder to kick his smoking habit, his team of doctors warned, but they also recommended ‘moderation of alcohol intake’.
It’s not as if voters weren’t warned in advance that the Anointed One is prone to substance abuse. Here’s Chairman Zero describing his own habits in one of his pre-accomplishment memoirs:
Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow [cocaine] when you could afford it. Not smack [heroin] though.
Regarding the doc’s advice that Zero stop smoking…
Last year Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The law allows the Food and Drug Administration to reduce nicotine in tobacco products, ban sweet flavourings and block labels such ‘low tar’ and ‘light.’
Also to be filed under H for Hypocrisy, from nearly a year ago:
One of President Barack Obama’s campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
But smoking is bad, so Big Government must discourage us from doing it. New taxes on alcohol, “blow,” and reading lies off teleprompters soon to follow. Not smack though.
On a tip from Nancz. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
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Written on February 28th, 2010 by adminno shouts
-By Warner Todd Huston
On February 27 the Times Online from Britain published what it hailed as amazing proof that 4th century Britain was “multicultural” and “diverse” during the Roman occupation of the island nation. This “new” revelation came from a recent scientific investigation into the burial in York of an African woman. The problem with this whole report is that it does not at all show that Britain was “multicultural” in the 4th century. The truth is the newspaper misapplied the word “multicultural” to this burial in an effort to celebrate the politically correct ideal of multiculturalism as it exists today.
There is nothing as ahistorcal as applying today’s standards and ideas to the past, but The Times falls headlong into this trap in an effort to show that the Romans were somehow just like us today in their acceptance of “multiculturalism.” The problem, of course, is that Rome did not accept other cultures in the same way that Britain’s modern, self-destructive dalliance in “multiculturalism” does.
The story of the 4th century burial is very informative and interesting, to be sure. Originally found in 1901 in Bootham, York, the grave was located in what was a Roman fortress and settlement named Eboracum, founded in AD71. The researchers found that an African woman (or one of mixed-race, they couldn’t be sure) was buried in a stone sarcophagus and laid to rest with several of her possessions proving that she was a person of wealth and station in life. The medical examination of the skeleton also seemed to show that the woman did not live a life of strenuous labor. A Latin inscription on one of her possessions indicates that she may have been a Christian, too.
It is well known that throughout the Roman Empire many African soldiers filled the ranks of the Roman legions and that some of them became officers of high rank. It is likely that this woman was the wife of one of these Roman officers of African descent.
So what does the Times and its quoted researcher make of this wealthy black woman from Britain’s 4th century society?
Archaeologists have discovered that wealthy black Africans lived in Roman Britain in one of the country’s earliest examples of multiculturalism.
….
Hella Eckardt, who carried out the study, said: “Multicultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and others like her, contradicts assumptions about the make-up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves.”
….
Dr Eckardt continued: “We’re looking at a population mix which is much closer to contemporary Britain than previous historians had suspected. In the case of York, the Roman population may have had more diverse origins than the city has now.
These are non sequitur assumptions and prove that neither the Times nor this foolish Dr. Hella Eckardt should be taken as informed, worthy sources of information.
Romans did not consider their conquered peoples as having cultures worth celebrating and nurturing. To be ROMAN was the goal and they did not just willy nilly accept into their own culture all the customs and practices of the lowly peoples that were taken over. Only today is there an abdication of local, western customs and practices so that immigrant’s cultural influences can prevail, this is now the case with Britain’s (and the west’s) self-hating practice of “multiculturalism.”
This rich black woman was not wealthy because she was “multicultural,” she was wealthy because she observed the Roman’s rules. She did not move to Britain to bring all her African practices with her, she did not become a woman of station in 4th century Roman Britain because she retained her multicultural identity, thumbing her nose at Roman practices.
Did the Roman Empire consist of people of many cultures? Of course. Did some of those cultures influence Roman practice and custom? Over the long term they did, most certainly. In fact, that is the history of mankind. Man’s history is a repetition of the actions of conquering a people, then living with them, followed by a taking of the best ideas and practices (as well as languages) from that conquered people and incorporating them into a new, stronger society. But this is not “multiculturalism” as now so sadly celebrated by the PC set.
Further, the history of the Roman Empire spanned many hundreds of years. Tolerance for local customs, religions, languages, and the like waxed and waned with the times and the whims of the Emperors back in Rome. So, to present 4th century Britain as multicultural in today’s terms is absurd as the climate for the other-than-Roman was not a fixed quantity.
So, for this report to announce that 4th century Britain was “multicultural” is a slap in the face to truth because the concept of multiculturalism as we now understand it simply did not exist in the 4th century. The Roman Empire was not multicultural. It was Roman. 4th century Britain was not multicultural but was ruled by Romans that were Roman despite their diverse racial makeup. They were Romans acting like Romans ruling a subjugated Celtic people. That Rome often turned a blind eye to the continued practices of their conquered peoples does not mean that Rome was “multicultural” in the same way we’d think of it today.
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