April, 2007 archive
God in Schools 3
This sounds like a good decision to me:
The Liverpool Central School District in upstate New York based its restrictions on “fear or apprehension of disturbance, which is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression,” Chief U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue wrote in a 46-page decision Friday
(snippage)
Bloodgood’s requests to school officials said that her daughter, now a sixth-grader, would hand them out only during “non-instructional time,” such as on the bus, before school, lunch, recess and after school.
The lawsuit noted that Michaela had received literature from other students at school, including materials for a YMCA basketball camp, a Syracuse Children’s Theater promotion and Camp Fire USA’s summer camps.
The Constitution of the United States of America says (now, note! I’m quoting the actual Constitution, not the Bushie version):
The issue with prayer and other religious observances in public (that is, government-run) schools, regardless of how it has been misrepresented ad nauseum is this: The government and its agents are prohibited from promoting religion–any religion and all religions.
That’s all there is to it. There ain’t no more.
The American Way (Updated) 0
Icing on the Cakewalk 0
Out of the net.
It’s not drunken driving in New Jersey if it involves a Zamboni.
A judge ruled the four-ton ice rink-grooming machines aren’t motor vehicles because they aren’t useable on highways and can’t carry passengers.
I Try To Run a Family Blog 1
So I can’t figure out how to blog this. (You have been warned.)
(Aside: When I was in college, I did not even consider joining a fraternity. I saw no sense in paying dues to get drunk. However, no self-respecting frat house I knew would have asked her to leave oh, never mind.)
Alarmists (Updated) 8
Opie caught it. I’ve been had.
Howsomever, I stand by my comment, visible when you click the comments link.
And to honor my captor and to savor my humiliation, I shall not remove the post (however much I should like to), though I have taken it off the front page.
You can read it in all its blustering credulousness here.
But one day I’ll see Phillybits at Drinking Liberally (tomorrow and every Tuesday, Tangier, 18th and Lombard, one block north of South Street, Philadelphia) and put Ipecac in his beer.
And it was really well-done.
I take consolation in this:
The writing was not wasted. The Current Federal Administration will certainly give me a chance to use it again.
What He Said 0
As my two or three regular readers know, I’m a big fan of Dick Polman’s political analyses. He is knowledgeable, incisive, and factual. Not always right, but always interesting.
Having attended a birthday party for a three-year old today, I’m a little full of birthday cake (and truly appreciative of the empty nest) too do anything energetic.
So I’ll just say, “What he said. Him. SpinDentist. Over there at ASZ.”
The American Way 0
You can’t make this stuff up. Thirty years ago, you couldn’t have imagined it.
Mitt Romeny can’t say — at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of “smart lawyers” — whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today’s Republican Party, Romney’s openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:
Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.
It sounds like Giuliani is positioning himself in this race as the “compassionate authoritarian” — “Yes, of course I have the power to imprison you without charges or review of any kind, but as President, I commit to you that I intend (no promises) to ‘use this authority infrequently.'”
Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. — including those arrested not on the “battlefield,” but on American soil.
What kind of American isn’t just instinctively repulsed by the notion that the President has the power to imprison Americans with no charges? And what does it say about the current state of our political culture that one of the two political parties has all but adopted as a plank in its platform a view of presidential powers and the federal government that is — literally — the exact opposite of what this country is?
Via Eschaton.
