Just your garden-variety, public school-going-to-hell-in-a-handbacket story

Saying their son was "silenced" by his teacher for talking about hunting in the classroom, the parents of a fourth-grade student at North Bennington Graded School took their son out of school and have taken their case to the local school board.

Bordwell [the boy's mother] said that, during snack time, Jared was discussing the recent spring turkey hunting season with a classmate when Backus interrupted the conversation, insisting that there be no talk of "killing" in her classroom.

Reached through a relative, Backus declined to comment.

Yeah, I think I'd decline to talk about it, too, considering how she reacted:

"Jared's teacher covered her ears, trying to block the conversation, and singing 'la la la la.' When asked by another school employee about her odd behavior, the teacher claimed she did not want to hear about the boys and their 'killing.' The boys were left feeling that they were not legitimate hunters, but 'killers' in the eyes of an important authority figure in their lives," Bordwell said.

Bordwell said that after the incident at school, Jared's father approached Backus, questioning the teacher about her "reprimand" of his son.

"The confrontation ended with Ms. Backus demanding that Marty leave the classroom, screeching, 'I went hiking this weekend and saw a moose and a bear, and I will never tell you where they are because you might kill them," Bordwell said.

Just what does the school principal have to say about all of this?

School Principal Thomas Martin said he is confident the administration and the school board "can reach a reasonable understanding" among the parties involved in the matter.

"It's not a huge issue," Martin said in an interview. "Marty is a good kid and Kathleen is a good teacher. The focus is on the kid. We want to try to meet his needs. Kathy cares a great deal about kids. She's troubled a great deal about this."

Martin said the issue is neither "black and white or right and wrong. It's more complicated than that. It's brushing up against a number of things that are important to a lot of people and issues relating to the classroom. Emotions start to feed into it when people's belief systems come into play," he said.

Martin said he would not support any move that would inhibit conversations about any student's hobby, "as long as it is in the parameters of good taste."

With all due respect to Principal Martin, this teacher should be fired, fired, fired. I didn't even get in to the stories about him potentially being singled out by her, but even without that - how can she be considered a good teacher? I'm of the opinion that this is more fallout from zero tolerance nonsense - this principal doesn't have what it takes to make a decision here and there's no policy dictating what his action should be.

Link to the story.

Now batting

My buddy jrazz has invited me to join his blogdom, so from time to time I'll be pinch-hitting over there. Today is the first post, titled "Whither the 17 corpses?"

In all the commotion and teeth-gnashing of the 17 Gloucester girls who were willingly inseminated - supposedly half of which had a "pact" to do so - I wonder where are the 17 men? At least, I hope it's 17 men. B-O

In my day, when my natural flock of seagulls was righteous and the dames were actually embarrassed if they exposed their underwear, there was one such guy who went missing shortly before the whole school found out he and his girl had been making the beast with two backs in the back of daddy's Caddie. Something about a moose hunt in Georgia gone bad.

So far one of the 17 dipsticks has been identified as a mid-twenties urban outdoors-man. Most of the other donors are assumed to be "over-the-age."

My questions:
-Have there been reports in the area of 17 sudden homicides/kidnappings/beatings?
-Is it possible for these men to run faster than 2855 ft/sec?
-Thoughts on castration?

You'll shoot your eye out!

No, honey - I wasn't making this up:

A Los Angeles woman claims she was injured by her Victoria's Secret thong, prompting her to sue the underwear manufacturer.

The plaintiff in the case, Macrida Patterson, 52, attributed the May 2007 injury to a Victoria's Secret "low-rise v-string," according to a court document posted on The Smoking Gun.

Patterson's lawyer told The Smoking Gun that a "design problem" caused a decorative metallic piece on the underwear to fly up and hit Patterson in the eye while she was putting the underwear on.

Patterson's product liability lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last week.

The Smoking Gun reported that, prior to the lawsuit, officials from Victoria's Secret had asked to see the offending underwear but were refused by Patterson's lawyer.

Too... many... jokes... not... enough... words...

I do have a question, though: just how small were these things that the mere act of putting them on created so much tension to have catapulted... er, something... at such a high rate of speed so as to injure her eye?

At least this gives fathers of daughters some ammunition (har-har) when they want to wear one. "Naw, honey; you'll shoot your eye out!"

Oh the inhumanity...

I wish somebody in my blog constituency could explain to me how a man can get run over, in broad daylight, in the middle of a hustle and bustle part of town, with at least a dozen witnesses immediately present, and do seemingly nothing more than look, gawk, and go on with their lives. From Foxnews:

A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but appear to do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.

The chilling scene — captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera — has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city's biggest newspaper blaring "SO INHUMANE" on the front page and the police chief lamenting: "We no longer have a moral compass."

"We have no regard for each other," said Chief Daryl Roberts, who on Wednesday released the video in hopes of making an arrest in the accident that left Angel Arce Torres in critical condition.

Setting aside the vitriol I have for the two miscreants whose game of Grand Theft Auto style racing through the streets was interrupted by a living and breathing human being - because they will be caught and charged, hopefully thumped with a club a time or ten - I have to ask myself: what on earth paralyzed so many of those onlookers and passers-by?

Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is legality. The Good Samaritan Law takes care of that - though I doubt most if any of them knew that. I think it goes deeper in to our subculture, and it's something I've harped on before. We've been ingrained indoctrinated to sit back and let someone else - namely the government - take care of whatever happens. If I were one of those people in that video who had seen that and did nothing, I'd be ashamed of myself.

Farther down the rabbit hole

Papers please:

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

...

Peter Nickles, the city’s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have “a narrow focus.”

“This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”

Land of the free, huh? For maybe the second or third time in my adult life I find myself agreeing with the ACLU (I'm still getting over typing that statement):

Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.”

“I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” she said. “It’s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.”