Armed guards in schools?

Another dumb Facebook post

Imagine, if you will, a gun being dropped - or a student taking a gun from a purse - or a gun being stolen from a teacher's desk (things are stolen in schools every day) - or a gun left lying on a desk picked up by a curious 5-year-old (or worse yet, picked up by a high school student with a grudge) - or an innocent parent entering a school and forgetting to sign in while a trigger-happy teacher starts blasting away  - or imagine the results, if a shooter did enter the school, of teachers hiding behind doors and conducting a shoot-out with a guy armed with an automatic weapon and wearing bullet-proof armor. A .22 caliber pistol is not going to be much of a defense. Even police officers who are trained and equipped to deal with shooters sometimes get injured or killed.

Do you think there are teachers who suffer from mental illness? Might one of them not go berserk? Or how about those who have proposed that we hire returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to work as guards in schools? Do any of them suffer from PTSD and would they all be stable and reliable, sitting there in a school full of children?

Trust me - the answer to too many guns in the wrong hands is not more guns in the wrong hands. I am not advocating getting rid of all guns - I am advocating the elimination of assault rifles in ANYONE's hands, and much more strict background checks of anyone who wishes to buy a gun. We can't eliminate all mudrers, but perhaps we can slow them down.

We need more guns?

The rightest of the right-wing gun imbeciles (we've passed the nut stage) are claiming that we need MORE guns, not fewer, to discourage the bad guys (or women).

From the Denver Post...

A Denver mother who believed her daughter was being bullied at school drove into the school's parking lot and threatened four girls with a gun, according to an arrest document.

Monica Avila, 34, was charged Tuesday with four counts of felony menacing and one count of possession of a weapon on school grounds, also a felony. According to the probable cause statement accompanying her arrest paperwork, Avila drove into the parking lot at Lake Middle School on Thursday afternoon and confronted four girls, ages 13 and 14. 

The statement says Avila began arguing with the girls about bullying. She then, while still sitting in her car, pulled out a black semi-automatic handgun and said, "Look what I have," the document states.

Because what we really needed here was for those girls to be armed so that we could have had a shoot out! How neat would that have been!

Is God protecting us?

In the recent shooting in Connecticut, would the people not have been slain had we allowed prayer in our schools, as suggested by Huckabee and Robertson? I have not seen any evidence of this anywhere else, why should we have expected that here?

As a nation....

As a nation we have let the insane people take charge.

Day Before Connecticut Shooting Massacre, Michigan Legislature Passed Bill Allowing Guns In Classrooms

Hey - let's beat our school children into better grades!

Posted on Gawker - read more by clicking HERE.

Hamilton Nolan — Did you know that in 20 hick states of our great union, it's still cool and A-OK for school officials to take your child into the dreaded "office" and administer stern thwacks to their bottom with some sort of wooden beating-stick, in order to teach them the difference between right and wrong (for example, violence is "wrong")? Yes, well. It is so. Might this be stupid?

Education in the U.S.

We here in the U.S. are taking a lot of hits for our educational system. We don't score well on a lot of international tests, we have a higher drop-out rate and, according to all of the conservatives, we have bad, bad unions. Forget about the fact that those bad, bad unions spend millions of dollars every year fighting for legislation that will make schools better.

One reason that our educational system is probably weaker than most other nations is the diversity of our citizenry. We take in, and have taken in since the inception of the nation, immigrants from all over the world - including nations that don't have much history of educating their youth, meaning folks without the culture (like Japan) that have an intense drive to pursue learning.

We also have weakness because of a fatal flaw in the reasoning of those guiding the schools - they are convinced that everyone can, and wants to, and should learn the same stuff. Here in New York, with few exceptions, all high school students are required to take "Regents" classes that focus on more advanced language skills, algebra and geometry, Biology and earth science, etc. There's little room for the children whose interest focuses on technology, welding, auto mechanics, or even digging holes in the ground. In some districts, music and art are also after-thoughts. In many other nations around the world, children are sorted out, at some point, to get an education in a field that they are suited for and have an interest in.

Another reason our schools are weak is the religious influence that wants to dull the intellectual pursuits of science and increase the pursuit of subjects best left to harlequins and preachers. If your going to focus on crap like creationism and astrology, your children are going to look pretty dumb on tests that ask how long ago dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Now we've got at least one Federal judge who's going to provide sanctuary for the nincompoops that don't want to learn what the better educational systems are offering. Most likely, religious nuts who want their children to believe that the only true text is a dusty old book written over two-thousand years ago by an imaginary God that nobody can see, hear or touch.

The following is from the J-Walk blog...

A US judge has granted ­political asylum to a German family who said they had fled the country to avoid persecution for home schooling their children.

In the first reported case of its kind, Tennessee immigration judge Lawrence Burman ruled that the family of seven have a legitimate fear of prosecution for their beliefs. Germany requires parents to enrol their children in school in most cases and has levied fines against those who ­educate their children at home.

Christians Uwe Romeike, a piano teacher, and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Morristown, Tennessee, in 2008 after ­German authorities fined them thousands of euros for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes, Romeike said. They had been holding classes in their home.

Along with thousands of torture victims, political dissidents, members of religious minorities and other persecuted groups who win political asylum every year, the Romeike family will now be free to live and work in the US.

Oh goodie - some more anti-science nuts to throw into the mix.

Discrimination Is Okay In Some Places

I don't disagree with the judge's ruling in this case. See what you think. I'll comment more after the clip, from The Los Angeles Times...

After a Lutheran school expelled two 16-year-old girls for having "a bond of intimacy" that was "characteristic of a lesbian relationship," the girls sued, contending the school had violated a state anti-discrimination law.

In response to that suit, an appeals court decided this week that the private religious school was not a business and therefore did not have to comply with a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating. A lawyer for the girls said Tuesday that he would ask the California Supreme Court to overturn the unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal.

So, what do you think? I think "freedom of religion" means exactly that - religions are free to treat people any way they want. If the girls are so stupid that they want to continue to participate in a religion that hates them, one has to ask just how dumb they are.

I've said it before - I don't like any of the organized religions - but the constitution guarantees them the right to do most anything they want - short of human sacrifice.

Check out the image used in this post - does this imply religious persecution? Is this church school discriminating against Christians and Muslims? Is there any difference between this and what's posted above?

via The J-Walk Blog
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Bush Visits a Classroom

President Bush did take the opportunity to visit a couple of schools while he was President - he didn't want to seem totally unconcerned about education and his failed, underfunded education policies. Here's proof that he actually went to a school.

Prayer in Schools

I am a member of the ACLU, though certainly not a major contributor. Still, I recognize the phenomenal work they do in maintaining our freedoms as guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I also have friends who are conservative and religious and who often complain about the ACLU's positions on religion and prayer. One set of cases often singled out are those suits filed by the ACLU over prayer in the schools. Frequently the ACLU position is over-simplified and amplified in order to make their demands seem even more unreasonable.

The ACLU's position is really quite clear. Prayer and religion are personal matters. If you want to pray before an athletic event - feel free to do so. If you'd like to worship before attending any school event - feel free to do so. Just don't force your beliefs on everyone else at that event.

Because of the confusion, I herein post the ACLU's official position of prayer in the public schools...

1. Students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers so long as they are not disruptive. Because the Establishment Clause does not apply to purely private speech, students enjoy the right to read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, pray before tests, and discuss religion with other willing student listeners. In the classroom students have the right to pray quietly except when required to be actively engaged in school activities (e.g., students may not decide to pray just as a teacher calls on them). In informal settings, such as the cafeteria or in the halls, students may pray either audibly or silently, subject to the same rules of order as apply to other speech in these locations. However, the right to engage in voluntary prayer does not include, for example, the right to have a captive audience listen or to compel other students to participate.