As an employee in an educational facility, one of the biggest eye-sores I encounter on a daily basis is saggy pants. We actually have a school policy against the so-called ‘fashion trend’, yet it doesn’t seem to stop some young and older men from having their pants sag down to their knees and exposing us all to their underwear.
I’m sorry, but if every time you go to stand up you have to pull your pants up, there’s a problem here and a nice belt is a great, easy solution to the problem.
Well, it should come to no surprise that some towns are saying enough is enough and that is what’s happening in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.
The Terrebonne Parish Town Council is hoping to put a ban into effect against saggy pants. The following penalties will ensue if pants are caught below the buttocks:
$50 for first-time violators
$100 for second offenses
$100 and 16 hours of public service for each following offense
The ordinance which the town council has already voted 8-1 to pass and sign into law states:
Appearing in public view while exposing one’s skin or undergarments below the waist is contrary to safety, health, peace and good order of the parish and the general welfare
The American Civil Liberty Union of Louisiana opposes this ban because they feel it violates constitutional rights. They claim:
To ban a particular clothing style would violate a liberty interest guaranteed under the 14th Amendment…The government does not belong in the business of telling people what to wear. Nor does it have the right to use clothing as a pretext to engage in otherwise unlawful stops of innocent people
And while the American Civil Liberty Union has a valid point here, I personally feel that my civil liberties are violated on the daily as I am constantly being exposed to someone’s dirty drawers and subsequent butt views. To me, that is indecent exposure at it’s best, or shall I say, at it’s worst.
It’ll be interesting to see how this develops, but in the meantime…
Could JayZ and Beyonce‘s trip have anything to do with the possibilities of new policies regarding the US trade embargo against Cuba? In recent weeks, the interest of a change in U.S. policy towards Cuba has been showing up in some of the most important media outlets in the United States.
One of the key points in this widening discussion is to find a clear and just solution to the case of the Cuban 5, prisoners held in the United States for 15 years.
The Cuban 5 are five Cuban nationals, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and René Gonzalez, who, in September 1998, were accused of conspiring to commit espionage and arrested by Miami FBI agents.
The US government never confirmed that any real acts of espionage had been carried out, since no classified documents had been confiscated from the Five. The men have since stated that their actual mission in the United States was monitoring the activities of the groups and organizations, dissidents and ex-patriots of Cuban after the revolution, responsible for terrorist activities against Cuba. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cuba had been the victim of more terrorist attacks than any other country in the world, killing 3,478 and injuring 2,099. The vastly majority of those attacks originated in southern Florida, by groups tolerated and partly financed by the US government.
After their arrest, the Five were immediately placed in solitary confinement, for the 17 months of pretrial custody.
Despite vigorous objections raised by the Five’s defense, the case was tried in Miami, Florida, a community with a long history of hostility toward the Cuban government, which prevented them from receiving a fair trial.
Their six month trial became the longest in United States history and its resulting four life plus 77 year sentence for each of the five defendants made them the first people ever to be sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage in a United States case, in which there were no secret documents was ever obtained.
The Five were imprisoned in five separate maximum security prisons spread across the US without the possibility of communication with each other. Cuba is the only country in the world that Americans are restricted from visiting. If you can get a visa, the US government allows you to go anywhere else in the world, even places like Syria, Iran or North Korea. For this reason there are questions brewing over the legality of the trip. Did the Carter’s visit Cuba as unofficial envoys of the President? In his recently released rap song Open Letter, JayZ kicks back a response to the negative press of his visit to the tropical country, with the lyrics, “…boy from the hood but got White House clearance”. But the White House has immediately denied any sponsorship for the visit to Cuba.
I’m certain many of you remember the Central Park West Jogger case in New York. I sure do. “Wilding” and “wolfpack” were words used the media used to describe it. In 1990 five Black and Latino teens — Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray and Kharey Wise — were wrongfully convicted of raping, sodomizing and brutally beating a white woman who was jogging in Central Park shortly after 9 p.m. on April 19, 1989. They spent from six to 13 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Keeping up with the trial I was shocked at how it was allowed to continue on with no direct evidence or even circumstantial evidence that could put those boys at the scene of the crime.
In 2002, their convictions were overturned, and they were acquitted following a confession by the actual rapist, Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist whose DNA actually matched the evidence found on the victim’s clothing, unlike none, and I repeat NONE, of the DNA samples taken from any of the five following the NYPD’s unjustifiably botched up, bullet hole-ridden investigation of the case. It was a horrific crime, that I as a female and a fellow human being felt to the core of my soul…but Kevin, Yusef, Raymond, Antron and Kharey hadn’t done it.
After being exonerated, the young men filed a federal lawsuit for $250 million that claimed, amongst other things, that they were railroaded, maliciously prosecuted, wrongfully imprisoned and that their civil rights had been violated. But instead of exacting justice, the lawsuit has caused the five to be victimized a second time by past and by the present Bloomberg administration who refuse to acknowledge the Five’s proven innocence and contend that the NYPD and the District Attorney’s office did nothing wrong in arresting the teens, coercing confessions from them and prosecuting them back in 1990.
For the last 10 years, requests for records and documents from the case have been met with statements such as the files cannot be located or are too old and deteriorated to read. This bull has resulted in major time and money wasted by the prosecutor’s office. It is for these reasons that U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, who presently presides over the case regarding the lawsuit has now set specific deadlines for records to be presented. The bureaucracy is suffocating.
You would think Bloomberg would want to go out on a good note with a city that has made him a billionaire. You know, show us and other large city municipalities what an administration looks like when its wants to improve relations with its citizens by rectifying once and for all, the sloppy crudeness in which this case was handled in the bygone era of the 90’s. But I suppose that kind of thinking opens up way to many closets hiding way too many skeletons. This may be 2013, but we’re still a long way from initiating change to some things that are in desperate need of it.
The pressure is on though, with the broadcast of a documentary on the case by filmmaker Ken Burns. It airs on PBS on April 16.
The film ‘The Central Park Five’, opens with an audio of Reyes describing how he savagely beat and raped the jogger late that night in 1989, in New York’s Central Park. Starting the film off with that horrible, truthful preface it then proceeds with the story of how five totally individuals, unrelated to Reyes and unrelated to any part of the incident other than being in the park that day, were picked up, held and grilled for 24 hours and ended up being convicted for one of the most heinous crimes in New York City’s history.
A man fell onto the subway tracks in Times Square this morning and was electrocuted by the third rail, authorities said.
The fire department first received a call of a person on the northbound 2 and 3 train tracks at 6:55 a.m. at the 7th Avenue and 42nd Street station. A second caller reported that the man had been electrocuted.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, the FDNY said.
Two and 3 express trains will be running on the local track between 14th Street and 72nd Street, the MTA said.
The details surrounding the incident were not immediately known.
From the state that gave the United States the worst idea in school reform since Joe Clark prowled the halls of East Side High School in Paterson, NJ, Texas, comes this remarkable admission: High stakes testing has taken over the curriculum to the point where the Lone Star State is now rolling back the number of assessments students must take every year. Not only that, the reform that Bush wrought is proving that a laser-like focus on college prep curricula won’t hit every child.
The Texas House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill this month that would reduce the number of exams students must pass to earn a high school diploma to 5, from 15.
Fifteen tests just to pass high school? Let’s talk about out-of-control standardized assessments. Let’s further talk about the Texas requirement that all students take four years of English, science, social studies and math, including an advanced algebra class, because all students must be college-ready and matriculate at an institution of higher learning. Never mind students who are not proficient academic learners or who would benefit from a vocational curriculum. It’s vitally important for all students to get a foundation in the liberal arts, but young people also need exposure to non-academic courses and classes that do not rely on a test.
From an educational policy perspective, there is something to like in the fact that Texas is considering cutting back on testing. From the article:
Here in Texas, the backlash has been fiercest among parents and educators who believe testing has become excessive, particularly after a period when the state cut its budget for education.
On a recent afternoon, Joanne Salazar pulled out a copy of a testing calendar for the school in Austin where her daughter is a sophomore. “Of the last 12 weeks of school, 9 are impacted by testing,” Ms. Salazar said. “It has really started to control the schedule.”
Too many tests taking too much time out of the school year? Where have I heard that before?
Is there opposition to the proposed changes? Yes, and they require some analysis. Consider:
But at a time when about half of the students who enroll in community colleges in Texas require remedial math classes, Michael L. Williams, the state’s commissioner of education, called the proposed changes “an unfortunate retreat.”
“What gets tested gets taught,” Mr. Williams said. “What we treasure, we measure.”
First of all, the new standards, which were adopted in 2007, do not seem to have helped a large segment of Texas schoolchildren who enroll in community college. Second, it’s not just that what gets tested gets taught; it’s that Texas only teaches what’s on the test. And I can assure you that the Texas curriculum has narrowed considerably, since a teacher can’t possibly cover an enriching curriculum with the knowledge that very little will get taught during the last 12 weeks of school.
Hey, New Jersey, this is your future, and it’s starting in September. The states that adopted tests early are figuring out that they don’t contribute to a quality education, and they’re pulling back. What are we doing? Governor Christie has us jumping into the pool as the water is being emptied. This can’t, and won’t, end well.
I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.
In an attempt to reach a deficit-reduction deal, President Obama is offering to cut essential programs such as Social Security and Medicare in his new budget proposal. The President’s proposal will include a cut of $1.8 trillion over 10 years and replace the budget cuts that went into effect on March 1. This deal also revisits an earlier proposal to House Speaker, John Boehner, where $400 billion in savings to Medicare would occur over those 10 years.
A senior administration official commented,
The President’s budget to be presented on Wednesday will show how we can invest in the things we need to grow our economy, create jobs and strengthen the middle class while further reducing the deficit in a balanced way
The Social Security portion will include a ‘chained CPI’, an inflation formula which should attract many Republicans as the CPI is argued to be a more accurate calculation of inflation which could possibly help minimize the growth of consumer prices. The idea of whether or not this is truly the case is still being heavily debated.
There’s little doubt that this proposal will cause some dissent against President Obama as cutting Social Security and Medicare is an unpopular choice for many Democratic supporters.
However, this has been an ongoing battle between the President and many Republican incumbents and it’s clear that the President is ready to move forward with some type of compromise that pleases most, if not all, members of each party.
One of the most well-known movie critics of all time has lost his battle with cancer today, April, 4, 2013 at the age of 70.
Two days ago, Tuesday, April 2, 2013 Roger Ebert reported that he was “taking a leave of presence” in order to undergo radiation treatments for cancer that was discovered due to a hip fracture.
Roger Ebert, born June 18, 1942, had suffered a long hard battle with thyroid and salivary gland cancer. He was first diagnosed in 2002 with papillary thyroid cancer and then later in 2003 for cancer in his salivary glands where he underwent several surgeries that were deemed successful at the time. Unfortunately, several years later in 2006, he had surgery to remove part of his jaw bone in order to remove more cancerous tissue found.
Since 2006, Roger Ebert has underwent several medical complications and future surgeries that slowed his progress, but never deterred him from continuing his work as a movie critic and reviewer.
Roger Ebert was well known for his Siskel and Ebert tv shows and his movie critiques featured in Chicago Sun-Times, and he was also the first film critic to receive a Pulitzer Prize and be awarded a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
I grew up watching the Siskel and Ebert shows and his passion and love for a great movie will certainly be missed.
R.I.P. Roger Ebert (June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013)
A team led by Francesco D’Andria, an Italian archaeologists from the University of Salento, has discovered a sort of Gates to Hell.
This ancient gateway to hell aka Pluto’s Gate excavated near a cave entrance was described by the Greek geographer, Strabo, in 24 A.D. as a,
Space full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.
It was believed to be a true portal to the underworld in Greek mythology and a place where the “rites of incubation” would occur. Vapors from the gate would cause hallucinations which would give rise to visions and prophecies to those who slept nearby the cave. The temple complex was also used as place to offer up sacrifices to Pluto. Also unearthed nearby was a thermal pool and courtyard for priests and travelers.
Even today the gateway located in the city of Hierapolis still contains lethal vapors as D’Andria describes of his excavations,
We could see the cave’s lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes.
A digital reconstruction of the site is currently being designed by D’Andria and his team to help give more insight into this unworldly find.
Now, if only we could find the Stairway to Heaven next.
Whenever I read about the foolishness of using standardized tests to evaluate teachers, I am immediately reminded of my own experiences in school, and how even a competent student like me could have done serious damage to otherwise excellent teachers. I understand the danger of generalizing my experience to the larger issue, but I’m sure that I’m not alone, and I know that many teachers face the same issues I have.
Miss Smith was both my algebra and geometry teacher when I was in high school. She was an imposing women who asked great deal from us, and she didn’t tolerate either fools or students who didn’t want to learn mathematics. She was an excellent teacher in every way. The problem is that I learned very little according to the tests I took in class, and if 50% of her yearly evaluation was based on my, and some of my classmates’, performance on a standardized test, then she would have been in real trouble.
But the problem was not hers. The problem was mine. I studied, but algebra was a foreign language and geometry was an alien language. I did my homework. I went after school for help. I just didn’t, and couldn’t, get it. As the school years progressed, I lost some interest in math, which didn’t help my performance in Miss Smith’s class. So if I had to take a year-end test that would in any way tell the administration how effective a teacher Miss Smith was, my score would have impacted her evaluation. And that would be a terrible injustice to her.
Do I understand algebra and geometry today, three decades later? Yes and no. Algebra comes easier when I need to use variables in my day-to-day existence. Geometry? Not so much. I continue to try and get it, but it’s still an alien language. Miss Smith’s fault? Not on your life.
I also had another Smith in high school, but his name was Mister and he taught Earth Science. If you can believe it, I did worse in that class than I did in either of Miss Smith’s math classes. And again, the problem was me. There was very little that Mr. Smith could do to help me understand and apply facts and analysis about igneous and sedimentary rocks in a way that made sense to me. My test scores were routinely in the 20s and 30s, which mercifully he curved. Was he as effective a teacher as Miss Smith? No. Quite honestly, he wore a scowl daily, was sarcastic, and it was not always clear that he had all of his faculties while he was teaching. But other students did well in his class and he could be a very good teacher.
I had the power, though, to sink him if I had to take a standardized test that evaluated his abilities as a teacher. I didn’t learn much Earth Science and to this day tend to shy away from it, with the exception of plate tectonics, but I don’t really understand that all too well. I just like the rings of fire and how new Hawaiian land gets created.
I did well in English and I loved my Shakespeare class and the teacher (not named Smith), but my full Elizabethan flowering didn’t come until college. Do I give my professor the credit for getting me interested in the Bard? Of course not. It was my high school teacher, but again, if I had to take a standardized test on Hamlet or the Scottish play, I would not have done so well.
So it is with thousands of students in New Jersey and millions across the United States. They are in our classes and we can teach them, but even the good ones will not always learn everything that’s in the curriculum. Or they will do well on certain assignments, but when it comes to synthesis, they either can’t or won’t do it. They are children and they are unpredictable. The tests they’ll take were not meant to evaluate teacher performance.
Further, the standardized tests they’ll take mean very little to them, but they will have enormous consequences to the teachers who administer them. Does that make sense? It does to those people who think they’re reforming education or believe that America’s teachers are failing.
And to them, I can just see Miss Smith’s burning gaze falling upon them as she asks the immortal question I heard many times in her class: “How in the ham sandwich did you get an answer like that?”
The Supreme Court will finally hear arguments in the Marriage Equality cases this week, and it’s about time. If justice delayed is justice denied, than we’ve had denial of justice for a good part of our population for far too long.
The opponents of marriage equality do not want to talk about civil rights. They don’t want to talk about equality. They don’t want to talk about gays sharing in society and being fully accepted in American culture. What they want to talk about is redefining marriage, which they say is what these cases are all about. They also want to point to the Bible for their definition, and cite its prohibitions against any homosexual activity. You’ll excuse me, but I am tired of having to worry about what a book that also mandates stoning, banishment and ritual murder has to say about people who live in a manner that is really not your business. If religious opponents of marriage equality can pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to apply here, then I will feel free to ignore the Bible altogether as a remnant of tales, stories and oral histories that provide a fascinating narrative, but are not relevant to the modern world.
But in the end, they are simply redefining equality. And that’s wrong.
The main argument against marriage equality is that it would redefine the institution that opponents believe to be the bedrock of any civilization. Once you allow anybody who loves another person to marry them, then you’re opening the door to polygamy, incest and child marriage. Here’s Brian S. Brown, one of the most active opponents of marriage equality:
“When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences,” Mr. Brown warned last August in a fund-raising letter. “Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?”
Then there’s this audio from the NPR program The Takeaway, where Joseph Backholm, executive director of Family Policy Institute, an anti-marriage equality group, says that not only should gays not be allowed to marry, they shouldn’t be able to adopt and raise children, since that right is traditionally reserved for those who can create children. I guess childless heterosexual couples need not apply either.
This is what the right wing does best: They scare and twist facts so that there’s no other choice but to oppose the same things they oppose. But Mr. Brown did more than that. He enlisted African-American clergymen and women to oppose marriage equality because, he said, it was less a civil rights issue than one of religious doctrine. Wasn’t this the same argument that segregationists used to fight integration? Yes it was.
Denying people rights is the same no matter what their station is. Laws that forbid intermarriage were overturned.Laws that forbid certain sexual practices were overturned. Public places were integrated. The long history of our country generally moves in one direction; towards more freedom and more access for all groups. I can’t imagine the Supreme Court saying that marriage equality is against the Constitution. It’s just a matter of how far they’ll go.
The problem, though, is that even if the Court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act, it doesn’t mean that gay couples will have an unfettered right to marry or enjoy the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. Unless the Court mandates marriage equality throughout the nation, states that don’t recognize it can continue to not do so. That will continue to complicate the lives of those couples who are legally married in the eight states that do recognize marriages if they even visit states that do not. That’s not equality. More delays. More denials.
I expect that the Court will open the gates to marriage equality in some way, but won’t make a sweeping judgement that covers the whole country. I also believe that this will be another John Roberts decision and that he will provide the fifth vote in favor. If Anthony Kennedy comes along, then the tally will be 6-3. I just can’t see Scalia, Alito or Thomas signing on to this.
Opponents of marriage equality say that an expansion of marriage rights is not a done deal. I disagree. Many people already have these marriage rights in the states that recognize gay marriage. I cannot imagine that the court would take those rights away. And once they are affirmed, they will become part of the American way of life. Gay couples will be more visible and will ultimately become more accepted. It will take some time and there will be bumps along the way, but it will happen.
Because this is a civil rights issue. Plain and simple.
Creators of the History channel’s “The Bible” today rejected suggestions that the character of Satan in the popular mini-series resembles President Obama.
“This is utter nonsense,” producers Roma Downey and Mark Burnett said in a statement. “The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouazanni, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics — including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our president.”
The History channel said any claims of a resemblance are “false.”
“HISTORY channel has the highest respect for President Obama. The series was produced with an international and diverse cast of respected actors. It’s unfortunate that anyone made this false connection,” the channel said.
The 10-hour series, produced by Downey and Burnett, who also produced “Survivor,” began airing March 3 and will conclude on March 31. The series has been pulling in strong ratings, with the premiere viewed by 13.1 million.
Sunday night’s reveal of Satan led many viewers to take to social media to express their surprise with the casting choice.
“Anyone else think the Devil in #TheBible Sunday on History Channel looks exactly like That Guy?” conservative commentator Glenn Beck tweeted.
“Did you catch #TheBible last night? Obama made an appearance,” Twitter user Chris Forewit wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to ABC News when reached for comment.
The casting decision recalls the uproar when it was revealed that the creators of “Game of Thrones” used a faux severed replica of former President George W. Bush’s head mounted on a stake in a number of scenes in the hit series. HBO quickly released an apology over its inclusion.
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Two high school football stars were found guilty on Sunday of raping a 16-year-old girl last August, in a case that drew wide attention for the way social media spurred the initial prosecution and later helped galvanize national outrage over the episode. The town’s obsession over its football team, many said, had shielded other teenagers who did little or nothing to protect the girl.
One football player, Trent Mays, 17, who had been a quarterback on the powerhouse Steubenville High School football team, was sentenced to serve at least two years in the state juvenile system, while the other, Ma’lik Richmond, 16, who played wide receiver, was sentenced to serve at least one year. Both could end up in juvenile jail until they are 21, at the discretion of the state Department of Youth Services. Mr. Mays’ minimum sentence is twice as long as Mr. Richmond’s because he was found guilty of two different charges.
After Judge Thomas Lipps read his decision, both boys broke down and sobbed. Mr. Richmond turned to his lawyer, Walter Madison, and said, “My life is over.”
Both Mr. Mays and Mr. Richmond apologized to the victim and her family. Mr. Richmond walked over to where they were sitting and said, “I had not intended to do anything like this. I’m sorry to put you through this,” before he broke down, unable to speak any more, and embraced a court officer.
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