300 dead by taser in the U.S. this year alone

...this is the last one, I promise. But I felt a need to at least post the link.

This is why I despise tasers and police-state tactics.

This needs to stop.

Chris Matthews does something right

Normally that guy is pretty insane, especially when it comes to gender. This time, he gets one right. This is in regards to asking why anti-abortion activists don't seek criminal penalties against women who get abortions:

MATTHEWS: It just seems like you make a basic political judgment that would blame the doctor, when, in fact, these doctors don‘t go door to door offering people abortion services. The person who wants the abortion goes to a doctor and has the procedure done by the doctor. Yet you put the onus on the doctor. It just seems to be the strangest way to enforce a law.

Follow the links and check out the other guy's defense.

It's pretty telling.


I'm done posting for now. Promise.

h/t Hullabaloo.

NYT's "100 Notable Books of the Year"

I might have to take a closer look at this.

... what's with all the prices? I hope those are just for the hardcovers.

Australia's Howard is out

Good frackin' riddance. That guy is incredibly racist. Everything I saw come out of his government was Bush-lite and/or neoliberalism 101. Plus, he'd been PM for 10 or 11 years or so (way too long, in other words).

I hope Rudd is better, especially on Aboriginal issues.... but I doubt he will be. My experience with Australia is that there's still an incredible amount of blatant, conscious racism there.

Hopefully it was just the people I met.

Update: Howard lost in both ways - he lost his seat and his party lost. Yay!

DH: Alexander amends motion re: firing Robinson

I have one question: Did Meadowbrook know about his misreading of the statute beforehand, or did he really find out when the DH ran the story the first time?

Either answer's not good - the former means that he was playing politics in a bad way, and the latter means that he's not all that good at his job (or that he was in such a rush to get the request in before the break and while Robinson was gone that he didn't take the time to do all the research he should have).

On the other hand, apparently the complaint is very straightforward, far more straightforward than Alexander has been at board meetings:

In the complaint, Alexander says he wants to move that the board not renew the superintendent’s contract under ORS 342.513 “unless that action would violate” the contract.

The suit also says that Alexander is worried that if he goes ahead with such a motion, Robinson will sue him and anyone who votes for it. He is concerned, the suit says, “in part because Robinson sued plaintiff in this court last year ... for alleged contract violations.”

I'm disappointed. He gave away the game - not only does he say he wants to get rid of Robinson by any legal means (having discovered that he does not, in fact, have the power to do so illegally), he throws in the irrelevant sop about being sued (and the DH falls for it - by merely noting that Robinson eventually dropped the suit, it does not acknowledge why he filed or why he dropped, reasons that I file under the category "important context.")

Rick's running out of tricks, I think. He'd better hope he can manufacture a crisis again soon. Maybe it's time for Josh to step up to the plate...

LTE on Williams' Column

[Sometimes I capitalize post titles and sometimes I don't. I wonder why.]

Anyway, there is a letter to the editor in the DH responding to Ben Williams' Young Voices column.

An excerpt from the letter:

In closing, I must summarize that at least one student has been able to overcome the lack of leadership within our school structure and has been able to rise above the leadership of our school system. Mr. Williams, I commend you and will be voting for you when you run for school board, or who knows, one day come back as our superintendent.

Let's just say that I think Mr. Gestrin's letter is unintentionally funny. It actually makes me wonder if he knows the student in question.

Get Off My Lawn Or I'll Shoot Edition

Of course it's Hering. Who else would it be?

I'll keep this short - I have better things to do:

The same issue has come up in Oregon in connection with public schools. A Medford teacher challenged her school district’s policy that barred her from being armed on school grounds. She went to court and lost, but she’s appealing. Now the school district plans to ask the Oregon Legislature to amend the law in order to give school districts explicit authority to enforce such policies. The question would be how. Metal detectors? Regular pat-downs?

Yes, actually. Apparently Hering is unaware that some schools actually have metal detectors and bag searches.

I always thought that being an editor meant that one actually researched the editorials they wrote.

There's also this:

Another is that people who have met the requirements for a permit to carry a concealed weapon are, as a general rule, more law-abiding and responsible than your average individual in the population at large — and certainly more so than the criminal who just ignores the law.

Really? Evidence, please. I hear this all the time from gun advocates, but I have never seen a single scrap of evidence for the claim that people with concealed weapons permits are safer than those without. My experience is completely contradictory to that - the craziest people I know are also the ones who carry concealed.

Hering really shouldn't be in the business of printing - or writing - evidence-free assertions based on unsupported (and frankly ridiculous) beliefs. It's not becoming of a newspaper editor.

The History Boys

Picked this film up at random this evening and watched it with two friends.

It was amazing.

I don't want to give away any plot information, but here are three things that were raised during the film:

1. Student-teacher relationships, including power dynamics.

2. Pedagogy, specifically modern vs. postmodern understandings of truth, history, and literature.

3. Masculinity, male adolescent development, and sexual identity.

It plays out against the background of a British grammar school with wonderful, if incredibly understated (stereotypically British?) writing and acting - as it would turn out, the cast of the film is the same as the cast of the play the film was based on. It also shares the same writer and director as the play.

Anyway, the thing that impressed me the most was the way in which the film treated everyone with compassion.

Go see it.

Alexander wastes everyone's time - again

LT has already posted on this, but I want to point something out that I noticed while reading the dead tree version of this story:

Alexander is asking the court to interpret the contract in light of an Oregon statute, ORS 342.845, that states school boards “may elect not to extend the administrator’s contract for any cause the school board in good faith considers sufficient.”

...

Alexander disagrees and is asking for a ruling saying that the law allows boards to end contracts for any “good faith” reason and without having to first make a job evaluation.

...

Shannon Priem, communications director of the Oregon School Boards Association, said OSBA agrees. She cited definitions under ORS 342.815 that specifically state superintendents are not included in the definition of “administrator” for dismissal purposes.

This seems pretty clear-cut, actually, which is unsurprising. Meadowbrook and Alexander are still playing spaghetti: Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. So far, they've had no real success.

Also, what do we think Alexander will use as a 'good-faith' reason? And how much will Robinson get when he sues Alexander?

Will Robinson be forced to sue the school district to get the rest of his pay and/or clear his record? How does that help the district's students.

However, what was raised for me when reading the story for the first time was the larger issue of the rolling three-year contract that Robinson and most other Superintendents get.

My understanding is that such contracts are tantamount to job or financial security (buying out the remainder of the contract being one way to end a super's employment without waiting for the contract to end), and they allow a Super to work without the immediate possibility of the current year being their last. However, unless school boards can fire without cause, I don't see why a rolling contract is necessary. Well, unless a board can fire a Super without cause.

Anyone?

Buy Nothing Day

Found here; follow the link for the full image, which is much larger and more interesting.