A conservative bigot who hates Arabs? Shock!

The New York Times has a fairly lengthy article up today that highlights the disgusting religious bigotry of the conservative movement after 9/11. Oh, of course they don't phrase it that way, and in fact rely on the hate-mongers as putrid "balance" in this story of how a bunch of bigots forced a woman out of her job as principal of an Arabic school that she founded. The reason they did so is because, in their vapid and xenophobic minds, anyone who would learn Arabic is an Arab, who is a Muslim, who is a terrorist (and never you mind that the school was named after a Lebanese Christian pacifist).

In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a "radical," a "jihadist" and a "9/11 denier." She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser's longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser's downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

"It's a battle that's really just begun," said Daniel Pipes, who directs a conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

It's not enough to go after terrorists, now they have to harass and intimidate perfectly law-abiding Muslims who just want to practice freedom of religion. It's like they think that's enshrined in the supreme law of the land, or something!

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

Muslim cabdrivers who refuse to take passengers carrying liquor... well, I agree that's stupid--pretty much as stupid as saying a pharmacist can refuse to give out birth control because they're Christian. But I suspect Pipes wouldn't agree. Nor would he give a damn about political candidates who support political Christians, like Dobson or Hagee, nor would he care if an institution went out of its way to accommodate Christians. He also probably wouldn't recognize that it is due to Christians demanding accommodations for their religion that set the precedent that allows Muslims to do so, as well. But that's because he's a misanthropic twit.

Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to distort the truth and play on Americans' fear of terrorism. They say the campaign is also part of a wider effort to silence critics of Washington's policy on Israel and the Middle East.

"This is a political, ideological agenda," said John Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University who has been a focus of Mr. Pipes's scrutiny. "It's an agenda to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem."

That portrait, Muslim and Arab advocates contend, is rife with a bias that would never be tolerated were it directed at other ethnic or religious groups. And if Ms. Almontaser's story is any indication, they say, the message of her critics wields great power.

Of course. Because these people don't see any difference between "Islam" and "extremists".
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Get back in that closet, now!

Ken Hutcherson has done and said some pretty disgusting things: tried to organize a takeover of Microsoft because of their gay-friendly policies (yeah, get conservatives to buy their stock until you're in control, Ken... that'll work); dismissing GSAs as "sex clubs"; he's tried harassing teachers and a librarian at the high school; trying to get sexual orientation removed from Washington state's anti-discrimination laws; and so on.

But I thought this was his most reprehensible action yet. Today is Day of Silence, where students can choose to be silent the entire day as a show of protest against bullying (especially against gay students) in schools. Naturally, homophobes like Hutcherson are apoplectic over the idea that anyone might want gays not to be bullied in school ('cause he's a reverend, and Jesus told us to beat up fags, dontcha know?). So his proposed response?

Late last week, the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, an outspoken anti-gay-rights pastor, called for 1,000 "prayer warriors" to peacefully march outside the high school.

In an interview, he repeated his view that homosexuality is a sin. "God hates it," he said.

A little more information here.

Can you imagine that? 1000 people marching outside a high school, for chrissake. I can scarcely conceive how intimidating that would be for the students, especially the gay ones. The message being sent is that people object to your right to be safe from harm, that they object to your coming out of the closet, that they object to your very existence. And he's calling for 1000 people (hopefully he won't get any, of course), compared to the only 230 students who participated in Day of Silence last year.

It's reprehensible.

[Edit] According to news articles I've read, Hutcherson got 100 people protesting outside the school. Protesting a gay person's right to exist and be safe from harm. Did I mention that Hutcherson's a reverend?

Also, an imbecile:

Hutcherson, who had called for 1,000 "prayer warriors" to join him in protesting a national day to call attention to the harassment of lesbian and gay students, said his group was not against homosexuals or the Day of Silence.

"We're against giving an entire school day to one club to push an agenda that is not about education," he said.

(A) There's no club involved.
(B) The school itself is also not involved in Day of Silence, so education goes on regardless. School is not interrupted to do this.

One Antioch member, Marvin Jones, said the GSA "doesn't have the right to come into schools and impose an agenda on students."

See how brain-dead homophobes are? There's no organization forcing students not to speak or imposing an agenda on them. The students choose to participate of their own free will, something that it seems a lot of Christians want to deny them.

Hutcherson took issue with gay student supporters who said they were discriminated against at school. He said homosexuality is a sin "trying to be a minority."

How dare gays think they're a minority!

Lynette Smallwood, the parent of two Mt. Si students, joined Hutcherson's rally. She said she had received several text messages from her sons inside the school saying they couldn't say anything except the Day of Silence is good.

And yet, just a few paragraphs further in the article...

Inside the school, students and administrators said there were many T-shirts expressing opposing views and some intense discussions.

Gosh! It's almost like the bigoted homophobe is projecting her desires to stifle all forms of expression she disagrees with onto the people involved in that expression. How could this be!?

"It's not appropriate to have during school. They're not getting an education," Smallwood said.

The only reason anyone's not getting an education is because a third of the students skipped that day because of jackasses like you.
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There's racism afoot

And this time, it's not directed against those poor, aggrieved white folks. Believe it or not, people still don't like blacks in this country!

In September, a black female student discovered a racist comment scraped into the door of her dormitory room at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. A week later, the faces of six black students were crossed out with a magic marker on a photograph hanging on a dormitory bulletin board at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn.

Now, one week since at least 23 black students at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., received letters in the mail that students said read, "bang bang get out of here," the unsolved incidents are sparking painful soul-searching by administrators and students. They have reawakened worries about race relations on prep school campuses.

A half century after the nation's most prestigious preparatory schools undertook major recruitment and aid initiatives to transform their all-white student bodies, significant numbers of blacks, Latinos, and Asians attend today, and the schools trumpet the diversity of their student body. But some minority students say the cultures of the campuses have yet to catch up with the marketing.

...

Word of the hateful messages sent to St. Paul's students spread quickly among prep school students in the region, particularly those from minority groups, many of whom know one another from programs such as Beacon Academy in Boston, which readies students for prep school. For many, it provoked bitter feelings about the persistence of racial problems.
more stories like this

"There was a frustration among students that, as much as we talk about it, racism is still an issue," said Heather Flewelling, director of student multicultural affairs at Milton Academy, where whole class periods, at students' behest, were devoted this week to discussing the St. Paul mailings.

And why is racism an issue? Well, because of misunderstandings and stereotypes that our society is replete with:

What is more pressing, say students, is the abundance of cultural misunderstandings by white students who have had limited contact with minorities. Some white students mistakenly assume their minority classmates are like blacks they see portrayed in the media, say minority students.

"They're always asking me questions like, 'Do you wear Rocawear clothes?' " said Carlos Lopes, 16, of Charlestown, who attends Tabor Academy in Marion, referring to a brand of clothing popular among hip-hop artists. "They assume I know how to rap and how to dance. I do dance, but I don't rap."

Lopes said white students also constantly questioned his language and tried to mimic phrases he used such as "mad corny," which means silly, until he modified the way he speaks.

...

Kelicia Hollis, 17, of Little Rock, a senior at Phillips Academy Andover, said she has not experienced the same level of scrutiny and that she feels accepted on her campus. Even so, she said, white students often assume there are no differences between racial groups, particularly when a black American is a leading Democratic presidential contender.

"I hear a lot of people say that racism and stereotypes don't exist," Hollis said. "But it's important to remember that we're different and that we won't always see things the same way."

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Our states is learning!

In addition to these states, we can now welcome Arizona into the reality-based community:

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is telling the Bush administration that the state does not want $1 million in federal funding for abstinence-only education because the programs don't work.

The move makes Arizona the 16th state to reject the federal money.

...

Since 1996, the federal government has spent over a half a billion taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only programs.

A 2006 study by the independent Society for Adolescent Medicine called the programs "scientifically and ethically flawed".

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Is our states learning?

This was sent to me by my brother: it looks like ten to twelve states this year are rejecting federal money for abstinence-only sex education.

The number of states refusing federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available, officials said. Virginia was the most recent state to opt out.

Two other states -- Ohio and Washington -- have applied but stipulated they would use the money for comprehensive sex education, effectively making themselves ineligible, federal officials said. While Maryland and the District are planning to continue applying for the money, other states are considering withdrawing as well.

Until this year, only four states had passed up the funding.

Huzzah! It looks like they're waking up to the fact that abstinence-only sex education (aside from being an oxymoron) just plain doesn't work.

Not everyone is pleased, of course. The government that offers the money isn't happy:

"We're concerned about this," said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. "My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It's the youths in these states who are missing out."

They're not happy, and they're not too bright. The youths in the states that are forced to have abstinence-only education are the ones missing out, because educating teenagers on how not to have sex doesn't work. The youths in the states that know that are also missing out because you won't give them money for a proper sex-ed course. But they're going to get something, at least, which is better than before.

The anti-sex crowd also are miffed:

"We're talking about the health of millions of youth across the United States," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association. "We know abstinence education offers the best for them. Now is the time to put more emphasis on that message, not less."

Yeah... "we know abstinence education offers the best for them. We don't have any proof of that, and we don't even have convincing arguments to wave away all the evidence that it doesn't, but we know it! We know it in our genitals. Thinking--that's what genitals are for, right?"

But wait, there's more from Huber!

"Our critics would have governors believe that these programs are just somebody standing in front of the class wagging a finger and saying, 'No. No. No. Don't have sex.' That's not what these classes entail," Huber said. "They are holistic. They include relationship-building skills and medically accurate discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception."

Oh? Such medically-accurate discussions of STDs as "HIV ... can be spread via sweat and tears"? Or such medically-accurate discussions of contraception as "nearly 1 in 3 will contract AIDS from infected partner with 100% condom use"? Or such relationship-building skills as telling kids that "any same sex 'sexual experimentation' can be confusing to young persons and should be strongly discouraged"? Yeah, that sounds exactly like it's the best thing for children to hear. (See here for more information on what abstinence-only education really teaches kids)

The states who opted out had some encouraging things to say:

"The governor has often stated that abstinence-only education does not show any results," said Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who announced plans to give up the funding last month. "It doesn't work. He's a firm believer in more comprehensive sex education."

...

"Why would we spend tax dollars on something that doesn't work?" asked Ned Calonge of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. "That doesn't make sense to me. Philosophically, I am opposed to spending government dollars on something that's ineffective. That's just irresponsible."

I'm pretty sure we won't be hearing anything of the sort from Gov. Sonny "Let's pray for rain!" Perdue anytime soon, unfortunately.

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But if your only goal is to punish people who have sex, abstinence-only is a good plan

All together now: abstinence-only education doesn't work:

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of mil lions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

In fact, if you want to have effective results, instead of trying to foist your Puritanical fear of sex onto children, you ought to actually, y'know, teach them useful stuff:

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."

"Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect," said the report.

...

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

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Rich white kids come out ahead? Whoda thunk it?

"Affirmative action means that well-qualified (white) kids won't get to go to the school of their choice because of some ill-qualified (colored) kid!"

Oh, wait. No it doesn't.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

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Anyone surprised by this?

Segregation in schools is increasing:

Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published on Wednesday.

The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Many segregated schools struggle to attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, do not prepare students well for college and fail to graduate more than half their students.

In its June ruling the Supreme Court forbade most existing voluntary local efforts to integrate schools in a decision favored by the Bush administration despite warnings from academics that it would compound educational inequality.

"It is about as dramatic a reversal in the stance of the federal courts as one could imagine," said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and a co-author of the report.

"The federal courts are clearly pushing us backward segregation with the encouragement of the Justice Department of President George W. Bush," he said in an interview.

...

"During the desegregation period there was a major decline in the education gap between blacks and whites and an increase in college entry by blacks .... That gap has stopped closing," Orfield said.

Interestingly, part of the reason for this segregation is demographics:

Part of the reason for the resegregation is the rapidly expanding number of black and Latino children and a corresponding fall in the number of white children, it said.

Contrary to popular belief, the surge in the number of minority children in public schools was not mainly caused by a flight of white students into private schools.

Instead, it said, the post-"baby boom" generation of white Americans are having smaller family sizes.

I wonder how many people will take this as a call for white people to start out-breeding them nasty colored fellas.
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Next we stop teaching people to drive to bring down the number of car crashes

It's true; information never helped anybody make informed decisions.
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More on the Supreme Court case

I've noticed an unfortunate tendency to treat racial problems as black and white: other races are often ignored.

So it was, it seems, in the Seattle plan that the court ruled unconstitutional--or rather, "white" and "non-white", rather than "white" and "black." And also, unfortunately, in Justice Stevens' dissent.
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We must be color-blind, that those who are not can discriminate and we won't notice!

The Supreme Court today handed down a ruling that limited the use of race in school admissions, affecting my hometown of Louisville:

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy would not go as far as the other four conservative justices, saying in a concurring opinion that race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

To the extent that Roberts' opinion can be interpreted to foreclose the use of race in any circumstance, Kennedy said, "I disagree with that reasoning."

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

The two school systems in Thursday's decisions employ slightly different methods of taking students' race into account when determining which school they will attend.

Federal appeals courts had upheld both plans after some parents sued. The Bush administration took the parents' side, arguing that racial diversity is a noble goal but can be sought only through race-neutral means.

Roberts claims that he was following the logic of Brown:

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia joined the entirety of Roberts's 41-page opinion. Three years ago, without Bush appointees Roberts and Alito, the court ruled that universities could consider race in making admissions decisions.

...

Roberts invoked the Brown ruling as a basis for today's decision.

"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," he wrote for four justices. "The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again -- even for very different reasons."

The dissent claimed that, on the contrary, that this decision was a threat to Brown:

Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberals on the court, said Roberts' opinion undermined the promise of integrated schools that the court laid out 53 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

"To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown," Breyer said.

You can get a PDF of the full ruling from that MSNBC article, or follow this finely-crafted link.

I am kinda bemused by the notion that the justices believe we can achieve racial integration without paying attention to race. And this statement by the attorney for the plaintiffs is just bizarre:

Attorney Teddy Gordon, who argued that the Louisville system's plan was discriminatory, said, "Clearly, we need better race-neutral alternatives. Instead of spending zillions of dollars around the country to place a black child next to a white child, let's reduce class size. All the schools are equal. We will no longer accept that an African-American majority within a school is unacceptable."

Reducing the class size? How the fuck is that supposed to achieve the goal of integrated classrooms?
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Racism is alive and well

In fact, as much is admitted:

Both off-the-record and on, Jena residents told me racism is alive and well in Louisiana, and this is a case where it rose above the levee, so to speak.

'This case' is an incident where three black students in Jena, Louisiana, were threatened with lynching:

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

But didn't Brown v. Board solve everything forever?
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"Yes! The system works!"

Julie Amero, the Connecticut substitute teacher who was convicted when dozens of pornographic pop-ups showed up on her computer in class, has gotten a retrial.

Hat-tip to Lindsay Beyerstein
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Next she'll try to ban schools from teaching Latin

Via Michael Ralston in the comments over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, we get this story about a mother in Georgia trying to get the Harry Potter books banned from the county schools. Nothing unusual there--as the article notes, "They have been challenged numerous times since 2000, making them the most challenged texts of the 21st century, according to the American Library Association." But her legal approach is one I hadn't seen before:

At Tuesday's hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Well, that's not at all how the separation of church and state works, but okay. Almost semi-reasonable.

Until she continues to speak:

"I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again," Mallory said. "I think we need him."

Wait, what? You want to get rid of the separation of church and state, but you want to use it to get Harry Potter books out of the schools? I have to wonder whether these people even consider that if they let religion in the schools, it won't be theirs. That's how my step-father got a bill to allow prayer in schools defeated: he called up his state legislator one night, pretending to be a supporter. After a while of talking, he brought up "But I've been wondering, what should I do if my kid's teacher is Catholic? I've also heard there are some teachers that are Jews, and -- God forbid -- Muslims." The bill was withdrawn the next day.

Anyways. This next part was what really got me:

Mallory said she has testimony from children who have read the Harry Potter books and have thought about acting out spells described in the books.

"They don't want the Easter Bunny's power," Mallory said. "The children in our generation want Harry's power, and they're getting it."

"And they're getting it?" Damn. School must be a lot more interesting these days.
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Falwell's legacy lives on!

Poland to probe if Teletubbies are gay:

Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children's show promoted homosexuality.

She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

In comments reminiscent of criticism by the late U.S. evangelist Jerry Falwell, she was quoted as saying: "I noticed (Tinky Winky) has a lady's purse, but I didn't realize he's a boy."

"At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby ... Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."

...

But in a sign that the government wants to distance itself from Sowinska's comments, Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said he had warned her against making public comments "that may turn her department into a laughing stock."

Little late for that, Dorn.

Oh, and there's another person mentioned in the article, the Polish Education Minister, Roman Giertych, who has proposed laws that would fire teachers who "promote 'homosexual lifestyle'." And guess what else he wants to teach the kids?

[Edit] Whoops. This guy is Roman Giertych, and the creationist is his father, Maciej Giertych.
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I guess "spare the rod, spoil the child" doesn't apply to Iraqi legislators

On Iraq:

President Bush will not support a war spending bill that punishes the Iraqi government for failing to meet benchmarks for progress, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

On education:

Everyone would like to see "no child left behind." But NCLB is a "test and punish" law, not a school improvement plan. It uses achievement gaps to label schools as "failures" without providing the resources or strategies needed to eliminate them. Federal education policy should support public schools, not undermine them.

Although I suppose I should, in all fairness, point out that Bush decided that a different word was appropriate for NCLB:

President Bush, acknowledging public frustration over his No Child Left Behind Act, said Thursday the point of the law is not to punish schools that fall short, but to help them.

Bush suggested the White House and its allies must do a better job of explaining the goal of holding schools accountable.

Accountability, President Bush? If only you'd start applying that concept to your war in Iraq.
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Still working on integration

Almost 53 years after Brown v. Board of Education, a Georgia school is finally integrating its prom:

Breaking from tradition, high school students in this small town are getting together for this year’s prom.

Prom night at Turner County High has long been an evening of de facto segregation: white students organized their own unofficial prom, while black students did the same.

This year's group of seniors didn't want that legacy. When the four senior class officers — two whites and two blacks — met with Principal Chad Stone at the start of the school year, they had more on their minds than changes to the school’s dress code.

They wanted an all-school prom. They wanted everyone invited.

On April 21, they'll have their wish. The town's auditorium will be transformed into a tropical scene, and for the first time, every junior and senior, regardless of race, will be invited.

...

Students say the self-segregation that splits social circles in school mirrors the attitude of this town of 4,000 people. So getting every student to break from the past could be a difficult task.

With prom night about two weeks away, only half of the 160 upper-class students have bought tickets. And there’s talk around the school that some white students might throw a competing party at a nearby lake.

"Everyone is saying they're not going to the school prom," said Steven Tuller, a 17-year-old white junior who doesn't plan to attend either event because he wants to wait until he's a senior. "They're saying it's tradition."

Yet Turner County High already has defied tradition this year. The school abandoned its practice of naming separate white and black homecoming queens. Instead, a mixed-race student was named the county’s first solo homecoming queen.

...

[Keith Massey, a 1990 graduate] recalls an attempt to integrate one of the prom parties when he was in school, but few whites showed up. Attempts to organize a school-wide prom in recent years failed because of a lack of student support.

This is a repeat of what happened five years ago at another Georgia school. From the April 20, 2002 Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via Nexis):

After three decades of dual proms segregated by skin color, the juniors and seniors at the 420 student Taylor County High School have pasted that tradition into somebody else's scrapbook. When the unified prom starts up on May 3, Taylor County will become one of the last places in Georgia to drop this practice.

"Everybody finally decided to grow up," said Gerica McCrary, one of the student leaders in the effort to unify the prom.

Amber Williams, McCrary's white counterpart, said the student prom planners questioned the thinking behind the practice that had been part of school-year-ending celebrations ever since the county schools were integrated in the early 1970s.

"Why is it that we can't dance with each other?" she said the students started wondering.

...

In December, members of separate prom planning committees put their heads together.

"Everybody thought it was just kind of crazy," said Darcel Loyd, a planning committee member.

"To me, it was embarrassing," said Quantanya Hollis, a prom committee member. They put the prom unification proposal to a vote of the school's 94 seniors and 95 juniors, and it carried by better than 2 to 1.

At first, some resisted in the school that is 55 percent black and 45 percent white.

"A lot of people got mad at me," Williams said, adding that she received a few anonymous phone threats.

Once the students on the two planning committees started working together, the opposition seemed to die out, she said.

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God bless this great state!

Once again, I am proud to live in Indiana.
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Really? You don't say.

Julie Amero is a substitute teacher in Connecticut. Apparently during one seventh-grade class, her computer popped up with dozens of pornographic images, which the kids saw and reported. She was convicted of "four felony counts of 'injury or risk of injury to, or impairing morals of, children.'" Each count has a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

The defense tried arguing that a great deal of malware was responsible for the flood of pornographic pop-ups--a possibility the police didn't even check. Their expert witness, Herb Horner, determined "that the machine had been infected with multiple pieces of malicious software before she arrived at the school, and that these hidden programs were responsible for the pornographic deluge." The expert witness for the prosecution, Detective Mark Lounsbury, "a computer crimes officer at the Norwich Police Department", ran a program called ComputerCOP Pro to analyze the activity of the machine Ms. Amero was using. He countered that Ms. Amero was clearly guilty because--get this--the computer visited porn websites.

ComputerCOP scans the hard drive and reports on when each file was created or modified. Lounsbury says he is satisfied that Amero intentionally viewed porn in class because the logs show that her computer accessed various inappropriate sites while she was sitting at the computer.

"I take that at face value," Lounsbury told Alternet. "It's evidence. It speaks for itself. The pop-up defense is a Twinkie defense."

Lounsbury said that Amero must have navigated to pornographic sites in order to have infected her computer with obscene popups. "You've got to get that ball rolling," he said.

That defense transforms this from tragedy to farce. I am personally offended by that statement.

The article specifies that ComputerCOP "is not designed to definitively distinguish between user-generated clicks and the effects of malware." Saying that the computer "accessed various inappropriate sites while she was sitting at the computer" means nothing other than that porn popped up on the screen, which nobody has denied. Obviously the computer visited these sites, but that doesn't mean that Ms. Amero did so herself. On the contrary, Horner discovered that a "program called Pasco showed that malware had automatically redirected Amero's browser. Horner stressed that this particular form of hijacking is invisible to ComputerCOP Pro."

Via Tom Tomorrow
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Someone needs a history lesson.

Via Atrios, I find this perfect example of zombie racism:

For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.

The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."

...

The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.

"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.

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