Abbie Hoffman Moment

Abbie Hoffman Moment

Abbie Hoffman Moment

In Case You Slept Through Church This Sunday

In Case You Found Church Irrelevant This Sunday

Christian School Nurse Denies Service To Child

A Pennsylvania school nurse took it upon herself to refuse to treat a child because the child did not recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag while waiting in the nurse's office. The nurse at Wilson Middle School in Carlisle yelled at the student until she started to cry, and when the student tried to call her mother, the nurse refused to allow that, too. The nurse felt that because of the controversy about new laws concerning religious "liberty", it was her god-given right to refuse service to a child in attendance at the school where she works. Patriotism and devotion, expressed by mindless recitation of a verse with which many Americans do not agree. Nice. This is why Christians should be more like indoor house cats, and excrete their daily devotions in the litter box, rather than at work or around real people.

There are two problems with the pledge. One is that it states that this nation is "indivisible under god", when such a thing is no more possible than a nation being indivisible under Santa Claus, and the other is that the pledge ends with an affirmation that America sports "justice for all". Actually, many Americans do not get the benefits of justice, because while there is usually justice for those who can afford private attorneys, justice for "all" is certainly not a guarantee! Boycott The Pledge got involved on the child's behalf, and have contacted the school to request an apology for the christian nurse.

Selma To Montgomery, Fifty Years Ago

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama by blacks to protest the unconstitutional interference in their voting rights by whites, what would a girl in Kansas have on her mind, besides Kris Kobach? From it's role as a (ahem) DEFENDANT in Brown v. the Board of Education in Topeka, 1956 to Secretary of State Kris Kobach's continued disenfranchisement of Kansas voters, it appears that bigotry is still alive and well in the Midwest.

A Comedian Has The Most Thoughtful Response

Amid all the reports and commentaries on recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, the one by comedian Russell Brand stands out as the most thoughtful. Young Michael Brown was shot by a police officer,, Darrin Wilson, because he was black. Many Fox News fans have pointed out that it is possible that Brown may have stolen a box of cigars, but Wilson had no way of knowing that Brown was even inside of a store until the police department began looking for exculpatory evidence for Wilson. Every effort on the part of Missouri's judicial system has been to exonerate Wilson and remind the rest of America that shooting minorities is a good thing to do. Fox News would have us believe that certain minorities are responsible for all crime, as a matter of fact.

Russell Brand issues the obvious challenges to those racist ideas. Ideas such as immediate execution not being the penalty in America for shoplifting, and white teenagers not receiving the death penalty for the same. Ideas such as tanks, machine guns, and all sorts of military gear and personnel standing by in order to make sure that no one exercises any first amendment rights without risking death. And he addresses the fact that no police officer in Missouri has ever been held accountable for the killing of a civilian, and in America, most civilian victims of police are black. Why should Wilson be charges with a crime? He was, after all, "doing what he was trained to do", according to Darrin Wilson's lawyers. So Wilson was "trained" to discriminate against blacks and kill them. Brand does not sell Wilson's injuries short, though. Wilson did, after all, have an injury resembling the type of bruise left by the kick of a mishandled gun on his cheek. Lets cry for him.

To add insult to injury, Wilson had the audacity to thank the morons who supported him in his murderous efforts. Now that he has resigned, whatever will he use as impunity to murder unarmed minority citizens?

Gays Always Want Cakes Baked For Them

Pat Robertson has spoken....yet again! He, once again, has found a new way to twist the words of the Constitution and the doctrines of the Christian religion to fit a new and deranged formula only beknown to his own subconscious. Gay men and women are now terrorists if they order cakes for their weddings and other special occasions......Only white, christian heterosexual types can enter bakeries or visit caterers and have events planned and catered! If anyone else does this, it's clearly a sign of terrorism.......(eye-rolley here)

Reverend Robertson has his panties in a bunch because the Kansas senate refused to pass House Bill 2453 earlier this year.The bill would have allowed any business or government agency, including but not limited to public schools and hospitals, to refuse service to anyone whose demeanor, jewelry, tattoos, skin color, accent, or surname posed a "religious conflict" for the employee or gatekeeper providing customer service. The reason it did not pass the senate, besides it's insane content and stupid language, is that such a bill, were it to become law, is at obvious cross purposes with the Constitution and federal law. It seems Robertson is disappointed that members of the senate were uninterested in fighting terrorism by instigating bigotry and unlawful discrimination. How the pastor links ordering a cake from a bakery to terrorism is still a mystery, though.

If all those terrorists, regardless of sexual preference, only want cakes baked for them, the solution seems simple enough; just give Betty Crocker a call.

Private Message

Rather than destroy your long standing relationships and associations within our community, wouldn't it be better to simply establish the legal rights to your intellectual property and invoke those rights when someone violates them? Once the persons in question see and realize that you are not playing games, your problems with said persons are likely to stop. Quite a few of your friends, and even some of mine, have decided, over the past few months, that your angry and ongoing reactions after you experience professional problems connected to theft and theft of intellectual property are spilling over into other aspects of life, inasmuch as it includes you, and have decided to stop interacting with you. That is a shame, because when these things are not going on in your professional life, you are a very nice person. That is all I have ever said about you to anyone, when asked. Nothing else; except that as clergy, we owe you a certain amount of respect, and you generally are knowledgeable about the subject matter of your written works and lectures. When you are not, you have always sought the input of those who are. That makes it a shame when it is made so difficult for so many to look beyond your anger and irrational defensiveness for so long.

I've been friends with you long enough to know that you are truly more mature. It would be much better to simply copyright your intellectual property, file the appropriate complaints when the copyrights are violated, and move on.

In Case You Missed Church On Sunday

The Kansas interpretation of Freedom of Religion. A secretary at Frankfort High School in Kansas actually told me, in defense of some Christian teenage bullies on campus, that "Christians have rights, too". This was to justify the constant mockery of any religion besides Christianity at school.

Ready For Spring?

Yes, it's time for change. Hopefully, a few of you will wake up. From governors who shut down bridges in retaliation against voters to prosecutors who suspend medical treatment of jail inmates pending guilty pleas rather than jury trials, (you KNOW you bear ultimate responsibility for that young man's death in Marysville Kansas in January, Laura Johnson McNish)* it's time for Americans to stop tolerating the disrespect of our Constitution by our elected leaders. These leaders and officials are on our payroll. It's time for them to pay attention to what we want. The wealthy actually pay a smaller portion of their earnings and resources than the portion paid by most poor and middle class entities, so it is time for everyone's best interest to matter, not just one group's best interest.

*Someone actually died in custody as a result of the coercion and manipulation of jail inmates in Marshall County, Kansas. Instead of allowing defense attorneys to confer with clients and consider the best defensive strategies for court, the prosecutor and law enforcement threaten defendants and their counsel. This includes suspension of medical care of defendants while in custody.

To Disagree With The President

Unfortunately, I cannot disagree more with Obama's assertion that America's judicial system follows it's own rules. In this video, Obama states that our government has checks and balances to prevent the abuses of overdone surveillance that has been brought to light by Edward Snowden. Obama also suggests that if Snowden takes advantage of his rights as defendant, as afforded him by our judicial system, everything will be okey-dokey for Snowden. At this point, after the recent and publicized abuses by almost every type of judicial entity from small town police departments to federal courts, I am quite inclined to look at this whole matter from Snowden's standpoint. Even if Snowden did, indeed, commit a crime; or three, as Obama claims, why is this crime a felony? Government agencies purport and publish information and misinformation against individuals all the time, with no penalties and very little oversight. Why is the same action criminalized in the case of a private citizen?

 

 

Kansas And It's Uses Of Foster Children

On Changing Kansas, there is a post dated March 24, concerning the Protective Parent Act, which would enable foster children to file formal complaints about abuses and violations of their rights which take place while they are in custody of foster parents or other designated custodians. This would give foster children and their natural parents recourse in situations involving sexual predators who are given custody of foster children, such as Noble Rick Pendland. Many parents complained about him over the last decade, but since their children had been taken from them, their complaints were tossed into the circular file. Some of these children were sodomized, (Pendland's apparent abuse of choice) and injured in other ways, but denied legal recourse and medical treatment. No one in Kansas cared, and Kansas lawmakers still don't care, as evidenced by their resistance to passing the Protective Parent Act. Noble Rick Pendland is in jail in Cowley County, awaiting trial, by the way.

What does Kansas have to gain by refusing the rights of foster children and their natural parents? An alarming number of foster children are on drug regimens that are either experimental, or not approved for children. These very children are often the subjects of pharmaceutical experimentation. A "ward of the court" who has unwittingly become a subject in a drug experiment may find that there are other considerations, besides the fitness of his parents, to his reunification with his parents. What a way for Kansas to make money! Don't believe this? Here's a sample from Kansas Statutes, Chapter 38, Article 22.

(d) When the court retains jurisdiction after appointment of a permanent custodian, the court, in its order, may impose limitations or conditions upon the rights and responsibilities of the permanent custodian including, but not limited to, the right to:
(1) Determine contact with the biological parent; (2) consent to marriage; (3) consent to psychosurgery, removal of a bodily organ or amputation of a limb; (4) consent to sterilization; (5) consent to behavioral and medical experiments; (6) consent to withholding life-prolonging medical treatment; (7) consent to placement in a treatment facility; or (8) consent to placement in a psychiatric hospital or an institution for the developmentally disabled.

Looking closely at (3), (4), (5), and (6), the notion that social services can drop in on an unsuspecting parent whose child happens to possess a physical trait that is of current interest to drug companies conducting experiments on persons with said trait, and generate a reason that may or may not be factual to remove the child, then turn the child over to foster care or other circumstances wherein involuntary drug experiments can be conducted is a bit unsettling. Yours truly has guardianship of a child with medical problems, and this child was once on many drugs. We found a doctor who is truly interested in medicine, and, one by one, the drugs were permanantly removed from this child's life. Now he is much healthier, and no one really knows why all of the drugs were prescribed in the first place. The drugs certainly did not play a productive role. The very idea, as in (6), that a court or a caretaker can actually withhold life-prolonging medical treatment to a child is chilling. Changing Kansas makes a very serious and valid point concerning the rights of children who are wards of the court.

 

Robert Poe III And Your Tax Dollars At Work

As a bit of a sequel to this post, here is another eyebrow raising piece of information that followed closely on it's heels: while federal and state authorities in Kansas were interviewing the victims of Michael Arnett, the driver/paramedic/all-time-helpful-social-services-approved driver to provide foster children in Kansas with transportation to visit their parents and attend appointments, (he's in jail now, for sexually abusing those children as he drove them from one place to another) his victims kept bringing up another name......Robert Poe III. It seems that Michael Arnett was not only abusing the children as a solo act, but stopping by the home of his friend, Mr. Poe, who also abused the children, and used a gun to gain their cooperation. All this, done to children who have already been exposed to stress that is heartbreaking, all by itself. Is there any way at all Kansas could have done, or could..... in the future...... do a better job in the area of background checks? Not that foster children matter terribly much in Kansas. After all, once a Kansas foster child has been  abused  or inexplicably "lost" by a foster parent or other custodial guardian employed by the state, the social worker simply moves the court to terminate the natural parents' rights and sever all ties between the child and his or her natural siblings, right Kansas? That way, no one who might actually love the child will ever speak up about the human rights abuses you allow daily to be leveled against these children.

 

Illinois Students Suspended For Possession Of Caffeine

Yes, you read that correctly! It is not against the law to drink or possess caffeine. It is not against the law to drink or possess tea or coffee. One may also eat chocolate, which contains caffeine, and also consume and share the confection at school. Yet......four high school students in Illinois were suspended for "consuming unfamiliar mints" in the cafeteria! Instead of simply asking the students what they were eating, the drama queens who run the school in Peoria, Illinois hauled the students into the office, confiscated the package, which, by the way, lists all the ingredients, suspended the young people, and called their parents! Let me remind everyone at this jucture that if a crime had actually been committed, the school would have had a responsibility to notify law enforcement. Law enforcement would have had to pack up some doughnuts and COFFEE for the road and go arrest these naughty children. But that didn't happen, because the children did nothing unlawful. But did the drama queens at the school "unsuspend" the children and apologize for accusing them of criminal behavior? (I'd sue the school over that if it were my child) Did they give the students back the instructional time, which is their right? Did they even abide by federal law, which states that children must attend school until the age of sixteen? No they didn't. After the successful dramafest, the school decided that they should continue to deny these children instructional time at school!

"According to EnergyFiend.com, each mint contains 101 milligrams of caffeine along with guarana, green tea, ginseng, acai, mangosteen and goji.

McMichael's father said school officials later admitted they did not know if the chewable, unmarked mints were, in fact, illegal drugs, but upheld the suspensions anyway, saying the teens displayed "gross misconduct for taking an unknown product."....Yahoo News

The Food And Drug Adminstration actually takes all the mystery out of these "unknown products" by requiring a list of ingredients on all foods marketed commercially in the United States. That includes mints, gum, candy, coffee, and tea. Imposing discipline in a school is a very serious thing, especially a suspension. The principal, teachers, and any other faculty involved has the reponsibility to find out what has actually taken place before depriving a child of the right to an education.

Quite a few of us actually drink coffee in support of world peace! Can anyone imagine what would happen if everyone with a caffeine habit was suddenly denied? Another question that deserves an answer here involves the teachers' lounge at this school: how much coffee is consumed there? Had the teachers involved in this incident abused anything stronger and less legal than caffeine before they suspended these children? Had the teachers involved in this incident had their coffee yet?

 

Mints and candy will not be tolerated in Illinois schools! So says the Furor!