#2
so if the , uh, performance, lasts more than 13 minutes, does that mean that the excess body heat created will cause global warming and require carbon credits to offset same?
#3
See also FREEREPUBLIC > SEX DEPTH: WHEN FREAKY DEAKY MEETS HARA-KIRI. Looks like Russ isn't the only one wid demographic decline vv Year 2050, and a major cause likely has to deal wid Japanese-centric "It".
THE SIMPSONS > "it It IT IIITTT IIIIIIITTTTTTTT"!
D *** NG IT, WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN [think of HAVING CHILDREN - PERIOD]"!
A recent California Court of Appeals case has been making some waves as the precursor to the end of homeschooling in this state. . . . I admit, it sounds pretty bad the way the LA Times writes:
Parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to a state appellate court ruling that is sending waves of fear through California's home schooling families.
Advocates for the families vowed to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Enforcement until then appears unlikely, but if the ruling stands, home-schooling supporters say California will have the most regressive law in the nation.
"This decision is a direct hit against every home schooler in California," said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which represents the Sunland Christian School, which specializes in religious home schooling. "If the state Supreme Court does not reverse this . . . there will be nothing to prevent home-school witch hunts from being implemented in every corner of the state of California."
The ruling as described would effectively end homeschooling in California, and I agree that it would be an outrageous result. Fortunately, the LA Times misunderstood the case and that misunderstanding was carried over into the discussions of the bloggers . . .
The short version: The LA Times got it wrong in the first sentence of their article. Parents without teaching credentials can still educate their children at home under the various exemptions to mandatory public school enrollment provided in § 48220 et seq. of the Cal. Ed. Code. The parents in this case lost because they claimed that the students were enrolled in a charter school and that with minimal supervision from the school, the children were free to skip classes so the mother could teach them at home. There is no basis in law for that argument. If only the parents had attempted to homeschool their kids in one of the statutorily prescribed methods, they would have prevailed.
Under California law, attendance at a full-time day public school is compulsory for all children between the ages of 6 and 18. Parents wanting to take their kids out of the public schools must do so under one of the exceptions provided by the California Education Code. For the purposes of home schooling they are: § 48222 Attendance in private school or § 48224 Instruction by credentialed tutor. (There are other exceptions for short-term child actors, the mentally gifted, or leaves of absence, but they are not appropriate for homeschoolers.)
So, generally, parents have three options for educating their kids in California: (1) public school; (2) private school; or (3) credentialed tutor. This is not as bad for homeschoolers as it looks. To be a private school in California, all the parent has to do is be "capable of teaching" the required subjects in the English language and offer instruction in the same "branches of study" required to be taught in the public schools. They also have to keep a register of enrollment at their "school" and a record of attendance. Once a year they have to file an affidavit with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction with things like their names and address, the names of the students and their addresses, a criminal background check (since we don't want unsupervised felons teaching kids), and their attendance register. That's it.
In the Longs' case, they attempted to claim that their children were enrolled in a "valid charter school" and that the school was supervising the mothers' instruction in the home. It is unclear from the court's opinion, but it looks like the parents tried to argue that the children were enrolled in a public school (since all charter schools in California are public schools). But since they obviously couldn't meet any of the attendance requirements for public schools*, the court also examined the question of whether the parents were credentialed. Since they obviously aren't, the court kicked it back to the lower court to order them to "enroll their children in a public full-time day school, or a legally qualified private full-time day school." It looks like the parents never bothered to argue that they were running their own private school in compliance with § 48222.
*Some homeschoolers attempt to twist the "independent study" provision for public school education in § 51745 into a form of generalized homeschooling and that may be what the lawyers were trying to do in this case. Unfortunately, that statute is quite explicit that independent study not take the form of an "alternative curriculum" to that provided by the public school and that it not replace any courses required for a high school diploma.
In sum: homeschoolers, TAKE A BREATH. You are not about to be criminally charged for choosing to educate your children at home, as the LA Times and the various commentators I mentioned above imply. You can still homeschool your kids, assuming that you can pass a criminal background check and aren't totally incompetent. The lawyers for these parents and homeschool advocates all over the state are gleefully watching all the outrage this has stirred up, but I think they should be ashamed of themselves for terrifying the parents of homeschooled children.
We should all keep in mind that outrage is fun, but not necessarily harmless.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/07/2008 10:59 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The teachers union and prison guard union along with longshoremen's unions are the most powerful in the state. Not only do they pull the strings on the legislature and Ahhnold, now they are jerking the courts around.
#2
FWIW...we home-schooled our kids for about half their 12 years. One graduated with honors from Stanford and the other will graduate with honors from Washington. I can assure you neither my wife nor I have taken a single college course in education.
#3
If there's one thing that most child-raising Americans agree on, it's the sad state of the public schools. I can't remember one person with children who didn't either have already have them in home school or private school, or desperately wish they could be. Contempt for the public schools was the norm, with outright hatred for the system a close second coming up fast.
I read a stat that said almost 15% of American children are being homeschooled. Given the facts that a)many schools are dangerous places serving primarily as places to warehouse uninterested louts who terrorize other students, and b)the left-wing indoctrination from the often poorly educated (even if credentialed) instructors is ubiquitous, I'd believe it. It's easy to see why conscientious parents would take such action.
It would be a real shock to the education system to have vouchers introduced; the competition might actually make them kick them into a higher gear. Still, since the the public schools are stuck by law with all the bad apples, the likelihood of the public schools managing to make much of an improvement over their current poor performance is pretty slim.
#4
"I had sex with my high school teacher....unfortunately, I was homeschooled"
/stolen from comedy central
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/07/2008 19:18 Comments ||
Top||
#5
So, generally, parents have three options for educating their kids in California: (1) public school; (2) private school; or (3) credentialed tutor. This is not as bad for homeschoolers as it looks.
scuse me???
Not that I have a dog in this fight, but from what Ace of Spades has written here, the parents should be very concerned.
To be a private school in California, all the parent has to do is be "capable of teaching" the required subjects in the English language and offer instruction in the same "branches of study" required to be taught in the public schools.
This law can easily be changed to require certifications that can not be so easily obtained. And the same with "Credentialed tutor".
There should be a right for parents to home school their kids or to deny the state the RIGHT to indoctrinate them. I could understand if the State required testing in core subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic. But the state can't/won't do that because the children in many public schools would not be able to pass them.
#6
I can't remember one person with children who didn't either have already have them in home school or private school, or desperately wish they could be.
Clearly things are different in Los Angeles. I went to a public school in Amherst, NY (a suburb of Buffalo) and got an excellent education. The trailing daughters have gone to Lakota district public schools ever since we moved back to this country, ie first grade and kindergarten respectively, and have gotten excellent educations there. Granted, both were identified as intellectually gifted, a measure not of raw IQ but of a very different way of undergoing learning. As such it's classified as a learning disability - eg. homework drills that help normal students grasp material often enough actually prevent gifted students from doing so. But I'm only aware of one very tiny private school in the Cincinnati area capable of working with such gifted students, whereas the Lakota public school district has one of the best gifted ed. programs in Ohio, and it's fully capable of accomodating every one of the 1-2% of the approximately 18,000 students in the district.
A very, very good thing, because I would have been absolutely terrible educating them myself -- I'm not anything close to organized enough. Nor patient enough, either.
#7
I could understand if the State required testing in core subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic.
Ohio requires every student to be tested on such skills as well as subject knowledge twice during the elementary years and on basic subjects in order to graduate from high school. Overall Ohio's education requirements are less than I would like, but they do have minimum standards.
#8
For reasons unclear to me, over the last several years I have come into contact with many people who home-school. At first I thought it was a bit strange. Why would you WANT to do it? So much work!
But what I have noticed is that they are able to teach their children so much more in so much less time. One woman I know teaches her daughter in the morning. I used to teach and the lesson plans she uses are as good as or better than many of the ones that the teachers that I knew used. Plus you can tailor it to your own child's level.
And so it is with most of the home-schoolers I know. Their kids are better educated than those sent to private school. They are also better behaved as well.
It makes sense when you think about it. If you are smart and your children are smart - the public school [USUALLY] spend lots of time holding your child back on children slower than your own.
Many exceptions (as noted above) - but it seems to me that a home-schooling enviroment would be far superior to a public school one.
#9
Their kids are better educated than those sent to private school.
oops - that should have been public schools. And yes, there are MANY good public schools that do a fine job, especially for the gifted students, but I can assure that quality of LA public schools would be highly dependent on the zip code.
They don't call him Qadaffy for nothing, y'know...
Libyan Leader Al-Qadhafi: In America, "A Candidate Who Wants People To Vote For Him Keeps Talking About Change... They Want to Change America and its Current Political System"; "The Whole World Will Return to the Libyan Model" of Government
In a public address, Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi discussed the U.S. electoral system, saying that the Americans want to change it, that "a very small minority decides who will be president" in the U.S., and that "none of the peoples" really want elections. He also said that "the whole world will return to the Libyan model."
"The Whole World will Return to the Libyan Model... A Candidate Who Wants People to Vote For Him Keeps Talking About Change"
Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: "You must have seen elections and political parties throughout the world. You must have seen what a farce they are. The whole world will return to the model of the republic of the masses, to communes, to popular conferences, to popular security, to popular defense, to popular capitalism, and to popular socialism. The whole world will return to the Libyan model. I have watched the world and the people in it. I've seen that in America, a candidate who wants people to vote for him keeps talking about change. They all keep saying 'change, change.' They want to change America and its current political system. They want to make a change in their lives. They say their system is a failure, that their government is a failure, and that their elections are a failure. An American who wanted to get elected said: 'I will make a change.'"
"None of the Peoples Want Elections"
"To this day, there is no ideal ruling system in the world, which can resolve the problems. There are conflicts everywhere. They are still asking: 'Who won the elections - Al Gore or Bush?' If someone gets 49% of the votes, and you get 51%, you become president, against the will of 49% of the voters. Is that democracy? That is a farce. No more than 30% of the public goes to vote in the elections. None of the peoples want elections. They got fed up with the farce of elections and those trash ballots. None of those who vote are willing to die for the president. They say: 'Whoever rules - rules. It has nothing to do with us.'"
"A Very Small Minority Decides Who Will Be President... Is That a Democracy?"
"I asked the Americans: How could you elect a crazy man like Reagan? He turned out to be actually crazy. They said to me: 'Never. How could we possibly elect someone like that?' So who voted for him? They said: 'We have no idea, but it wasn't us.' They said: 'We didn't even go to vote. A small group of people, to whom he gave money, voted for him.'
"If 30% at most vote in the elections in a country in which 10 million people are eligible to vote, then seven million people said they would not vote. When there are 10 million eligible voters, at most three million turn out to vote.
"Let's say that there are three candidates. The first two get 1,000,000 votes each, and the third gets 1,000,001 votes. The third candidate wins and becomes the president. In other words, nine million voters will be ruled against their will. A very small minority decides who will be president, and they say they got a majority because they won one extra vote. Is that a democracy? How can you rule nine million people who did not vote for you? This is the epitome of dictatorship."
#2
"I asked the Americans: How could you elect a crazy man like Reagan? He turned out to be actually crazy. They said to me: 'Never. How could we possibly elect someone like that?' So who voted for him? They said: 'We have no idea, but it wasn't us.'
Must've been the 'elite' that he was talking to...
H/T Gateway Pundit
A phone call Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez allegedly made to rebel leader Raúl Reyes revealed the location of the guerilla leader, according to Colombian intelligence reports radio station Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN) disclosed on Wednesday.
The phone call was made last Wednesday, February 27, the day when the rebel Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) delivered four former Colombian lawmakers -Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Pérez, Orlando Beltrán, and Jorge Eduardo Gechem- to Chávez's government after almost seven years in captivity, Efe reported.
"Chávez was thrilled by the release of the hostages, and called (Luis Edgar Devia, alias Raúl) Reyes to tell him that everything went well," said RCN, quoting "senior (Colombian) military sources."
Intelligence agencies detected the call and uncovered that Reyes was in Colombia, near the border with Ecuador. He crossed the border and "then the raid was launched" late February 29 and early March 1, when the FARC leader and other 20 rebel troops were killed.
According to RCN, "the same intelligence agent, who called for anonymity, said 'it is quite ironic that it was precisely a phone call from President Chávez what allowed us to take Reyes out of action."
Reyes died in a bomb attack Colombian troops launched against his rebel camp in Ecuadorian territory. The incident ignited a serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries, as Quito severed ties with Bogota.
Quoting the same intelligence source, RCN reported that the top leader and founder of the FARC, Pedro Antonio Marín, also known as Manuel Marulanda Vélez and Tirofijo, "is taking shelter in Venezuela."
RCN added that the Colombian intelligence services "found that Tirofijo is ill" and "is taking shelter in a ranch in Venezuela located not very close to the border, but to the other side of the border with the Colombian department of Norte de Santander."
According to RCN's intelligence source, "Chávez ordered military battalions to move to the border with Colombia to protect Tirofijo, to prevent him from being done in the Venezuelan territory the same thing Reyes was done in Ecuador."
#3
Well, you know what that means, don't you? Chavez burned him. Hugo is secretly working with Colombia (and the CIA) to burn the FARC guys. All this stuff about moving troops to the border is all smoke and mirrors.
Nah, couldn't be true.
Or could it?
Posted by: Mike ||
03/07/2008 14:35 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Tough choice. Make Hugo look like a friggin idiot, but blow the intelligence...
For continental elites, the candidate exemplifies the good American.
Europes media and left-wing intelligentsia see Barack Obama as the most appealing candidate for the U.S. presidency. He exemplifies what the French leftist magazine Le Nouvel Observateur calls the America we like. Most Europeans deny that theyre anti-American; they argue instead that there are two Americasthe good and the bad. Michael Moore is a good American, honored with the Cannes film festivals highest prize in 2006 for his anti-Bush fantasy documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Other good Americans include Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Noam Chomsky, Barbra Streisand, and Philip Roth. Charlton Heston and Billy Graham are badas bad as McDonaldsand so, of course, are President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Let us understand why, from the European perspective, Obama is good. First, he belongs to a minority. Europeans love minoritieswhen they live in the U.S. We tend not to like our own minorities, whom we willingly discriminate against on the basis of skin color or religion. Black Americans, however, are popular in Western Europe, since they play good music and revolt against the white establishment. For European leftists, whites in the U.S. are inclined to be Christian, racist, and imperialist. Whites started the war in Iraq. A white U.S. soldier is an imperialist; a black soldier is a victim, fighting in the army only because he is poor.
Not only is Obama black; he is also a pacifist, or nearly so, certainly when compared with the other presidential candidates. A pacifist U.S. leader becomes more than likable; he becomes one of us. Opposed to the war in Iraq and uninterested in confronting Iran, Obama is almost an honorary European, more civilized than the white, imperialist, trigger-happy Republicans. Obama has also been linked with Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan and former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, which suggests that he is not an unconditional ally of Israel. Israel is less popular than the Palestinians among the European intelligentsia, so Obama scores again.
Obama also favors universal health insurance, another Europe-like move in the right direction to free the bad Americans from their capitalist shackles. On capital punishment, a contentious issue between Europeans and Americans, Obama again strikes the right chord: he is a death-penalty abolitionist. His stance on this issue alone would make him a darling in Europe. But theres more: Obamas Christian faith seems murky. In Europe, we love secularism; at least Obama seems reserved about his faith.
The few European pundits who have closely examined Obamas platform know that he advocates what sounds like protectionism. Economists and the business community in Europe have anxiety about a protectionist agenda, since Europe depends on free trade with the U.S. But European journalists and pundits tend to be anticapitalist and antiglobalist, so for them, Obama stands on the right side. The good American is expected neither to trade nor to fight terrorism. If more Americans were good, in fact, there would be no terrorists, as the Left in both Europe and the U.S. often contends.
Jean-David Levitte, former French ambassador to the U.S. and now foreign affairs advisor to President Nicolas Sarkozy, used to say that the only way for Europeans to influence American policy would be to have their own representative in the U.S. Senate. In fact, many Europeans believe that Europe should have a say in American elections, since the president is de facto leader of the Western world. And if they did have a vote, they would choose Barack Obama in a landslide.
Sign of the times: you hear about a bombing of a Times Square recruitment office, and you assume its nutjob antiwar folks, not Al Qaeda. I wonder how the number of attacks on recruitment offices, however broadly you want to define attacks, stacks up against attacks on abortion providers in the last seven years. The standard meme always trots out clinic-bombing to suggest that domestic Christianist lunatics are a mirror-image of Islamist enthusiasms; if attacks on Army offices and attempts to block access exceed the number of similar instances directed against Planned Parenthood and the legal activities taking place within, will the talking points adjust to reflect the new face of intolerance?
Posted by: Mike ||
03/07/2008 06:20 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
From the same article:
"This isnt a new law argued and debated by the legislature, but a ruling from a state appellate court. 'Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,' wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court.
Well, there you go. No eminated penumbras here; the Constitution requires that your child be educated by the state."
In one fell swoop this judge, who is know to be a teachers' union tool, has assuaged the two groups that comprise 99% of public school teachers' unions:
1. The ones got into teaching for 30 years bulletproof income security and a pension, and literally nothing else, and
2. The ones who got into teaching because it was a bully pulpit for advancing anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist propaganda.
Follow the link to the LA TImes article at Lileks' site, and then read some of the comments from public school teachers concerning this decision. Juxtapose the attitude present with Lileks' take on the relative levels of tolerance for blowing up recruiting stations vs incidents at abortion clinics.
Scary stuff, eh, kids?
/Count Floyd off
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/07/2008 7:24 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Anyone who offers Hillary the vice president spot has a death wish.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/07/2008 11:02 Comments ||
Top||
#4
It looks to me like the Democratic party may be having a phoenix moment. That's when they spontaneously burst into flames and are totally destroyed. Then, out of the ashes comes a new bird, er, turkey. It happened to the Whigs in the 1850's. The issue was slavery and the Whigs were finished. Some in the party migrated to the Democrats, many others reformed with others into a party opposed to slavery. They won their first national election in 1860 with an ugly backwoods lawyer from Illinois who was blessed with a thin, reedy voice. Abe Lincoln became the first Republican president and changed our nation forever. The Democrats are locked into an intense struggle not just with the Republicans, but between major factions within their own party. Neither Obama nor Clinton can afford to step down. To blink now would mean political death. I feel strongly that we are witnessing a major death in the Democratic party. Will they, phoenix-like rise out of the ashes to a new identity? Or will they simply reduce themselves to ashes? Time will tell.
Posted by: Titus Cloling7944 ||
03/07/2008 21:35 Comments ||
Top||
#5
mebbe so, but won't be really happy til I see Ashura-like bloodletting on anarchist and dipshit heads in Denver. Reality has an impact point, and Ima hoping a lotta trust-fund assholes and wanna-be dirtbags find subdural hematoma and increased cranial-fluid nirvana
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/07/2008 21:40 Comments ||
Top||
How did Hillary come back? Her own staff doesn't know. They fight over it because if they don't know how she carried Ohio and Texas they can't repeat the strategy. . . .
Did she come back because Mr. Obama's speech got a little boring? Was he coasting and playing it safe? Or was it that he didn't hit her hard enough? "He hasn't been able to find a way to be tough with a woman opponent," they say on TV. But that's not it, or is only half the truth. The other half is that it has long been agreed in the Democratic Party that one must not, one cannot, ever, refer to the long caravan of scandals that have followed the Clintons for 15 years. "We don't speak of the Clintons that way."
But why not? Everyone else does. Yes, the Obama sages will respond, that's the point: Everyone knows about cattle futures, etc. Everyone knows that if you Yahoo "Clintons" and "scandals" you get 4,430,000 hits.
But what if they do need to be reminded? What if they need to be told exactly what Mr. Obama means when he speaks of the tired old ways of Washington?
But voicing the facts would violate party politesse. So he loses the No. 1 case against her. But by losing the No. 1 case, he loses the No. 2 case: that she is the most divisive figure in the country, and that this is true because people have reason to view her as dark, dissembling, thuggish.
One Obama supporter on Root.com apparently didn't get the memo. That is the great threat to the Clintons, the number of young and independent Democrats who haven't received the memo about how Democrats speak of the Clintons. Writer Mark Q. Sawyer: "If Obama won't hit back, I will. Why aren't we talking about impeachment, Whitewater and Osama?" . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
03/07/2008 06:35 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I think they need to badger her about tax returns.
#2
In Ohio, at least, there were a great many cross-over Republican voters who really, really didn't want Obama as the Democratic candidate. She won't get their votes in the national election, but likely will where possible in the remaining primaries.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: "You must have seen elections and political parties throughout the world. You must have seen what a farce they are. The whole world will return to the model of the republic of the masses, to communes, to popular conferences, to popular security, to popular defense, to popular capitalism, and to popular socialism. The whole world will return to the Libyan model. I have watched the world and the people in it. I've seen that in America, a candidate who wants people to vote for him keeps talking about change. They all keep saying 'change, change.' They want to change America and its current political system. They want to make a change in their lives. They say their system is a failure, that their government is a failure, and that their elections are a failure. An American who wanted to get elected said: 'I will make a change.'" 
"To this day, there is no ideal ruling system in the world, which can resolve the problems. There are conflicts everywhere. They are still asking: 'Who won the elections - Al Gore or Bush?' If someone gets 49% of the votes, and you get 51%, you become president, against the will of 49% of the voters. Is that democracy? That is a farce. No more than 30% of the public goes to vote in the elections. None of the peoples want elections. They got fed up with the farce of elections and those trash ballots. None of those who vote are willing to die for the president. They say: 'Whoever rules - rules. It has nothing to do with us.'" 
"If 30% at most vote in the elections in a country in which 10 million people are eligible to vote, then seven million people said they would not vote. When there are 10 million eligible voters, at most three million turn out to vote. 
