This guy may have thought he was just being cute, but this goes to far for just showing off.
The Secret Service investigated a teacher in Jefferson County, Alabama after “he picked the wrong example” and used a hypothetical assassination of President Obama to teach angles to his geometry students, the Birmingham News reports:
The teacher was apparently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.
“He was talking about angles and said, ‘If you’re in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,’ ” said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.
The Secret Service questioned the math teacher, but decided not to arrest him or charge him with a crime after they determined he was not “a credible threat,” an agency spokesperson said. Superintendent Phil Hammonds called the incident “extremely poor judgment” and “a poor choice of words,” but said he has no plans to fire the teacher… [emphasis original]
I can understand not arresting the guy, because what he says falls short of being a criminal act. However, was the next Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold in the classroom? We cannot know, but given the nature of GOP hate in that state, it’s a distinct possibility that he may have planted the seed for an assassination attempt. The teacher should be fired.
I’m particularly disgusted that all concerned are letting him hide behind a cloak of anonymity. We may not know his name, but we know his party affiliation.
Yesterday my COPD acted up so severely that it knocked me out four times. Nevertheless, I caught up on comments and returning visits. Today is touch and go.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 4:08. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Crooks and Liars: Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder announced Tuesday he would resign from Congress, effective Friday, because he had an affair with a staffer.
This violated the norm in GOP family values, because the staffer is female.
From Common Dreams: Shell yesterday pushed ahead with plans to drill in the Arctic Sea this summer, defying calls for a moratorium on offshore exploration in the pristine wilderness following the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
In one word, NO!
From me: Oil is washing up in the Florida Keys. I fear that we can kiss one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems goodbye.
This piece travels in circles, beginning with lawsuits filed over the GOP Gulf Geyser, from Diane’s link.
Environmentalists seeking to curb oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday filed federal lawsuits to shut down a major BP platform and close a government loophole for new oil and gas exploration.
The lawsuits, filed in Alabama and Texas, target the federal Minerals Management Service, the much-criticized agency that oversees offshore energy leases.
Since a blowout on BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform last month killed 11 workers and triggered a massive spill, the agency has approved at least nine deep-water exploratory wells in the Gulf with minimal environmental reviews.
The Alabama lawsuit seeks to end the practice. It would also force the agency to revoke the permits recently issued to Shell Offshore Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., Anadarko E&P and other companies.
The deepest of those projects would operate at water depths of more than 9,000 feet.
That’s almost twice the depth of Deepwater Horizon, which has released millions gallons of oil into the Gulf since it exploded and burned. The depth has complicated efforts to contain the leak a mile below the surface. An attorney for the plaintiffs said the spill makes it "abundantly clear" the government needs to review deep water projects more closely.
"They need to be analyzed fully before given a blanket rubber stamp exclusion," said Catherine Wannamaker with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The Texas suit seeks to shut down BP’s Atlantis platform, which has operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents.
Atlantis is stationed in 7,070 feet of water more than 150 miles south of New Orleans. It can produce 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas daily.
In 2009, an independent firm hired by BP found that the giant petroleum company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.
BP responded Monday by saying it had made "procedural changes" related to Atlantis in response to the outside investigation. But the company said safety was never an issue… [emphasis added]
Safety on Atlantis is the same issue that it was on Deepwater Horizon, but not to BP, as this illustrates.
Last [Sunday] night 60 Minutes broadcast a stunning report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster featuring an eyewitness account from crewmember Mike Williams and analysis from Dr. Bob Bea, a UC Berkeley engineering professor asked by the White House to help figure out what went wrong.
According to Williams, several weeks before the explosion, the blowout preventer was damaged but despite the damage, BP ordered the rig operator to ignore critical a safety measure when sealing the well. BP wanted the rig operator to seal the well without using drilling mud, a heavy liquid used to keep oil and gas from burbling up as cementers completed the seal.
According to Professor Bea, the accident would not have occurred had the drilling mud been used. Instead, BP cut corners in an attempt to save money, and now we’re left with this enormous economic and ecological disaster…
…It gets worse: 60 Minutes reports a BP insider says he is concerned about another risky rig, the Atlantis platform. According to the insider — whose account is confirmed by internal BP e-mails — nearly 90% of the safety documents needed to run the platform safely hadn’t been reviewed by BP. At best, BP is flying blind on the Atlantis, so this could all happen again… [emphasis added]
So we have Transocean continuing to work with a blowout preventer which they knew was faulty BP cutting corners in spite of that knowledge, and Halliburton performing up to their normal defective standards.
Rachel Maddow provides even more detail and ties it up in a neat package.
In yesterday’s pieces, I predicted an outpouring of GOP hate from the right wing noise machine over Rima Fakih’s selection as Miss USA. I even suggested that it might be equivalent to that on behalf of Carrie ‘silicone sweetie’ Prejean, who came in second last year after displaying GOP hate against gay folks, and before being outed for her proclivity for masturbation tapes. Was I right, or was I right?
Last night [Sunday], the Miss USA pageant crowned Miss Michigan Rima Fakih the 2010 Miss USA. Fakih, who hails from the large Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan, is a Lebanese American and the first Muslim to ever win the crown. (Miss USA 1983 Julie Hayek was reportedly the first Arab American to get the title).
In winning the title, Fakih defeated first runner-up Miss Oklahoma Morgan Elizabeth Woolard, who garnered headlines when she responded to a judge’s question about immigration policy by saying that she was “perfectly fine” [Faux Noise delinked] with Arizona’s radical new immigration law. Just as they erupted over Carrie Prejean’s loss in the Miss USA contest 2009, the right is again alleging a liberal bias against Woolard. But many more right-wingers are enraged over Fakih’s crowning:
– Conservative radio host Debbie Schlussel blamed Fakih’s win on a supposed “politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate” in America and labeled her a “Lebanese Muslim Hezbollah supporter with relatives who are top terrorists.” [GOP bigot delinked]
– Right wing pundit and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin ranted that “Fakih’s cheerleaders are too busy tooting the identity politics horn to care what comes out of her mouth” and that “the Miss USA pageant didn’t want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob.” [GOP bigot delinked]
– Conservative author Daniel Pipes, who was briefly appointed by former President George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace, opined that “this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.” [GOP bigot delinked]
– Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson complained that Woolard’s “informed opinion” may have cost her the crown, and said that Fakih may have won because we live in a “PC society.” [5/17/10]
“This is the real face of Arab Americans, not the stereotypes you hear about,” said Fakih supporter and Arab American Zouheir Alawieh following her win… [emphasis original]
The closest any of these lies came to accuracy was that of Faux Noise hatemonger, Gretchen Carlson. It is indeed possible that Wollard might have won. She is also quite gorgeous. But GOP leaning beauty queens need to realize that to be considered, they need to stop using the pageants as platforms for their hateful homophobic, racial, and religious bigotry. I don’t feel at all sorry for Wollard. Her future is assured in a low cut dress, jiggling GOP family values on Faux Noise. The sheeple will love her.
Yesterday I planned major visiting. In the best laid plans of mice and men, I had one more little thing to do first. I chatted a Symantec tech rep to find out how to stop Norton Utilities from wiping out my email contacts every time I clean the registry, making me undo to recover the contacts. Little did I know that I would still be in chat with Charlie 4 1/2 hours later. He was a nice enough fellow from India, although I would prefer the job had not been outsourced. He knew about as much about the workings of Windows as I do, making him almost as competent as a 12 year old, but far more competent than the vast majority of tech reps I have encountered. (Blue Host is an exception to that. Those folks are fantastic.) What neither of us realized is that Windows Live Mail stores contact info in a completely separate program, Windows Live Contacts, so we spent hours looking in the wrong place. I replied to comments, but did no visiting. I plan to do so today, God help me!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 4:57. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Crooks and Liars: Today, the ACLU, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ACLU of Arizona, National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice) filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s sheriffs and county attorneys, asking the court to find S.B. 1070 unconstitutional. It violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law because it unlawfully invites the racial profiling of Latinos and other people who look or sound "foreign-born." It also violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by interfering with the federal government’s authority to regulate and enforce immigration.
Both claims are completely valid. That gives us almost a 50% chance at success.
From Daily Kos: Quinnipiac offered their final poll in the Keystone State, and they confirmed what everyone else had already suspected: the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate is too close to call. The Q Poll gives challenger Joe Sestak a statistically insignificant lead of a single point over incumbent Arlen Specter (42-41). Two amazing statistics for a race with this high a profile: on the eve of the election, one in six voters are still undecided. What’s more, a significant number of Specter and Sestak voters (25% of those who have made up their minds) were still persuadable at this late stage of the game.
I hope I’m wrong, but I think the party machine will get out more of their voters, giving Specter a narrow win. In Arkansas, I think Blanche “party of” Lincoln will win without getting the required 50%, forcing a runoff. It’s primary day in Oregon. I mailed my ballot two weeks ago. None of the major races are hotly contested. I predict that all Republican primaries will be won by pigs.
On Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) took to the floor of the House to rail against the Obama administration’s policies on immigration and combating terrorism. King complained that Obama is against racial profiling, saying “it had better be used” in cases involving, for example, “a young Middle Eastern male.” He added, however, that racial profiling couldn’t be the “exclusive component” of screening people:
KING: He has said to all of his Federal officers from the White House down, ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, all of them, well, he really doesn’t want to see immigration law enforced. And it’s clear, of course, that he doesn’t want to have racial profiling used, and I would agree with him–as an exclusive component. However, if it’s part of the other indicators, it had better be used. Would we say that we can’t use as an indicator when it comes time to enforce the law against international terrorism that a young Middle Eastern male cannot be considered as one of the factors? We’ve kind of said that when people go through the airport. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s foolish. And in fact, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s downright stupid to set aside our common sense for the sake of political correctness.
Watch it:
What is ironic about King’s endorsement of using the race of a “young Middle Eastern male” to profile terrorist suspects is the fact that the last major attempted terror attacks in the United States were not commited by men from the Middle East. Faisal Shazad, the chief suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing, is an American citizen originally from the country of Pakistan, which is located in southwest Asia on the Indian subcontinent. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the chief suspect in the Christmas Day bombing attempt, is from Nigeria, which is located on the continent of Africa.
As a counterterrorism strategy, racial profiling is completely ineffective. A study released last year by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science conducted a mathematical analysis to compare random screenings to racial profiling. It found that racial profiling is “no more effective” than using the random method in detecting terrorists… [emphasis original]
Were it not for a Muslim American, the time square bomber might have gotten away. Most Muslim Americans are every bit as loyal to our nation than you or I, but Bush and the GOP tried to win support for their war for oil and conquest in Iraq by making it a jihad against Islam. Followers of the bogus GOP Supply-side Jesus love jihad. Republicans refuse to abandon their bigotry, because their base is 99.44% pure bigoted hate-mongers. If racial profiling were an effective way to prevent terrorism, even I might be inclined to support it. But since it is no more effective than random selection, racial profiling serves only as a smoke screen to justify Republican racism.
Fortunately the majority of Americans are different from that.
A 24-year-old Arab American from Michigan beat out 50 other women to take the 2010 Miss USA title Sunday night, despite nearly stumbling in her evening gown.
Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., won the pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip after strutting confidently in an orange and gold bikini, wearing a strapless white gown that resembled a wedding dress and saying health insurance should cover birth control pills.
When asked how she felt about winning the crown, she said, "Ask me after I’ve had a pizza."
Fakih, a Lebanese immigrant, told pageant organizers her family celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths. She moved to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York, where she attended a Catholic school. Her family moved to Michigan in 2003…
I congratulate Fakih on her achievement and the judges for not bowing to GOP racism. I have no doubt that the right wing noise machine will give us a redux of their outrage over Carrie ‘sex tape’ Prejean’s loss. Since the runner up was Miss Oklahoma, I predict that Inhofe needs an underwear change.
Professor Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and left-wing activist, was denied entry into Israel on Sunday, for reasons that were not immediately clear.
Chomsky, who was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Jerusalem, told the Right to Enter activist group by telephone that inspectors had stamped the words "denied entry" onto his passport when he tried to cross from Jordan over Allenby Bridge.
When he asked an Israeli inspector why he had not received permission, he was told that an explanation would be sent in writing to the American embassy.
Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge at around 1:30 in the afternoon and was taken for questioning, before being released back to Amman at 4:30 P.M.
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said Chomsky was turned away for various reasons but declined to elaborate. The ministry was looking into allowing him to enter only the West Bank, said Haddad.
In a telephone interview with Channel 10, Chomsky said the interrogators had told him he had written things that the Israeli government did not like.
"I suggested [the interrogator try to] find any government in the world that likes anything I say," he said… [emphasis added]
Chomsky is a bit out on the fringe, but his work is usually well researched and well documented. In Israel’s war of attrition against Palestinians, in defiance of their own treaty obligations, I have no doubt that Chomsky’s lecture would have been far to accurate for consumption by Israel’s college students. I don’t always agree with his positions, but were I to suppress them, I would be a hypocrite, as is the Israeli government.
The Secret Service investigated a teacher in Jefferson County, Alabama after “he picked the wrong example” and used a hypothetical assassination of President Obama to teach angles to his geometry students, the Birmingham News reports:
