Month: October 2013

A Chain Liar

Obama has quit smoking, at least according to Michelle Obama, who in 2011 said that Barack hadn’t had a cigarette in nearly a year.

“It’s been almost a year,” Michelle said back on February 8, 2011 [ref].

I sincerely congratulate President Obama on the significant accomplishment of quitting smoking. There are many people who are never able to kick the habit. Hopefully he’s kicked it for good.

Unfortunately, one habit that Obama hasn’t kicked — and isn’t even trying to kick — is that of lying.

Continue reading “A Chain Liar”

Substitute teacher on heroin passes out in class

Reported by Fox News on 2013-10-17

Police say a substitute teacher at a Pittsburgh-area high school took heroin before work and passed out in class. KDKA-TV reports that Bellevue Police Sgt. Mike Hudson says 26-year-old Christopher Chiappetta, of Pittsburgh, was arrested Wednesday after he passed out in front of 11 students. Authorities say they found four baggies of heroin in Chiappetta’s pocket and marijuana in his car, and that he confessed to using heroin around 6 a.m. Wednesday.

Just a substitute teacher… But substitute teachers often become full-time teachers. Someone who does heroin (or any illicit drug) is too stupid to be a teacher. Seems teachers are getting dumber, which would partially explain poor educational outcomes and America’s low education rankings.

Teacher fired for allegedly giving minors alcohol, condoms

Reported by WSVN.com on 2013-10-17

A South Florida teacher has been fired after she is accused of providing students with alcohol and condoms. The Miami-Dade School Board terminated Isabel Diaz Almaraz on Wednesday for acting inappropriately with students…. Almaraz was a full-time dance teacher at South Miami High School. The district first began to investigate Almaraz because of several complaints from parents….

Kudos to the school district for firing the teacher. Teacher misbehavior (too nice a word) is way too common. There should be near-zero tolerance for this type of bad behavior from teachers.

Cartoon bomb drawing gets special-needs student suspended

Reported by Fox News on 2013-10-16

A South Carolina mother says her son was suspended for drawing a picture of a cartoon bomb at home and bringing it to school. Amy Parham [said] her 13-year-old son, Rhett, was suspended from Hillcrest Middle School after showing the drawing to classmates, who reported him to administrators…. ‘They knew he was not actually having a bomb, creating or making a bomb. But that they could not go with out making an example of him and take some type of action because they were worried about their perception’….

Zero tolerance = zero brains… Just drawing a picture of a bomb, or of a gun, or knife, is absolutely not grounds for suspending a student, and certainly no child should be “made an example of” in order to preserve somebody’s image. The administrators knew there was no danger, therefore they should have taken no action.

Parents outraged over highly intrusive school survey

Reported by The Blaze on 2013-10-16

What’s your religion? Your sexual orientation? Your parents’ political affiliation? Should “assault rifles” be banned? Who’s to blame for the government shutdown? Do these sound like questions that high school sophomores should have to answer? A Maryland high school that is “Common Core” compliant — as described to TheBlaze by a representative — allegedly administered a survey to its sophomore class that pried for personal information….

Schools have zero business asking for this kind of information from students. None of the info has anything at all to do with the education the students should be getting. It is high time that schools returned their focus to the fundamentals, and stopped trying to indoctrinate students socially and politically with progressive propaganda.

High school play features bestiality and incest

Reported by The Blaze on 2013-10-13

Let’s say your house is humming along in first weeks of a brand-new high school year, and one day you find out your kid’s in an acting class that’s putting on a play with some questionable content. Like man-in-love-with-a-goat questionable. Like bestiality questionable. Incest, too. And perhaps unsurprisingly, other sexually explicit content and a fair dose of swear words. All acted out and starring teenagers. That’s the news many parents received when it came to light that drama teacher Andrew Cupo of Cactus Shadows High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., introduced students in an advanced acting class to an absurdist play called ‘The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?’ by Edward Albee.

My first thought? What kind of a pervert has the school unleashed upon impressionable children? My second thought: That kind of absolute trash has no place in a high school, even if parents are “notified” (which they were not).

School slaps teen for doing the right thing

Reported by The Boston Herald on 2013-10-13

North Andover [MA] High School stripped Erin Cox … of her position as captain of the volleyball team and suspended her for five games after she got swept up in an underage drinking bust while picking up a friend who was too drunk to drive at a party just as police arrived….

Another case of school administrators with exhibiting zero good judgment by enforcing an idiotic zero tolerance policy.

Obama’s Temper Tantrum

(Submitted by a Truth is Reason reader)

Calling in extra people to close down the World War II Memorial is worse than absurd — it is outrageous. We haven’t the money to pay for good things for the American people, but we have the funds to harass freedom loving Americans?

Obama and his cohorts are carefully choosing their targets to make it hurt patriotic Americans, veterans who actually have served and love this Country, and those who would go out of their way to honor these veterans. The Democrats, those represented by Barack  H. Obama have made their intentions obvious in these actions.

Continue reading “Obama’s Temper Tantrum”

Teacher makes students decide who lives, who dies

Reported by Fox News on 2013-10-10

A classroom of 14 and 15-year-old Illinois high school students was assigned the task of deciding the fate of ten fictional characters in an exercise that critics called a lesson in death panels…. The lesson involves 10 people who are in desperate need of kidney dialysis…. But there’s a problem. The local hospital only has enough machines to support six patients.

There was a time in America when the obvious answer to such a “dilemma” was to harness the power of capitalism and build more dialysis machines. In a Socialist world, however, the reality is shortages of just about everything, and, ultimately, yes, death panels. But, putting aside that stark eventuality, I can’t help but wonder why we can’t just focus on teaching kids, the four R’s: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and RESPECT — especially respect for human life and liberty.

Teacher urges students to fail, resigns

Reported by Dispatch.com on 2013-10-10

A Reynoldsburg [Ohio] middle-school teacher who is accused of telling her gifted students to fail a science pretest … resigned yesterday…. The science assessment was part of the district’s new evaluation system, where teachers will be graded in part by how much their students improve over the school year. Student academic growth accounts for half of a teacher’s evaluation….

It goes without saying that this “teacher” should be out of a job, and probably should never teach again. Regarding the district’s evaluation of teachers based on student improvement, I’m not a fan. Students — and their teachers — should be evaluated on achieving high standards in reading, writing and math, not on mere improvement.