Minnesota

Privacy, Facebook, And School Abuse of Power

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Riley StrattonIt can a bit late to the party, in my view, but the ACLU just delivered a crucial blow to Big Brotherism in the schools. Addressing an issue that Ethics Alarms flagged in 2011, Minnewaska Area Schools (in Minnesota) agreed to pay $70,000 in damages to Riley Stratton, a 15-year-old high school student,

for violating her rights. It also agreed, as part of the federal court settlement, to rewrite its policies to limit how far a school can intrude on the privacy of students by examining e-mails and social media accounts created off school grounds.

In 2012, the ACLU Minnesota Chapter filed a lawsuit against the Minnewaska School District after it suspended Stratton for a Facebook post, written and published outside of school, in her home, in which she expressed hatred for a school hall monitor who she said was “mean.”  After the suspension, Stratton used Facebook to inquire which of her “friends” had blown a whistle on her. School officials brought the young teen into a room with a local sheriff and forced her to surrender her Facebook password. Officials used it to searched her page on the spot; her parents were not consulted.

“A lot of schools, like the folks at Minnewaska, think that just because it’s easier to know what kids are saying off campus through social media somehow means the rules have changed, and you can punish them for what they say off campus,” Minnesota ACLU attorney Wallace Hilke said. “They punished her for doing exactly what kids have done for 100 years — complaining to her friends about teachers and administrators. She wasn’t spreading lies or inciting them to engage in bad behavior, she was just expressing her personal feelings.”

Not that it was any of the school’s business if she was spreading lies or inciting others to bad behavior. This phenomenon, where schools decide that they have a right to punish students for non-school activity, words and thoughts  was discussed on Ethics Alarms, and condemned as unethical, here, here, here, and here, and more recently here.

Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt protested (the school settled without admitting any wrongdoing) that the school only wants to make sure kids understand that actions outside of school can be “detrimental.” “The school’s intent wasn’t to be mean or bully this student, but to really remedy someone getting off track a little,” Schmidt said. Not your job, you officious, censorious, child abuser. This is the sole realm of parental authority. I have seen enough wretched judgement from your breed, Mr. Schmidt—like (I’m picking examples randomly) here, here, here, here and here—to convince me and anyone with a cerebral cortex that school administrators lack the training, wisdom and judgment to know what “going of track a little” is for a 13-year old.

Stay out of my kids’ life and my family’s life. You have enough trouble running schools properly…work on that.

________________________

Sources: Daily Caller, ACLU, Minnesota Star Tribune

Unethical Website Of The Month: Minnesota For Marriage

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
No, nobody's saying you can't advocate your beliefs, archaic and destructive though they may be. Just make sure they don't stop people from buying flowers and cakes like everyone else...

No, nobody’s saying you can’t advocate your beliefs, archaic and destructive though they may be. Just make sure they don’t stop people from buying flowers and cakes like everyone else…

I’ll spare you much commentary on this one, but it’s eye-opening in tone and content: an indignant, angry appeal to protest on the theory that legalizing same-sex marriage in Minnesota constitutes an attack on the freedom of religion.

A sample:

 “Now over 1.4 Million Minnesotans are considered the legal equivalent of “bigots” and have NO protection to live out their beliefs in the public square. The gay “marriage” law allows churches and SOME religious organizations to define marriage as only between 1 man and 1 woman. But, people of faith know that living out your beliefs means living what you believe OUTSIDE the walls of your church.

“Gay “marriage” supporters and their allies in the MN Legislature seem to think that Minnesotans with deeply held religious beliefs about Marriage will be content to believe that marriage is the union of 1 man and 1 woman in the walls of their church and then stay SILENT about those beliefs outside those walls. So, the MN Legislature passed the gay “marriage” bill with no protections for people outside the walls of their church. The MN Senate had the chance—and refused—to protect the religious liberty rights of Minnesotans outside their church walls….Now Minnesotans with the deeply held belief that marriage is the union of 1 man and 1 woman cannot act on this belief in the way they do their business or the way they practice their profession.

“The Minnesota Department of Human Rights has already confirmed our worst fears:  There is NO religious liberty protection for people of faith in the public square. The Department states specifically that nonreligious organizations are NOT exempt from the law and that nondiscrimination laws can (and will) be used as a weapon to punish people of faith. For example, if a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim florist refused to provide flowers for a same-sex “wedding” based on his religious beliefs, the same-sex couple can “file a claim with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights against the entity that discriminated against them.”

“Bottom Line?  The gay “marriage” lobby and their allies in the MN Legislature view Minnesotans of faith as “bigots” and will punish them accordingly using MN Human Rights laws—forcing men and women of faith to choose between their livelihood and their convictions.

“That is not acceptable.” Continue reading →

July 2, 1863: When 262 Minnesotans Saved The United States Of America

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
Officers of the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment

Officers of the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment

For the last two years, I have posted here about the courage and sacrifice of the men of the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. There was more than enough of those qualities, on both sides, to go around that day, and unless you are in the vicinity of that lovely and unbearably sad little Pennsylvania town, it isn’t just the brave Minnesotans who are neglected, but all of the participants. Yesterday was July 1, the anniversary of the beginning of the battle in 1863, and there was scant mention of it in the media. After all, there is the Zimmerman trial, and outrage over Jennifer Lopez accepting a million dollars to sing “Happy Birthday” for a brutal dictator, and whether movie viewers will flock to see Johnny Depp play Tonto. One of the few excellent acknowledgements of the date and its significance was by CBS, which also featured the famous feature on the battle published years ago by the Saturday Evening Post. 

In an ambitious mood, I once resolved to find a different group of battlefield heroes from that day to feature every July 2, the messiest, most important pivotal of the battle that itself has been overshadowed by the tragedy of suicidal Pickett’s Charge on July 3. But I have neither the historical research skills nor time to do justice to such a task, though the injustice of so many forgotten heroes is great. It is best to allow the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment, who obeyed a desperate order to fill a breach in the Union line, knowing that it meant almost certain death,  “to gain a few minutes’ time and save the position and probably the battlefield,” to stand for all of them.

As for me, I’m going to watch, once again, Ted Turner’s excellent film Gettysburg, and play its soaring score in my home and my car. We have a duty to remember, and honor, every moment of those three days in July, 150 years ago. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Nicollet County Attorney Michelle Zehnder Fischer

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yes, this is certainly a good use of time, money, and public opprobrium.

The evil miscreant, facing her just desserts!

The evil miscreant, facing her just desserts!

An 86-year-old woman in Minnesota, Margaret Schneider, admits that she voted twice in a primary election, and attributes it to confusion, a memory lapse (she may have early dementia), and maybe believing that her later vote would cancel out her earlier one. The local Jaubert, prosecutor Michelle Zehnder Fischer, is bringing felony charges against Margaret, supposedly because a statute requires her to do so or risk misdemeanor charges herself.

Did I mention that Margaret, in addition to being 86 and having cognitive issues, suffers from Parkinson’s? Throw the wily old bat in the clink!!!! Continue reading →

Now THAT’S An Unethical Lawyer!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Even Arnie didn't try THIS...

Even Arnie didn’t try THIS…

It’s bad enough that Minnesota lawyer Thomas P. Lowes had sex with his divorce client. That’s explicitly forbidden since Minnesota adopted ABA Model Rule 1.8 k, what “L.A. Law” fans fondly refer to as “the Arnie Becker Rule.” Not professional, exploits the relationship, interferes with independent judgment, a conflict of interest, you know, all that stuff.

But Lowes went a step further, and set some kind of a new record for…

  • gall,
  • unreasonable billing practices (ABA Rule 1.5)
  • inflated self image, or
  • always working on the case, no matter what, OR
  • …mixing legal work with prostitution.

…by charging his client/lover/sex toy his hourly fee for the time they spent having sex!

Continue reading →

The Assumption Church in Barnesville, Minn: Wrong On Belief, Right On Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

“Oh, what the hell. Sign him up.”

In Barnesville, Minnesota, the Catholic Church has denied the religious sacrament of confirmation to two students who posted their support for gay marriage on Facebook.

Good.

The Catholic Church has been barely holding on to a dwindling membership by adopting the strategy of becoming an organized religion for hypocrites. Being a member of any church should mean the full acceptance of its core teachings. The students involved publicly expressed their disagreement with the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage, and the Church was right to deny them confirmation.

Is the Catholic Church dead wrong to oppose same sex marriage as a sin? Of course. The way to make the Church enter the 21st Century is for double-talkers like John Kerry, Joe Biden and Mario Cuomo to show some backbone and integrity, and reject the Church or their upbringing because it doesn’t accept same sex marriage and abortion, while they obviously do. Instead, these and other faux-Catholics absurdly claim in public that they support diametrically opposed positions simultaneously. All three have piously stated that as Catholics they believe that life begins at conception (ergo, abortion is the sinful taking of innocent human life), but that as elected officials they feel it is inappropriate to “impose their beliefs” on the public. Of course, what elected leaders do is to impose their beliefs on the public, wherever those beliefs come from. What Cuomo, Biden and Kerry, as well as many others, have done, is to aggressively and pro-actively support policies, like abortion-on-demand, that they and their Church say they believe are wrong. Liars or hypocrites, take your pick. Continue reading →

Conservatives Take Note: Media Bias Doesn’t Explain Everything

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rep. Akin and his fans.

Pervasive media bias against them has the added affect of making Republicans and conservatives both paranoid and less likely to perceive their own flaws. In this it is like racism: that black Americans know that elements of society refuse to treat them fairly makes it difficult for them to assess their own accountability when they fail. Given the opportunity to blame failure on ourselves or others, most of us are inclined to choose the latter: psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error. That tendency, however, undermines our ability to evaluate areas where we need to improve, and to improve them.

The news media’s leftward bias warps public opinion, tilts elections and distorts public policy. A few candid  journalists acknowledge this, like ABC’s Jake Tapper, who opined to Laura Ingraham yesterday that the media “helped tilt the scales” against Hillary and John McCain in 2008, saying that “Sometimes I saw with story selection, magazine covers, photos picked, [the] campaign narrative, that it wasn’t always the fairest coverage.” Weasel words for unethical media bias, true, but for a member in good standing of the liberal Beltway media like Tapper, an admirable confession. This is justly frustrating to conservatives, but they can’t let it drive them stupid, for this is the Catch 22 of all pervasive bias. If a group blames everything on bias, it begins to make the bias look justified.

Hypervocal, a snazzy blog that delves into such matters and much else, has an excellent analysis of a current example of this phenomenon, as conservatives complain that the news media is ignoring a juicy Minnesota scandal involving a gay Democrat while overplaying Rep. Todd Akin’s self-outing as an ignorant fool regarding rape, abortion, and female biology. This is such a regular refrain now any time an embarrassing event occurs involving a Republican that it is both predictable and laughable, and it is always unseemly. Continue reading →

Reminder: July 2 Is “Thank Minnesota Day,” and Remember Gettysburg, Too.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Last year on this date, I posted about the injustice of historical memory, and how the heroic exploits of the Maine soldiers on Little Round Top commanded by Col. Joshua Chamberlain on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg have all but obliterated recognition of the even more remarkable sacrifices made by the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment that same day, when it took on the suicide mission of blocking a hole in the Union line against a Confederate force that outnumbered it five to one. Those Minnesotans quite possibly saved the United States of America at the price of their lives.

I see that some readers are finding that post today: let me make it easier for everybody. Here is the link. This a day for all of us to honor the heroism of the First Minnesota, and indeed all of the Americans, North and South, who fought for their nation, their states, their ideals and the soul of America in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, on July 2, 1863. Continue reading →

A Ban on Threatening “Spiritual Injury”: Unconstitutional But Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

There you go, Bill, letting people be unethical again...

Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment  provocateur, notes that Minn. Stat. Ann. § 211B.07 makes it a gross misdemeanor to

“….directly or indirectly use or threaten force, coercion, violence, restraint, damage, harm, loss, including loss of employment or economic reprisal, undue influence, or temporal or spiritual injury against an individual to compel the individual to vote for or against a candidate or ballot question.“

The professor opines that the spiritual injury part, at least, is unconstitutional. Interesting.

Prohibiting the interference and manipulation of a human being’s rights of autonomy and self-determination by using threats to compel his voting choices is a legitimate area for the law, because ethics is notoriously inadequate at preventing electoral abuses. It is also an area where the law is an especially blunt instrument, and many conceivable violations of § 211B.07 would seem to risk colliding with free speech. “If you don’t vote for Ron Paul, I’ll never speak to you again!” comes to mind. The threat of “spiritual harm”—“Vote for Mitt Romney, my flock, or I condemn you to Hell!” adds the  free exercise of religion to the mix, particularly when the threat is linked to a position of a candidate that violates religious doctrine.

I have no difficulty concluding that any and all threats to force a citizen to vote according to another citizen’s desires are wrongful and damaging to democracy, and should be condemned and discouraged to the maximum extent possible. Ethical though such prohibitions may be, some, like the use of threatened spiritual injury, are impossible under the Bill of Rights.

So threatening to send someone to Hell if they vote for Newt Gingrich—a reasonable result, when you think about it—is unethical, but a law punishing that threat is unconstitutional.

Sorry, Ethics…looks like it’s all up to you!

 

The Twin Cities, Cheating CitizensTo Balance Their Budgets

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I'm confused...I thought the police were supposed to arrest con artists, not be con artists!

Municipal governments are having a difficult time balancing budgets in these challenging economic conditions, but the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota have devised a surprisingly effective way to pick up oodles of extra cash.

Steal it.
From its citizens.

I’m not kidding. City records show that St. Paul, for example, has kept nearly a quarter-million dollars from impound lot auctions this year that should have properly gone to vehicle owners. But the law requires the car owners to ask for their money, and both St. Paul and Minneapolis do their level best to keep that information from trickling through all the documentation and red tape. The St. Paul Police Department, which runs the St. Paul impound lot, sends owners of impounded vehicles a certified letter shortly after their car is towed. The letter includes citations to one city ordinance and five state laws that govern the towing, impoundment and auction of vehicles. Car owners  have to look up the fifth state law cited and read that law’s fourth paragraph before learning of the right to a refund. And to do that, they have to know what they should be looking for—which the letter doesn’t tell them.

Cute, eh? Continue reading →