protest

The Persecution Of Justin Carter And The Consequences Of Fear-Mongering: If This Doesn’t Make You Angry, Something’s The Matter With You

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

strike

Here I was, naively thinking that the threatened jailing of a student for resisting a teacher’s efforts to make him remove his T-shirt with the image of a rifle on it was the most shocking proof of how imperiled free thought and expression are in today’s fearful, dim-witted and child abuse-rationalizing America. Then this jaw-dropping story came across my screen, and I realized that the situation is far worse than I imagined or could imagine—and I have a pretty good imagination.

Now the question is, I think, this: what are we going to do about it?

Nineteen-year-old Justin Carter has been in prison since March. You will not believe why, or perhaps, being both paranoid and right,  you will. A Facebook friend and video game pal described him in an exchange as “crazy” and “messed up in the head,” and Carter replied, with sarcasm detectable by anyone who isn’t an SS officer. “Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts. lol. jk.” A Canadian busybody read the exchange, and decided to report Justin to the Austin police, who then arrested him–he was 18 at the time—searched his family’s house, and charged him with making a “terroristic threat.” Continue reading →

Angel Hernandez’s Botched Home Run Call, Continued: Now THIS Would Justify Over-Ruling It

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
"You blew that call deliberately! Didn't you? DIDN'T YOU???"

“You blew that call deliberately! Didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU???”

Yesterday I wrote about the terrible, tomato-worthy botch of a home run call by Angel Hernandez in an Oakland-Cleveland baseball game, and how as bad as it was, the rules of the game don’t permit such rules to be over-turned, and thus over-turned they must not be, lest the game’s integrity be damaged. But on the Dan Patrick radio sports show today, renowned baseball writer Peter Gammons theorized that Hernandez may have refused to credit Adam Rosales of the A’s with a home run, despite the instant replay proving to anyone with eyes that it was not a double as he had ruled, because he, like many if not all major league umpires, hates the concept of allowing instant video replay to over-rule umpire judgments.

And, of course, Hernandez has a well-earned reputation as a spiteful jerk.

Hernandez would never admit to so unprofessional an act, but I think Gammons’ speculation is fair, and also very possibly correct. The alternative is to conclude that Hernandez literally can’t see, which seems unlikely. What seems far more likely is that he and his umpiring crew decided to register a nasty and unprofessional protest over the gradually expanding trend in Major League Baseball of letting technology do better what umpires have traditionally done well. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: GMU School of Law Dean Daniel Polsby

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

George would be proud.

“Student organizations are allocated budget by the Student Bar Association in order to allow them, among other things, to bring speakers to the law school.  Neither the law school nor the university can be taken to endorse such speakers or what they say.  Law school administration is not consulted about these invitations, nor should we be.  Sometimes speakers are invited who are known to espouse controversial points of view.  So be it.  So long as they are here, they are free to say whatever is on their mind within the bounds of law.   They cannot be silenced and they will not be.

“Just as speakers are free to speak, protesters are free to protest.  They must do so in a place and in a manner that respects the rights of speakers to speak and listeners to listen, and that is in all other ways consistent with the educational mission of the university.  Student organizations which hold contrary points of view have every right to schedule their own programs with their own speakers, and these speakers’ rights will be protected in just the same way.

“The law school will not exercise editorial control over the words of speakers invited by student organizations, nor will we take responsibility for them, nor will we endorse or condemn them.  There has to be a place in the world where controversial ideas and points of view are aired out and given space.  This is that place.”

——  Daniel D. Polsby,  Dean of George Mason University Law School, responding to calls from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for the Law School to disinvite activist Nonie Darwish, who had accepted an invitation from the campus Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association to speak on campus.  Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Triple Dunces…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[In his Comment of the Day, Jeffrey Field endorses the actions of both the teacher and the superintendent that I labeled “ethics triple dunces” for making students write letters lobbying for more money in school budgets, raises some other provocative ethics issues related to teacher and student conduct, and questions my indictment of the ethics of the teaching profession. I think he’s wrong on every count (you can read my response with my original post), but it’s a terrific comment.]

“When I was a 5th grade teacher teacher at Clements school in North Alabama, the all-white Limestone County School Board voted to allow students the Martin Luther King holiday, but teachers would be required to work that day. So, partially in self interest and partially in empathy of the small percentage of black teachers, I got my 5th grade class to write letters to the board asking them to reconsider. Long story short, the board reversed position and everybody got a day off.

“Yes, I used this as a writing exercise, and I offer no excuses. You see, too many times teachers have students write a paper with no real purpose in mind. In this case, my students had a real purpose in penning a persuasive letter to the people who ran the schools (btw – no one was required to write the letter, but they all did). And boy, you should have seen the smiles and heard the whoops of joy the morning the Athens News Courier ran a story saying the board had reconsidered its position. Continue reading →

Citizenship, Ignorance, and The Star Spangled Banner

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Neatly balancing the high school that refuses to allow “Ave Maria” to be played by the school band because its unheard lyrics might offend litigious atheists in the student body, we have the indignant students at Goshen College, who are angry at their school for finally permitting “The Star Spangled Banner” to be played at sporting events. Goshen is a Mennonite institution, and the Mennonites are pacifists. Somewhere the school got the idea that the National Anthem glorifies war, and on that basis some of its students are up in arms—well, not really, since they object to that sort of thing. But they have a Facebook page, which aims to organize a protest.

When the bicentennial of the War of 1812 comes around in two years,  maybe the defiantly ignorant in this country will begin filling in that huge gap in its consciousness. Many media articles covered the National Anthem flap at Goshen and quoted students like Marlys Weaver, 22, a senior from Goshen and editor of the college newspaper. “I am not in favor of the college’s decision to play the anthem,” she  said.  “Images of war run throughout all the verses of the anthem, and Mennonites, as pacifists, work with active and involved non-violent options.” None of the articles that I could find bothered to note that the “The Star-Spangled Banner” does not glorify war. Indeed, criticizing the Anthem for “images of war” shows a shocking deficit in American history and perspective, and the failure of our news media to help the public be informed citizens on this point is a breach of its duties as well. Continue reading →