Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalTeacher on leave after saying school banned 'Rainbowland' by Miley, Dolly
A Wisconsin teacher who said the school district's administration banned students from performing the song "Rainbowland" by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton, has been placed on administrative leave.
Melissa Tempel, a first grade dual-language teacher at Heyer Elementary, confirmed she was on leave from the Waukesha School District in a text to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network. She deferred any further comment to the Alliance for Education in Waukesha.
The alliance is a group of mainly Waukesha parents who announced Monday on social media that they want superintendent James Sebert to be investigated for discrimination of LGBTQ+ students and staff, accusing him of repeated discriminatory actions.
Sebert later confirmed in a statement that Tempel was on leave and wouldn't comment further.
Sebert said in March the decision to pull the song was based on "whether it was appropriate for the age and maturity level of the students" and because of "social or personal impacts" on them.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/04/13/teacher-rainbowland-school-ban-administrative-leave/11655446002/
She's on leave because she hurt the superintendent's wittle fee-fees by telling the truth--in Snot Walkerland.
He Needed Medical Help. He Ended Up In Jail And Died Weeks Later.
When 29-year-old Joshua McLemore stopped answering his mother’s calls and texts, she started to worry. McLemore had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young adult, and he had struggled with psychosis and drug use for years. When neither his mother, Rhonda McLemore, nor a family friend had heard from him for a few days, the apartment manager in McLemore’s building agreed to stop by. He found McLemore naked on the floor, confused and incoherent.
McLemore was taken to the hospital in an ambulance around 1 a.m. on July 20, 2021. But instead of receiving medical treatment, he was soon arrested and moved to Indiana’s Jackson County Jail. There, he was left in a padded isolation cell with no bed, sink or toilet. He spent nearly every hour of the next 20 days in solitary confinement, naked, alone and suffering from active psychosis. At times, his cell was covered with urine, feces, food and trash. By the time jail officials sought medical help for McLemore on Aug. 8, it was too late. He died two days later of “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink,” according to an autopsy report.
On Wednesday, McLemore’s estate filed a civil lawsuit against Jackson County, jail officials and the private corporation contracted by the jail to provide health care services, accusing the plaintiffs of violating McLemore’s 14th Amendment rights, “causing him unnecessary pain and suffering and, ultimately, an avoidable death.”
McLemore’s “condition was treatable, and his death was preventable,” his estate said in a complaint. “Josh suffered and died because of multiple failures by county staff and supervisors as well as systemic deficiencies and unconstitutional customs, practices, and conditions at the Jackson County Jail.”
McLemore’s deterioration over the course of his time in jail is apparent in hundreds of hours of disturbing surveillance footage obtained by his lawyers, parts of which were filed as exhibits to the lawsuit.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joshua-mclemore-death-preventable-lawsuit_n_64358cbde4b06e56d695aa4a
Cops were so far in the wrong they were in another universe---that's not even to mention the jail employees.
White racists built a wall to keep Black students away -- but decades later, it finally came down
For more than 80 years, Morgan State University students walking down Hillen Road near the school’s entrance saw a massive red brick wall. Some thought it was a simple alley; others thought perhaps it protected a few garages. But the structure was actually a “spite wall” intended to keep Black students from venturing into a once predominantly white Baltimore neighborhood.
White Baltimore residents banded together in the late 1930s to erect the wall in response to the growing number of Black people in the area attending Morgan State, a historically Black institution. On Tuesday, University President David Wilson, school officials and residents watched as an excavator destroyed the barrier.
“We had no choice but to tear it down,” Wilson said in an interview. “We couldn’t have this symbol of hate staring down every single day. This was an easy decision for us. It was time for us to tear down that hate.”
The wall was built along Hillen Road in front of the school’s entrance and stretching past Northwood Shopping Center in the early 1940s after years of debate and opposition. Residents and neighborhood associations in the predominantly white city already had qualms with the school when it moved to its current location in 1917, Wilson said. The state’s decision to change what was then Morgan College from a private institution into a public one in 1939 to help Black people only “exacerbated” the racial strife, Wilson said. It happened as Baltimore began to adopt restrictive racial covenants limiting where Black people could live — Baltimore was among the first cities to adopt such practices.
The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper published articles chronicling the debate: College trustees called plans for the wall “discriminatory to Morgan College,” while Morris Macht, part of one of Maryland’s largest residential building companies at the time, denied that it had anything to do with race. Ultimately, a zoning board approved the wall, and construction began in 1942, according to the Afro-American.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/80-year-old-segregation-wall-finally-comes-baltimore-rcna79148
This wall should have come down 50 years ago.
The most farcical argument in the case against abortion pills
Anti-abortion activists have been using a deeply misleading refrain to squash access to mifepristone, a drug approved in 2000 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to safely end pregnancies.
“Pregnancy is not an illness,” declared Erik Baptist, the lead counsel for the coalition of anti-abortion groups Alliance Defending Freedom, in a hearing before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in a federal district court in Texas last month. “Pregnancy is not a disease.”
Last Friday night, when Kacsmaryk issued his unprecedented decision ordering mifepristone to be pulled from the market, the anti-abortion judge said the same thing: “Pregnancy is not an ‘illness,’” Kacsmaryk emphasized in his 67-page order, writing that it’s “a natural process essential to perpetuating human life.”
The argument matters because anti-abortion leaders claim the FDA illegally approved mifepristone through an accelerated drug reviewal process known as Subpart H that only applies to “new drugs for serious or life-threatening illnesses.” If pregnancy isn’t an illness, their logic goes, then mifepristone shouldn’t have been approved at all.
It’s a silly argument that reflects both an unreasonably textualist interpretation of the law, as well as a Christian view that pregnancy is holy and stopping it is sacrilege. It’s a shoddy legal interpretation because there’s a long history of the FDA using the terms illness, disease, and condition interchangeably. In an amicus brief filed in the case in February, 19 US food and drug scholars from 16 academic institutions across the United States emphasized mifepristone has always been lawfully approved.
https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/4/12/23678459/pregnancy-mifepristone-abortion-kacsmaryk-texas-illness
There are so many holes in this decision that only Clarence the Toad and Silly Sammy Alito can possibly approve it down the line. Even Beer Boy Kavanaugh and Amy Bony Carrot have to find fault with it on legal grounds....
Disturbing New Details Emerge of Louisville Shooter's Livestreamed Carnage
Several new details emerged Tuesday about the horrific, livestreamed massacre carried out by a gunman who killed five colleagues at a bank office in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday morning.
Louisville Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel identified the suspect as 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon, an employee at the Old National Bank. Officials said Tuesday that Sturgeon used an AR-15 he’d purchased legally on April 4, told at least one person that he was suicidal and intent on causing harm shortly before the attack, and left a note. Gwinn-Villaroel said Sturgeon was livestreaming throughout the attack, which also left nine people injured, including three police officers.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, confirmed it “quickly removed” the stream after it was uploaded. But an unnamed city official provided details to CNN early Tuesday, saying the attack only lasted about a minute.
According to the source, the weapon was clearly visible at the beginning of the livestream as the shooter entered the bank. There, he was reportedly greeted by a worker who wished him a good morning. “You need to get out of here,” the gunman reportedly told the woman—before attempting to shoot her in the back.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/louisville-shooting-disturbing-details-of-suspects-livestream-emerge?ref=home
Dumbass forgot the first rule...when telling people to get out of there, let them. And shoot yourself first.
Puppy flung from pickup in high-speed Los Angeles police chase survives
A puppy that was thrown out of a moving pickup truck in Los Angeles during a high-speed police chase “miraculously” survived, according to authorities.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Los Angeles police department announced that on 7 April, at about 12.10pm in a south-east part of the city, officers started a car chase in pursuit of a suspect who was wanted in connection to an attempted murder and carjacking which occurred on 26 March.
The suspect was driving a Chevy Avalanche, the local news outlet KTTV reported. The pursuit had crossed through multiple cities across Los Angeles county, including Inglewood and Westchester, when a puppy was placed in a brown Michael Kors designer bag and then “tossed from the suspect’s moving vehicle”, police said.
The puppy, an eight-week-old beige mixed breed with one blue eye as well as one brown eye, “miraculously … emerged unharmed and was rescued by responding … officers,” the police department said.
The puppy is now reportedly in the care of South Los Angeles Animal Services. The agency is holding the dog pending an investigation into the “abandonment” of the animal during the chase, and it is not available for adoption, at least not yet, the police added in a statement.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/09/puppy-high-speed-los-angeles-police-chase
People are fucking awful.
What does a 19th century 'anti-vice' law have to do with the abortion pill ruling?
A 19th century “anti-vice” law is at the center of a new court ruling that threatens access to the leading abortion drug in the U.S.
Dormant for a half-century, the Comstock Act has been revived by anti-abortion groups and conservative states seeking to block the mailing of mifepristone, the pill used in more than half of U.S. abortions.
On Friday, a federal judge in Texas sided with Christian conservatives in ruling that the Comstock Act prohibits sending the long-used drug through the mail.
Here’s a look at the case and the law:
In a sweeping ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk said that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone more than two decades ago violated federal rules. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Donald Trump appointee said the FDA overlooked “legitimate safety concerns” with the pill, which has been available since 2000.
The Biden administration and mifepristone’s main drugmaker filed appeals notices within hours of the decision.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/19th-century-anti-law-abortion-pill-ruling-rcna78849
They can't come up with anything reasonable. It has to be ancient history.
Ousted Tennessee lawmakers say they felt targeted by GOP since Day 1
The two Black Democrats who were ousted from the Tennessee state House said Sunday that their presence there was a source of tension from the start — even before their protests on the chamber floor in the wake of a deadly mass shooting.
The GOP-controlled state House voted last week to expel Justin Jones, who represented the Nashville area, and Justin J. Pearson, whose district included Memphis, over those protests, arguing that they broke the rules of the chamber. A vote to boot Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white Democrat who also participated in the protests, fell short. Jones and Pearson, who took office in November and January, respectively, are community organizers and social justice advocates, and Jones has described himself as an activist.
Asked by NBC News' Chuck Todd whether that history of activism made them a target, Jones said: “I think our presence as young Black voices for our constituencies, people who will not bow down, those who will not be conformed, that’s what put a target on us the day we walked in the Tennessee General Assembly.”
"I mean, this is the first time in Tennessee history we had a completely partisan expulsion by predominantly white caucus — all but one member of their caucus is white out of 75 members — and we are the two youngest Black lawmakers in Tennessee,” he continued.
“And so what we saw was a system of political hubris. This was not just an attack on us, it was an attempt to silence our districts.”
Pearson said he felt unwelcome since the day he entered the state House, which he described as having “always been a toxic work environment.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ousted-tennessee-state-lawmakers-say-was-target-us-rcna78843
Uppity Black men who don't "know their place". Yeah buddy.
Troops Reveal Pact to 'Destroy' Putin's Empire From Within
The horrors of Ukraine are an eerily familiar sight for Maga, a 30-year-old Chechen fighter who spoke with The Daily Beast using his codename.
“The same torture, the same mass graves… the things the Russians are doing in Ukraine, they were doing back in Chechnya,” Maga told The Daily Beast from his unit’s hideout in eastern Ukraine last month. “They just come and destroy everyone who could be against their power.”
Having fought first to defend Kyiv—and then in the battles for the liberation of the Kharkiv region—Maga said the atrocities he has seen in Putin’s invasion match stories told by his relatives, who fought in the wars for Chechen independence from the Russian Federation in the 1990s.
While much of the world was shocked by the bloody atrocities committed by Putin’s forces in cities like Mariupol and Bucha, for many Chechens none of this came as a surprise.
Now, this shared trauma appears to have formed a bond between Chechens who have flocked to Ukraine to fight against Putin’s invasion and their new Ukrainian comrades, who have agreed that once the war is finished here, they will travel to fight for a free Chechnya.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/chechen-fighters-make-war-pact-with-ukrainian-troops-to-fight-vladimir-putin?ref=home
I don't think it will be just the Chechens, somehow....
Debate over expelled lawmakers brings more bad publicity to Tennessee
Former U.S. President Barack Obama said no elected official should lose their job simply for raising their voice — especially when doing so on behalf of children.
“What happened in Tennessee is the latest example of a broader erosion of civility and democratic norms,” Obama wrote on Twitter. “Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress."
Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman, criticized Tennessee's conservative lawmakers for expelling Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, from the state House. Meanwhile, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, escaped removal by one vote.
Jones and Pearson are African Americans. Johnson is white.
"So tell me how to process that because I know what it feels like," Steele wrote on Twitter.
And Occupy Democrats praised the trio nicknamed the “Tennessee 3.” The political activist group even predicted Jones and Pearson — thanks to Thursday's made-for-cable-television, oratorial performances — are now in position to become future stars of the Democratic Party and the worst political nightmare of Republicans during upcoming midterm elections. The tweet gathered 11,000 responses by Friday morning.
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/2023/04/08/tennessee-debate-on-political-activism-ignites-social-media/70093031007/
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