Fool’s News

We’re going here.

Extensively here.

The Newark, New Jersey school district ordered a picture of a male student kissing his boyfriend blacked out from all copies of a high school yearbook.  Originally calling the photo “illicit,” the district blacked out the photo after Russell Garris, the district’s assistant superintendent who oversees the city’s high schools, told Bolden [the principal] he was concerned that the photo could upset parents.  Additionally, “[t]he decision was based, in part, on misinformation that Mr. Jackson was not one of our students and our review simply focused on the suggestive nature of the photograph,” the district said.  Oops!

Later - after the fact – the school district said it regretted its decision and claims it has apologized to the student, Andre Jackson.  District spokeswoman Valerie Merritt said Bolden would meet with Jackson on Tuesday.  But Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said Jackson had not heard from the district by 10 p.m. Monday.

“They don’t have a meeting set up, it’s not true,” Goldstein said. “The school district hasn’t contacted him. Whether they reach out to him on Tuesday remains to be seen.”

The photo was among several that appeared on a special personal tribute page in the yearbook.

Jackson, who paid $150 for the page, noted that the yearbook is filled with pictures of heterosexual couples kissing

Finally, the district said it would issue an unredacted version of the yearbook to any student of East Side High School who wants one.

As if there was any doubt, with GWB’s Supreme Court appointees, nearly every decision by the Supreme Court has been conservative. Just a sampling of the more recent decisions:

Supreme Court Bars Suit on Faith Initiative
Environmental Case Ruling Favors Business
Justices Loosen Restrictions on Campaign Ads
Bong Hits 4 Jesus (Say it isn’t so…a Bush court ruling against free speech!?!?!)

Really.  No surprises here.

From CNN:

65,000 adopted children being raised by same-sex parents in the United States, according to a March 2007 report compiled by the Urban Institute and the Williams Institute at University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.

The same report estimates more than 14,100 foster children were living with one or more gay or lesbian foster parent.

Well, can you?

The quote is from “Absolutely Fabulous”:

EDDIE: Yes, Yes!… Why, oh why, do we pay taxes, hmmm? I mean, just to have bloody parking restrictions- and BUGGERY-UGLY traffic wardens, and BOLLOCKY-pedestrian-BLOODY-crossings?… and those BASTARD railings outside shops windows, making it so difficult so you can’t even get in them! I mean, I know they’re there to stop stupid people running into the street and killing themselves! But we’re not all stupid! We don’t all need nurse-maiding. I mean, why not just have a Stupidity Tax? Just tax the stupid people!
PATSY: And let them DIE!

That’s how I feel about the proposed law that the New York State Senate is considering.  A state senator from Brooklyn has introduced legislation that would ban people from using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in New York City or Buffalo.

Sen. Carl Kruger is proposing the ban in response to two recent pedestrian deaths in his district, including a 23-year-old man who was struck and killed last month while listening to his iPod on Avenue T and East 71st Street In Bergen Beach.

“While people are tuning into their iPods and cell phones, they’re tuning out the world around them,” Kruger said. The proposed law would make talking on cell phones while crossing the street a comparable offense to jaywalking.

To be honest, Eddie’s quote above pretty much sums up my sentiments on this proposed law.   We’re not all stupid.  Why should everyone be penalized because some of the less-fit, less-intelligent among us forget the lessons of youth.  One of the first things parents teach us is “Look both ways before crossing the street.”  Well, look at the pedestrian crossing light as well.  God, you don’t even have to be able to read to understand them.  We’ve become so dumb that they’re now pictograms.

This is the epitome of the so-called Nanny State.