Assault on Free Speech, Part I

I read an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, granola capital of the world, home of mellowness) about how public school teachers were forbidden to wear their Obama buttons in school. Even scarier, they were not allowed to comment for the article, which begins with this:

Teachers at Soquel High School have agreed not to wear "Educators for Obama" buttons in the classroom after a parent complained that educators were attempting to politically influence his daughter and other students.

John Hadley, an importer of South African goods, called the school to complain Friday after his 16-year daughter Teegan returned home and reported that she had seen several teachers wearing the buttons.

Hadley said his family supports Sen. Barack Obama's rival, Sen. John McCain, but that he is opposed to teachers wearing political paraphernalia regardless of its nature.

Censorship is alive and well in the public schools. Usually, it's the students who are told they can't wear t-shirts supporting causes. Now, a school district is telling its teachers not to wear their Obama buttons. What is everybody scared of? Where are the kittens supposed to learn to discuss and respect differing opinions if the schools are giving them the message that ideas are toxic?

No wonder adults have no credibililty with kids. When you tell them not to have unprotected sex or take drugs, will they see that as a well-reasoned position, or yet another example of adult timidity? I know what I thought when I was a kitten and Mama told me not to jump the fence. Mama thought the same thing about adults back when she was a kitten, and so did Daddy. Kids shouldn't be sheltered, especially in high school. It doesn't work, and they just develop contempt for you. Not sheltering kids is different from forcing them to conform to your political views, though you must enforce standards of civilized behavior in classroom discussion.

The McCain kid in the article who complained about the Obama teachers said, "they shouldn't be stating their opinion in front of students who can't even vote." Shouldn't someone tell the kid that you can discuss things, like drinking or going to war, that you're not old enough to do? And why shouldn't the student also state her opinion? I know kids form cliques and pressure one another to conform, ostracizing racial, religious or political minorities. It is worthwhile to face this behavior head on by discussing divisive topics in the classroom under the guidance of teachers, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Nor is there any benefit to sanitizing the teachers into insipidity, so that they appear to have no involvement in, and no authority on, real life.

Dig this quote from the article:

If teachers had been wearing buttons supporting McCain, [the student] said she would still think it was wrong but acknowledged, 'I probably wouldn't have told my dad about it.'

That child sure learned a lesson in democracy — shut down those who do not agree with you. She could have learned to discuss her opinions without losing her temper, but that apparently was not an option.

I feel strongly that kids are not being prepared for adult life in school, and the culture has changed such that the preparation they get at home is spotty. They may become adults not knowing how to intelligently eat, handle finances, have love affairs, live a clean and well-ordered life. We clearly see — after the last 8 years — that America is not turning out voters educated in democracy. Wasn't that of of the original rationales for a public school system — to educate voters? Where did that idea go?

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Crime: Jean-Pierre Orlewicz Sentenced

Jean-Pierre Orlewicz

The psychopathic little wretch will get life in prison without possibility of parole. He was seventeen years old when he committed his crime. He is eighteen years old today.

We have mixed feelings about Mr. Orlewicz' sentence. There is no denying that he is a detestable little boil without the slightest trace, apparently, of what makes people human beings &mdash that is, a capacity for empathy, for understanding the pain that others suffer and therefore being incapable of inflicting it upon them.

Mr. Orlewicz' crime, in case you're not up on details, involved luring a supposed friend to the Orlewicz grandparental home, having first prepared the garage with tarps to minimize cleanup of blood. He then set upon his victim, Daniel Sorenson, and stabbed him repeatedly, which caused Mr. Sorenson's death.

Having murdered Mr. Sorenson, whose only crime appears to have been borrowing money from Mr. Orlewicz and failing to repay it, he then cut off Mr. Sorenson's head and applied a blowtorch to the hands and feet, to make identification more difficult. He bullied another debtor and friend into helping him transport the body to an open area, where he doused it with flammables and set it on fire. He disposed of the head in a river.

The friend and fellow-debtor in the case, one Alexander James Letkemann, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, for aiding and abetting inthe crime. Although Mr. Letkemann, who was 18 years old at the time, did not actually assist in killing Mr. Sorenson, he helped prepare the scene and helped dispose of the body. Foolish boy. He may never see his parents alive again.

Orlewicz did not speak at the sentencing hearing, having, apparently, already seriously damaged his case by taking the stand in his own defense. However, the judge who sentenced him, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Annette Berry said she was grateful he was convicted.

"I am grateful that you are going away for the rest of your life, because in my view I believe you will kill again," Berry said.

[...]

The judge called the killing "an evil act." "There is a difference between mental illness in this country and evil," Berry said. "But your actions, sir, are tantamount to evil. No two ways about it."

Judges, in our estimation, are not always the best evaluators of character. Like any other human being, they have their own biases and their life experiences shape much of what they see and how they think. However, the judge's assessment in this case makes us wonder what she saw in this teenage boy &mdash because we saw some evidence of psychopathic behaviour, but we freely admit that we are very prejudiced against him &mdash that would cause her to say such things.

We understand that there is a video clip on YouTube of Mr. Orlewicz testifying on the stand. For reasons we don't understand, and don't want to troubleshoot, we cannot view the clip. But we are told by those who have viewed it that it revealed Mr. Orlewicz to be a nasty little wretch and pretty much guaranteed his conviction.

Mr. Orlewicz' attorneys will appeal. Let us hope they meet with no success. We really do not think this teenager should be allowed to find potential new victims. The parents of both these children and the murdered man have our deepest sympathies. What must it be like to know that you have raised a monster, and that your own flesh and blood is condemned by society at large never to walk free again?

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Crime: The Murder of Daniel Sorenson

Jean Pierre Orlewicz

Some time ago, we blogged about two Michigan teenagers who were accused of murdering a supposed "friend" of theirs, decapitating him, blowtorching his hands to prevent or slow identification of the corpse, and setting fire to the torso in a field. Charming pair, eh?

Today, one of the pair &mdash Jean Pierre Orlewicz &mdash was found guilty of first-degree felony murder in the killing of Daniel Sorenson. Jean-Pierre Orlewicz was 17 years old at the time that he committed the murder. The prosecutor introduced evidence that he had planned the murder in advance. Orlewicz claimed self-defense, but the jury apparently did not buy it. Orlewicz is looking at a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The other defendant, Alexander Letkemann, pled guilty to second-degree murder in return for testimony against his erstwhile bosom companion, Orlewicz. However, Orlewicz apparently admitted that Letkemann did not commit or assist in committing the murder. Letkemann is looking at between 20 and 30 years in prison.

This is what the kid looked like before his attorney got him all cleaned up for court:



This is so sad. Three families have lost their children. Frankly, it sounds/looks as if Jean Pierre Orlewicz might be a psychopathic killer. The killing was so senseless, one is hard put to understand what was going on. Imagine if there was some way of culling psychopaths before they could be born. We wouldn't be at war in Iraq today, for one thing. After all, the Orlewicz kid only killed one person. The neocon cabal that took us to Iraq has already killed close to one million.

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Women's Rights: WTF??

Raw Story is reporting that a high-school track star with the fastest mile and 2-mile times in her class has been disqualified from a track meet because she wears a garment that conforms to her religion's requirements.

Is she a Mormon, with the knee-length holy underwear? No, she's a Muslim. An American Muslim. What's interesting is, she's been wearing the same damn garment for the past three years.

WTF is this about? We always thought the idea of sports was to give children a chance to compete in a healthy manner. If the kid has the best time, and she is wearing the official uniform, why is it a problem? More to the point, why is it a problem now, when it hasn't been a problem previously?

Here's another interesting point:

Kelly, whose 1,600-meter time of 5 minutes 17.49 seconds and 3,200-meter time of 12:00.81 are the fastest of any D.C. girl, was hoping to run fast enough at the Montgomery Invitational to qualify for the New Balance Collegiate Invitational in New York on Feb. 8-9.

The girl, Juashaunna Kelly, is probably African-American, and this athletic event would give her access, if she wins, to an athletic scholarship to college. Why is this a problem?

The misogyny is getting thicker than cheese, these days, and we here at Casa de Los Gatos, are getting pretty sick and tired of it. We sincerely hope she sues their asses off AND wins AND gets a scholarship, and any other good thing we can think of. And we sincerely hope the meet director gets the boot and ends up peddling iced peanut drinks on the road to Samarkand.

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Young Voters Unhappy with GOP

Carla Marinucci in the San Francisco Chronicle today reports on young voters becoming more and more unhappy with Republicans:

A Democracy Corps poll from the Washington firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner suggests voters ages 18 to 29 have undergone a striking political evolution in recent years.

Young Americans have become so profoundly alienated from Republican ideals on issues including the war in Iraq, global warming, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration that their defections suggest a political setback that could haunt Republicans "for many generations to come," the poll said.

and further ...

Younger voters, who grew up in the Clinton years, are also increasingly at odds with the GOP and its leaders on social issues.

"This is a more diverse generation, racially and ethnically, and it's more progressive on social issues like gay marriage," Greenberg said. "They see the Republican Party as profoundly different on tolerance and identity."

The poll also suggests the GOP is not addressing young voters' deep concerns about their future economic security. "Young people's economic struggles, more than any other issue, defines their political agenda," she said.

And they should be concerned. To see the cost of the Iraq war, click here. As I type this it is at over $455 billion!!!!! And it's frightening, as I've said before, at how quickly that figure climbs.

To make a comparison ... it's hard to do because of the different financial situation now in the global economy ... but just so you have a figure: the Vietnam war cost $120 billion. And we're not out of Iraq yet.

We all should be concerned. Who is going to pay for this war? We are. And for a long time. And if you'd like to read about how we're still paying for past wars, go here.

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