Utterly Meaningless

SEPARATION? WHAT SEPARATION?

Filed on September 24, 2010 at 8:22 pm under by dcobranchi

Fort Bragg, here in town, has decided that it’s a church and needs to “save” people in town.

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DOG BITES MAN

Filed on September 18, 2010 at 2:26 pm under by dcobranchi

And in other news, Newt Gingrich is still an idiot. Newt, buy a map. The World Trade Center was not in the South Bronx.

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STUPID SCHOOL TRICKS

Filed on at 1:51 pm under by dcobranchi

First Amendment? What First Amendment?

A soft-spoken 14-year-old’s nose piercing has landed her a suspension from school and forced her into the middle of a fight over her First Amendment right to exercise her religion.

Ariana Iacono says she just wants to be a normal teenager at Clayton High School, about 15 miles southeast of Raleigh. She has been suspended since last week because her nose ring violates the Johnston County school system’s dress code.

Iacono and her mother, Nikki, belong to the Church of Body Modification, a small group unfamiliar to rural North Carolina, but one with a clergy, a statement of beliefs and a formal process for accepting new members.

The morons in the district office are threatening to send her to juvi school. The nose stud is so tiny it’s almost invisible. There is no way in hell that her having it interferes with the school’s mission. This is a power play, pure and simple. The authoritarians in the district office think they ought to be able to decide which religions are and which are not “legitimate.” They’re wrong and they’ll lose in court. And, in the process, waste tens of thousands of tax dollars.

Make sure to click over to the story for a photo of the offending stud. And I’m not sure that some of the comments aren’t good examples of Poe’s Law.

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AN EXCEPTIONAL TEACHER

Filed on September 16, 2010 at 9:54 pm under by dcobranchi

Here’s a local one:

A teacher at J.W. Coon Elementary School has been suspended with pay after being accused of breaking the arm of a 5-year-old student, Cumberland County Schools officials said this morning.

Jackie Bennett, 57, of the 6500 block Pacific Avenue in Fayetteville, is charged with assault inflicting serious bodily injury and child abuse inflicting serious injury, said Debbie Tanna, a Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office’s spokeswoman.

Bennett is an exceptional children’s teacher, said Theresa Perry, schools spokeswoman.

Bennett told investigators he was trying to use a “therapeutic hold” on the girl Tuesday when she was injured, Tanna said.

“A therapeutic hold refers to the technique used by school employees to restrain a child for a limited time in an attempt to calm the child and to prevent them from harming themselves or others,” Perry said in an e-mail.

But just remember, schools are the safest place for students to be.

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