The fliers screamed “Stop Facial Profiling!” Hundreds of people donned cheap plastic Lone Ranger style masks and took to the streets in protest. Local TV and newspapers were all over the place. National press took notice, but the City Council rolled over and allowed Visionics Corp. (now known as Identix) to sniff and paw all [...]
Archive for August, 2003
State: Drug offenses responsible for prison population “bulge”
August 19, 2003
According to the Tribune, Florida says that an increase in prisoners is due to more drug offenders being locked up. Do we really want to spend millions of dollars locking up non-violent drug “criminals”? This quote strikes me as rather incredible: McDonough, director of the state’s Office of Drug Control Policy, notes most people sent [...]
OFFaL in, more garbage out.
August 17, 2003
Our Fearless Florida Leader (OFFaL, not to be confused with his brother OFaL) is teaming up with a Texas based Repulican-run non-profit to re-digest and re-regurgitate the same data (from the FLDOE website, titled GOVERNOR JEB BUSH ANNOUNCES BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT EVER ON FCAT) that the state is already manipulating to show that OFFaL’s education agenda [...]
Asscroft’s war on federal judges
August 16, 2003
Attorney General John Ashcroft continues to look for new ways to lock up even more of our people. If this country is so free, how come we have so many of our citizens in prison for non-violent and often victimless crimes? From Elaine Cassels Civil Liberties Watch: With a little help from Congress, John Ashcroft [...]
Republican recipe: more prisons, less schools
August 16, 2003
Remember: in Florida, prisoners almost never get their voting rights back. From the SP Times: Lawmakers will even let Corrections Secretary Jim Crosby go on a building spree without competitive bids. That means he doesn’t have to accept the lowest price offered, and rival companies can’t appeal his selection. Crosby says bidding slows everything down. [...]
Kristof gently comments on right wing religious nutcases
August 15, 2003
Kristof comments on our country’s increasingly evangelical religious convictions: My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has [...]
Is this the future for Florida schools?
August 15, 2003
The NY Times reports on a growing public school scandal in Houston that involves extreme manipulation of statistical data to produce extraordinarily low dropout rates. ROBERT KIMBALL, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, sat smack in the middle of the “Texas miracle.” His poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman [...]
Washington Post guest editorial by Fox News?
August 15, 2003
There is so much wrong with this piece that I can’t even begin. OK… I’ll begin… First, the arrogant prick who wrote this piece might want to look at a world map and notice that Europe is a little farther north than Texas, and thus it usually enjoys much milder summers than the current brutally [...]
Hillsborough School Board members pray for holy paddles
August 13, 2003
It seems that some Hillsborough County School Board members are into spanking. From the Tribune: As board members expressed frustration at a lack of consequences for misbehaving students, Barrington recalled his days as a teacher and administrator when he could “slam ‘em up against the wall and counsel them.” Board member Jennifer Faliero quickly took [...]
Early beer sales to aid Bucs fans, rich white folks catch a buzz, and more!
August 8, 2003
The Tampa City Council is considering allowing early liquor sales on Sundays. This is a good thing, as government has no business enacting and enforcing laws based on religious convictions. But why is the proposal only allowing sales after 11:00? Why not earlier? Apparently, the reasoning is that 11AM sales will allow Bucs fans to [...]