Union To Boycott Newspaper for Exposing Union Failures

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now usually when someone points out that one has done something badly or has failed in something, the average person would look at those accusations and assess where they went wrong in order to correct the situation for the future. Not unions, though. Unions boycott those that point out union failures. Such is the case in Los Angeles as union teachers are organizing a boycott of the L.A. Times for daring to point out that kids in the L.A. school district are all too often failing miserably.

In a series of recent articles the Times used student test scores to estimate the effectiveness of L.A.’s teachers. This infuriated the union.
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Union To Boycott Newspaper for Exposing Union Failures”


The Tax Left-Wing Professors Act

-By Warner Todd Huston

James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently had a brilliant idea. Let’s tax tenured professors at a higher rate than everyone else. And how could they complain? After all, these left-wing, communist sympathizers are always saying everyone should pay more taxes. How could they complain about being called to “pay their fair share”?

Lileks came up with this idea on a recent Ricohet podcast with Jonah Goldberg and Hollywooder Rob Long.

His brilliant proposal should be loved by everyone; both those that hate our anti-American professoriate, and those professors that hate America because Americans won’t pay enough taxes for social programs.

And here is that proposal:
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The Tax Left-Wing Professors Act”


$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Went to States that Didn’t Need it

-By Warner Todd Huston

As I mentioned in a previous discussion on the Democrats $26.1 billion bailout for unions that Speaker Pelosi pushed through Congress at the last minute this summer, there was no need for the money for the stated purpose of “saving teachers” jobs. After all many states still had $30 billion of the previous stimulus that has yet to be used and others already have fully funded payrolls for at least this year.

Chris Moody confirmed my claim in his Daily Caller column today. He found that states like Arkansas, North Dakota, Tennessee, Alaska and others didn’t need this new “stimulus for their educational sector. They’ve got plenty already.

Not only that but Moody notes that none of this new money will even reach the schools until a month after school starts all across the land. So, how this new money will save anything after the tough decisions have already been made and the school year fairly begun is a bit hard to understand.
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$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Went to States that Didn’t Need it”


Too Dangerous to Print: Liberal University Bias

-By Paul A. Ibbetson

Thomas Paine once said, “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” How true these words are. One of the most fundamental reflections of liberty is the freedom to question, challenge and debate the world around us. This freedom does not exist everywhere in the United States and certainly not at the university level.

As a lifelong Kansan, it would be much less painful to talk about liberal bias in places like Berkeley or Columbia University, but unfortunately my example comes from the least likely of places expected for liberal bias, Kansas State University. It was here that I was hired to write a political opinion column for the college newspaper. I was not naïve to the Collegian’s historically antagonistic relationship with conservative writers. In my 2009 book, “Feeding Lions: Sharing The Conservative Philosophy in a Politically Hostile World,” I had documented the firing of fellow conservative writer Chuck Armstrong, who was sent packing by the Collegian after writing an article about radical Islam. Armstrong’s article, based on his radio interview with scholar Robert Spencer, was labeled as racist and the Collegian threw Paine’s words out the window.
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Too Dangerous to Print: Liberal University Bias”


About the Left’s New Palin-Confronting ‘Teacher,’ Turns Out She Lied

-By Warner Todd Huston

Earlier today the left sent up cheers for an Alaska “teacher” that is seen on video attacking Governor Palin as “the worst Governor ever” as the sign she was putting up read.

When Gov. Palin interacted with her, the woman told Palin she was a “teacher.”

Looks like the woman, Kathleen Gustafson, is a liar. As we find on GatewayPundit, she isn’t a teacher but a theater tech. Even more absurdly, the woman belongs to a band that features drag queens as its attraction!

Another blogger whose blog is named Mac’sMind did some digging and the only Kathleen Gustafson he could find connected to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District works in the theater dept. as a tech.

So, once again, the left’s hero turns out to be a whack-job and a liar. Are we surprised?

Here’s that confrontation with Gov. Palin:
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About the Left’s New Palin-Confronting ‘Teacher,’ Turns Out She Lied”


Feds Move to Prevent Kindle Readers for Use With College Textbooks

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s the age of the computer, right? The day has arrived when our lives are increasingly conducted in cyberspace, online, over cell phones and web enabled devices. So, shouldn’t it be a natural thing that college textbooks begin to migrate to an electronic variety instead of dithering in the old fashioned world of printed paper? You might have an enthusiastic “yes, yes, yes” in mind, but then again you wouldn’t be Obama’s Department of Justice because they say “no, no, no.”

Byron York recently wrote a piece for the Washington Examiner that explained why the DOJ was attacking the idea of Kindle readers and e-books for college textbooks and preventing colleges and universities from offering them to students.

York reports that the DOJ ridiculously made the claim that electronic book readers like Amazon’s Kindle violated the “civil rights” of the blind and so, e-books violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because of this the DOJ insisted that several pilot programs in colleges and universities across the country be discontinued until e-books can be “accessible” to blind people.
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Feds Move to Prevent Kindle Readers for Use With College Textbooks”


As Fellows Lose Jobs Union Fights For Stiffer Drug Benefits: Free Viagra

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions have for years been figuring out new ways to screw employers and in Madison, Wisconsin a teacher’s union is looking for yet another way to slam it to the taxpayers by insisting that they get a free Viagra drug benefit.

In this bad economy, with states going bankrupt right and left, with teachers being laid off all across the country are Wisconsin’s teachers getting serious about negotiations and thankful they have a job at all? Apparently not, because in this dismal employment environment these teachers are trying to get free sex enhancement drugs.

The amorous union has demanded that a judge order the administration to reinstate the Viagra drug benefit that was sliced from the budget in 2005 to save money. And this demand comes at the same time that 482 teachers in Milwaukee have received layoff notices.
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As Fellows Lose Jobs Union Fights For Stiffer Drug Benefits: Free Viagra”


Mass. School Kids Now ‘Allowed’ To Say the Pledge of Allegiance

-By Warner Todd Huston

What sort of nation have we become when it takes monumental efforts by a kid to get a school administration to “allow” them all to recite the Pledge of Allegiance?

Nonetheless, that is the nation that liberals have turned these great United States into as after two months of wrangling Arlington, Massachusetts High School student Sean Harrington finally succeeded in getting his school administrators to allow the Pledge to be recited by students in class.

Arlington High School Principal Charles Skidmore told FoxNews.com that the policy has now been changed. “All principals in the district must ensure that the Pledge of Allegiance is said every school day in all classrooms,” he wrote in an email to the news channel.

Young Sean said he is pleased with the outcome.
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Mass. School Kids Now ‘Allowed’ To Say the Pledge of Allegiance”


Even The Left Getting Tired of Teachers Unions?

-By Warner Todd Huston

An interesting article appeared in the Chicago Tribune lamenting the fact that teachers unions are standing in the way of good education for our kids by constantly and in knee-jerk fashion opposing school reform efforts all across the country.

Penned by the Tribune’s Leonard Pitts, no arch righty he, the piece scolds teachers unions and postulates that we may be at the edge of a new day in education where the whining of backwards and uncaring teachers unions may be properly ignored as school districts, backed by parents and voters, launch into a new wave of reforms that will finally have a positive affect on America’s schools that have been failing for decades.
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Even The Left Getting Tired of Teachers Unions?”


National Education Association Orders Members to Read Communist Guide Book

-By Warner Todd Huston

The National Education Association (NEA) is the premier teachers union group in the country. As such it is instructive to learn the sort of reading material that the biggest of all teachers unions tells its own members to study so that they can more adequately represent teachers in America today.

A look at the NEA website reveals a shocking recommendation to its members. The union that represents the teachers that we send our children to every school day suggests that its members read the communist-like manifesto of famed left-wing agitator Saul Alinsky.

That’s right, the NEA wants its members, America’s teachers, to become programmed by the ideas and policy prescriptions in a communist manifesto.
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National Education Association Orders Members to Read Communist Guide Book”


Jamal Greene: Why I Am a Conservative?

Jamal Greene took to his video camera to tell us why he is a conservative. His effort is a serious and worthy explication of conservatism and his words should be listened to.

Jamal Greene: “In this video I speak about the ideas and beliefs that hold true. As a young educated black male I wanted to show the other face of the Conservative Movement: Me. There are many of us out here. Thanks to Glenn Beck for having them on his show. As a young educated black I constantly face down the stereotype that all blacks are Liberal and vote democrat. I am a member of the Tea Party, so the liberal media lies about the tea party being racist are completely untrue. This video dedicated to freedom, life, and liberty of the American Spirit. The Best is still yet to come for America.” As seen on Mr. Greene’s FaceBook.


Howard Zinn, Left’s Favorite Historian Now Proven Member of US Communist Party

-By Warner Todd Huston

Howard Zinn (1922 to 2010) is the left’s favorite contemporary historian. As an historian he is a child of the Beardian revolution yet he has for decades been able to straddle that line between legitimate historical observer and anti-American leftist. America’s intellectual society, in both the social movement and universities, have looked to him as a paragon of American virtue. He’s always been held up as just the right mixture of American leftism coupled with true scholarship.

But those of us on the right that have paid attention understand that he is not American in outlook and never was. Until now, though, it’s been hard to pin down his final loyalties. Now, with the revelations made due to a recent FOIA request, Zinn’s FBI files reveal the truth that Zinn fought his whole life to hide from the public. Howard Zinn was a card carrying member of the Soviet funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
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Howard Zinn, Left’s Favorite Historian Now Proven Member of US Communist Party”


Heartland Institute’s Bruno Behrend On WLS Radio Tonight, 6PM Central

Bruno Behrend – Heartland’s Director for the Center for School Reform, liberal Robert Creamer and Tea Party activist Tim Krulidis will be the guests on Bruce DuMont’s Beyond the Beltway. A wide range of issues relating to America’s deficit, taxation, and spending will be discussed.

Sunday, August 1st, 2010 at 6:00 PM CST
WLS Radio – 890 AM in Chicago (see link below for syndicated stations)

If you want to enjoy a great radio show with one of America’s best show hosts, you can’t do better than taking 2 hours to listen to Bruce DuMont’s “Beyond the Beltway.”
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Heartland Institute’s Bruno Behrend On WLS Radio Tonight, 6PM Central”


Teachers Unions Spent $100 Per Teacher on Politics

-By Warner Todd Huston

Education Next undertook for the first time an effort to find out how much of their members dues money that teachers unions spent on political action. The results are very interesting. The analysis discovered that, “national teachers unions and their state affiliates spent more than $100 per teacher in five states, with Oregon at the top of the list at $360 per teacher during the 2007-08 election cycle.”

Much of this money was spent to attempt to control the political debate above and beyond mere issues of education. Teachers unions spent millions trying to affect the political debate on taxes, housing, healthcare, gay marriage, congressional redistricting, and a whole raft of issues that as teachers they have precisely nothing to do with.
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Teachers Unions Spent $100 Per Teacher on Politics”


For All Teachers’ Whining, Almost Half of Chicago Area Teachers Make $100K a Year

-By Warner Todd Huston

As the Obama economy tumbles farther and farther down into depression, as states begin to face the reality of a budget crunch that can only be solved by layoffs of public employees, and as teachers find they are open to those layoffs, we commonly hear teachers claim that they are perennially underpaid and don’t deserve layoffs. Yet the Chicago Tribune has found that nearly half the teachers in many of Chicago’s ritziest suburbs are making over $100,000 a year in salary.

The Tribune reviewed the salary information of 132,000 Illinois teachers and in Highland Park, Deerfield, Park Ridge, Hinsdale, and other Chicago area suburbs it found that in some cases half the teachers — and in other cases over 40% — make $100K yearly (not including benefits) even as the educational system in Illinois crying poor and cutting staff.
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For All Teachers’ Whining, Almost Half of Chicago Area Teachers Make $100K a Year”


Grammar Tip: Use of Quote Marks

-By Warner Todd Huston

I learned something today that I was not aware of concerning the use of quote marks. This might help others that are equally ignorant on the grammatical rule.

Now, I knew that in America we put a period inside the quotes in a sentence relating what someone else said. Like so:

Then John said, “this is the sort of place I love.”

I was also aware that the Brits do it differently. Like this:

Then John said, “this is the sort of place I love“.

But I was not aware that when using quotes that don’t encapsulate a sentence and when the quote lands at the end of a sentence, we do not put the period inside the quote marks. For instance, the use of scare quotes, or quotes to denote a euphemism or used mockingly, is different than the use of quotes encapsulating a full sentence.

Like so:

Next he talked about “global warming”.

Here the period lands outside the quotes because the full stop for the sentence was not part of the quotation.

I did not know this. I will try to remember this from now on.Maybe it will help you, too?
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Grammar Tip: Use of Quote Marks”


Fisking the Chgo Sun-Times Anti-2nd Amendment Article

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Sun-Times is Chicago’s left-wing, left-wing paper while the Chicago Tribune is but the city’s left-wing paper and pursuant to its agenda, the Sun-Times recently made to shore up support for Mayor “King” Daley’s attempt to eliminate the Second Amendment for his Chicago subjects with its headlined “More guns in city not a good thing.” Naturally most of what is contained in the piece is incorrect and deserves a good fisking.

So, here goes…

This won’t make the NRA happy. Twelve guns a year? How dare Chicago restrict a citizen’s right to buy 12 million guns a year.

My response here won’t make the Sun-Times happy: Newspapers? They have a constitutional right to be free of government interference, too. We call it the First Amendment. But here’s an idea for you, Sun-Times… how about we limit the public to one newspaper a month? After all, ideas are very, very dangerous, aren’t they? If, Sun-Times, you have no problem with our Second Amendment rights being restricted by the federal, the state or local governments, why should you be all upset that your First Amendment rights are restricted? Where is the intellectual honesty in agreeing to restrict the Second Amendment but not the First?
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Fisking the Chgo Sun-Times Anti-2nd Amendment Article”


U of Ill. Instructor Fired Over His Catholic Beliefs

-By Warner Todd Huston

A University of Illinois instructor of the school’s Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought course was fired at the end of last semester because he had the temerity to send a student an email that explained the Catholic doctrine against homosexuality.

In the email, professor Ken Howell of Champaign wrote, “Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

The thought police at U of I decided that no teacher that taught Catholic theory had better EVER be a real Catholic that actually holds Catholic beliefs. Why, it would be unseemly, don’t you know?

The anti-intellectual student went whining to school authorities after he was made to see an opinion with which he does not agree from a class about religion. One wonders why this mentally retarded student was even taking the class?
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U of Ill. Instructor Fired Over His Catholic Beliefs”


Another Sign of Unions Losing Allies

-By Warner Todd Huston

Again the New York Times reports on the confusion, anger, and loss of influence being experienced by shocked unions, this time teachers unions. Like the psychotic that lashes out at everyone around them when things are going wrong, at a New Orleans teachers union convention there is a lot of harsh words for former friends in the Obama administration the Times reports.

Listen to this falderal from Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, as he spoke to the assembled, “This is not the change I hoped for… Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced.”
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Another Sign of Unions Losing Allies”


Podcast: We Need A New Declaration of Independence

Yep, this one’ll get the lib’s panties all in a twist. “He’s calling for Revolution,” they’ll whine.

I even added some nice fife and drum Yankee Doodle music to this. Enjoy!


In Florida Schools, Bibles Banned… On Religious Freedom Day

-By Warner Todd Huston

A group called Liberty Counsel is suing Florida’s Collier County Schools for banning Bibles from being distributed on its campuses even after allowing the practice for years. The organization World Changers has been distributing Bibles to students during off-school hours on the day closest to national Religious Freedom Day — held on January 16 — for some time. Yet now school district officials have declared that the Bible holds no “educational benefit” to students. (download .pdf of complaint here)

The Collier County School District policy specifically allows the distribution of literature by nonprofit organizations, but only with the approval of the superintendent and the Community Request Committee, whose members are appointed by the superintendent. Approval was denied to World Changers, despite the fact that its distribution included a disclaimer of any school endorsement or sponsorship and that receiving a Bible was purely voluntary. The district, nevertheless, censored World Changers’ message simply because it included the Bible.

Liberty Counsel founder Matthew D. Staver said in a press release, “…we are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools. Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible. If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate. The distribution of religious literature in a forum opened for secular literature is constitutionally protected.”
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In Florida Schools, Bibles Banned… On Religious Freedom Day”


Worst Teachers Rewarded by Unions, New Teachers Abandoned

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week the Chicago Tribune published an editorial detailing the biggest reason why unions as they have operated in the U.S. for decades are an illegitimate venture. The Trib published a plea to new Chicago teachers union chief Karen Lewis not to protect the bad teachers under her charge and to help the younger teachers that haven’t yet proved to be bad for kids by allowing the bad ones to be laid off without complaint.

The Trib’s editorial called the practice of keeping bad teachers “dancing lemons,” revealing the sad practice of shuffling bad teachers around the system instead of firing merely because they may have tenure on the job. While new teachers are automatically laid off due to budget cuts, teachers that have a disciplinary problem or a troubled history are kept because they’ve been on the job longer. This is wrong and reflects badly on the union and teachers alike, not to mention that it leads to a bad education for our kids.
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Worst Teachers Rewarded by Unions, New Teachers Abandoned”


Wisc. Dem. Unaware that Arizona Borders with Mexico (Plus YouTube Pulls Video)

-By Warner Todd Huston

Wisconsin Democrat Peggy West says that we shouldn’t accept Arizona’s anti-illegal immigrant law because Arizona isn’t a border state. If it were, West apparently thinks, we could excuse Arizona’s worries over the integrity of its borders. Peggy West is obviously no geography scholar.

As TMJ Channel 4 in Milwaukee reports, West told the crowd at the Milwaukee County Board meeting an interesting tale. “If this was Texas,” West seriously begins, “which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this. But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border.”

(Note: video has short ad at beginning…)

Mz West is obviously a wondermous product of our public school system. She even got herself a Dee-gree at an area Kollage, too. And now she sits on the Executive Committee of the Milwaukee Democrat Party and is also the County Supervisor of Milwaukee County’s 12th District.
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Wisc. Dem. Unaware that Arizona Borders with Mexico (Plus YouTube Pulls Video)”


Protest Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers at Roosevelt University‏

Please join Reform Chicago Now for this important protest and spread the word by inviting at least one friend to come with you. Let’s send a strong message that terrorism will not be tolerated – even if the terrorist is a friend of Barack Obama’s.

There will be a protest THIS THURSDAY at 5:45 pm of terrorist-turned-university professor Bill Ayers. Weatherman bombing terrorist and friend of President Barack Obama is holding a fundraiser this Thursday at Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The benefit is for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The admitted bomber and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn planned multiple terrorist bombings in the late 1960s, bombings that resulted in the murder of a San Francisco police officer, the blinding of another with nail shrapnel, and other murders and the injury of many others.

Ayers, a bomb designer, has boasted publicly that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. In all, the Weatherman claimed responsibility for more than 25 other bombings in its infamous reign of terror.
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Protest Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers at Roosevelt University‏”


Despite Misconception, We Conservatives DO Want Some Government

-By Warner Todd Huston

Leftists love to purposefully misconstrue what sort of government conservatives want. Certainly whenever some new big government boondoggle erupts in the typical corruption and waste that is government, conservatives rail against the misappropriation of powers that such boondoggles invariably mean. But when government isn’t doing something they want it to do and conservatives kvetch with equal vitriol, the first attack left-wingers charge them with is hypocrisy. The left’s taunt, however, is a willful misread of what it is that conservatives are saying in their critique of government.

Unfortunately, many conservatives make this taunt all the easier to level because it seems that they are a bit hazy themselves on just what they should think about the role of government.

Conservatives come by this problem honestly, though. What conservative worth his salt is unaware of Ronald Reagan’s famous small government quote: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” (Reagan’s first inaugural address)
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Despite Misconception, We Conservatives DO Want Some Government”


The $5,000 Pancake

-By John Armor

Saturday a week ago I had a $5,000 blueberry pancake. Actually, I had two of them. They were just as delicious as the ones I had last fall. All of them were courtesy of the Scaly Mountain Women’s Club.

Scaly Mountain is an unincorporated community just down the Dillard Road from us, about ten miles from the intersection of the North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia borders. In the summer, Scaly Mountain swells to several thousand people. In the winter, it shrinks to a few hundred. But, there is never a shortage of fine people who willingly give their time, efforts and treasure for the benefit of others.

A lady whom we’ve met before, Kay Steele, was kind enough to tell us the history of the Women’s Club. It began 22 years ago with just 14 members. Now, it has grown to about 80 women. This is the seventh year they have run their Pancake Breakfast at the Community Center (which used to be a church, and before that was a one-room school, but more about that later).
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The $5,000 Pancake”


Another School-Makes-Little-Boys-Cross-Dress Story

-By Warner Todd Huston

In April I had a story that raised a ruckus in New Jersey. To celebrate women’s history month, Maude Wilkins Elementary School thought it would be cool for their grade school students to dress like women… yes, even the little boys. Well this moth yet another east coast grade school is trying to force its little boys to cross-dress, this time in New York.

Andrea Peyser reports that a Roosevelt Island school for children with special needs — The Child School and Legacy High School, a private school — decided to throw on a play, a kiddie version of the gay-themed romp La Cage aux Folles.

A father “almost choked on his Wheaties,” Peyser writes, when his developmentally disabled child expressed no desire to “wear a dress to school” that day. Of course, the father was quite upset that his special needs child was being used to push the gay agenda even as the boy didn’t understand exactly what was going on.
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Another School-Makes-Little-Boys-Cross-Dress Story”


2-Inch-Tall Army Soldiers Gets School Kid Reprimanded

-By Warner Todd Huston

A policy of no tolerance for weapons got an 8-year-old boy in trouble at his Rhode Island grade school this week. The boy brought in nearly a dozen M-14 Army rifles to his Tiogue School in Coventry, R.I. grade school and was chastised by the principal for the outrage.

How did he get all those assault rifles into the school you might ask? Why he did it by gluing seven or so of his 2-inch-tall green army soldier toys to his camo colored ball cap for “make a crazy hat” day at school. That’s right, a few green army man toys were enough to trip the poor child up in this foolish school’s “no weapons” policy. (Photo credit, WPRI.com)

Seriously. No weapons includes 2-inch-tall army soldier toys holding teeny, tiny representations of army rifles. 2-inch-tall army soldier toys are enough to get a kid sent in shame to the principal’s office and threatened with sterner action.
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2-Inch-Tall Army Soldiers Gets School Kid Reprimanded”