TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Politics

  • Blogging, students, and the First Amendment

    Blogging, students, and the First Amendment

    Can Schools Punish Students for Posting Offensive Content on MySpace and Similar Sites? Often, the Answer Is No, Unless The Posting Materially Disrupts School Activities:

    This is a great article from FindLaw about blogging, students, and the First Amendment and whether or not schools can punish students for blog posts they make at home. And I’m not saying it’s a great article because I get a mention in it. 😀 I hear a lot of cries of “But..but..but it’s free speech and it’s protected by the First Amendment”. Well now, hopefully this article should clear a few things up…

    Cases Where Postings Violate the Law, or Provide Evidence of Its Violation

    These sites – though a boon to students in many ways – have also raised their share of problems. And some of the problems may also involve torts, or violations of the criminal law.

    In some instances, students engage in cyber-bullying — making critical remarks about other students or teachers. If these postings are factual, false, and damaging, they may count as defamation. The sites cannot be sued: Under a key provision of the Communications Decency Act, web intermediaries – those who merely allow others to post their own comments and photos – are not liable for defamation. But the authors can be.

    Sometimes postings may be evidence of law-violation: In photos, underage subjects may be shown in sexually provocative poses, or shown smoking or drinking, or holding firearms. For instance, a 16-year-old boy in Jefferson, Colorado was arrested after police — having seen pictures on his MySpace page in which he was holding handguns – found the weapons in his home. And in late April, police reportedly intercepted a Columbine-style plot in Kansas on the basis of a threatening email posted on MySpace.com.

    And sometimes postings may themselves violate the law – making criminal threats, or constituting harassment. In Costa Mesa, California, twenty students were suspended from TeWinkle Middle School for two days for participating in a MySpace group where one student allegedly threatened to kill another and made anti-Semitic remarks.

    So let this be a lesson to you that not all speech is protected under the First Amendment. And if you’re in a private school, you’re out of luck.

  • Blackface

    Blackface

    Vandals Spray Black Paint Over Faces In Confederate Monument:

    I don’t condone vandalism, but I’m sorry, this cracks me up to no end. Isn’t it like rain on your wedding day? 😆

  • Videospiel-Gewaltttigkeit

    Videospiel-Gewaltttigkeit

    Computer games train players to be violent?:

    I guess it’s not just Americans who harp on the alleged links between video games and violence. Now we have a study coming out of Germany from the “Stuff that we pulled out of our ass Department” at the University of Aachen from renowned German scientist Klaus Mathiak which says that video games are training people to be violent. Mein Gott, here we go again…

    Klaus Mathiak, of the University of Aachen, maintains he has discovered for the first time what goes on in players’ heads as a killer character lies in wait on a computer screen.

    Their brains react as if they are treating the encounter as real, says the academic.

    According to Dr Mathiak, when players know violence is coming, the cognitive parts of the brain become more active and during a fight its emotional parts shut down.

    How did Herr Doktor measure these activities?

    According to New Scientist, Dr Mathiak recruited 13 young men who played video games for two hours daily. He asked them to play the game while having their brains scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

    Dr Mathiak studied how brain activity changed during violent interactions.

    I’d be more inclined to believe him if he then dropped the subjects into an actual scenario of impending violence like Iraq or any violent big-city neighborhood, then compared findings. Most of these kids would probably crap their pants if they were in a real situation of violence.

    At least the British are thinking clearly…

    Last night, Mike McClure, director of public education at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said there were individuals who were susceptible to suggestions inherent in video games. But he added: “You would have to say it is a small minority. Most people can distinguish between them as a game and what they would be doing in reality.”

    And that small minority has something wrong with them to begin with.

    And as an added bonus, a follow-up to Rep. Chuck Schumer’s snit over the game “25 to Life”.

    According to the guys at Penny Arcade you can also play as the police. Notice that Chucky boy doesn’t mention that part.

    Instead of worrying about the games themselves, maybe scientists and politicians should worry about the parents that are letting these games into their houses for underage kids to play.

  • Video Game Violence 2005

    Video Game Violence 2005

    Violent game furor:

    Here we go again, folks. Last year, it was GTA: San Andreas. This year it’s a new game made by Eidos called “25 to Life”. This is the first I’ve heard about this game, so let me quote the article…

    “25 to Life,” allows players to attack police with an arsenal of Molotov cocktails, broken bottles and baseball bats. When weapons fail, players make strategic moves using civilians as human shields.

    The game even lets players choose gang colors and create personalized graffiti tags.

    It sounds like a GTA rip off to me. I bet the gameplay will suck. But of course, that’s not the point here. Certain lawmakers have their panties in a wad…

    “It’s the worst in a series of violent and gruesome games that lower the common denominator of decency,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is trying to block the game from hitting stores in September.

    “25 to Life” makes “other controversial games like ‘Grand Theft Auto’ look like ‘Romper Room,’” Schumer said.

    Schumer called on PlayStation manufacturer Sony and Xbox maker Microsoft to cancel their licensing agreements with Eidos. The senator also urged stores and retailers not to stock the game.

    Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, slammed “25 to Life” for its cavalier treatment of murder.

    “It’s outrageous that a company like this would try to desensitize our children,” Lynch said.

    First off, have you noticed that when a politician is usually involved in calling for the censoring of a video game, it’s usually a Democrat?

    Secondly, these are obviously people who have never held a game controller in their life, or at least not since Space Invaders or the Atari 2600.

    Not all video games are aimed towards children anymore, and haven’t been since the dawn of Mortal Kombat back in the early ’90s.

    Lastly, the bigger a deal you make out of these games, the more hype you’re giving them. You’re taking what looks like to be a mediocre game at best, and you’re potentially making it a blockbuster by trying to censor it. People always want what they can’t have.

    If this game ends up in the hands of children, it’s because of irresponsible parents, and I have yet to hear any kind of blame falling on them. Remember kids, censorship is the solution to bad parenting. Or so says the Democrats.

  • Rampage is Racist

    Rampage is Racist

    Reader’s Representative: Sorrowful news held extra challenges:

    (Log in info) It seems that Kate Parry, the “Reader Representative” of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has an issue with the way the Red Lake shootings were reported…

    Like anyone, journalists make mistakes, especially when working fast and under difficult conditions. There have been mistakes in the Red Lake coverage, which we’ve corrected. One that can’t really be corrected but warrants discussion is the headline used on the first day of coverage. In large type it read: “Rampage at Red Lake.”

    While the technical definition of “rampage” would accurately describe a shooting that leaves 10 dead, it was a poorly chosen word to describe a catastrophe on an Indian reservation. Portrayals of “rampaging Indians” fed hateful stereotypes in books and movies for many years. Yet I’ve seen the word used in many media around the country to describe the Red Lake shooting.

    Here in Minnesota, where so many neighbors are Native American, we have the opportunity to be better informed about native issues and sensitive to language. Someone should have stopped that headline before it saw print.

    Emphasis mine.

    So the word “rampage” is racist because Jeff Weise was an American Indian. Well, what word or phrase would you have preferred? That he went on a “merry jaunt”? That he “cavorted with bullets”? That he went on a “lead filled excursion”? The kid went on a fucking rampage. But if he was white, or black, or Hispanic, or Asian, then rampage would have been ok? It’s not like the headline read “Him go on warpath after he smoke ’em peace pipe”. Instead of trying to be politically correct, how about reporting this thing called the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts. Deal with it.

    Link via Tongue Tied.

  • The 2004 Trenchie Awards

    The 2004 Trenchie Awards

    It’s the post that I look forward to all year long. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 4th annual Trenchie awards. The best and worst of my year, as voted for by me. Let’s get right to it.

    Best Move I’ve Seen This Year:
    Veronica Guerin. This movie about an Irish journalist is assassinated by drug dealers she wrote about in a series of stories moved me in a way that I’ve never been moved before. I was first made aware of the story by the song “Veronica Guerin” off the Savatage album “Wake of Magellan”. If you get a chance, check out both the movie and the CD.

    Worst Movie I’ve Seen This Year:
    There were a plethora of movies to choose from this year. There was the unspeakable 13th Child, which was supposed to be a horror movie about the legend of the Jersey Devil. I don’t know what that crap was, though.

    Then there was the British indie flick Blood about a girl who was genetically altered to have narcotic blood.

    But the winner/loser has to be Elephant. This movie about a Columbine-like school shooting has to be the most boring piece of crap I’ve ever seen. The critics creamed their jeans over this movie, calling its writer/director Gus Van Sant a genius. As usual, the critics are on crack. It was like having a tooth drilled with no Novocaine for 81 minutes.

    Best Album of the Year:
    This was tough. It was a pretty good year for music. There was Master of the Moon by the metal god that is Dio. There was also Inner Circle by Evergrey. However, this year’s winner took the title early and never let go. It was The Glorious Burden by Iced Earth. Their first album with new vocalist and one-time Judas Priest frontman Tim “Ripper” Owens. A themed album that dealt mostly with the history of war. This album is the definition of metal.

    Worst Album of the Year:
    The Neon God Part 1: The Rise by W.A.S.P. The first part of a concept album released by the lesser of the metal gods Blackie Lawless. While I am a huge fan of the first W.A.S.P. concept album The Crimson Idol, this one just doesn’t even come close. Made me not want to pick up Vol 2.

    Best TV Show of the Year:
    The winner and new champion is House, the medical drama on Fox. It knocked 24 out of the top spot, since season 3 of 24 was all over the map in terms of storyline. House is about a doctor who solves patients diagnoses that other doctors can’t discern. Did I mention that he hates people? My kind of doctor.

    Worst TV Show of the Year:
    I have to give dishonorable mention to The 4400. The concept of that show started out great about 4400 people who were returned to earth after being abducted by aliens through the past 7 decades and returning with no knowledge of them being gone or having aged a day. Then they all started getting SUPERPOWERS. I stopped watching at that point. But the winner/loser has to go to Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital. This show was so painful to watch. Stephen King should just stick to books.

    Best Wrestling Moment of the Year:
    Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit winning their respective world titles at WrestleMania XX. It showed that popular world champions don’t have to be big, juiced out freaks. Sadly, from what I hear, we’re getting more huge juiced out freaks in the future from Vinny Mac.

    Worst Wrestling Moment of the Year: Apparently the WWE is very tightfisted about allowing people to post pics on the web. Bastards. Anyway, it has to be the Lita/Kane pregnancy angle. Not only was this possibly the worst storyline ever, it may also go down in history as the most offensive. Plus, it’s the angle that put old moon face himself Gene Snitsky on our TVs. That should be reason enough right there.

    Best Video Game of the Year:
    I know what you’re saying. What about Halo? What about San Andreas? I have one word for you. Baaaaaaaaaa. Front Mission 4 from Square-Enix was the most engrossing and addictive game I played all year. It’s a turn-based tactics style game where you battle evil in giant robots armed with giant machine guns, shotguns, and missiles.

    Honorable mention has to go to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. A groundbreaking RPG. Instead of saving the world, the world has already been destroyed and you have to survive. My only complaint is that some of the levels are long and boring.

    Worst Video Game of the Year:
    Samurai Warriors by Koei. While Little Jay and I are big fans of the hack and slash Dynasty Warrior series, Samurai Warriors didn’t live up to its predecessors. The incredibly lousy camera angles totally ruined any chance of decent gameplay.

    Best Movie Line of the Year:
    From The Boondock Saints when Rocco fondles the passed out strippers breast. Connor MacManus says”What the fuck are you doing?” Rocco screams, “I’ll tip her”. I’m not doing it justice. See the movie.

    Biggest Dumbass of the Year:
    Bruce Friedrich of PETA, who compared the chickens KFC uses to the time in our country when blacks were used as slaves.

    Most Inane Political Agenda of the Year:
    Remember the woman who refused to have a C-section and ended up killing one of her babies that we lovingly refer to as Scarzilla. Well, at the time of her court appearances pro-death organizations like NOW, NARAL and the ACLU were saying that the prosecutors’ attempt to charge her with murder was somehow a conspiracy against abortion rights.

    Biggest Jackass Celebrity of the Year: My wife gave me the idea for this one. Everyone’s favorite skank ho, Britney Spears. Two marriages, one over in less than 24 hours. The other to a no-name dancer with no prenup while his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his child. Going into gas station bathrooms in bare feet. And the list goes on and on. You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.

    That’s it for this year, kids. Have a safe Amateur night.

  • Hoping against Hope

    Hoping against Hope

    Things I hope for in tomorrow’s election:

    1. A clear winner. Hopefully, there will be enough of a difference in the results, so the election won’t be in dispute.
    2. If someone concedes, be a man of your word and stick to it. Al Gore could have saved this country a lot of frustrations and leftist cries of a stolen election if he had just stuck to his word.
    3. If President Bush wins by a considerable majority, that the left will finally shut up about “stolen elections”.
    4. If Senator Kerry wins that conservatives regret the loss, congratulate Senator Kerry and focus on 2008.
    5. That the news media shows a modicum of partiality and not declare winners in states that are still too close to call. If the media didn’t declare Gore the winner in Florida too early, we wouldn’t have had the problems we did in 2000.
    6. That the people who say they’ll leave the country if Bush gets re-elected actually leave if he gets re-elected.
    7. This bears repeating. That when we all wake up on November 3rd we have one clear winner, a gracious loser, and citizens who can get on with their lives.

    I know I’m hoping for too much.

  • Live Long and Protest

    Live Long and Protest

    If I had the time and resources and if I were a total geek, I would make one of the greatest satire sites ever, if it hasn’t already been done. I would take a Star Trek slant on the current war on terror.

    There would be Intergalactic A.N.S.W.E.R. who would try to tell us that the Romulans are just a poor and oppressed people. EngageOn.org, who would say that we have no business being in the Neutral Zone and accuse the current President of the United Federation Of Planets of being controlled by a Ferengi dilithium crystal mining company.

    And my personal favorite, “Shuttle Captains for the Truth”. A previously unheard of ensign actually survives an away mission. He receives a commendation for being injured in battle, but the truth is he just scratched himself with his communicator. When he’s discharged from Star Fleet after only three months, he speaks out at several rallies in favor of the Borg. Then years later, he tries running for President of the Federation, claiming he singlehandedly defeated the Borg.

  • Nazi Recruiters

    Nazi Recruiters

    I really hate to steal ideas from other bloggers, but Zombyboy from Resurrection Song presents a really good point.

    Panzerfaust Records is a neo-Nazi record label whose bands promote the usual Nazi rhetoric. What really sickens me is what they call Project Schoolyard. I’ll let them use their own words to hang themselves…

    In the spring of 2004, German patriots announced their plan to produce 100,000 sampler CDs containing German nationalist rock and roll and distribute them to youth in their country. This effort, Project Schoolyard, was examined by lawyers to make sure that none of the music violated Germany’s oppressive laws against free speech. Although everything was approved, the project received much hysterical media attention, and the CD was outlawed by the German government. Every CD factory in the country was contacted by the government and warned not to produce the now “illegal music.” Every school in Germany was contacted by police and told to be on the alert for anyone distributing the forbidden CDs. It looked like Project Schoolyard had been shut down, but on Friday, September 3, 2004, the increasingly popular far-right political party, NPD, put out a press release that a new CD had been arranged, a factory had agreed to produce it, and that 25,000 of the discs would be handed out all over Germany by volunteers on the weekend of September 4th and 5th. Since the government does not operate on weekends, the soonest that they could outlaw that CD is first thing Monday morning, but of course, they will all have been distributed by then.

    As an expression of the increasing level of international solidarity and cooperation between White nationalists, Project Schoolyard has crossed the Atlantic and is being continued here in the U.S. Panzerfaust Records is pressing 100,000 copies of a pro-White sampler CD to be handed out to White youth from coast to coast in every state, including Hawaii. Volunteers from every pro-White group and organization in the U.S. have signed up to assist us in this project, as well as numerous unaffiliated individuals, consisting mostly of our customers/supporters who are high school students themselves. These CDs will be handed out in middle schools, high schools, university campuses, shopping malls, sporting events, mainstream concerts, parties, etc…

    They want to recruit kids, your kids. Want to do something about it? Here’s their web host EV1SERVERS.net. Write them here. The host is based out of Houston TX. The local paper is the Houston Chronicle. Write the Chronicle about it here. Let them know that white supremacists and their sympathizers are not welcome near our schools. Don’t just sit back and do nothing.

    (UPDATE: EV1Servers has since dropped that site)

  • Another Confederate Controversy

    Another Confederate Controversy

    Here’s where I get called a liberal, a Yankee, and usually some other unflattering comments, which usually show off the ignorance of the commenter.

    Confederate flag causes flap:

    So this kid from a little Podunk town in North Carolina attends college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He buys two confederate flags at a Virginia gift shop. He displays one in his window and then says that he didn’t think it would be a problem? In the essence of fairness, here is his argument.

    The flag’s owner says it’s about pride.

    People don’t get upset about the Rebel flag in King, N.C., he says.

    The town of about 7,000 people, and “about 97 percent white,” Montgomery says, are used to seeing it hanging in front of neighbors’ houses.

    The flag comes second – after the American flag, before the state flag – in the town’s annual parade.

    To Montgomery, the flag means rolling hills and lush Carolina valleys. It means King, where he knows everyone and everyone knows him.

    It’s collard greens, grits with butter and a friendly wave from a front porch as you drive by, he says.

    It’s the South he knows and loves.

    “When I look at it, I think of home.”

    First off, I think flying the Confederate flag before the state flag of North Carolina is doing a great disservice to North Carolina. Basically, what you’re saying is that a defunct, anti-abolitionist, segregationist and some would even say a seditious country is better than what North Carolina is today.

    I may just be a “Yankee transplant” but I love North Carolina, and I’m damn proud to make it my home. And it’s all these rebel flag waving hicks that make it look bad to the rest of the country. And if you want to bring something with you that reminds of you of home, bring a banner from Duke or N.C. State or God forbid…Chapel Hill.

    Now the opposing opinion, which I happen to agree with.

    The “Southern Cross” rose to post-Civil War prominence around the turn of the 20th century, at the same time many Reconstruction-era reforms were being eroded by Southern state governments, he says.

    It rose again during the 1960s, when those opposing the Civil Rights movement used it as a symbol of defiance against the federally mandated integration of schools.

    The Strom Thurmond-led Dixiecrat party adopted it when it broke from the Democrats during the early stages of the Civil Rights struggle.

    So have countless white supremacy groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.

    “As a historian, I find it difficult to untangle the symbol from racial inequality,” Jones says. “To say this flag isn’t linked to slavery – That’s a historically inaccurate statement if we’re honest about it.”

    And let’s not leave out that the Confederacy lost. Now, this kid has every Constitutional right to display the flag if he so chooses. However, common-sense dictates that if you do choose to display the flag, there is going to be controversy.

    Personally, I think the south has every right to be proud. I love the south. I extol its virtues on almost a daily basis. What they should not be proud of is the Confederacy. If you want to have a universally recognized flag of southern pride, then maybe y’all should get together and design a new one. Because the old one is nothing to be proud of.