Public school idiocy: Teen eats shared chicken nuggets, gets taken away in police handcuffs

 News  3 Responses »
Jul 212010
 

It’s difficult to express the sheer absurdity of this story, but it perhaps helps explain why our country is falling so swiftly. Are we truly this pathetically stupid and our schools and police this tyrannical and amoral?

A 15-year old boy ate chicken nuggets given to him by a friend.  As a result, the police arrested him and took him away in handcuffs.

Ava Hernandez got a disturbing voicemail message from the Assistant Principal of Shorewood High School in March. Her 15-year-old brother Adam has been taken into police custody. She says, “It was because his friend had shared a lunch with him and he was accused of stealing [It] was really, I don’t know, it was just over the top.”

Adam was accused of stealing chicken nuggets from a $2.60 meal. Those are the nuggets his friend, Gakaree Garner, gave to him. Garner says, “Although that month I was fasting so I couldn’t eat meat, and we had chicken nuggets that day.”
…
Garner says, “They actually put him in handcuffs, and actually tried to force him into the car.”

Adam Hernandez was slapped with a theft citation and a $170 fine. However, after public outrage following news coverage from a local television station, the school principal and the police chief dropped the charges like a hot potato.

Kagan appointment: How separate are church and state in the United States?

 News, Opinions, Uncategorized  Comments Off on Kagan appointment: How separate are church and state in the United States?
Jul 212010
 

Should we view the following astonishing statistics as separation of “church and state” in the United States, or rather “government without representation”?

The current makeup of the United States Supreme Court includes 6 Catholics and 2 Jews. If Kagan’s nomination goes through, there will be 6 Catholics and 3 Jews on the Supreme Court.  The make-up of the court would be 66.6% Catholic justices and 33.3% Jewish justices.

As of 2008 the U.S. population professed to be 76% Christian with 25.1% of the population specifying Catholicism. This means that slightly over 50% of the American population professes to be Protestant. The Jewish faith makes up 1.2% of the 2008 population and 15% of the population stated that it had no religious affiliation. Here is a graph with a more detailed break out.

This is a list of the current supreme court justices with their religious affiliations.

John Roberts – Catholic

Stephen G. Breyer – Jewish

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Jewish

Anthony M. Kennedy –  Catholic

Antonin Scalia – Catholic

Sonia Maria Sotomayor – Catholic

Clarence Thomas – Catholic

Samuel Alito – Catholic

John Paul Stevens  – Protestant (retired June 29, 2010)

Elena Kagan – Jewish (Her nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 20, 2010.)

If you’d like a more detailed look at the history of the Supreme Court and religious affiliation in our country, scroll through this interesting page.

At this point, I’m beginning to feel a little, no a lot, like Marvin, the robot in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy….