I miss the First Amendment, wherever it is

Like, whatever happened to the Tinker decision?

The Nashville Tennessean tells us:

Norma Super and her daughter, Dani, proudly displayed "Free The Jena Six" T-shirts at a recent Nashville march. They didn't expect censorship, however, when they arrived at Smyrna High School last week.

The message was meant to support six African-American students charged in the beating of a white peer at Jena High School in Louisiana. While the case gained national attention, primarily for its racial overtones, locally it raised the issue of students' rights to free speech.

Super's daughter was prohibited from wearing the T-shirt inside Smyrna High, along with some other students.

"When I persisted to ask why, the quote was that 'It could cause problems,'" Super said. "It's a political statement. I feel strongly about free speech. I feel like (my daughter's) rights were infringed upon."

School systems throughout the nation have enacted stricter dress codes in recent years and have effectively banned symbols such as Confederate flags and those associated with urban clothing labels. They contend such symbols and images disrupt the learning environment and could jeopardize student safety by sparking arguments and possibly fights.

Messages were left for Smyrna High School Principal Robert "Bud" Raikes for this story, but he was not available for comment.

The Smyrna High administration treated the T-shirt as a dress code violation because it could have caused disruptions, Rutherford County schools spokesman James Evans said. Earlier that morning a handful of students made racial comments in the hallways, and administrators had to intervene, he said.

While providing a safe environment, schools must have a valid reason to stop reasonable student expression, a Nashville legal scholar says.

"Public school officials can censor student expression if they can reasonably forecast that the student expression will cause a substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others," said David L. Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

Students' First Amendment rights on campus are supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Tinker vs. Des Moines (Iowa) Independent Community School District. In that case, two students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

(snip)

"What educators can't do is censor simply because they don't like it or because of undifferentiated fear," Hudson said. "They have to point to facts in a school environment. They just can't say, 'Oh, we think this will cause a disruption.' It has to be reasonable."

Hudson teaches First Amendment classes at Vanderbilt Law School and Nashville School of Law. He's also written books on the topic.

When it comes to the classroom, teachers have a broad authority to censor student expression because the courts have determined that learning is more important than free speech, Hudson said.

Hudson, though, said he worries about school administrators who don't provide reasonable proof about causing a disturbance and instead create an environment "where students won't appreciate our Bill of Rights."

AMAZING, ISN'T IT, that it's the First Amendment that always takes it in the shorts when school administrators can't control roving bands of little racists obviously raised by wolves. As society continues to coarsen and people further eschew socialization, how many constitutional rights will we see disappear, all in the name of keeping order?

Don't answer that.

Finally! A video update on our pal Kristy

At long last! A new Kristy Dusseau video! We'd kind of been waiting. . . .

Anyway, since this video was filmed, Kristy has been out of the hospital, and then back in. Have I mentioned lately that cancer sucks?

Not to mention the aftereffects of what they do to you to get rid of the cancer. You can ask Mrs. Favog about that one. Or Kristy, who (sadly) may be one of the world's leading experts on that score.

Anyway, here are the latest updates from Kristy's big brother, Rob:

10-7-07

Well it turns out I was dead wrong about Kristy's getting out. She's still in the hospital right now recovering from the surgery to close up the wound left behind by her feeding tube. I guess since they've removed the tube (a week or two ago) her skin keeps breaking apart where it used to be. They've cauterized it, stitched it, stabled it, you name it trying to heal it back together.

I'll let you guys know when she's out.

I finally got the latest movie together. You can see it over there on the right. I thought it was pretty dull so I added some music to jazz it up a bit. This was taken last august at one of her stays in hospital.

Very busy, get back with you guys soon.

10-4-07

Hello everyone. Thanks for your patience. Yet another stay in the hospital. This one was a little scary.

You see I had everything figured out. Last Friday night Kristy was to accompany friends and siblings to a classy comedy club here in Michigan called Joey's. It might not sound fancy, I know, but it's actually a really nice place as far as comedy clubs go. There was ten of us in total going, and Thursday night I called to surprise her with the news.

She sounded tired, but very happy to be going. Dad and I worked out how I was going to go about getting her to the club, and I took a half day off of work just to make sure I could get her in time to make it.

Friday morning she had one of her regular check-ups at the hospital, and around noon my father called to tell me she had been omitted.

"There's something wrong with her lungs. They think she might have some kind of virus. Kristy was really upset about it because you know they don't do anything on the weekends. They're worried that the Graft vs Host might have come back in her lungs ... which would be really bad"

"But I thought Kristy was doing great?"

"She has been getting weaker over the past few days. She's only able to stay awake for about four hours at a time now. The doctors want to put her out and fill her lungs with fluid. After that I guess they take it back out and study it."

I was really bummed, worried, and angry all at the same time. Needless to say I didn't have the greatest attitude that night. The comedians only got a faint smile from me.

So the weekend went by with nothing being done. Dad reported Kristy seemed stronger, but suspected the drugs had something to do with that.

I started to worry about her. It was a fresh worry, something I had buried deep into the back of my mind had resurfaced again. If it was Graft vs Host, and it was in her lungs, that's something that would take her out quickly.

Monday they were late with the test, as was the norm, and the next day I tried calling my father to hear the results, but his cell phone was off. And no one answered the house phone. I called every hour or so, with each call implanting another terrible image into my head. Maybe they had the phone off and weren't answering because they got some terrible news. Maybe something happen to Kristy last night and they were too upset to talk to anyone. Maybe -

She was fine. It's just a virus, not the Graft vs Host, she's going to be okay. She may have gotten out of the hospital today, if not tomorrow for sure.

If you're reading this mom and dad, don't do that again.

And Kristy, if you're reading this, you're a very loving person, and everyone loves you very much, but you need to stop hugging and kissing people. I know it's hard to do, but people are walking nests of viruses, and until your immunity gets stronger, maybe you should tell people to back off a bit.

Because you and I ARE going on that plane trip to Texas this winter to visit Kenny. Mark my words.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers, working on the video now, but it's a dull one, so be warned.

AS ALWAYS, go to KristyRecovers.com and say "Hey!" And maybe drop a little scratch in the kitty, y'know what I mean?

Free booze and whores would be better

Rod Dreher reports on the New York Times' report on the latest idiotic craze among some scruples-and-cerebellum-deprived Evangelical ministers.

In a story that could have been lifted from The Onion, but in fact appeared in The New York Times, hundreds of Protestant churches are using the ultraviolent videogame Halo to lure teenage boys into church. No, really, I'm not making this up. Excerpt:

Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.

Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.

(snip)

“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”

FREE BOOZE and whores would be even better. They could call the ladies of the evening the Mary Magdalene Hospitality Corps.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

And while I'm thinking of it. . . .

To tell you the truth, not only is this a fine song, well written . . . it's probably the best thing John Mellencamp has done in years. T-Bone Burnett as your producer tends to have that effect on artists.

You'll know Jena by its strange fruit

The mayor of Jena, La., is mad at John Mellencamp in the wake of the rocker's telling it like it is about his little burg's being straight out of In the Heat of the Night.

Actually, Mellencamp uses the home of the Jena Six as a stepping stone to take an unflinching look at race in America. Never mind, hizzoner is miffed, reports The Associated Press:

A video in which rapper Mos Def asked students around the country to walk out Oct. 1 to support the Jena 6 escaped comment by the town’s mayor. When John Mellencamp sang, “Jena, take your nooses down,” he took issue.

“The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied,” Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed Friday to The Associated Press.

He said he had previously stayed quiet, hoping that the town’s courtesy to people who have visited over the past year would speak for itself. “However, the Mellencamp video is so inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough.” Mellencamp could not comment because he was on a plane from California to Indiana and had not heard about McMillin’s comments, publicist Bob Merlis said late Friday.

A note from Mellencamp posted Thursday on his Web site says he is telling a story, not reporting. “The song is not written as an indictment of the people of Jena but, rather, as a condemnation of racism,” it says.

Nooses hung briefly from a big oak tree outside Jena High School a year ago, after a black freshman asked whether black students could sit under it.

IT DOESN'T MATTER, Mr. Mayor, how courteous you are to people you'd like to think well of you. What matters is how you treat your own -- how "courteous" you are to those you see no clear percentage in treating like actual human beings.

In a town where an African-American ninth-grader feels like he has to get the white principal's permission to sit under the "white tree," there's a racism problem and an oppression problem.

That hangman's nooses appeared in the tree after that request, and that those responsible weren't expelled, only exposed the preexisting gangrenous rot in Jena. Racism in Jena is the original sin -- indeed, it's America's original sin -- and every bad thing that's happened there since those nooses swung from the "white tree" are just ripples from homegrown bigots pitching a big rock into a pond called Jena, Louisiana.

Firing up the Silvertone, dusting off the vinyl

We're doing things a little bit differently on the Big Show this week, our first podcast since getting back from a trip back home to Baton Rouge, La.

The trip has led your Mighty Favog to take up the challenge of an old friend and do an extra-long, extra-tasty stroll down memory lane on the Revolution 21 podcast, looking at the music of my misspent youth, why it was important and how it fits in with who I am today.

Or something like that. Mainly, we're just reminiscing and reflecting.

Pretty much.

I'm glad I did it, being that it's been something of a tonic to salve the more bittersweet parts of the trip back home to Louisiana -- like going back to my beloved high school and documenting how it's fallen into ruins . . . all the while kids who don't deserve to learn amid squalor still attend classes there.

I guess I'll never understand how adults in positions of power can be that indifferent toward beautiful, majestic old buildings and beautiful, intelligent young people. It's a crime, and I wish the public treated it as such.

But there are wonderful things -- still -- about my home state, and I have some fond memories of growing up there. And I hope this episode of the Revolution 21 podcast conveys that with all the love I intended.

Listen now.

Be there. Aloha. Cher.

When we let our kids' schools deteriorate into dumps, is it a human-rights violation?

Let's ask the United Nations Human Rights Council . . .

Treaties and Human Rights Council Branch
OHCHR-UNOG
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Friday, Oct. 5, 2007


To Whom It May Concern:


I realize this may be something of a stretch -- all right, a big stretch -- but I was wondering whether the deplorable condition of many U.S. public schools, particularly in the context of the United States being the richest nation on Earth, might constitute violations, at least in principle, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I was thinking, particularly, of Articles 24 and 26:

Article 24

1. Every child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.

Article 26

All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Attached are photographs I took last week at my old high school, Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Magnet High School, from which I graduated in 1979. What I found there would seem to indicate that the school, which was not in that condition when I attended there, has been allowed to deteriorate into a state of abject ruin by the East Baton Rouge Parish (county) School Board. It would appear there has been no meaningful maintenance on the building in the 28 years since my graduation, and that the copious amounts of peeling lead-based paint, crumbling terra cotta and plaster, pothole-sized craters in the gymnasium floor, rusted-over metal surfaces and gym lockers, as well as fetid, deteriorating restrooms pose a clear and present threat to the health and well-being of students who spend eight-plus hours a day there.

Furthermore, I've been informed that Baton Rouge Magnet High School is far from the only East Baton Rouge Parish school in that condition, just a particularly egregious example. One could find many schools across the American South -- and in many Northern urban centers -- in similar condition. Again, this in the context of the richest country on Earth.

I also note that -- while many Baton Rouge schools were in relatively poor condition when I matriculated some three decades ago -- Baton Rouge High's deterioration seems to have coincided with the school system's transition from 65-percent (or so) Caucasian to roughly 80-percent African American in racial makeup.
To my mind, this reflects the abject failure of school-system governors, as well as the local electorate and political and civic leadership, to provide clean, safe and adequate educational facilities for all the community's children, regardless of race, class or socio-economic status. Could not this be interpreted as a clear violation of Articles 24 and 26 of the Covenant? After all, parents with the income and inclination are able to shield their children from fetid educational facilities; the poor and working-class, largely, are not.

Is not a proper education in clean, safe, reasonably maintained facilities -- according to the standards and means of their particular country and region -- a basic human right? And is it proper for parents to expect they must pay a surcharge in private-school tuition to obtain what world governments are charged to provide as a basic service to their citizens?

These are the questions I have, and I eagerly await guidance in this matter.


Sincerely,

The Mighty Favog

cc: Charlotte Placide
Superintendent
East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools

War criminals by any standard

Perhaps it's time to start referring to the Republican Party as The Party, as in Nazi party . . . or Communist party . . . or Party apparatchik . . . or Party functionary . . . or Party orthodoxy.

You know, Party purge, Party power struggle and Party members.

As this New York Times report damningly reveals, there's not so much difference anymore between our Party chief in America and previous Party chiefs who constitute ugly stains on human history, particularly in the bloody 20th century. In fact some infamous Party types got themselves hung, shot or thrown in Allied prisons for life for the self-same things our Supreme Leader, Party chief George W. Bush and his vice premier, Dick Cheney, are most assuredly guilty of.

Here's what the Times reported Thursday:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Mr. Fratto added, “We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence community and our practices fall within U.S. law” and international agreements.

More than two dozen current and former officials involved in counterterrorism were interviewed over the past three months about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the documents and the C.I.A. detention operations they govern.

When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks on his credibility, Mr. Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech of how his department was “a place of inspiration” that had balanced the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the need to uphold the law.

Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence.
The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy.

Mr. Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government’s most authoritative interpreter of the law. “In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out,” he said in an interview. “The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn’t like the advice being given.”

The debate over how terrorist suspects should be held and questioned began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation, both practices the United States had previously denounced when used by other countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or Congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal advice of a handful of appointees.

The policies set off bruising internal battles, pitting administration moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of 2004. But under Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bradbury, the Justice Department was wrenched back into line with the White House.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the C.I.A.’s secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. halted its use of waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner’s cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.

But in July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel.

Douglas W. Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush and wrote a book about it, said he believed the intense pressures of the campaign against terrorism have warped the office’s proper role.

“The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an advocate,” said Mr. Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine University law school. But at times in recent years, Mr. Kmiec said, the office, headed by William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they served on the Supreme Court, “lost its ability to say no.”

(snip)

Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.

With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

“We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003.

Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: “These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”

(snip)

Mr. Bradbury soon emerged as the presumed favorite. But White House officials, still smarting from Mr. Goldsmith’s rebuffs, chose to delay his nomination. Harriet E. Miers, the new White House counsel, “decided to watch Bradbury for a month or two. He was sort of on trial,” one Justice Department official recalled.

Mr. Bradbury’s biography had a Horatio Alger element that appealed to a succession of bosses, including Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court and Mr. Gonzales, the son of poor immigrants. Mr. Bradbury’s father had died when he was an infant, and his mother took in laundry to support her children. The first in his family to go to college, he attended Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School. He joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he came under the tutelage of Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent prosecutor.

Mr. Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Mr. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Mr. Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Mr. Goldsmith had hired Mr. Bradbury as his top deputy.

“We all grew up together,” said Viet D. Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and very much a member of the club. “You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there.”

But what might have been subtle differences in quieter times now cleaved them into warring camps.

Justice Department colleagues say Mr. Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Mr. Bradbury on national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Mr. Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Mr. Yoo and Mr. Goldsmith, both from the academic world.

“As a practicing lawyer, you know how to address real problems,” said Noel J. Francisco, who worked at the Justice Department from 2003 to 2005. “At O.L.C., you’re not writing law review articles and you’re not theorizing. You’re giving a client practical advice on a real problem.”

As he had at the White House, Mr. Gonzales usually said little in meetings with other officials, often deferring to the hard-driving Mr. Addington. Mr. Bradbury also often appeared in accord with the vice president’s lawyer.

Mr. Bradbury appeared to be “fundamentally sympathetic to what the White House and the C.I.A. wanted to do,” recalled Philip Zelikow, a former top State Department official. At interagency meetings on detention and interrogation, Mr. Addington was at times “vituperative,” said Mr. Zelikow, but Mr. Bradbury, while taking similar positions, was “professional and collegial.”

While waiting to learn whether he would be nominated to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Bradbury was in an awkward position, knowing that a decision contrary to White House wishes could kill his chances.

Charles J. Cooper, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan, said he was “very troubled” at the notion of a probationary period.

“If the purpose of the delay was a tryout, I think they should have avoided it,” Mr. Cooper said. “You’re implying that the acting official is molding his or her legal analysis to win the job.”

WHAT WILL BE BUSH'S FATE, and that of his Party underlings? And what fate awaits we who voted him into power and tolerated his soiling of our most sacred principles as Christians, Jews, humanists and Americans . . . not to mention a political opposition who refused to oppose when conscience demanded resolute opposition?

This is going to get ugly. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Disbelief in Omaha, or No Frame of Reference

There's one important thing I think Louisianians need to grasp that many just have no clue about: They need to know that the dysfunction and, indeed, squalor that many never give a second thought is genuinely puzzling and horrifying to most Americans.

A CASE IN POINT is that the Third World conditions at Baton Rouge's "five star school of academic excellence" leave ordinary people in, say, Omaha, Neb., shaking their heads in disbelief that a community would subject its children to such a dilapidated pit. Ordinary urban folk out here on the edge of the Great Plains have no frame of reference for what I found when I recently went back home . . . to Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

And likewise, I fear ordinary Louisianians have no frame of reference for what a functioning education system looks like. What putting your kids first -- at least as a community -- looks like.

This was brought home big-time when my wife told me about the conversation she had with the film-processing guy when she went to pick up the rolls of black-and-white pictures I shot last week at BRMHS.

AS MRS. FAVOG TELLS IT, the fellow's first question was "Do kids still go to school here?"

Yes, she replied.

"Is it in New Orleans?"

No, she said. She asked how he knew the photos were from Louisiana. He said he saw the state seal on the floor in a photograph.

Mrs. Favog told him it was a school in Baton Rouge, La.

"Was it damaged in the hurricane?" he asked. "I took one look at this and figured it was a photo from the hurricane."

No, that's just the school board's neglect of a school over 30 years, she explained, adding that the history behind BRMHS was similar to some schools here in Omaha. In other words, a magnet school created during desegregation.

Mrs. Favog told him Baton Rouge High was my lifeline -- that it was a magnificent old school when I went there, was on the historic register and that it was the first place I learned there were possibilities out there beyond a working-class life. She then explained that now, many alumni were fighting to get it renovated while the school board seemed to want to tear it down.

"Oh my," he said. "I looked at the photos and thought, 'Oh, those poor kids in New Orleans, having to attend this school after it was damaged in a hurricane.' "

He was sympathetic, and wished the BRMHS alumni and students good luck with our efforts. My wife reports the gentleman seemed genuinely stunned that anybody would be expected to attend school in such a building.

WHAT DO YOU SAY when it's your old school that shocks unsuspecting Midwesterners so? I can't speak for Baton Rougeans, but as an Omahan born, raised and educated in Louisiana's capital city, I'm deeply ashamed.

We pretty much have known for decades that the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is incapable of shame . . . or of properly running a school system. And we pretty much have always known that there's something in the Gret Stet's drinking water that renders the population incapable of competent self-government.

But are average folks back home capable of shame anymore? Is anyone deeply, soul-shatteringly, unable-to-show-your-face ashamed that this is the best America's Next Great City (TM) has to offer its "best and brightest" teens?

IS THERE NO VOTER who's hang-your-head ashamed of hiring the incompetents who run the schools that educate their children but can't be bothered to keep them from crumbling like a Western ghost town? And whose solution to their own managerial indifference is to tear down the evidence of their crimes against Louisiana students, replacing the blight by throwing up something new that will be in the same sad shape in a generation or so?

Have they, at long last, no shame? Is their blindness, instead, merely a refusal to see?

Magnificent schools like Baton Rouge High -- great despite what and who birthed them and wonderful despite the ruins that house them -- gave many of us children of Louisiana the eyes to see the dysfunction standing plainly before us.

And we were sooooo out of there when we got the chance.

I OFTEN WONDER whether I ought to have stayed and fought. I wonder, too, whether it would have made a damned bit of difference.

Laissez les bon temps rouler, cher! But don't be surprised if, someday soon, you're rouler-ing all by your lonesome.

UPDATE: Don't forget to read the previous two installments of this Baton Rouge High trilogy of posts and pictures here and here. Heck, for that matter, just go to the front page and peruse the whole blog.

You'll be glad you did (wink).

More scenes from 'America's next great city'

Down in Baton Rouge, La., Mayor-President Melvin "Kip" Holden is fond of saying he presides over "America's next great city."

I'm from there. I love the place. I want the PR hype to be true.

THE PHOTO ABOVE shows the revitalized kind of place the good mayor wants the rest of America -- and the world -- to see. Indeed, downtown has made amazing progress since my wife and I moved away in 1988 -- never would I have thought Third Street again would be this hoppin' on a Friday night.

But to live up to the hype of "America's next great city," you need more than a rebounding downtown and big crowds for a free concert and Abita Beer pub crawl. To be "America's next great city," you need an educated populace.

You need to care about your kids, and that means giving them better places to learn than what you give Fido (or Phideaux, as the case may be) to sleep.

These pictures belie the "great city" hype. These are more pictures of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School. These pictures do not reflect a great city.

These pictures reflect Mogadishu, or something equally wretched. These are pictures of how a local school board refuses to perform even basic, routine maintenance on a grand old building -- a grand old building filled with the city's best and brightest teen-agers -- and lets it rot until it falls apart.

With the city's children within its crumbling walls.

Great cities don't stand still for this kind of outrage. Great cities' boards of education don't neglect a venerable and acclaimed school until it molders in Third World squalor.

Great cities' school boards don't then have public panic attacks, wondering whether the whole thing just ought to be torn down, when the evidence against them becomes damning and blatant.

See, that's what you call destroying evidence of the crime.

NO, GREAT CITIES don't put up with crap like that when its children's lives and futures are at stake. And great cities don't go around tearing down giant pieces of its history when they can do better than that.

They don't. They. Just. Don't.

I want my hometown to be a great city. Sadly, I see little in the Baton Rouge Magnet High fiasco to bolster my confidence that it will be someday.

Home is where the heartbreak is

My wife and I just got back to Omaha from a visit to Baton Rouge, during which I spent a few hours at Baton Rouge Magnet High taking several rolls of pictures documenting what's become of the place.

By the time I was done shooting in the gym and the boys' locker room, I was near tears. Let me try to explain a bit.

I GRADUATED FROM BRMHS in 1979. Except for my kindergarten year in Catholic school -- my neighborhood public school had no such thing as kindergarten then -- I spent my entire school career within the EBR system.

Until my fourth-grade year, the schools I attended still were legally segregated and all-white. In fourth grade, I got a stern lecture -– from a teacher -- for playing with one of two black students at Red Oaks Elementary.

All this is to say that the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has been on the cutting edge of backwardness and stupidity for a very long time now.

To get to my roundabout point here, every public school I attended was a dump. That is, until I got to Baton Rouge High the first year of the magnet program.

To me, BRMHS seemed like the Taj Mahal. Hard as it is to believe, the building had just been spruced up and was in great shape. I loved going to BRMHS, particularly in such a grand old building -- if you tried, you almost could see all the generations that preceded you still walking the halls.

AT THAT SCHOOL, in that wonderful old structure, you hardly could escape the realization that you were part of something bigger than yourself. That's an intangible, yes, but some of life's most important things are unambiguously intangible.

And in this age of out-of-control individualism, I can't think of anything more important than coming to the realization we're all part of things bigger than ourselves.

But now, as my visit doubly confirmed, BRMHS now is a dump, too. And it seems that more than a few people there on South Foster Drive want to tear it down . . . and all the intangibles with it. For what?

To build a new school God-knows-where that EBR Schools will let deteriorate into just as big a dump 20 years down the road?

And any new BRMHS will become a dump, too. Visiting the existing building -- and for an old alum like myself, it is a profoundly heartbreaking experience -- makes clear that the place has not been decently maintained since I graduated nearly 30 years ago.

THERE ARE CHUNKS of terra cotta on the facade just about ready to fall on someone's unsuspecting head. Inside, ditto for the ceiling tiles. There are whole sections of classroom walls -- the ones that are exterior walls -- missing gigantic chunks of plaster. Both exterior and interior walls are horribly cracked. Every wall in the entire school, it seems, is peeling paint like a dog sheds fur.

The school-board powers that be blame "moisture intrusion," saying that the building can no longer "breathe" since they installed air conditioning in the early '70s.

But the gym -- the structure that's never been air-conditioned, doesn't trap moisture and still "breathes" -- is worse. I don't know how it hasn't been condemned. In Omaha, where people generally care and government generally works, it would be condemned.

THERE ARE POTHOLE-SIZED craters in the gymnasium floor, thanks to the leaky roof. The "guest" restrooms -- I photographed both, with Abbey Gauthier of the alumni association running girls' room interference for me -- are not for those with weak stomachs.

A coach told me a school-board maintenance crew once "fixed" the leaky roof with duct tape. Duct tape! Duct tape is an amazing product, but it isn't going to do a thing for a leaky roof.

”Moisture intrusion” hasn’t been solely a function of air conditioning a 1920s structure. It’s largely been a byproduct of nonexistent maintenance on a world-class structure.

If the boys' locker room were a kennel -– for that matter, if the whole school were a kennel -- you wouldn't let your dog stay there for a minute. But that's what the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board thinks is acceptable for children, because it is the school board’s decades-long neglect that has left those students in abject squalor today.

THE SCHOOL I LOVE now is unfit for dogs; it's unfit for convicted murderers; it's certainly unfit for the parish's "best and brightest." But there you are.

Baton Rougeans apparently are OK with that, because it's been going on parishwide for generations. And they wonder why there's a "brain drain" in Louisiana.

The school board doesn't care, and neither does the electorate. If they did, the children of Baton Rougeans wouldn't be attending classes in a neglected dung heap. That the neglected dung heap is a beautiful, historical landmark only makes the outrageous even worse . . . if that's possible.

In Omaha, inner-city schools just as old as Baton Rouge High -– or, in one case, decades older -- are comparative palaces. Suburban schools are newer palaces.

In Baton Rouge, citizens have no frame of reference for what it looks like when a community cares about its kids. In Omaha, those who don't hail from places like Baton Rouge have no frame of reference for what I beheld when I went back home . . . to Baton Rouge High.

A little music to hold you for a while. . . .

We're taking a couple of weeks off to do . . . whatever, or nothing at all. I think the technical term is "recharging the batteries."

But I can't just leave you empty-handed for two weeks, so here's a tasty bit of video from Oct. 13, 1969 -- the St. Louis group Smith with their big hit, a cover of the Shirelles' "Baby, It's You."

Yummmmmmmmm. . . .

WHILE WE'RE AWAY, however, there is almost a whole year's worth of archives to get acquainted with. And there are several episodes of that podcast thang to listen to. So you ought to be covered.

Tell your friends. They'll have a couple of weeks to get up to speed before the blog resumes and new installments of the Revolution 21 podcast come online.

Till then, though . . . I'm outta here. Be good.

Don't the Jews have trouble enough?

From Jerusalem comes this story to ring in the Jewish New Year, as relayed by the AP:

Madonna toasted the Jewish new year with Israeli President Shimon Peres and declared herself an "ambassador for Judaism," local newspapers reported Sunday.

The singer, who is not Jewish, arrived in Israel Wednesday on the eve of Jewish new year to attend a conference on Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.

Madonna met Peres at his official Jerusalem residence on Saturday evening and the two exchanged gifts, with Madonna receiving a lavishly bound copy of the Old Testament.

She gave Peres a volume of "The Book of Splendor," the guiding text of Kabbalah, inscribed "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna," the Yediot Ahronot daily reported.

A Peres aide confirmed the meeting but had no details.

"You don't know how popular the Book of Splendor is among Hollywood actors," Yediot quoted Madonna as telling Peres. "Everyone I meet talks to me only about that. I am an ambassador for Judaism."

Madonna, who was raised a Roman Catholic, has taken the Hebrew name Esther, and has been seen wearing a red thread on her wrist in a Jewish tradition to ward off the evil eye.

But her interest in Kabbalah in recent years has been criticized by Orthodox Jews, who say it is an abomination.

Other celebrities who flew in for the Kabbalah conference included movie star Demi Moore and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, Rosie O'Donnell and fashion designer Donna Karan. Madonna came with her film director husband Guy Ritchie.

YOU KNOW, for roughly 6,000 years now, the Hebrew people have faced a more or less constant world o' You Know What, and during too much of that long history, the survival of the Jews has been an open question.

And now that self-important flakoid Madonna is going to be an "ambassador for Judaism"? A yutz! The woman is a yutz!

What, she doesn't think God's people have had enough trouble already? Oy!

God is not dead, nor does He sleep. . . .

This just in from The Associated Press:

LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday and faces multiple felony charges in an alleged armed robbery of collectors involving the former football great’s sports memorabilia, authorities said.

Simpson was arrested shortly after 11 a.m., Capt. James Dillon said.

The charges against Simpson will include robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a firearm, all felonies, Dillon said. More charges could be brought against him, he said.

Simpson was being held at Las Vegas police offices pending the arrival of his lawyer, who was expected later Sunday, Dillon said.

“He was very cooperative, there were no issues,” Dillon said.

At least one other person has been arrested and police said Sunday that as many as six people could be arrested in connection with the alleged armed robbery that occurred in a room inside the Palace Station casino-hotel on Thursday.

Simpson, 60, has said he and other people with him were retrieving items that belonged to him. Simpson has said there were no guns involved and that he went to the room at the casino only to get stolen mementos that included his Hall of Fame certificate and a picture of the running back with J. Edgar Hoover.

(snip)

Police said two firearms and other evidence were seized at a private residence early Sunday.

Walter Alexander, 46, of Arizona, was arrested Saturday night on two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary with a deadly weapon.

He was released without bail on Saturday night, Dillon said.

Besides the two firearms, police said they seized other evidence during early morning searches of two residences, Lt. Clint Nichols said.

Translation: Yeah, the war's all about oil

Here's how you know that the defense secretary knows that the Iraq War is largely about O-I-L: Robert Gates, an intelligent and learned man, is reduced to a competing explanation as lame as the one he's ladling up on the Sunday chat shows.

Gates says the war that has massively destabilized an already unstable region is "really about stability in the Gulf."

And before you can ask how stupid he thinks we are, he regurgitates an already-discredited talking point from the disingenuous buildup to the war five years ago: "It's about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It's about aggressive dictators."

That's how stupid the Bush Administration thinks we are. And it's rolling out the same line again in the present buildup to war with Iran. Here's some of the Reuters report on Gates-rebuts-Greenspan, with Greenspan being Alan, the former federal reserve chief who leveled the war-for-oil accusation in his new memoir:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's statement that the Iraq war "is largely about oil."

With Democratic lawmakers apparently short of the votes needed to force President George W. Bush to change course, Gates defended the war, now in its fifth year, and said it's being driven by the need to stabilize the Gulf and put down hostile forces.

Gates's defense came a day after thousands of anti-war protesters marched in Washington. A spokeswoman for one of the groups who organized the march said more than 200 protesters were taken into custody, including at least 10 Iraq war veterans, when they attempted to cross a police barrier near the U.S. Capitol.

Greenspan, in his new book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war is to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.

"Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy," Greenspan wrote.

"I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil," added Greenspan, who for decades had been one of the most respected U.S. voices on fiscal policies.

After more than 18 years at the helm, Greenspan retired in January 2006 as chairman of the Fed, the nation's central bank, which regulates monetary policy.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Gates said, "I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan." But he disagreed with his comment about oil being a leading motivating factor in the war.

"I wasn't here for the decision-making process that initiated it, that started the war," Gates said. But he added, "I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don't believe it's true."

"I think that it's really about stability in the Gulf. It's about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It's about aggressive dictators," Gates said.

"After all, Saddam Hussein launched wars against several of his neighbors," Gates said. "He was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, certainly when we went in, in 1991."

Bush last week ordered gradual troop reductions in Iraq into next summer but defied calls for a dramatic change of course, saying the U.S. military role there will stretch beyond his presidency.

Gates said he would urge Bush to veto a proposal by Democratic Sen. James Webb of Virginia that would require U.S. troops spend as much time at home as their previous tour in Iraq.

"It would be extremely difficult for us to manage that," Gates said. "It really is a backdoor way to try and force the president to accelerate the drawdowns. Again, the drawdowns have to be based on the conditions on the ground."

Listen to the podcast

You know, you won't hear anything like the Revolution 21 podcast anywhere else. It's that different from the over-researched pit of mediocrity that is the vast majority of American radio today.

It's quirky. It's eclectic. It dares to use words like quirky and eclectic, some of which are polysyllabic.

It dares to use words like polysyllabic.

What you'll find when you check out the Revolution 21 podcast is intensely personal "radio" -- only it isn't on the radio. It's a close as your browser . . . or your iPod.

As we say, the Revolution 21 podcast is like a box of chocolates . . . you never know what you're going to get next. That's kind of exciting -- and slightly dangerous and subversive -- don't you think?

You get what you vote for

Actions have consequences, and sometimes they come like a flood.

New Orleanians are finding that out the hard way -- the really hard way -- since Hurricane Katrina, being that they never learned that lesson before Katrina and the feds wrecked their already-struggling city.

Most folks could see that there would be major consequences from re-electing a dithering dunderhead like Ray Nagin as mayor. But nooooooooo, the fine citizens of the Crescent City re-elected the dope anyway, figuring that acting the same old idiotic way in the voting booth surely would produce positive results this time.

Guess what.

The Times-Picayune reports on yet another bad thing that happens when you play electoral roulette with five bullets in a six-shooter:

With millions of FEMA dollars already approved for myriad stalled infrastructure projects in New Orleans, federal officials this week questioned City Hall's continued insistence that technical issues in its own charter prevent local officials from getting the work done.
Mayor Ray Nagin's legal analysis of the city charter dictates that officials can't let any contract unless the city has 100 percent of the money available, an argument the mayor first brandished in a bid for massive upfront payments of Federal Emergency Management Agency repair grants. After federal and state officials declined such entreaties - instead requiring signed contracts and completed plans before making payments - city officials have since repeatedly raised the charter issue when asked about the glacial pace of progress on FEMA-approved projects.

The issue emerged again after the city and FEMA faced fresh pressure last week from fire officials and a new foundation created to help rebuild the city's still-fractured fire apparatus. FEMA officials deflected blame to the city, saying local officials simply haven't spent $9.1 million the federal agency has approved, through its Public Assistance grant program, for Fire Department repairs and to replace destroyed building contents.

The city remains stymied by a host of factors, said Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, including squabbles over repair costs with FEMA, a shortage of architects and questions regarding station design.

But the legal issue with the charter remains the biggest obstacle, Sylvain-Lear said.

That the city continues to cling to that rationale perplexed FEMA officials, who said the Nagin administration told them months ago they'd resolved the charter issue. FEMA minutes from a June 21 meeting with Nagin and at least one aide, Becca O'Brien, say: "City reported that the city attorney has ruled on the 100% funds available before entering into a contract issue and it is NO LONGER a problem."

FEMA administrators didn't know details of the city's legal analysis, but were simply relieved that it had been put to rest.

Nagin spokesman James Ross, after conferring with the mayor, said Friday that Nagin doesn't recall telling FEMA the matter had been resolved, and that the charter language is still an obstacle.

The charter language cited by the Nagin administration - Section 6-308(2) - says this: "Prior to signature, contracts involving financial obligations by the city shall be approved also by the Department of Finance as to the availability of funds in the amounts and for the purposes set forth therein."

The language appears, at the very least, open to interpretation. For instance, while the city interprets the language as a requirement that all funds must be on hand, the rule also could be interpreted to mean the city's finance director simply must sign off that the money - having been approved by the federal government - is available.

Officials in Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration who partially control the flow of Public Assistance grants declined comment on the charter question.

While millions in federal money dedicated to firehouses remain untapped, most repairs at the stations to date have come through volunteer labor, donations and work by the firefighters themselves.

Sylvain-Lear confirmed that no more than modest repairs have been carried out at firehouses using federal grants, although some roof repairs are about to start. She said of the slow progress: "It's not out of a lack of desire . . . you can't build something without money."

Citing the legal issue with the charter, Sylvain-Lear said the city has struggled with state procedures allowing for no more than 75 percent of the cost to be advanced from a FEMA grant, and FEMA's approval to reimburse the full cost of a project doesn't meet the charter requirement because that offer can later be revoked, she said.

FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson said that while FEMA can revoke money for a project if it is found to have been misused, that happens rarely and usually not until well after a project is done - during a records closeout phase.

Moreover, he said, if the charter poses an obstacle to rebuilding contracts, city officials could simply seek a change in charter language. That would require majority approval from voters in an election, after a charter amendment is proposed by the City Council or through a petition of 10 percent or 10,000 of the city's registered voters, whichever is less.

For firehouse projects - and many other infrastructure needs - Nagin administration officials claim they need major upfront money from the sale of state or city bonds. The State Bond Commission has given preliminary approval for the sale of $300 million in bonds for city and Sewerage & Water Board projects, and the Board of Liquidation City Debt is considering a $75 million sale from a 2004 bond issue that can be used for certain repair projects.

Right-wing geeks aren't, either

Oy veh.

Something for the Compsons . . . and the Snopeses

It's a good thing when you can kick off a show -- a record-spinnin', rock-'n'-rollin' radio show, by God -- with a rock song originally sung by a country legend when he was a blue-eyed soul singer and now reinterpreted by a New Wave legend growing comfy in his own skin as a "mature" artist.

Now, was that a sentence or what?

Next step, William Faulkner redux. . . .

We start the program, the Revolution 21 podcast, with Nick Lowe covering Joe Stampley and Merle Kilgore's "Not Too Long Ago," which spent some time "bubbling under" the Billboard Top 40 in 1965, a single that put Stampley's group, The Uniques, in the spotlight for the first time -- a spotlight both wondrous and cruel with its unrelenting beam, unwavering and unforgiving just as it was unforgettable, a blessing and a damnable damned curse because fame can mess up a good man. It has messed with many a good man. Men make the music of our lives, it is true, but women do, too, women both strong and sensual and with the artistic genius that only the best men may possess, but not with the grace and tenderness of the fairer sex, and we pay tribute to them all today.

Michelle Shocked. Aretha Franklin. Patti Smith. All these women have achieved greatness in this man's world, rapacious, cruel men who chew up and spit out all that stands between them and their sordid appetites, like the appetite I possess for Early Times, a wondrous elixir of the gods I guzzle just for guzzling's sake. Hic! And all these women are featured on The Big Show this week . . . geniuses all.

We also will feature other geniuses on the program this week, many of whom you have heard about and others you have not but are brilliant and talented and a mere step below the pantheon of the heavens nevertheless. It is right and good that we shall honor them this week.

Lo, these gut-busting, uncivil and unkind times are times in which we need art, need music, need Revolution 21 and the brightness it brings to a mean and dingy, a mean and dank world. Listen now. Listen as if your life depended on the act of will that is listening, because it might. It might.

Can you tell that I need a vacation? For men will call you perceptive if you can, for that it the God's -- the Christian and Jewish god of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph -- honest truth that I do. I do. I do, God help me, I do.

Pass the Early Times.