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[The teacher] stat was from before the 21/22 school year started. Now that we're back, between the kids definitely not being alright and tik tok challenges, what will the stat be at the end of the year?
I know it's like crazy sci-fi to think Biden ever would. I just want to know if the following article by Ryan Cooper is accurate. I find it nearly impossible to believe.
I've got a simple and easy solution for this. Biden declares judicial review null and void.
Democrats have a better option than court packing
There has been comparatively little attention to the simplest and easiest way to get around potentially tyrannical right-wing justices: just ignore them. The president and Congress do not actually have to obey the Supreme Court.
The weird thing about judicial "originalism" is that the explicit principle of judicial review is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. All of that document's stipulations on how the courts are to be constructed are contained in one single sentence in Article III: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Actual judicial review was a product of a cynical power grab from Chief Justice John Marshall, who simply asserted out of nothing in Marbury vs. Madison that the court could overturn legislation — but did it in a way to benefit incoming president Thomas Jefferson politically, so as to neutralize his objection to the principle.
Jefferson famously hated judicial review. In one letter, he said it is "a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so." But because of Marshall's canny political strategy, from that day forward Congress and the president have mostly deferred to the court's views and allowed it to strike down laws or establish entirely new legal principles even on completely spurious grounds.
As Matt Bruenig argues at the People's Policy Project, it would be quite easy in practical terms to get rid of judicial review: "All the president has to do is assert that Supreme Court rulings about constitutionality are merely advisory and non-binding, that Marbury (1803) was wrongly decided, and that the constitutional document says absolutely nothing about the Supreme Court having this power." So, for instance, if Congress were to pass some law expanding Medicare, and the reactionaries on the court say it's unconstitutional because Cthulhu fhtagn, the president would say "no, I am trusting Congress on this one, and I will continue to operate the program as instructed."
No doubt many liberals will object to this idea. It would be a fairly extreme step in terms of how America's constitutional system functions, and a lot of Democrats fear the idea of a Republican president not being hemmed in by the legal system. Big chunks of liberal political advocacy (like the ACLU) rely on pressing political cases through the courts. Conversely, conservatives have long advanced the idea that they are against "judicial activism," which makes liberals favor it more through negative polarization.
[...]
Most Americans are taught from a young age that the Supreme Court being able to strike down laws is what it means to have the rule of law. But this is not true. For one thing, as Doreen Lustig and J. H. H. Weiler write in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, judicial review is not nearly as intrusive in every other country as it is here. Some nations, like Austria or France, have a special Constitutional Court which rules on constitutional questions, but relatively infrequently. In others, like Finland or Denmark, judicial review basically never happens. In no other developed democracy does basically every piece of major legislation have to run a years-long gauntlet of tendentious lawsuits trying to get through the courts what parties could not get through the legislature.
Moreover, simply refusing to agree to judicial review has happened before in American history. As historian Matt Karp writes at Jacobin, when the Civil War broke out, President Lincoln and Congress ignored the Dred Scott decision in a law banning slavery in all federal territories, and when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled Lincoln did not have the power to suspend habeas corpus, the president ignored him. As Karp argues, storming the citadel of reactionary court power was necessary to destroy slavery.
Opinion | The Sexism That Led to the Elizabeth Holmes Trial - The New York Times
Ms. Pao is a tech investor and chief executive of Project Include, a diversity, equity and inclusion nonprofit. She is the author of "Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change," about her lawsuit against a venture capital firm and her experience running the technology company Reddit.
The op-ed is shit. Pao throws in whataboutism and she doesn't even bother to explain how Holmes isn't actually a criminal and a con artist.
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Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American former businesswoman who was the founder and chief executive of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. Theranos soared in valuation after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing testing methods that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. The next year, following revelations of potential fraud about Theranos's claims, Forbes had revised its published estimate of Holmes's net worth to zero, and Fortune had named her one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders".
Reddit condom joke...
At the Olympics it's always exciting when someone comes from behind.
"Organizers say athletes should take the condoms home as souvenirs..."
Athletes At The Tokyo Olympics Are Being Given Condoms, And Warnings Not To Use Them
Organizers of this year's Olympics in Tokyo are putting a new meaning behind "look, but don't touch."
The Games are ordinarily a place where many of the young athletes mix, mingle, and naturally get very close.
As they have since the 1980s, organizers ordered thousands of condoms for athletes to safely hook up in Tokyo. To be specific, Japanese organizers ordered 160,000 condoms to be handed out to athletes in the Olympic Village.
But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokyo organizers also want participants to refrain from any kind of intimate physical activity outside of their sport.
That means: Those condoms we gave you? Don't use them — at least not while you're inside the Olympic bubble.
Organizers say athletes should take the condoms home as souvenirs, and use them to raise awareness for HIV and AIDS. But under no uncertain terms are participants to use them, or engage in any one-on-one philandering, while they are in Japan for the Games, organizers said.
The topic may elicit a giggle, but the penalties athletes face if they violate these rules are serious, as are the reasons for implementing them.
Athletes are under strict coronavirus protocols, as Tokyo and other regions of Japan are under a state of emergency due to COVID-19. They must follow social distancing guidelines and abide by bans on handshakes, high fives, and other types of physical, close contact, according to the rulebook.
Any participant who violates the rules could face fines, disqualification, and the loss of Olympic medals if they're found to be repeat offenders. If athletes choose to flout the rules on intimacy, they'll also have to contend with the small cardboard-frame beds that are provided to Olympians.
This really seems extreme and a harbinger of what is to come: veteran (and tenured) high school teacher and baseball coach dismissed from school after he assigned a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay and poem about white privilege.
A parent complained that the Coates essay painted Trump in a negative light.
Sullivan County school board approves teacher termination charges, supporters outraged
Posted: Jun 8, 2021 / Updated: Jun 9, 2021
UPDATE – The Sullivan County Board of Education Tuesday voted 6-1 that the charges of dismissal against teacher Matthew Hawn are true and warranted.
Supporters and former students gathered at the meeting wearing light blue and holding placards voicing their support for the contemporary issues teachers.
Supporters of Hawn told me they were frustrated with the board's decision to continue the dismissal process against the Sullivan Central HS contemporary issues teacher @WJHL11 @ABCTriCities pic.twitter.com/HF8L68IOyo
— Bianca Marais WJHL (@BiancaWJHL) June 9, 2021
During the meeting, only Board Vice-Chairman Matthew Spivey voted against the dismissal continuation.
Director of Schools Dr. David Cox said during the meeting that he's been accused of racism due to these charges of dismissal against Hawn.
"There has been a lot of talk online that accuses me of moving to dismiss Mr. Hawn because he taught anti-racism lessons. Let me be perfectly clear. Sullivan County Schools, and I in no way condone racism of any county. We have encouraged all of our teachers, including Mr. Hawn, to promote an environment welcoming to all students of all races of all backgrounds," Cox said.
He added that he has been told that white privilege was the reason for his dismissal charges against Hawn.
"This is also simply not true. In the charges I just read aloud in fact, I read that appropriate discussions around concepts like white privilege remain perfectly appropriate for a high school class, like contemporary issues. These charges of dismissal about Mr. Hawn refusing to provide his students with access to varying points of view, which is required under Tennessee law. And these charges are about Mr. Hawn, again, assigning inappropriate materials to his students," he said.
Former students told News Channel 11 that latent racism was ever-present when they walked the Sullivan Central High School halls.
One student who graduated in 2018 from Sullivan Central High School, and attended Hawn's contemporary issues class for two years, said that he felt Hawn was a fair and balanced teacher. @WJHL11 @ABCTriCities pic.twitter.com/KPlJocQse4
— Bianca Marais WJHL (@BiancaWJHL) June 9, 2021
One student who graduated in 2018 and attended Hawn's contemporary issues class for two years, said that he felt Hawn was a fair and balanced teacher.
"We talked about a lot of hot button issues in our class, we talked about white privilege, and he was very open and fair and balanced on both sides of the argument, and presented a like I said an open discussion we never saw any, anything that I believe would warrant a dismissal," Kyle Simcox said.
BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) – A Sullivan County school teacher and baseball coach is facing possible termination by the school district.
The charges of dismissal come after two incidents pointed out by the school district.
The first was after a parent who complained in early February about an opinion article Matthew Hawn assigned to his Contemporary Issues students by Ta-Nehisi Coats entitled "The First White President," which the complaining parent claimed painted the former president in a negative light. Matthew Hawn. Courtesy of Laura Hawn.
Hawn was issued an official letter of reprimand which passed unanimously at the March Board of Education meeting.
Later in March, Hawn faced a second round of reprimands from the school district when, according to officials, he showed a video called "White Privilege," a spoken word poem by Kyla Jenee Lacey.
The school district wrote to Hawn that though the concept of discussing white privilege and the like during a contemporary issues class is perfectly acceptable, the district administration did not believe some of the terms used in the video were appropriate for high school students.
Hawn faces charges of dismissal at the Tuesday Sullivan County Board of Education meeting at 6:30 p.m.
According to a Facebook group showing support for Hawn, roughly 50 people are expected to gather to show their support for the teacher at the meeting.
It is unclear whether the public will be permitted to speak on this subject during the public comment section of the board meeting.
He has been tenured at the Sullivan County School District since 2008 and has been teaching Contemporary Issues and coaching baseball at Central High School.
Sullivan County Schools administrators sent News Channel 11 the following documents regarding Hawn:
[a gallery of six images]
