You had better break out the “winter solstice” decorations and brush up on your politically correct “holiday” language early this year, as the PC thugs are already on the march.

PORT ST. LUCIE — For more than a week, Mary Anne Bender helped her 10-year-old daughter learn her Christmas pageant lines and daydream about what costume she’d sew for the after-school play at Windmill Point Elementary.

But on the second day of practice, fifth-grader Kayla Vance was told she can’t play Mrs. Claus in A Penguin Christmas because the principal has axed any mention of the word “Christmas” in holiday festivals.

The scenario is sadly familiar: An angry atheist complains and away go the (even remotely) Christian references.

Criticized last year by a parent who demanded strict separation of church and state issues, Principal Bernadette Floyd has decided instead to take a more generic approach to holidays, school district spokeswoman Janice Karst says.

Naturally, one parent’s concern with the mythical “separation of church and state” trumps all else.

“It was an unfortunate set of circumstances,” said Karst, noting the school’s music teacher was unaware of Floyd’s policy. “Any reference to a religious holiday has the potential to offend anyone who is not part of that particular persuasion.”

Offending Christians is, of course, encouraged. The repulsive, cringing, spinelessness continues far beyond mere words.

…principals across the district have moved away from religious-specific celebrations centered around Christmas and Easter and instead staged “winter wonderlands” and “spring flings.”

Windmill Point parent Heather Cowart, mom to third-grader Logan, said she was upset last year when Logan’s teacher demanded he not bring Santa cupcakes, candy canes or other Christmas-themed treats to a “holiday party.” Even donations of canned goods to the needy had to be wrapped in newspaper, not traditional wrapping paper, Cowart said.

“Last year Logan got in trouble for saying ‘Christmas’ in class. Is that a bad word now?”

Yes, yes it is. Anything with the slightest whiff of Christianity is inherently evil and must be destroyed.

“Everywhere in Florida, and probably the whole country, there is a heightened awareness to not be offensive to anyone,” Karst said. “While it’s historically been habit, we’re all more aware of it now. We can still celebrate Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.”

How generous of the kind, benevolent administrators. Of course, patriotism is offensive to many Liberals and Thanksgiving is just a celebration of evil white oppression of noble indigenous peoples, so these holidays cannot be permitted to go on much longer.

That’s the point, Bender says: Why is it OK to offend her and Cowart but not the parents who complained about the Christmas play?

“My child learns about Kwanzaa and dreidels,” Bender said, referring to religious traditions celebrated by non-Christians. “Why can’t they sing about Santa and Rudolph?”

When you chase every vestige of religion from public schools and public life, should we be surprised when it is replaced with…this?

Today is Yom Kippur.

I am no expert, but according to what I have read, it “is probably the most important holiday of the Jewish Year.”

The name “Yom Kippur” means “Day of Atonement,” and that pretty much explains what the holiday is. It is a day set aside to “afflict the soul,” to atone for the sins of the past year.

If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for our Jewish friends, especially David Benzion, our illustrious leader here at LST. I believe this explains his blogging absence today.

More dispatches from the NHMCCD front…

DISCLAIMER: I want to make something abundantly clear. I am supporting Fred Blanton, J.B. Crowder, and Dr. David Holsey for NHMCCD Board positions. They happen to be buying advertizing space on LST and I thank them for that, but I would be supporting them whether they were or not since the amount of OBSCENE PROFITS I make around here is completely unaffected by how much money is brought in by advertizing (10 times zero is still zero.) This is my opinion, and my opinion only and may or may not be the opinion of any other person, real or imaginary.

Fred Blanton’s opponent, Charlotte Lampe, who just happened to have signed up to run AFTER the board was handed it’s head back in May, has on several occasions talked to me and others about a report prepared by Gilbane Construction. As you can see from the link, Gilbane has built a number of NHMCCD’s facilities over the years. This report purportedly details the costs associated with the refurbishment of two of the eight sections (modules) of the old TI/Compaq facility on US 290 at Barker-Cypress, which is up for sale. I say purportedly because to date I have been unable to get anyone to show me this report. Charlotte Lampe promised to fax a copy to me this weekend but has failed to do so. The HCAD tax rolls list it’s value at a little over 8.8 million dollars. Back in 2004, Mr. Blanton who was unsuccsessfully running for a board position then, proposed that the facility would make an excellent campus to help with NHMCCD’s overcrowding and would be in an excellent position to serve the students from Cy-Fair. Fred asked a personal friend, a construction manager who has supervised over 800 million dollars in projects at the Texas Medical Center, who convinced a noted architect and his structural engineer (P.E.) to inspect and review the property as a favor to Mr. Blanton and to give him a verbal report of the feasibility of using the building as a satellite campus. The building was given a verbal clean bill of health by Mr. Blanton’s volunteer consultants, it has had new AC chillers installed in 2004 as well as new paint and carpet at that time. The building was occupied by Compaq/HP for about 2 months after major refurbishments before the facility was vacated. Since then, a maintenance crew has maintained the building while HP sorted out what they wanted to do with the facility. The facility has a direct link to the internet backbone and in fact all of HP’s Houston internet traffic still passes through the facility.

The husband of Maria Flotte O’Neill, NHMCCD board position 6, just happens to have been (and may still be, I’m looking into that) a high level executive at Gilbane, by the way, and Gilbane was the company that did the 80 million dollar design/build project for Cy-Fair for the Berry Education (edification?) Center AND the expansion of Cy-Fair HS. Charlotte Lampe, Fred Blanton’s opponent, as well as Mr. Randy Bates, the incumbent that both are trying to unseat, both commented upon Gilbane’s report that it woud cost 85 Million to refurbish just two of the 8 modules in the facility at a Copperfield Republicans Club meeting on 9/11/06. The report purportedly claims that the facility is in the flood plain (Not according to Harris County Flood Control, there is no record of it ever flooding, not even during Allison.), and would cost 85 million dollars to refurb just 1/4 of the facility.

But there is a funny thing about that report. NHMCCD claims via a response to a TXPIA request by Fred Blanton that it does not exist and that the college has no such a report, from Gilbane or anyone else. So who is right? I can say this. If the college DOES have such a report and has failed to produce it, Mr Laughter is in violation of state law and faces criminal charges for falsifying a government document on the reply and information contained herein on the letter dated September 25 and postmarked on September 27. I met with Charlotte Lampe back on the 17th at the opening of the GOP Victory Center on FM 1960 and she insisted that she had a copy of the non-existant report IN HER BRIEFCASE, and was hoping that Paul Bettancourt would show up so that she could give it to him.
Developing……..

You may recall a while back when Matt Bramanti and myself participated in a round table discussion of Al Gore’s An Inconvienient Truth. Well, last week, after a blog posting about the early arrival of flu season, Leigh Hopper interviewed me via telephone regarding the early arrival of the flu in our neck of the woods. Not even an hour after hanging up the phone with her, Eric Berger sends me an e-mail saying that there is a guy from BBC radio that would like to interview me. Well I met with him last night and had a chat with him. This morning when Channel 2 read Leigh Hopper’s article, they called to try to get an interview with me on camera.

Who’s Next? Larry King? Oprah? Heh, knowing my luck it will be Jerry Springer….. =D

The Supreme Court is to hear arguments on Tuesday on whether or not crimes committed by Illegal Aliens can be utilized to decide prison sentences and deportation proceedings.

The situation is that some crimes are considered misdemeanors in some jurisdictions and felonies in others. Would such a crime justify deportation?

Possession of a small amount of cocaine is a misdemeanor under federal law. But in Texas, the crime is a felony — serious enough that it helped send Reymundo Toledo-Flores to prison for two years before he was deported to Mexico.

On Tuesday, the first day of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2006-07 term, the justices will consider Toledo-Flores’ criminal case, along with that of a fellow Mexican national deported after a similar drug conviction in South Dakota. The issue before the court is whether the federal or the state view of the immigrants’ crimes should be used to decide their prison sentences and the terms of their deportation proceedings.

To decide, the justices will need to clarify a federal immigration law that once was aimed at ridding the country of foreigners convicted of crimes such as rape and murder but increasingly is being used by immigration authorities to deport those charged with relatively minor offenses, including drug possession and shoplifting.

This is my favorite part:

“The idea was that when immigrants commit really serious crimes, we didn’t want them in the country,” said Magali Candler, a Houston lawyer who chairs the regional chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “But over the years, the immigration laws have been amended repeatedly and now they are written so broadly that an immigrant who commits a minor crime, even if they never served a day in jail, can be deported.”
 

Um, I have a question: why is a conviction of any type necessary to depart someone here illegally? 

 

Be careful of the squirrels; they may be more dangerous than thought…

 

  

Jedi Squirrels

 

Dogs have always known…