Friday, March 24, 2023

Since The Manhattan Grand Jury Won't Meet On Trump Again Until Monday...

Classic example of the "uncanny valley." But I really came here to discuss books. "Is our children learning?"

In his speech before the bill passed, Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared, "We believe parents should know what your children is [sic] learning."

Among other things, H.R. 5, also known as the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to require schools to provide parents with a list of books and reading materials available in the school library as well as posting curriculum publicly.

It would also require elementary and middle schools that receive federal funding to obtain parental consent before “changing a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form; or allowing a child to change the child’s sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.”

Do other parents get a say?  It's a "bill of rights," right? 


Additionally, the legislation affirms parents’ rights to address school boards and receive information about violent activity in their child’s school.

If you're not getting that already, you need to be more involved in school board elections. 


Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the Republican bill “will not see the light of day” in the Senate and has called the legislation “Orwellian to the core.”

In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Schumer described the measure as a “school control bill.”

“If passed, schools across the nation would be forced to adhere to a panoply of federal regulations that take power away from parents and school districts. Again, let me repeat that: it would take power away from parents and school districts, away from educators, and put it in the hands of elected politicians. Again, the GOP that treasured small government, local control, is long since gone, replaced once again, by hard right MAGA ideologues,” Schumer said.
Brought to you by conservatives who think government is too big!  Unless it's doing what they want done.
I agree with this argument/example, even though: A) Nobody reads the Bible; and B) it isn't meant to be read by children; C) or as a novel, or an ethics manual, or in any manner except as the scriptures of a religious community (and so read in the context of that community). This passage from Ezekiel, for example, is aimed at Israel for its faithlessness which has landed it in Exile (Ezekiel writes from Babylon).  It's really not unusual language for the Exilic prophets in denouncing Israel, but no, it's not the stuff I would read to an elementary school kid.  And it definitely needs to be read in the context of a believing community, not as history or a narrative or even literature.  (I have nothing against teaching the Bible as Western literature.  I've done it myself.  But if you're going to provide context for Twain's use of the "N-word" in Huckleberry Finn, well....).

But the jab against "I don't like what I've heard about that book so git it outta tha liberry!" is a sound one, even when the Bible is the example of the falsity of such notions.  There's quite a bit in scriptures that would attack selfishness and greed and capitalism and "The American Way," which people routinely ignore in proving the Bible is a classic in Twain's sense (at least it's usually attribued to him):  "A book which everyone praises and no one reads."
"So much of it"? All of it. Just simply: all of it.

And since the grand jury in Manhattan isn't doing anything today (but Corcoran is testifying!  Too bad that's not on TeeVee):
"Breaking"? I'm so ready for this case to leave the grand jury and enter the courthouse. The number of legal pundits who haven't a clue but KNOW Bragg does/does not have a case, is growing tiresome. The most wrong a lawyer can be is to be sure he/she knows the quality of another lawyer's case that the first lawyer has NO involvement in.
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