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Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days
Jherek Carnelian writes "Cody Webb was jailed for calling in a bomb threat to his Hempstead Area high school (near Pittsburgh). He spent 12 days in lockup until the authorities realized that their caller-id log was off an hour because of the new Daylight Savings Time rules and that Cody had only called one hour prior to the actual bomb threat. Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt — she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'"
... wrongful imprisonment? I thought you could.
There is a war going on for your mind.
This kind of draconian, presumptive, knee-jerk response is exactly what people seem to be calling for from Virginia Tech...after all, "what if" this could have been a real bombing? Maybe even the worst school bombing in US history? They needed to react vigorously and without thinking and full consideration of the situation, right? I mean, after all, the daylight savings change is just a minor oversight. They could have been saving lives, right?
I mean, we should be able to, within less than two hours, have an overly aggressive "lock down" a 700 building, 2600 acre, 30000+ person city-like area because of an isolated domestic incident in a dorm, but we shouldn't have an overly aggressive response against this kind of possible school violence?
To anyone who thinks Virginia Tech has ANY culpability here,
1. Remember what your response would be to ridiculous "zero tolerance" tactics on any topic, and
2. Read the below first.
Commentary included from here, here, and here.
And yes, I believe this is "on topic" and highly related given the accusations that are being levied against VT.
-----
When what is believed to be a single, isolated shooting in a dorm happens on a 2600 acre public, open campus with hundreds of buildings, you can't assume that you're about to have the worst shooting incident (of any type) in US history.
Yet, people are already blaming Virginia Tech.
Would we close or "lock down" a city of 40000 people if there was a shooting? Because that's exactly what a campus of this size and type is (including students and faculty/staff).
No, but people are already calling for siren/PA systems in EVERY of HUNDREDS of buildings, of varying ages and constructions, centralized door locking/control and camera systems for not just outer building doors, but ALL doors.
The University reacted in a reasonable way. Yes, a shooter was "on the loose". Someone who had shot a person in a dorm, and the University immediately sent out notifications that such an event occurred; to be cautious and aware, and to report any suspicious activity to campus police. The area was "locked down", but after over two hours elapsed, there was no reason to believe that a madman was about to go on a random killing spree across campus.
This is not an elementary school. This is not a high school. This is a massive, open research campus with tens of thousands of people spreading over 2600 acres, with private, residential, and other buildings intermixed.
The only person to be blamed here is the shooter. And yes, he's dead. But Virginia Tech is not at fault.
-----
Colleges and universities do have the same kinds of procedures.
But a hospital is typically one building. Virginia Tech is hundreds of buildings - I believe close to 700 - of varying types, purposes, and ages. There is no central PA system or door locking system. Most of the buildings are wide open. They're intermixed with non-university lands and buildings, and span 2600 acres. Some of the buildings are over 50 and 100 years old. Do we retrofit literally tens of thousands of doors with centralized locking and cameras and install central warning/PA systems in all buildings, just because you might be the site of a madman's rampage?
There's security and prudence, and there's waste and ridiculousness.
And the area in the vicinity of the shooting was locked down and blanketed with police. It was determined to be a domestic-type, targeted incident. And by the time VT had a handle on the situation, thousands of students were already on their way to campus. Nothing happened for over two hours. Then what do you do when you have no means of directly communicating with everyone? Should the university have had a knee jerk to a shooting in one d
'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
My history in K-12 is that most school staff (secretaries, teachers, administrators) really are that impervious to logic.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Article doesn't contain too much information, but the reg (byo grain of salt) sez:wtf? WMDs? I guess they just can't be found anywhre huh?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
These are the people we want teaching our children? Or we want our children to become/emulate? I'm not sure which is more shocking -- the fact that they jumped to conclusions based on a couple of pieces of evidence or the fact that it took 12 days for some bright person to remember the switch in Daylight Time.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
This kid is not going to have to worry about college tuition... His family will sue and they will be awarded a large settlement because of this... Just you wait and see...
At least then the principal would have known it was time to buy a clue...
tag this article DaylightSavingsTimeIsStupid
in law enforcement should be punished - it would provide some pressure for them to improve themselves.
Schools seem hell-bent on denying kids due process... at least in this case they were exposed. Sounds like he's got a big payday coming!
stuff |
I like to believe that, in America at least, we avoid this "Catch-22" wherein we assume from the get go that the alleged criminal is innocent until proven guilty. Which gives them no motive to lie. After the fact, it may be revealed they were lying but you have to prove it first. Most of the time, they are caught within their lies and their guilt is exposed that way.
Relying on one instance of evidence that relies heavily on technology, is a pretty shaky case in my opinion. The principal has graciously illustrated why this is a risky assumption to make. I don't think I need to expound on my general feelings of how the RIAA uses the same techniques in their settle out of court cases but there is definitely a direct relationship here.
I feel that, as a society, we don't give our children enough credit. I've posted about this before and I'm sure I'll post about it again. If you don't apply the same ideas of justice & freedom to children, how can you expect them to grow up with those same virtues instilled? You can't, really. Once they turn 18, they still remember a lot prior to being 18. Any injustices they suffered are probably not forgotten.
While I have not raised a child, I have volunteered at local grade schools to teach the children about engineering. I go and set up some sort of challenge that involves engineering with limited resources. One of my most horrific experiences wasn't watching some child verbally or physically assault another child, it was actually a teacher/student exchange. The challenge was to build a tower out of cards and after several failures and few successes, I decided to wrap up with some basics in mechanical engineering. I asked the class why they chose a square structure to build their tower in. One particularly energetic imp told me it was clearly the most stable. I corrected him and said that actually a dome is a more stable structure. But he persisted and asked why were 99% of buildings made in a square formation. I really didn't have an answer
I pretty much blame myself for not encouraging the kid to research it on his own. But I thought about it a lot afterwards and wondered if we don't give our children enough credit. Does this happen often? Do children get stereotyped as "the problem child" with no possible second chance? Are they doomed once teachers look for this type of behavior. I hope not but this story with the principal assuming the kid was wrong is just another example, though my personal example is probably a case of no exoneration.
My work here is dung.
Principal meet egg, egg meet face.
At least they figured it out.
Can someone please explain this story? What call did Webb make exactly? How does the time of the call mean anything?
There is a more detailed account of the story here.
Read any good sonnets lately?
The kid's phone probably has wireless internet access. Plus, I guess the article is posted online!
In conclusion... INTERNET.
Actually, it's Hempfield, not Hempstead. Insert your favorite cannibis joke here...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
"Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time."
When did the RIAA go into the education business?
It's Daylight Saving Time, there are no "Savings" only a stupid attempt at "Saving" the daylight ...
And in other news, as long as it affects "security" the police/whomever can basically lock you up for as long as they would like. Where is your "Freedom" now?
I know here in Arkansas, students are pretty much presumed guilty before proven innocent. Acually I had a run in, not as severe, but basically the same senario. Kid gets blamed for something, gets locked up, kid is proven innocent after lockup, when its over. But here is how screwed up things are. Kid gets In School Suspension (basically, you stay in school, away from any other students, and get treated like the dog crap of society), Parents know 100% that the student did not commit the act, so parents want to take the kid out and goto another school, because of racism (which if you have ever been to a Pulaski county (Little Rock area) in the administration, taking an athlete's word over a normal student, or some other act, but of course, you can't do anything about it.... Because If the student is a Criminal, so are the parents, why should they listen to them. Criminals lie all the time. Not to mention, if you try to take your student out of his current school when he has ISS, they wont release his records. Which again, is crap.
The principal is an ordinary member of the public. She didn't arrest the kid or charge him. She supplied mistaken evidence that this was the culprit, which was pretty inept, but the rest of the system should have caught this.
Why wasn't he interviewed by the police in the prescence of an adult immediately? Isn't there meant to be some advocate protecting the accused rights, especially with a 15 year old?
Surely a decent investigation should have gone something like:
cop: We have this recording of the threat.
Defender: Uhm. That doesn't sound much like this kid. Are you sure you got the right guy?
Defender and cop disappear. Re-appear later.
cop: Sorry about that. You're free to go.
I almost missed a connecting international flight because the Boeing 777's clock had not been updated. Had to run like @#%! to reach the next flight.
What idiot came up with the idea to move the daylight savings time change anyway? What idiot came up with the idea of daylight savings???
I've eaten in the Hempstead cafeteria. They definitely have WMDs.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Wow. Sounds a lot like America's attitude to terrorists.
sig not found. please replace sig.
Did they actually look at the numbers on the Caller ID?
Sounds like the local police and principal are the ones who need to spend a few years behind bars.
This is a clear case of police malfeasance, however accidental, there was serious harm. Police are in the business of making people pay for their mistakes and harm to others. Will they accept their own? Or evade it? Criminals prey upon civilians. Police prey upon criminals. What should happen when police reach too far down the food-chain?
Ideally, the police chief admits wrongdoing and reaches some financial settlement, min 10 k$. If this _doesn't_ happen, the police have loudly shouted they're nothing but bullies and will attack whomever they wish.
Last time I checked, high schools do not have jails. Maybe the principal pointed his finger at this kid, but it's the police who were dumb enough to believe him without doing the proper investigation.
PeopleAreStupid
It is about someone that was locked up for making a phone call (using a phone line), and then having no one believe that there was a computer error, even though there was public notice to double check anything that had a timestamp until it was verified that it handled the time change correctly. This error was caused by a tracking/surveliance system that was put in place to eliminate having to "run a trace" when someone called and someone needed to know for where. If you make a phone call, then it could very easily be you that is mistaken for a terrorist, though it is statistically unlikley. I think that taking blind faith in a computer system that automatically monitors your phone calls instead of doing investigative work to verify that a suspect is or is not lying because of something they did on a comminication network classifies in losing your right to "innocent until proven guilty" while online, but others may disagree.
For most of us who have real IT jobs, the DST update was a pain. The article is about how an online nuisance to us has caused a real-world nuisance to this kid.
A public school worker who doesn't believe in the rights that our forefathers shed blood for and died for? Anyone actually surprised by this?
The public school system is the love child of 1984 and Lord of the Flies. I would have thought that people would have learned by now that it is unfixable.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
> she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'
Constitution says, people are innocent until proven guilty. I guess, the idiot was confused "suspect" with "criminal"
Can we please blame this on video games? Maybe the educator assumed that since he played video games he was a bad kid.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
... and the quarterback is toast!
There is a war going on for your mind.
...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.
Well, for one thing if you use any anonymous services like freenet, they may well do things like correlate bandwidth usage to downloads. If you use strong encryption to protect your communication, they may correlate message ties to events -- it's elementary spying.
It also points out something very, very important. The presumption of innocence does not really protection you from cops. For practical purposes cops work on the presumption of guilt, only the nicer word for this is "suspicion". Falling under suspicion has been found by the courts NOT to be a deprivation of liberty. As long as they don't step over the line into a technical presumption of guilt, or violate narrowly drawn limits on unreasonable searches and seizures, it means they're pretty much within their powers to investigate you and in some circumstances detain you for varying lengths of time.
In a highly technological society, suspicion takes on a very different aspect. It is both less personal and more pervasive. Whereas once the redneck sheriff might have had it in for you, now every transaction you take part in exposes you to suspicion. This case is an example of somebody who was swept up into suspicion because of an electronic correlation in a system he was using -- faulty it turns out. Which points out another problem with electronic suspicion. It may not be subject to the kind of personal animus the Sheriff might have toward you, but it also lacks common sense.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah, you.
Asshole.
The only thing that really matters is that we begin now to call for Healing. The sooner the healing begins the better everyone affected by this incident will be. So I am calling now for the healing to begin.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
http://www.hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us/webdir/charlton /index.htm
And especially in Daylight Savings Time!
"Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time."
That's no catch-22. A catch-22 is a situation whereupon two actions are dependent on one another. A chicken-or-the-egg sort of thing. This quote is close, but it's not a catch-22.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)
Sorry to pick a nit.
Remindes of that movie Brazil.
It's interesting. My son, who's eight, never lies. In fact, if I ask him if he's done something and I say I don't believe him, he gets incredibly upset. My daughter, who's three, will freely lie if it gets her out of anything. "Did you wash your hands? Did mom say it's okay?" To some degree, it's a measure of maturity. Eventually people figure out that the elusive concept of "trust" is more valuable than the short-term gains made by lying. Not everyone figures this out, and many people lie about small things ("Yes, honey, that dress looks great."). Still, I'd like to think that most kids are mostly honest.
What's frustrating to me is when school officials "play detective" when they're so clearly untrained to do so. I've had to play detective at work, tracking down people doing bad things electronically. While it was interesting, I had absolutely no interest on doing anything other than gathering information to present to someone else. Jumping up and down and yelling "We got him!" sounds like poor deductive reasoning.
They read the caller ID. That's the WHOLE BASIS of the article. The issue was the time on the caller ID was an hour wrong!
"WMD" has become almost as much a euphemism for "The Man can do anything he wants" as "terrorism" and "child pornography"; not the root password to the Constitution, say, but at least superuser. And it's been written into all kinds of state and local criminal codes which will never, ever, under any conceivable scenario, be applied to people actually using nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. It's been used to charge drug dealers on the absurd theory that drugs are WMD -- er, no, people don't generally wander the streets begging dealers to sell them sarin gas to use on themselves! And of course any explosive device (whether said device exists or not ...) will be labeled WMD by some ambitious prosecutor, because it grabs headlines. The original meaning has been diluted to the point where the phrase is useless, and can therefore mean anything you want it to, which is exactly how the people who abuse it want things.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
...when did you stop beating your wife?
What, exactly, is slashdotting the school's web server going to do?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When I was in high school, I can clearly recall doing some stupid things, including waltzing into the teacher's lounge during lunch in order to grab a copy of whatever paperwork they put in the teacher's mailbox I made for myself. After getting caught, I made the mistake of asserting that it wasn't my fault that the school had lax security policies. This was shortly following the Columbine incident.
Now, with the hysteria occurring during that time, they could very well have expelled me and caused who knows what kind of trouble for myself and my parents. But they brought in the police liaison, gave me a good scare, and essentially realized that I was just a kid who made a stupid decision. I didn't even get a detention.
I understand that this situation is different, in that the kid didn't actually do anything wrong, but even still, having administrators who can step back and look objectively at the situation, even when there is some stupidity involved, is a must, especially when dealing with children.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
and they won't lose track of a case again.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I agree that it was ultimately the fault of the police for wrongfully arresting and holding the child, and not the principle. However I do believe that as somewhat of a figurehead in the community, the principle of the HS should be held publicly accountable for her actions. It was completely unprofessional, and she should loose her job for it, as well as be required to make some sort of public apology or reparation. I'd love to see that, personally I had so many disciplinarians in high school say whatever they wanted without backing it up, and without having to later answer for their actions.
It took 12 freakin' days to find that hour we lost?
that would piss me off enough to call in a bomb threat...
Thanks for the link to a real, local news source. It's annoying to be thrown links to crappy pseudonewsblogs that simply chase ad revenue by borrowing the content feeds of others before crashing under the weight of more than their normal 100 visitors per month.
Granted, most news papers have a sufficient chunk of their business following the same model (re-brand unoriginal news from a single source AP/Reuters, then slap it generously with ads). At least they can withstand something of a slashdotting.
Looks like they don't allow blocked callerid any more:
n gindex=18
http://www.hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us/mainnews.asp?l
Is there a password for the staff page floating about?
Don't post it, just an evil side of me coming out. I don't advocate criminal activity to strike back at stupidity, just like to fantasize about it.
If I were the kids parents I would looking to relieve everybody involved of a lot of money... I would with phone company, and work my way down the list. The whole thing is unacceptable. Phone switches are supposed to be within one minute by law to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
Poor kid's family has probably got lawyers crawling all over them to file defamation and other lawsuits. Then again, they might not be so poor after awhile if they do file a lawsuit.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Nah. We who have real IT jobs, don't use Windows.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...the person who is actually responsible has a free hand to implement their dastardly designs because no one is looking for them, the "guilty party" having already been apprehended.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
A good example of why data integrity and checking of log files is needed. And why time is very very important in automatic logging systems.
If the RIAA says "We have a log of your assigned IP downloading this song at 12:31pm". They had better have some way of proving the clock on that system was correctly set.
This is a good example to show how incorrectly set clocks can go unnoticed and how the wrong results can be concluded.
My actions at work would never result in a minor's civil rights being trampled on. Apples & oranges. People who we basically put in charge of raising our kids should have at least a grain of foresight & should be held to higher standards. Also, in general, they should be paid a lot more.
There is a war going on for your mind.
She demonstrated an utter lack of judgment, not a little lapse in judgment.
Or were you joking?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How is this different from the way we treat any of our terrorism suspects? It was a bomb threat. He should be happy he was only in jail 12 days and not 5 years.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I am pretty upset that a principal, a school administrator, who is supposed to have:
A) the best interest of the student body,
B) the best interest of the individual students and
C) a moderate level of education
Would gleefully persecute one of her own charges. It seems to me that someone with the accountability for the welfare of so many impressionable minds would be more interested in ferreting out the right answers before causing an uproar in the larger student body, or the life of one individual student. Kudos to this kid for hanging tough. Thoreau spend one night in jail for tax evasion. This kid got 12 for checking the weather over the phone.
The opinions listed above reflect the positions of management, largely cause I am management.
It's a joke, laugh.
Blerg.
She didnt give the kid a break either, now did she??
Please turn in your credibility card and prepare for re-assignment to Digg.
First, please be aware that it is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight Savings Time. The extra 's' is extra.
Second, the cops really dropped the ball on this. When they request caller ID records they should be getting a list of all of the calls put into a certain number. When they identified the culprit they should have had a list of all of the other calls for the previous hour above it and should have been scratching their heads as to how many people called since the bomb threat.
Third, as is a widely held view 'round these parts, DST is a big pile of imaginary poo. Most people hate DST in the spring, but love it in the autumn. I vote that we do away with DST as well as time zones and just go with TAI. Sure, it means that kids across the country won't get out of school at 3 and there would have to be some work on when the day flips, but problems like this and the difficulties of getting air support at the Bay of Pigs would be greatly reduced.
Wrongful punishment has screwed his brain, so he is unfit to live in the society of peace loving principals. jail him again to prevent future 42 sh00ting + the pricipal.
It was Hempfield Area High School, not "Hempstead". Also, a link to a story that actually works: story time
You can't honestly justify the imprisonment of a student with PMS; persons in authority can't afford to have emotional lapses of judgment, if that's what you want to call it. It's closer to a complete lack of reasoning ability, and she should be removed from the public school system.
Well, when we structure our schools and administer them also just like... prisons... then should it become any surprise when more students start behaving like criminals.
PS: "Lockdown" is, after all, a prison ops term.
Except iraq
In the same way that you can anonymize a web request by going through some proxy server, is there a way to place phone calls anonymously ?
ie : to call 8203-MYSCHOOL, I dial 1800-ANON (which connects to some unaudited telephone exchange in Chechnia), connect to the operator, and type in 8203-MYSCHOOL to connect to the school anonymously before placing my bomb threat.
is there a market for such a thing do you think ? Its technically feasible anyway, and no real way to prevent it from happening.
If you don't apply the same ideas of justice & freedom to children, how can you expect them to grow up with those same virtues instilled? You can't, really. Once they turn 18, they still remember a lot prior to being 18. Any injustices they suffered are probably not forgotten.
Too true my friend, too true. A good example from my own past is cops.
I was a teenager and I got pulled over for having a crappy car. Twice in two different cities. I wasn't speeding, I wasn't playing loud music - I was just trying to get to work. How do I know that's what I was pulled over for? Both times the cop said so.
I was searched. My car was searched "for drugs". One cop told me to get my "piece of shit car out of his city and not come back".
That was close to 20 years ago. I'm now nearing 40, have a nice job, and drive a brand new Prius. Or my minivan. I am invisible to cops, and haven't had any reasons given in the last 20 years to dislike them.
But still every time I pass one on the road I think "motherfuckers".
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Surely it should be: "Innocent UNLESS proven guilty"? the original seems to include a degree of inevitability
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Wow, I just had a strange thought, I can totally see Hilary saying this in a year or two if she gets elected in 08... Haven't you ever had a little lapse in judgement, when your emotions were running strong during a small time of the month and bombed Iran off the face of the earth? No? Go to hell!
A more reputable source (namely the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) confirms this: "charged with a felony count of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction and misdemeanor counts of making false alarms."
http://www.hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us/mainnews.asp?ln gindex=18
The school will no longer except calls from phone's with their number blocked from caller ID.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
In hindsight, maybe evacuating campus immediately after the first shootings (when there was no reason to believe they were anything other than an isolated incident) MIGHT have saved lives. But think about it--as far as I'm aware, they don't really know what the shooter was doing in the two hours between incidents. For all we know he was hanging around on the drill field, waiting for an evacuation to send hundreds of panicked students out into the open. Or maybe he was in one of the buildings, hoping a lockdown would give him plenty of time to do his work while preventing his victims from making a run for it (from what I've read, he attempted to do just this on his own by chaining a door shut). Keep in mind, we're not just talking about evacuating a dorm here, but an entire campus. How do you move that many people quickly? Where do they go? Or do you lock them down in place without having any idea of where the killer might have gone? Givn that the first killings were in a dorm, do you ask everybody who lives in that hall to rush back there and lock themselves in? MAYBE evacuation/lockdown would have saved some lives. Maybe it wouldn't have. But to suggest that the VT cops should have made that call with little or no information to justify it is nothing more than Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Sorry, answered the phone and posted with out proof reading. To clarify, the phones in the previous post are not actually in possession of anything, the apostrophe is a mistake.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Yep. Running "apt-get update; apt-get -y upgrade" or "yum -y update" is a near impossible task.
/qinstall" to a logon script or update script is also near impossible.
If you're stuck running Windows (I unfortunately have to admin several hundred xp boxes), downloading the fix adding "\\server.dom\dstfix\DaylightSavingFix.exe
How could anyone manage to do something so incredibly complex?
In Arizona about 90% of the population lives within either the Phoenix or Tucson metro areas. This is within the great Sonoran Desert (extends into the top half of Mexico). In the summer we typically have about 100 days where the temperature exceeds 100 degrees (often above 115).
Too much sunlight! We value an early sunset and subsequent cooling. By state law, we have not observed DST here since the 1960's.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Everywhere that is... except Iraq.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Divide those 12 days by the multi-six-figure lawsuit this kid is going to successfully bring against the school district, principle, police department, etc. and you figure the kid probably got paid at least $1,000 an hour to sit on his ass.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Minors have no civil rights.
The UN has a definition of WMD that these folks should look at. Emotive mis-use of technical terms is fucked up, especially when people's crimes get blown out of all proportion. It's stupid.
Police departments all across the nation commonly have the number blocked on all outgoing phone calls. Mine does (I'm the telecom admin for a city PD). That's OK, because if our local school district suddenly stopped accepting our phone calls, we'll just come and visit them in person, in uniform, and definitely not amused.
Godless heathen.
this is actually the perfect example of begging the question. contrary to popular opinion, "begging the question" does not mean "demanding that the question be asked." it is a form of logical fallacy in which you assume what you are trying to prove.
using the fact that someone was accused of a crime to discredit their defense of that crime is a prime example of begging the question.
the example of "a catch-22" from the book catch-22 is the following: if a pilot is crazy, he will not have to fly more missions (since he will be placed on medical leave). if a pilot does not want to fly more missions, he is not crazy (since he values his own life, therefore he has to fly more missions). so if you're not crazy, you fly more missions. if you say you are crazy, the army assumes you are just trying to save your own life, therefore you are not crazy, and therefore you still fly more missions. that's the quick summary, anyway.
Why was the kid jailed at all? Even if he phoned in the hoax I don't see it as a crime deserving being locked up for 12 days BEFORE reching trail, especially considering the kid was never in trouble previously. A reasonable response would to charge the kid, and release him to his parents until trail. That is what happens in civilized countries, and is exaclty what happened in my city. A local kid did phone in a hoax bomb threat, the school was locked down, armed police on the roof the whole bit. And the kid was not charged with some outlandish terrism crime, but simple mischief. He was released to his parents, he did go to trail, he was found guilty, and he was sentanced to community work - not jail time. He was suspended from school too.
Americans seem to be in love with incarceration.
Anarchists never rule
That's truly appalling. Maybe we should lock him up for 12 days and see how he feels about not having his rights stepped on?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
All Bush did was sign the bill. He did not author it. See this.
The Real WTF (tm) is that they would jail a student for making a bomb threat, even if a hoax. What ever happened to just a week of detention? If we are that paranoid, then the Terrorists Have Already Won (tm).
"Hello, USA? Hi, this is Iran. Umm, we were just wondering, why are you bombing us?
"Oh, like you don't know!"
I didn't say it was hard, i said it was a nuisance. If is wasn't a nuisance, why were there so many slashdot articles on it ?
Richard Mellon Scaife's local rag? LOL... I lived there for years, buddy, you ain't fooling me.
I had to laugh when I saw this happened in the Pittsburgh area BTW. It totally makes sense. And the further away you get from the city center, the more whacked the place becomes.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Also, caller ID logs are always wrong. We forget to wind clock again.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ummm, root is the superuser. They are equivalent...
Now if a real bomb threat is ever called in they won't get the call.
And if there's anything a minor needs more of, it's more reasons to have a nice, healthy hatred for the system and the "Man". Shit like this for minors just makes more anarchists as adults. What do you do? Shoot them all? Congratulations: you are now a fascist government.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Leave it to the lawyers and courts, because that's what the they did before they put the kid in the slammer.
:(){
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hmm, well since he's a minor, would it be possible for one of his parents (or better, both) to be able to sue for their son? Assuming an income of 30-50k, an individual parent could sue for 60-100k or both for 120-200k
That might make the cops take notice a little bit more.
Bit of a spelling mistake in there...
s/clocks/cocks/
Chevy Chase: Weekend Update recognizes its obligation to present responsible opposing viewpoints to our editorials. Here to reply to a recent editorial, is Emily Litella.
Emily Litella: I'm here tonight to speak out against busting schoolchildren. Busting schoolchildren is a terrible, terrible thing. I hear this is going on all over the country. Mean policemen arrest little children and put them in jail in the wrong neighborhood, so they can't even play with their little friends. Imagine, busting schoolchildren! The food in jail isn't good, and even though they get bread, I don't believe they can get toast. Or nice cake. Now, who will tuck them in? Where will they hang their leggings? Where will they set up their little lemonade stands? Well, they don't have toys in jail, except maybe..
Chevy Chase: [ interrupting ] Miss Litella?
Emily Litella: Yes?
Chevy Chase: I'm sorry. The editorial was on bussing schoolchildren. Bussing. Not busting.
Emily Litella: Oh. I'm sorry. Never mind.
...when I was doing some Windows Forms programming. All controls have a Hide() function. I got sick of my sig, so I hid it one day.
I'm sorry that it reminds you of Nazis. But, really, it's a programming thing.
:(){
"The Slashdot effect" is bad enough. We can all individually look this information up, but when people start posting it with requisite "tee-hee, let THIS guy know" comments, it's an attempt to incite an electronic flashmobs and that is totally irresponsible, abusive and in the end pointless.
Hmmm...further down...
I hope his English teacher wasn't reading that article...
:(){
This is the problem with public schools. The principals view most of their students as trouble-making hoodlems, so when shit like this happens, they jump on the student like stink on shit..
It's "Daylight Saving Time," not "Daylight Savings Time." There's a difference. For an explanation on this and all things DST, see http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html.
Blame the police for imprisoning him. Blame the politicians who make laws that make it possible (or maybe even mandatory). Blame the people for electing politicicans who pass those laws (not despite them passing such laws, but because). Blame the media for generating spin and hype around alleged threats to throw the masses into hysteria. Blame sensationalism that makes such stories top sellers. Blame our sheltered life being so boring that we need such "sensations" to have at least a little thrill in our boring lives. Blame...
Well, blame whom?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who're even too dumb for that, supervise.
Too dumb even for that? Run for presidency.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As someone who has been wrongfully 'punished' in class (consistantly throughout the years) for expressing vasts depths of intellectual superiority, rather than 'assessed' and properly placed in a program for others like me, who ended-up being educationally-abandoned by the wonderful world of the Academia, I salute you all the bird.
Sincerely,
Some high-school drop-out who is (actually) succeeding in life, despite the discouragement and misguidance of the public education system.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I managed to find the school that was responsible for this...
HEMPFIELD AREA HIGH SCHOOL
Phone: (724) 834-9000
The student, Cody Webb, was on the honor roll with "High Honors" according to this page: Honor Roll HAHS
I think the principle who apparently fashions herself as judge, jury, witness, prosecution, and executioner needs to be reminded that she is nothing but a pathetic public employee with a tiny tiny life destroying other people with more promise than she ever had.
This is all about the Principle:
The Principle's Page
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Not according to this article. They did have a lawyer, who managed to get him released to their custody before charges were dropped. It's not clear why it took 12 days to do it, but they didn't believe the principal over their son.
The family's lawyer is quoted a number of times in the article as well.
Start sending those cards.
Local TV news coverage from April 4.
Includes video feed.
It's also the only source I've seen that mentions that 34 other calls were logged that night.
I am a recent alumni of this school and this news really didn't surprise me. The principal was there and in the same position when I was up there. She had a reputation of being, well, not so nice and she always wore skirts, whatever you want to make of that. This has been a bad year PR wise for the district that started with a nasty two week teacher strike and a $8 million dollar fieldhouse that has a slew of constructional faults two years after completetion. Now they are raising taxes and have to cut a few million from the budget and they are talking about curriculum cuts. Looks like time finally caught up from them. I think what the kid went through was total BS, someone got lazy and or a big head.
Also, in general, they should be paid a lot more.
Are you SURE? Why? Do you know how much they really make for only 9 months of work? Do you know the full value of their benefit packages? What is the value of a guaranteed job where you can't be fired unless you rape or kill a few hundred students?
Sorry, I think most teachers are making plenty. They just choose to take a good portion of their compensation in non-cash methods... In my area, teachers are making more than twice the median income. Just how much more should they make???
One of the first things I thought of when I heard about all this was "That could never happen in a Luby's in Texas."
For those that don't know, the second-worst mass shooting in U.S. history (IIRC) was in a Luby's restaurant in Texas. A guy crashes his truck through a window then gets out and opens fire on the diners with a gun in each hand. In the political aftermath years later, it was the testimony of one of the victims, an accomplished handgunner, that she had a clear, close-range shot at the gunman and could have ended the whole situation before most of the victims were shot. Unfortunately, at the time Texas didn't allow carrying concealed weapons and her gun was in her car. That testimony recieved much of the credit for the passage of CCW legislation in Texas. After the legislation was passed, businesses were allowed to prohibit guns on their premises. Luby's, however, immediately announced that people carrying concealed weapons were welcome as customers.
Nope. I sincerely doubt such a thing could happen at a Luby's in Texas.
I am reading the comments, and most are very quick to rip apart the principle for acting improperly. However, I am sitting here trying to think, if I was the principal - what would I do? In short how does one reasonably ensure the safety of the school?
At the extreme is arresting all childer, their parents, friends, etc. and shutting down the school until every room in the school and home of the 'accused' are thoroughly searched to ensure there is no threat.
At the other, we ignore it as a typical stupid teenager prank and when the bomb goes off we deal with a lot of fallout.
What is reasonable? A principal is not a bomb expert. Hopefully the police are better trained in this field. Once she had the number and approximate time confirmed, I don't think she was wrong in calling the police and detaining the boy.
What should the cops have done? Can't they hold him for 24 hours without charges? Take him to the cop shop, get a search warrent for his house, search the school and when nothing turns up, apologize and let him go? Maybe even this is too extreme. I'm not sure.
I agree that what happened was over kill. But I am trying to figure out what would be the proper thing to do.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
Not quite UID [Zero] is a superuser (normally called root) but it is possible to have others in the root group act as superusers/admins but not be root (and bet able to act as THE ADMIN)
plus you can get into client V server root (having the root account on clients but not the root for say a master key server or an AD server)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
They should be paid enough for competent and intelligent people to be attracted to the job. Apparently it is not the case now.
AccountKiller
...and it would very justified in this case. He and his parents should sue their asses off. The cops in this case left them selves wide open for a law suit. Can you say morons????
"Oh, like you don't know!"
Well if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you!
OK
Detaining an innocent child for an hour's detention = a little lapse in judgement
Sending an innocent to JAIL for 12 days = a royal fuckup and a major violation of his civil rights
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
the security got deleted off the entire network, they blamed me (i had not done it, but mabe i should have!)i was ushered to the principals office where they handed me a 2 week suspension, i protested, they said they had 20 people with statements against me, i asked to see the statements, they denied on the grounds that they had to protect those who made the statements against me, i then asked them again to show me the statements but without the names of those that made them. again the school refused without giving me a reason.i asked how i was to defend myself if they would not let me see what had been said about me. the principle said while youre guilty anyways and your suspended for two weeks what do you have to say to that? I then requested to phone my parents they denied me, i then went to leave the office and they had an sro stop me, i sat back down and refused to talk, about 15 minutes later the sro got up to go do something and i then walked out of the principles office walked out the front door and all the way home. I had my parents phone the school and they responded by adding another week to my suspension for leaving school grounds, i then phoned the school and informed them that i was willing to take the matter to court and that they should keep a copy of their log filee so that the circumstances of the incident could be determined, they responded by reformatting all their computers destroying all traces of the incident. i got my dad who happens to be a lawyer to go down to the school with me, they realized they had no case against me if they went to court so they said they would drop the hacking incident from my recore, however they then revised my suspension for leaving the school grounds too 3 weeks insted of one. long story short, screw high school administrators they don't know jack.
"If you have kids and don't have even $500-1000 in funds of some sort for any emergency, you are not being a good, responsible parent."
Yeah, well, that's what happens when you work for Wal-Mart. You get no health care insurance, and just enough money to pay for rent and food.
Selfish parents, spending that money on food.
Seriously, what world do you live in that working poor people have $1,000 set aside to pay for an attorney?
It's my belief they should sue, not for damages, but to punish the idiots who can't actually do their job.
Don't talk about how it's stupid. Talk about how it's slander.
Possessing a WMD and threating to use a WMD are, in fact, actual crimes, and if you accuse someone of committing that when the actual crime you mean is something else, you've just slandered them.
Now, if they've possibly committed said crime, but have not been convicted, that's one thing. You can get sued, but it's much harder. But if, for example, you have evidence they sell drugs, but they have not been convicted of it, while calling them 'drug dealers' may or may not be slander, calling then rapists certainly is.
A 'WMD', under US law, is a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon. While calling in a false bomb threat is certainly illegal, it is not the same thing as threating to use a WMD, which carries much harser penalties. Threating to use a WMD is always considered terrorism, while theatening to use a bomb isn't automatically, although if you do it to terrorize they can add 'making terroristic threats' and various other anti-terrorist statutes on.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As long as you are not a Christian or some other group they dislike.
You're fine in America, too, as long as you tow the company line. That's the problem with police states. It's not the sheep who line up to follow all the rules that have a problem, it's anyone considered "different". That's what America is supposed to protect. My ability to believe and speak as I please as long as I am not hurting anyone else. But we seem to be quickly losing those rights.
The only thing the Chinese students saw was that the propaganda is different, and they decided ours was wrong, while most Americans would say theirs is wrong.
Most likely, the truth is that they are both wrong.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Well the answer is simple enough. They should compensate him. I think a million dollars a day sounds about fair. $12M to the kid who was wrongfully jailed.
Union seniority rules weed out the competent and intelligent long before they reach levels of compensation and responsibility commensurate with ability.
An anecdote proving my point did you say? That'd be the best evidence? Well sure, I've got one in my personal experience even: my HS computer teacher. Who'd apparently actually studied computer science in college. So we were actually learning about algorithms and structures and the meat of programming...
He taught the upper-level computer courses for all of one year. At which point a more senior teacher with no actual experience ("I'm learning C with you," she said...) decided she wanted the HS job. He ended up teaching remedial math, being completely unappreciated there, and I think he's no longer teaching now. We ended up taking quizzes on windows behavior and wondering why we didn't just take band instead.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Someone didnt read the book. A catch-22 is doing something to achieve the opposite result. I.E. (from the book) if you want to fight in a war tell the army you are a pacifist, if you dont want to fight tell them you only joined because you love to kill.
It depends. I was somewhat like that kid myself. I was finally vindicated with the teacher apologizing to me towards the end of school. While the experience stays with me to this day-- that short moment of vindication doesn't seem to mean that much to me in retrospective... I'm sure it altered my perception of authority figures, but I had determined they were fallible in so many ways yet unknown to me at the time.
I would say it matters that the kid know they are correct, but beyond that it doesn't probably do a whole lot-- as the damage has already been done. It would be better to correct the teacher ASAP so it doesn't amount to a long period of such treatment, which has more impact.
Mine was odd because I had a NUN, who spent the rest of the time treating me the SAME WAY except then it was all about the fact I would not forgive her and I would go to hell if I didn't learn to forgive her. (same treatment except then it was a single issue - and in private - so I was still wrong in the eyes of my peers; she couldn't undermine her infallibility or ability to instill fear in students.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...because by staying poor, you are stealing thousands of potential income tax dollars from the government that you would otherwise be paying if you had and kept a good-paying job.
That's right in line with the way of thinking that organizations like RIAA/MPAA/??AA see it, anyway.
Why not the government too?
Flamebait or Insightful? You decide!
Importing us North Korea terrorist shit, let us grow our own garbage at home and maybe we won't have a shooting because his penis is only 1"
Ah yes I'll just deploy some aftermarket non vendor supplied patch from some random website to all the workstations in my organization. Why didn't I think of that??
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
you guys need to cut it out with the "i knew he was innocent all along" bs. the fact that this kid was wrongfully charged is the fault of the district attorney, not the school officials. the principal honestly thought that the school's records implicated cody webb, so she took the prudent course of action: call the police. would you rather see school officials release all students that proclaim their innocence? i'm sure you all went to high schools where nobody ever lied.
This "nutter" is uncomfortably common in the american public school system. What happens is someone goes to school to be an educator, their college training is rather specialized and not readily transferable to other fields. After graduation, they find that their personality isn't really suited to being a teacher. The kids being rather astute to such things, quickly start to pick on the misfit teacher who eventually goes into administration with a me vs. everybody attitude, when a career change would be more appropriate. Now factor in the fact that
1. our courts allow schools much more latitude in areas like probable cause for searchs,
2. the courts and police will jump through their asses to support the schools and protect the kids,
3. it's easy to get 13 year old tried as adults for infractions at school and,
4. school policies aimed at litigation avoidence rather than what's in the kids best interests
it's easy to see how things like this happen.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
no. read my post titled "hindsight" and stop screwing around with the school.
I see a lot of comments here on "forcing" the officials involved (especially the principal) to apologize to the boy, to the community, etc. What does it mean to be "forced to apologize"? We can make consequences for them if they refused to apologize, such as jail or job loss. But who the hell wants a phony apology from someone who's only saying the words to save their own neck? The only apology I would want to hear is from someone who says they're sorry because they realize they have actually caused me some harm and they feel bad about what I had to go through. A forced apology is not a real apology at all.
So, not only did the Democrat's Daylight Savings shift FAIL to save any energy in the end, but it also imprisoned an innocent boy for 12 days. Way to go, lefties. Feel proud of the accomplishments of the "100-hours" Congress. Last year's lame ducks were more effective than these senatorial wannabes.
The police, the principals, and anyone else invovled all need to be fired. Then he needs to turn around and sue the school for millions as well as personally sue the arresting officers and the principal. I would also expect criminal charges against the prinicpal. A decade in jail should straighten her out.
I love the smell of lawsuits in the morning.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
I am missing something in this story. They had a hotline that saved voicemail with timestamps and I guess CID, right? So, it had the message in question at timestamp 3:17, with no CID info (as the more thorough articles mention), right? Or they had a separate system to record CID's and one of those two systems was at DST and the other was not?
I am not getting how the confusion could have happened. If the school phone system was not on DST, then both the kid's call and the bomb threat would have been registered at non-DST time, thus more than one hour apart.
Anybody can explain here?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
i'd say yes, china is definitely more safer than america. walking around late at night in china vs in america? i'd take any city in china over any city in the US. one might say there's less visibility on crime with a controlled press, but i've personally seen a *lot* more crime in america (violent and otherwise) than compared to china.
Seriously, what the fuck is the matter with you?
Would you consider Ghandi, Martin Luther (the OG, or the King), Jesus, or any of the historical freedom fighters that brought the masses to bear against tyranny as "rude".
Are you a complete and total fucking idiot?
That question is rhetorical, by the way, but since I am assuming you are an idiot by your own statements, I'm going to tell you it's rhetorical since I already know you're an idiot.
Just wanted to add some circular logic to my post so you can realize what an idiot you are defending this principle.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Break the spirit of everybody moving through the system when they're young. Make sure all boat rockers, (i.e., people who have a brain and the ability to question authority), are DESTROYED. Never lose an argument to a kid. Make sure kids feel the quiver of fear and straighten their backs at the mere whisp of 'authority'. Only when our entire population of public school-going middle class citizens have been reduced to well-behaved machine parts who don't mind living in a 'Prison of the mind', will the school authorities have performed their task.
I hope you have learned from your lesson and became an even bigger boat-rocker once you left school. I hope you discovered that you can ignore the system's mandates and actually build a happy life and that you do not need to fear the clowns with their hoops and their demands that you jump through them.
-FL
at least he got out of class for 10 days or so. i'm just sayin', could be worse, yeah?
-Tony
Because it sounds like your point is that he was in jail because everyone assumed he was guilty until proven innocent - especially assuming that your assumptions are correct (which there is no proof of).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What do you bet that he would have just gotten a slap in the wrist if he was sports star at his school. Normal students will get 0 tolerance and 0 rights but if they are sports star at the school there is a high degree of tolerance because "He is really a good kid."
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The homeless were more selfish, but not for making public sex or for being poor. They were selfish because they were homeless. It takes a huge amount of "fuck everybody, I don't care" attitude for anyone to become homeless.
When I was a child, in Brazil in the 1960s, I knew people who were poor. I mean, not poor as in not affording a new car or home appliance, but abysmally poor. I knew people who lived in shacks made of mud with a grass roof. I knew people so poor that they had only one pair of shoes for a family of eight. Their kitchen was a piece of metal plate over some rocks where they burned pieces of wood they scrounged from the trash. But these people had a basic dignity. They didn't live in the streets, even if their huts were little better than a refrigerator box.
In my twenties in 1981 I lived for some months in Sweden. There can be hardly more contrast in social services for the poor between Brazil and Sweden, but, to my surprise, there are many homeless people in Sweden too, almost as many as in Brazil. Because people do not become homeless just because they are poor. People who become homeless simply do not seem to care. That may be sign of a mental disease, maybe it's some sort of pathologic depression, I don't know, but living in the streets is a condition that goes much beyond poverty.
come on! we want to punish the principle! not the IT Dept!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
No, the best way to keep the US safe is to pull your head out of your ass and LOOK at the reams of smoking gun evidence that is out there suggesting huge "inside the government" involvement with the COUP that occurred on 9-11. A reichstagg fire event, or a "new pearl harbor", direct from the PNAC documents where they clearly spelled out what they wanted to do, the excuse they would need to invade the middle east and establish a full time in perpetuity military presence, how it would most likely proceed, then when it happened just as they BRAGGED they would do it, they profited from it.. You can also read the mainstream press where despite a lot of pressure for suppression of evidence, they finally had to admit that saddam had NOTHING to do with "al queda" or 9-11, and didn't have WMD, which they blatantly lied about, over and over again, in order to push forward the extremist political agenda of the members of PNAC and AIPAC. Of course, you can still keep swallowing and regurgitating the government LIES about events. And we still have the so called "opposition party" not moving for any serious investigations or trials, because THEY are for the most part in it at the top levels as well, either from being fascists themselves (despite some nebulous party letter label which means *nothing*, or being bribed or blackmailed off.
We are LESS SAFE and are rapidly, almost daily, losing what freedoms remained prior to 9-11, and since this completely phony war on terror started with an act of TREASON and the armed and violent COUP D'ETAT. The bulk of the rest of the planet sees this, because the evidence is so overwhelming. The war on terror is a front to hide the state sponsored fascist terrorism we have already suffered and will continue to suffer.
Do the research, start with a clean slate like you never heard of these things before, with no preconceived notions,none, not even what I am saying, just blank it all out,then do the research, in depth, then you'll easily find out you've been used as a tool for the fascists. Last century, "sieg heil", this century "Let's roll!" Same shit, same dumbed down and kept half drunk all the time as policy (keep your serfs and menials stupid and brainwashed, works for rulers all the time) populations swallowing the big rah rah rah war cheerleading lie because the corrupt and illegitimate regime keeps repeating it over and over again and they have enough "true believers", fascist pig wannabes, spread out to insist they "win".
Why e-mail her when you can call her at work? :)
N /index.htm
Principal: Kathy Charlton
E-mail: k.charlton@hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us
School: Hempfield High School
School Phone: 724-834-9000
Voice Mail: 724-850-2058
Found on: http://www.hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us/webdir/CHARLTO
I once drafted up a budget for a 40hour/week minimum wage earner. It had money budgeted for food, housing, clothing, and transportation.
;)
I came in at a $100/month under income. Were there sacrifices made? Darn tooten. No eating out, no premium steak*, sharing an apartment(and phone), and walking, taking public transportation, or sharing a vehicle** at worst. You can buy an older used vehicle for a couple grand.
Before you go on about healthcare, I'll point out that a minimum wage earner qualifies for a heck of a lot of governmental assistance, which I didn't account for at all.
Is it a 'nice' life? Nope. Is it livable? Definately. Is it vulnerable to any disaster? Yep, though I'll note that that first month's $100 excess could buy the items needed for a health adult to last a month with no services. Others on the board where it was discussed got a month's survival supplies down to around $40. I was considered spendthrift.
*cheap steak is about the same price as ground beef, thus occasionally allowed.
**The way I figure it, a business being so cheap as to hire an adult for minimum wage doesn't deserve to get an employee with a car.
I don't read AC A human right
What's the problem? Anything more deadly than a gun is considered a weapon of mas destruction. If you want to build something like a (potentially working) replica cannon, you have to get permission to construct a WMD.
It's a simple legal term, and a BOMB definitely qualifies as a WMD.
It said "threat." You can threaten with anything, whether you have it or not.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I hope the lawmakers who agreed with the change get the karma they deserve for screwing everyone.
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Anything more deadly than a gun is considered a weapon of mas destruction.
Would you agree that the US army routinely uses WMDs against it's enemies then?
What, then, is the point of maintaining a phone number and email address if one isn't interested in feedback? Why should someone's civil rights take a back seat to your assumption /.ers will be pointless?
Digital Citizen
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. You'll find that bush revoked the right for habeas corpus, for non-us citizens in the war on terror.
The writ of "habeas corpus ad subjiciendum" is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a prisoner be brought before the court so that the court can determine whether that person is serving a lawful sentence or should be released from custody.
Since i am not a us citizen, if i was detained over the war on terror, for whatever reason (or lack thereof), the US forces could detain me indefinitely, and would be completely at the mercy (if any) of my jailers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus#Suspen
If i'm not mistaken, thats exactly what happened with one of citizens of Australian, only after having the presure of a 1st world government, and ally to America, did they start the processing him after he was jailed in Guantánamo Bay for years without charges.
If he was American, he would of had his due rights, but alas not his case, and the cases of many many other non-US citizens.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
> WMDs? I guess they just can't be found anywhre huh?
Well, all those stockpiles in Iraq that have never been found, they must be *somewhere*!
No one mentioned that the claim was based on caller ID WHICH CAN BE EASILY SPOOFED. Google for "caller ID spoofing".
o n
Also, if they had the audio on an answering machine, they should have been able to quickly use audio analysis tools to demonstrate that the voices did not match. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_identificati
It's a clear case of negligence. At a firing time should be involved for those involved in that "investigation". To be just, jail should be involved... and not jail as seen on TV... PMITA jail. Where you get a boyfriend and everything.
Bend over.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
> It is reasonable for police to believe a principal.
...
Perhaps it's reasonable for the police to believe the principal *thinks* the kid has done it, but it's certainly not reasonable for the police to arrest anybody just based on somebody else's word -- they should have checked the evidence. The solicitor claims they didn't. As some of the other posters point out, police don't always act reasonably
And what about the role of the court here? It sounds to me like the judge didn't even do the simplest weighing of the evidence: do the phone records support this claim?
jon
I have a funny idea. Just like how the principal had this kid incarcerated because she thought he called in a bomb threat, let's get the principal incarcerated for calling in a bomb threat too. Everybody, call up the hotline. Tell them that you are Kathy Charlton and that a bomb will explode in the school. See if she gets to spend 12 days in the cooler too. You can call the school at this number: 724-834-9000
Aside from the principal's numbers and e-mail at the bottom of the linked article, I suggest you contact their school board: http://www.hempfieldarea.k12.pa.us/administration. asp. Here's the number for their administrative offices: 724-834-2590.
I suppose one could blame this on Our Fearless Leader (ahem), who decreed that, effective 2007, DST would start three weeks earlier. Why? "To save energy." He didn't mention any of the following- driving less, turning the heat down, or using low-wattage bulbs, or carpooling. Or just eliminating DST altogether... Then again, I would expect no less from a third generation Texas oilman. Oh, and if this story is indicative of the way the principal treats her students, I'm surprised they don't have a dedicated "bomb threat" hotline.
I think they boy is lucky. This story is curious enough to be into a film, either for TV or the silver screen. Anyhow, the family will be able to sell the rights to Hollywood for a souped-up adaptation (say a blow-up even instead of a mere bomb-threat) and cash in five or six figure dollars. Then it really doesn't matter any more if they can sue the state for 20 grands.
yet another abuse of authority: in 4th grade, we were to answer questions about a short story of a barn on fire.
the question: could you feel the heat of the fire while standing nearby?
my answer: duh!
the answer key: no
the teacher's rebuke to my answer: heat rises
i've had issues with authority ever since;-}
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> I'm tired of the illegal justice system in the US.
...as you seem to be stuck in 1969.
> The one that lets the rich go free and throws the poor in jail
Please correct that to:
> throws the middle class in jail
The 'poor' of today, who get free legal assistance, free health care and free university education, can afford to jaunt about in SUVs whilst blabbering into a cell phone. The middle class have to pay the taxes to support this; whilst paying out-of-pocket for university and marginal health insurance, and struggling to make ends meet. No wonder the middle class vote Republican so often... the Dems with their endless social programs ensure this.
I sincerely doubt that this kid was 'poor'. There would be an army of lawyers who couldn't wait to get their names in the newspapers, if it were so.
(But the Dems are rich too. Living in a gated community, one may actually think that the 'poor' need more help, at the expense of the middle class of course.)
It's happening, how can you stop 'creeping fascism' with a few eMails? I was a student activist 25 years ago during the Reagan years, only to get my name on enough blacklists that I couldn't be hired for anything more cerebral than dishwasher. Do you think that the computer systems which keep track of people are _more_ efficient than 25 years ago, or _less_ ??
I don't want my child to grow up in this fascist police state... only to get drafted... We're thinking about Canada, En Zed, Australia, anywhere which still has the benefit of British justice and the presumption of innocence. That leaves out Pakistan and the US, which broke it down by force.
WMD & terrorism: the 21st-century police force's "get into jail free" card.
[Har: the captcha for this article was "habeas"]
"Do you think that the computer systems which keep track of people are _more_ efficient than 25 years ago, or _less_ ??"
That depends on who provided the hardware and what software they are running.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.