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In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment For a Novelist
An anonymous reader writes A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Md. middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report — "taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future."
Wow. Talk about a lawsuit that you are *guaranteed* to win.
This guy is going to make millions.
Book burns you.
I want to read that novel.
I'd say "Only in America" but that's sadly not true.
He should have made the plot around child molesting instead of shooting! Geeze!
I'd be interested to know if this teacher's school system has a union.
In the USA. We just didn't do it to very rich white people. And we had the Mafia to do it to the lower class whites.
This is nothing new kids. The internet just made it visible for us all to go OMFG collectively.
Well after this he'll have plenty of great material for a 900-year prequel that will tackle some different, but still very troubling, social issues.
Or you'll get detained for your story that involves explosions or gritty situations. Goodbye freedom, it was doubleplus good having you.
I know its a bit of a stretch of the mission, but based on what is known as of now, I think the EFF (and maybe even the ACLU) should come to this guys aid. Is this sort of thing exactly why we establish these sorts of organizations - to protect free speech be it online or on paper?
Those blue state basterds are at ir again destroying freedom one step at a time!
We still don't, actually. He's neither rich nor white.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
As if the story itself could not be more horrible I can't believe the books were published in 2011 and 2013 and just now they decide to go after him. Either he pissed off someone high up and they just found a reason to go after the guy or some bored cop just got around to discovering fiction...
Unbelievable!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
I read the opening paragraph of his book on Amazon. The man *is* guilty of a crime. Assault and battery on the world of literature!
Really, his stuff is "dark and stormy night" bad. Toss him in jail. No, wait, that's not a severe enough punishment for what he's done. Something more extreme is required. I know, make him teach middle school!
Instead of 900 years in the future, he should have set it in the past. Or at least included dinosaurs. You'd never get in trouble for writing about Dinosaurs... Oops, sorry. Forget about that.
In all seriousness, though, school shootings are a problem. However, I'm much more afraid of my oldest son (who begins middle school in a couple of days) getting in trouble for someone mistaking something he says/does as being a threat against the school than I am afraid that someone will walk into the building and kill a bunch of people. (My oldest is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and anxiety disorder. He can tend to be clueless about "other meanings" to the things he says or how people might take offense to certain phrases that he means in an innocent manner. Not a good combination with overzealous administrators who are jumping at the slightest whiff of trouble.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I didn't RTFA :) Thx for pointing that out. My point still stands. We never really had that much freedom individually in this country. It was just way less visible in our past than in the soviets past. IMO.
All of the stories I have read about this use the same reference: WBOC. There is, as of yet, no other source. I think there is more to this story than has been reported so far. I am not suggesting the lack of facts is a coverup, just that it is still in the early stages of falling into place.
Only a verifiable head case would write about a school shooting 900 years in the future. I have it on good authority that the last 'chemical/kinetic homicide' was recorded in the waning days of the Transcend Uprising in 2234. By 2914, the most common spree killings, by method, are 'engineered retroviruses', 'covert antimatter decanting', and nanoassembler override.
Also, ever since Heuristic Neural Patterning became economically viable in the mid 24th century, 'school' exists as little more than a footnote in some of the low level neural patterning modules. I'm not sure why you'd expect to find enough people for a mass casualty incident visiting one.
There is a petition at Change.org requiring the county school superintendent to apologize.
https://www.change.org/p/dr-he...
...to a regime that killed some 20-30 million people. Sounds like the guy got jobbed for sure, but Soviet punishment would have been to kill the guy and his family, or at least exile them to a Siberian work camp for 10 years.
It's like violating Godwin's Law, except for commies...
There are plenty of fucked up novels out there that involve sick shit with children... It's the goddamn terrorist tag that's causing this type of behavior by the law.. In their eyes we're the enemy, they're right, and we're wrong. I get it we're living in an age where you can be arrested for shitty rap lyrics on Facebook so it's not too big of a shock to be reading this.
The Eastern Shore is the right-wing part of the state, before anyone brings that up.
So in the original piece there is one commenter ranting about how the paper is not publishing 'the rest of the story' (which will vindicate the board of education and police) because they are enjoying the traffic they are getting.. yet I am not seeing this poster actually present any new information.
Has anyone heard anything that might even slightly justify this.. ahm... I am not sure it is even an 'arrest'... hrm... event?
Wow. Talk about a lawsuit that you are *guaranteed* to win.
This guy is going to make millions.
My best friend is an attorney and we've known each other for years. He has taught me a lot about how the law really works in the USA (I live in the US too by the way). Literally anything can happen in court. You may be right in that the odds may be good that he'll be able to sue and win, but it all depends on factors we can't control or predict. The judge the case gets is important. If it's a jury trial, the outcome may have more to do with the abilities of the lawyers involved than the actual merits of the case. Then if you don't like the verdict and appeal it, you go back to square one because some appellate judges tend to favor one side over the other. You get a really conservative appellate male judge in the Scalia mold and you could find that he'll basically allow the government to do anything if they feel that public safety was potentially at risk. Keep in mind too that the author may be greatly exaggerating what happened to him and what really happened may be a lot less sensational than the news report.
Which is the only definition that matters, whether you're a right-wing nutter like kruach aum or a leftwing nutter like a jezebel columnist.
It's awesome that his pen name was Voltaer which sounds like a reference to Voltaire who was fighting for civil rights and had his books burned.
It sounds like this guy is brilliant. He was smart enough to use a pen name to hide his writings from his students, and also smart enough to choose a pen name that mocks anyone who uses these writings to defame him. Clearly, Voltaire should now be required reading by Dorchester county students.
This is terrible. All across the country it seems that local government's are becoming more aggressive. This poor guy wrote a fictional book, set in the future and is now being severely punished for it. What will come next? Will we /.ers become targets? I remember in the past thinking "nope, that can never happen in the States", now I see that it is happening. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I've only read the Amazon precis, but it *seems* like the shooting is a plot device against which the author has characters act and react. Not all that different than Nevil Shute using a nuclear war as the backdrop for "On The Beach."
I am, frankly, of two minds about this. On one hand, possibly support a glory seaking attention hound. On the other, be tracked and branded as someone who "supports violence in schools" by buying the e-book. On the gripping hand, just read the thing myself and make up my own mind...
I have the same fears with my 6 year old daughter. Yesterday we were playing and she pretended to set me on fire with magic from a fairy crown. I in turn used my water bending abilities to douse myself and trap her in a whirl pool. I am pretty sure threatening to roast a person alive is against school rules, as well as unlawful detainment and, considering the drought my state is facing, so allowing imaginary water runoff to irrigate adjacent properties. She would have been expelled and sentenced to 13 years in the Muppet gulags.
Because, as we all know, people that plan to commit a horrific crime always write a novel about it first.
You would think huh? With all the searching they're doing, they'll find something they can pin against him that, at a minimum will ruin his career. This is 0 tolerance we're talking about, they won't back down.
We're now clearly on the road to Fahrenheit 454.
This, and yet no one went after Tom Clancy who basically planned 9/11 (i.e. kamikazing a passenger plane into the White House).
There's a good documentary film about that entitled "Basic Instinct".
hey I saw movies and news from that time period and I'm calling BS. There was nobody but white people in the USA at that time
And yet Stephenie Meyer is still free to write her crap. C'mon at least arrest her for that god awful twilight series.
But it's what happens to you afterwards that reveal its true qualities.
The problem is that apparently some officials believe that school shootings would somehow become less of a problem if nobody is allowed to talk or write about them...
did he stumble upon the future plan(s) ? is his book too much like the base model for all control that we are facing, or are teachers just not allowed to write a book?
happy trials
Hang on. Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that a perfectly normal teacher just happened to be grabbed and taken for an "emergency medical evaluation" because he had innocently written a book. It is also quite possible that he is actually suffering from mental illness -- schizophrenia often manifests itself in early adulthood, for example -- and that his books were originally written as a coping mechanism for the early stages of illness. Remember, approximately 1% of the population will suffer from schizotypal symptoms at some point in their lives.
The most likely explanation is that the teacher's behavior had grown erratic and he had shown signs of mental disorder that caused grave concern in his co-workers and friends.
There should be a Do Everything Wrong Day where students and teachers alike do things like play dodgeball, cops and robbers, offer pats on the back and hugs, bring copies of Mad Magazine and Guns and Ammo to school, call each other names, walk to school, say they look nice today, and so on and so on. Then everyone lodges official complaints against everyone else, so administrators now will either have to either suspend everyone and then crawl through hundreds if not thousands of hearings, or agree that a lot of the rules against these things are ludicrous if not completely anti-American.
The slogan for the day? "If everyone is in trouble, nobody is."
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
George Orwell says hi.
Stephen King did something very similar to this years and years ago, under virtually the same circumstances. He wrote a book called "Rage", under a pseudonym, which was about a fictional school shooting in a setting that would've amounted to the present when the book was written. Of course, the shooter in Rage was also portrayed sympathetically (he goes insane because all of his classmates are assholes). There were even cases where the shooters in actual school shootings were carrying around copies of Rage, which made him (voluntarily) pull the book from publication.
Yet strangely, I don't recall anything about Stephen King being arrested in the middle of the night and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
It would be useful to know if McLaw is under investigation for behavior other than writing two novels
Yes, it would be very useful to know that before people go writing articles about how this guy has been locked up (if that) for (and only for, seems to be the implication) writing two novels. Oop, too late.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Secret Laws.
Seriously, where is he now?
How is it possible for a person to simply disappear and have their whereabouts listed as "known to law enforcement".
IANAL, but it seems to me that someone with standing should file a writ of Habeas corpus because people should not just disappear like this in a first world country.
The Digital Sorceress
The reports (the Atlantic article is an opinion piece about the local reports regarding the incident) are too sketchy at this point to decide if there's a good probable cause for the teacher to be arrested (besides his having written a presumably controversial book, which is not a good reason for somebody in a presumably democratic country to get arrested).
What it does reveal is the attitude of the local reporters who appear to be somewhat supportive or at the very least neutral to the police action. I know, a news report is supposed to be objective. But I don't see any mention in the quoted parts of the news reports about the teacher's free speech rights. The "first ammendment" comment is in the Atlantic article not the news reports. Since these are local news reporters they probably also reflect local biases. Possible threats to safety are given more importance than any free speech rights.
So why did they not arrest Stephen King and all those other writers that write about horror?
lol, cheeky
The problem with that is that they are keeping him in an undisclosed location.
But they're revealing that he is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Wouldn't they just send him to the closest psychiatric hospital AND TELL THE PRESS THAT HE WENT THERE for evaluation? If there is no problem with the actions of the police then there is no need for secrecy.
They're looking for crazies that go on shooting sprees. What they should be doing is checking EVERYONE... not just people that publish books about school shootings while working at schools.
I frankly don't have a problem with them investigating the guy so long as they do it respectfully. That said, everyone should be checked out. These mass shootings are just crazy people acting out. Nothing more.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
That's exactly why we must destroy what's left of the unions. As usual they're the last thing standing in the way of a fascist state.
I guess you should just write about people smiling, dogs running, rainbows. They don't lock you up for making up stories about rainbows.
It's not just for students anymore. Hopefully this puts more visibility on this nonsense.
When McLaw shoots up some school 900 years from now, you all will look like fools!
The Democratic People's Republic of Maryland.
It's one of our "Drive through to get to the beach during the summer and forget about the rest of the year" back waters.
They are not the most advanced folk over there.
Bet there are some mental illness issues, the guy is in a psychiatric hospital, and they CAN'T say more due to confidentiality rules. Less a Soviet kidnap/whitewash than protection of patient privacy.
He may well be involuntarily committed at this point. I work in community mental health; we often see this kind of thing.
This is the USA, even if he's not or rich he has rights; if he has done nothing wrong and has (oh so very) carefully watched his step, he can't be arrested without being charged with a crime.
Oh look, we found some weapons/childporn/andordrugs in his house.
GCSE English, coursework graded as part of the exam back in '89:
"Imagine a book in which the pupils take over their school in the same way that the animals take over in Animal Farm. Write the first chapter of the book."
I got an A, probably for the scene where the female maths teacher got thrown through a top floor window.
Creative writing is healthy, teachers should be allowed to encourage and practice it.
This might just be me, but I don't necessarily see the problem with necessitating a teacher writing about a school shooting undergo psychological evaluation as a prerequisite to any future teaching assignments. It's in no way a wrong thing to write a book about, and nor of course should we assume that he is himself incapable of teaching, but when you're discovered to have very specifically spent time writing about murder at a school, I would want some kind of medical opinion that said it was safe to let you work in one.
I don't think that "conservative" means to be supportive of Soviet-style policing. Actually, REAL conservatives want to "conserve" good old traditions like Magna Charta, which is very, very old, yet very modern given the NSA-KGB FUCKERS.
Yeah, take that, NSA-KGB.
nc
She does not want to rape, she wants to castrate.
the Idiocracy syndrome cuts both ways. Yeah, the official reaction was a little over the top. However, I pity the young lad for having no imagination whatsoever. Nothing in the wide world to write about but more gore in a school setting? Right.
The cast, director, writer, editor, everyone! They must all be plotting terrorists
yeah mr nsa-kgb. whatever you say.
"Think of the children is the battle cry of Tyrants everywhere. I won't vote for anyone, even if I agree 99% with them politically, if they make any statement "
I agree, except where they should use this arguument.
ie: where politicians borrow money now to help keep them elected that our children WILL end up paying for on the future.
As a teacher, I can tell you the union would/will be all over this. They would not shy away from this. Freedom of speech is a hot button these days. If this guy is smart, he'll sue the district for defamation of character, get a big settlement and retire early. As a teacher, you PAY the Union to represent you in case of this sort of thing (in bi-weekly dues). They don't have a chioce: they have to represent you.
http://www.latimes.com/books/j...
Apparently, he sent a letter which caused some people to be concerned.
From what I've read on the StarDem website (can't find the source for their info), the Wicomico County State's Attorney brought up the issues. From the LATimes article, people were aware of the books before all this.
IMHO, I think there's something else going on here which caused a lot of people to become really concerned. I don't get the feeling it was an overreaction but involves something that they can't share for various legal reasons.
My suggestion, wait and see what is happening.
I think everyone freaking out about an "Author" being taken away needs to take a step back, remove the "books" from the picture, and see if their reactions are justifiable because every article I found about the issue is going nuts about censorship but very few seems to be approaching it objectively.
...when we have more information about arrests in the Soviet Uni...err, Russia, than we do in the People's Republic of Maryland.
I can confirm that years of inbreeding has created a "Won't someone think of the children!" utopia on the Eastern Shore. These are the same folks who advocate secession due to differing political views.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
Gotta luv maryland, a state so liberal they tax rain, this is not surprising.
The police are supposed to have probable cause that you are an immediate threat to yourself or others before taking you in for mental evaluation. Then, you are supposed to be evaluated by a qualified physician to determine whether to hold you for further observation, and if necessary, not release you until you are no longer a danger.
It seems incredibly unlikely that the police would detain someone simply because of the novel he published. It seems much more likely that the guy actually showed signs of severe mental illness and that the novel was just the impetus for the police to interview him and not the reason that they sought a psychiatric hold.
If the case is as the article is presenting it, that whole department needs serious retraining, but I suspect that there is something else going on here.
The problem here is that the press reports are just rehashes of what the cops are putting out. Somebody should find this guy and interview him. He may be in hiding for reasons of his own.
His book is self-published on Amazon. It's been out since 2011, and you can read a sample there. This guy is not the next Steven King. A typical sentence: "As Zea approaches her partner she cannot restrain herself from hyperventilating as she peers at the black embossed letters on the translucent glass sign above the entrance to the central atrium".
Today, the Los Angeles Times quotes cops as saying "Everybody knew about the book in 2012", and that this is more about a four-page letter he recently sent to officials in Dorchester County, containing "complaints of alleged harassment and an alleged possible crime". There may be more clarity over the next few days, now that the story is getting attention.
Places like here and Reddit...everyone is always applauding the idea of being able to detain, question, or otherwise harass people over what they write or say via glowing support of "hate speech" laws...especially in Canada. Now everyone isn't cool with detaining, charging, or otherwise banning people for what they say/write?
I know, you will say "no this is different!" It is not...you're just to f*%@#ing stupid to realize it...they are related and intertwined....
The Soviets didn't send their enemies home on paid leave.
Perhaps they should have. It would have been so much more difficult for the US to paint them as villains with propaganda if they were refereed to as the 'Iron curtain all expense paid vacation empire of evil".
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There have been some unfortunate events in this case There don't appear to be any Christians involved, but Jesus said in John 7:24 "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." The first step of that process would involve objective observation, which has been lacking here. Since intelligence is a legal reason not to hire someone to be a cop, they might need to find a new sheriff who is able to read.
Patrick McLaw has a track record as a good and creative teacher. In an era in which education has, increasingly, become prolonged baby-sitting with little practical value in the real world, he has made some money by publishing two novels of his own, and has also shown students how they, too, can publish books to make money.
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I have misplaced my Kindle, but I bought the Kindle edition of the book in question, and I'm reading it online.
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The Insurrectionist is a mixed-genre science fiction, detective, and spy story novel set nine hundred years in the future. The book opens as federal agents investigate the aftermath of an enormous school massacre. It isn't a bad first novel. The plot combines elements familiar to viewers of The Bourne Identity and NCIS. There is a little too much borrowed from NCIS, including a female investigator with a short name starting with "Z" and a reference to a agent smacking another one in the back of his head to make a point.
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McLaw's descriptive passages are well-written, devoid of the show-off stylistics we sometimes find in O'Henry's or F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories. He has a bit too much dialogue and, like Hemingway, he would benefit from a relationship with an editor. That is something you do not get with self-publishing, but I'd say he is a good writer and there is no incitement to violence or justification of violence here, at least in the first three chapters. I'm still reading it
More on this story, that asserts the teacher was taken out of class for various other reasons:
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-teacher-was-not-placed-on-leave-over-books-authorities-say-20140902-story.html
The original story at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... is dated 8/25 with an update on 8/26,5 days ago. From the today's Baltimore Sun at http://www.wboc.com/story/2636... indicates this is a mental health matter and nothing to do with his books. HIPPA laws kick in to protect Mr. McLaw's privacy.
After deciding to about-face on the cold War and implement a Soviet-style economy, it should not surprise us that we are now adopting their justice system as well. Luckily, Alaska will be an able replacement for Siberia when we set up the re-education gulags.
We get +5 insightful for people that want to jump the gun and get on the "sue the man" bandwagon with no information... and if you would just wait an hour you woulf find out things like.... he's probably not fit to be a teacher due to mental health issues:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/la-et-jc-teacher-was-not-placed-on-leave-over-books-authorities-say-20140902,0,1577239.story
But by all means continue your ridiculous tirades with little to no facts.
My ex and her sister have a very special name for the aforementioned state. They call it the People's Republic of Maryland.
We're starting to see quite a lot of these examples where you get punished before you do anything wrong.
Sure, guns can't be controlled, it's against the 2nd amendment and all that. And there's no proof that if you own a gun you will hurt someone with it.
But we must control speech. All that dangerous talk about guns and shootings and whatnot. I'm pretty sure there isn't any amendment protecting speech. And that guy is clearly dangerous. Get him boys!
So suppose I make contact, (I did), sphere and everything. It happens on camera (it did), they hear the noises just like me and I interpret them for the government watching. But the government denies its happening, what can I do? Who can I call? *hint* no black holes and ozone can be used to cure cancer
Isn't this the kind of thing that teacher tenure is supposed to prevent? Maybe he didn't have it yet. Note, I'm generally opposed to tenure. This sort of bolsters my opposing view. If tenure doesn't prevent this kind of thing, what good is it?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Mental health related actions also have legal restrictions just as physical disabilities do. Unless a crime is committed I can't see a way that a school board can force mental health treatment or examination. Frankly many people choose to be mentally ill even when effective treatments are available for their particular condition. If a person controls their actions even though their affect may be disturbing to others I'm not so sure that this school board has not taken a very bad and expensive path for itself. With the stigma applied to the mentally ill even a 48 hour hold for observation can ruin a person's career permanently even if the evaluation shows him to be in fine health.
So you are proposing a scholastic version of the "Purge"?.. I would love that.. (heck, there were a few teachers I had that I would love to have some "aggressive negotiations" with at the time).
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
1. With HIPPA etc, CAN they release medical information about someone that has not been convicted (I don't even think they can release medical information once convicted?) of a crime?
2. When he says "known to law enforcement" does that mean literally known only to them? or does that mean, LE and the immediate family?
3. These books were written a while ago. There was mention I thought in one of the news stories of a recent memo, now I can't find that.
4. If he is in a location known to LE and unable to travel, why are they circulating his photo to neighboring jurisdictions?
5. A K9 sweep of the school is actually pretty normal. They did those even way back when I was in high school and middle school. Even let me find out that the previous owner of the truck I just bought my junior year must have been a stoner as the dogs went nuts.
6. If this really was a case of LE going jack booted thugs, locking someone away, forcing meds, and destroying his career because of published fiction works? Well..... I feel bad for us as tax payers because this one is going to hurt. I can only hope that there is direct penalties to the DA, judge and Sheriff that approved this
I am 31337 or something.
Excerpt:
That is not that case, authorities tell the L.A. Times.
"It didn't start with the books and it didn't end with the books," State's Attorney for Wicomico County Matt Maciarello told The Times. "It's not even a factor in what law enforcement is doing now."
In fact, McLaw has not been arrested. No warrant for his arrest has been issued.
Concerns about McLaw were raised after he sent a four-page letter to officials in Dorchester County. Those concerns brought together authorities from multiple jurisdictions, including health authorities.
McLaw's attorney, David Moore, tells The Times that his client was taken in for a mental health evaluation. "He is receiving treatment," Moore said.
Because of federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations mandating privacy around healthcare issues, he was unable to say whether McLaw has been released.
McLaw's letter was of primary concern to healthcare officials, Maciarello says. It, combined with complaints of alleged harassment and an alleged possible crime from various jurisdictions led to his suspension. Maciarello cautions that these allegations are still being investigated; authorities, he says, "proceeded with great restraint."
--- end excerpt ---
http : // www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/la-et-jc-teacher-was-not-placed-on-leave-over-books-authorities-say-20140902,0,1577239.story
mark
http://d188rgcu4zozwl.cloudfro...
From the Amazon page.
I wonder how you get the job of making these? I could make a better book cover in my sleep.
A million years ago I got tricked in slamming myself into a state mental hospital overnight. I make two observation involving sense certainity.
the first is that I watched two burley male staff come up behind this passive sitting female and tell her to come with them for her meds. She did not respond in the net three separate ones so they immediately seized her in control locks and took her away. I did a written complain and before I left they told me it had been evaluated and deemed correctly done by the staff. I mention that she may have been unable to respond or respond in that time frame
nowxsoidud do this voluntary committment. This a cool grand for one night but the alternative of an involuntary commitment is a very permanent legal problem. But i was surprised maybe a year later to get a nice official certificate that I had my civil rights back. It had not occurred to me that I did not have them.
Enjoy.
Does it take nineteen minutes to understand this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
When a kid cannot mime splashing his friends with imaginary
water balloons without getting removed from school and subjected
to interrogation and counseling.... we have crossed a line.
I consider this issue to have its roots in "zero tolerance" policies
that have morphed into "intolerance" policies. Worse they teach
hide bound behaviour as ideal, remove negotiation and listening
from the table. Intolerant management at work, school and yes
parenting evokes despair and helplessness in people.
It is true that some find solace in the strict adherence to policy
by administrators and bureaucrats mindset but when policy is
wrong much more goes wrong. When we are lucky Kafka chuckles
in his grave.
Currently in the news we are seeing a zero tolerance organization
run amok in Iraq and Syria as ISIS fighters impose an extreme
view of the rules and then enforce those rules with a "Zero Tolerance"
policy.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
This is America, plain and simple.
Land of the free. Just as long as you don't say anything the government doesn't want to hear.