Another Reason For Good Public Schools

A local private school is closing its doors at the end of this school years. About 200 kids will have to find a new school to attend. This does not happen to public schools. There is and always should be a public school, a high quality one with needed funding, where a child can go for a 'free' education. I say free in the sense of tuition free. Education should be a public service as much as police protection and fire protection. If you want to pay for a private firm to give you police protection, you generally can. The same should be their for education. Voucher systems and the general motivation of some to make all schools private are things that will not best educate the majority of the youth in this country.

If you want religion in your school, then send your kids to a private school or school them yourself. That is your right, but not something we should subsidize.

The Law Dog Doesn't Dig Brown

LaShawn Pettus-Brown has fired Ken Lawson. According to the article Lawson had a plea bargain on the table that Brown rejected. The also indicates that Regina Collins, a civil attorney who has represented Brown in the past, stated Lawson forced his was onto the case.

Bottom line, when you Drop Ken Lawson as your defense attorney, you better start picking out your preferred brand of soap on a rope.

Hillbilly Lawyers?

Would this be considered legal incest?

The Dean Jams

The funniest thing Maggie forgot to include in her column was a reference to the Dean's music.

"D to the E to the A to the N!"

Bunning's Foibles

I thought this kind of ethnic bigotry died after the third installment of the Godfather?

Protest VP?

Dick Cheney is coming to town on Monday. Will protest groups have undercover agents inside their rallies down here like they did up in Dayton? With the GOP pull in this town, I would be shocked if the stroomtroopers where not out in force, both undercover and with riot gear ready to pounce on a litterbug.

Will Nate Livingston be protesting the VP? That I think is the real question, not that Bronson and Nate are becoming anti-free speech chums.

Sucker

So Peter Bronson fell for Nate Livingstone's email attacking the Know Theatre Tribe. Well folks, there you have your proof, both Livingston and Bronson seek to stamp out freedom and intellectual thought. Their form of life would be better had under their own distinct form of fascism. Nate wants a black run city where white people are oppressed, Peter wants a theocratic state, with a paper layer of tolerance easily torn.

Bronson should have seen Lips, the latest play put on by the Know Theatre. For the record I was a technical adviser on that production. In the play a fictional President (remember all of these plays are fictional) near the end of the play goes hand in hand with her Lesbian lover down the aisle of a Church, seeking acceptance, but instead gets attacked. That shows the realty of Bronson's brand of religion at its worst, but does not mock religion. Peter thinks his brand of Christianity and its fundamental/evangelical sects are tolerant of difference, but they really just seek to have those who don't conform to their religion slunk around in the shadows, neither seen nor heard.

Peter writes:

Council should encourage free expression and help the arts downtown. But if it gives cash to the Know Theatre Tribe, even indirectly, arts groups will never find the integrity to respect religion the same way they curtsey to more politically correct "sensitivities."

What Bronson forgets, oh so intentionally, that religious groups where pushing "politically correct" ideas for hundreds of years before the conservatives starting whining about being chastised for saying "redskin." I point to Blue laws as the ultimate in religious PC efforts, getting the sale of alcohol ban or limited on Sundays. What motivated the laws???? Yep, Political correctness.

I hope Peter does not forget something: Churches are afforded non-tax status. Why is that done? It is does because of political correctness. What does not having to pay taxes do for churches? Well, they can use more funds to evangelize or run their religious activities. The taxpayers are then indirectly supporting religious activities. I don't like that. If I ran the world I would tax churches as any other Business, because that is what I seem them as. Guess what, that is not going to happen. Bronson should look at what I do, learn to live with the reality that everyone will not think like I do and let groups like the Know keep up their work of keeping live theater going in this town and making a stand for new and diverse art.

UPDATE: The Post has a story on the Funding, and they too fell pray to Nate's charms by mentioning his email. I guess if on a slow news day I send out a mass email, then I would get my name in all of the papers too?

UPDATE#2: Wes Flinn also comments.