The Oakland Tribune reports that police in that California city were forced to stop putting up DUI checkpoints because Latinos complained they were snagging too many undocumented guests.
The checkpoints, at which officers demand drivers licenses and proof of insurance, have snagged dozens of illegal immigrants who are "not licensed to drive yet otherwise obey the law," the paper says.
The department agreed to a moratorium on the checkpoints until guidelines can be drawn up that would presumably only allow police to enforce drunk driving laws and not any others.
The mayor of Oakland later reversed the decision, however, calling the moratorium a "dumb idea."
Zero Tolerance
A New Hampshire high school student who was told his photo of himself with a shotgun was inappropriate for the school yearbook has threatened to sue the school unless it backs down, reports The Associated Press.
Blake Douglass argued that the picture of him with his skeet-shooting shotgun over his shoulder was the same as other students’ pictures of themselves with musical instruments or other hobby-related items.
Officials at Londonderry High School rejected it, however, saying the image violated its zero-tolerance policy against guns. They say the school is prepared to go to court to defend its decision.
In an interview with the Manchester Union Leader, Douglass describes how teachers and administrators even confiscated his gun enthusiast magazines when he took them to school.
12-Year-Old Felon
A Colorado seventh-grader is being charged with felony ethnic intimidation because he got into a shoving match with a student who was harassing him in Spanish, reports the Craig Daily Press.
Austin Sadvar, 12, is being prosecuted for a shoving match that occurred between him and another sixth-grader at Craig Elementary School.
Following the fight, when he was asked to write a written statement about the incident by counselors, he wrote, "Maybe now he'll start speaking some English," according to his mother.
The first District Attorney to get the case dropped the ethnic intimidation charge, but another who recently took over the case, Bonnie Roesink, 14th Judicial Circuit District Attorney, revived it.
The trial is set for Nov. 15.
The other student involved in the spat has since moved out of the country.
Investigatin'
A professor at Emory University in Atlanta is "under investigation" for his links to a Southern heritage group that some consider a hate group, reports the Emory Wheel.
The Southern Poverty Law Center appears to be initiating a campaign against professor Donald Livington because of his membership in the League of the South, which the SPLC considers a "neo-Confederate hate group." Livingston is said to have directed the League’s Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History at one time.
The crime of the League of the South, according to the SPLC, is the group’s slightly daffy Southern nationalist ideology and its avowed interest in promulgating a "free and prosperous Southern Republic … founded on private property, free association, fair trade, sound money, low taxes … self-governing states and local communities invoking the favour and guidance of Almighty God."
Since the League has a fondness for the Confederate flag and talks of "Anglo-Celtic" culture being subsumed by multiculturalism, the SPLC, one of whose recent campaigns included a brave denunciation of racism in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, says it is clearly nothing more than a front for a bunch of racist nutballs.
Nice
A GOP Senate candidate in South Carolina is being taken to task for referring to his female opponent as "a nice lady," reports The State in Columbia.
Activists from both political parties say the language used by nominee Jim DeMint when referring to his Democratic opponent Inez Tenenbaum is sexist, demeaning and constitutes sexual harassment.
DeMint says he may have been wrong to call Tenenbaum what he did.
"I really thought she was a nice lady," the Greenville congressman said. "But based on the nasty campaign she’s running, I may have been wrong."
Squeaky Wheels
A national poll of American Indians has found that nearly all of those surveyed were not offended by the Washington Redskins team name, according to the AP.
Only nine percent of the 768 Indians in 48 states polled by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey said they found the team name offensive. Ninety percent of them had no problem with it.
For more doses of politically correct nuttiness, head on over to the TongueTied daily edition.
Mailbag:
Joshua R. writes:
In your Sept. 27 column, "Birthday Bashing, Heteronormative Hoopla," in the section entitled "Hostile Art," you mentioned that the two paintings in question were commissioned by the Treasury Department in the 30s, and had been with the EPA ever since. I was under the impression that the EPA was not born until Dec. 2, 1970.
Mike writes:
I agree with the school stopping festivities associated with religious holidays. It is after all a government school, right? Separation of church and state being PC, right? The kiddies, as you so blithely put it, should be learning the three R's, not celebrating.
Jason G. writes:
I think it is a terrific idea for the Glendening Elementary School to end all of these superfluous activities. They claim they are converting four to five hours per year of wasted time back to instructional time.
From my experiences with my children's education, it is more like 5 hours per month wasted on parties, pumpkin carving, and the like. This is about one day a month or 5 percent of the time students spend in school.
Is it any wonder so few children pass standardized exams or compete with foreign students?
Tom O. writes:
The student who complained about the "professors and schoolgirls" party seems to have fallen victim to his own PC-ness. He claims that the party is "heteronormative," meaning that the party "force(s) us to adhere to heterosexual standards of identity." But that is only true if you assume that all professors are men. He must have skipped a chapter in his PC Handbook.
Drew D. writes:
If 50 people, or in this case kids, are having fun, but one is not, why make the decision to punish the vast majority? Why not, for once, make the few who ruin everything for everyone else tolerate a good time instead of rewarding them and hurting the others?
The school celebration is a microcosm of the rest of this country. If 80 percent of the country feels a certain way about a particular topic, but 20 percent are mad about it, this country has bent over backwards to make sure the minority is happy, and pretty much said "we don't care how you feel or what you think" to the vast majority.
This decision making makes zero sense and divides the county by not compromising.
Chris A. writes:
My gut reaction to the Hostile Art article is that it is nonsense. I am one quarter American Indian, myself. I am not offended by this art, in any way. Any more than I would be by a painting of a battle during the Civil War.
While the actions portrayed can be upsetting they are at least historically accurate. These types of things happen during any war, and while they are not "Politically Correct," they did actually happen.
Are we supposed to rewrite history, to pacify everyone?
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