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Re: “Self-serving Senate's failed gun control legislation”
Yugoboy - Good news! Despite the propaganda, misrepresentations and out right lies spewing from the NRA and their right wing accomplices, your freedom to purchase a firearm is not, and never was, in danger. The Constitution, including the Second Amendment is alive and well. Only those with a fevered imagination view it as being in the slightest shredded.
Neither Obama, nor Congress nor any state government has proposed or will propose that all firearms be banned or that those in private hands be confiscated. Your right to be shot by a friend or family member remains intact, as does the right of any citizen, law-abiding or not, to buy as much firepower as they can afford ij order to be able to and take out their wrath on innocent bystanders in schools, movie theaters and college campuses.
Re: “Lovely Warren says city schools would be her first priority as mayor”
Mrs. Lovely ought to be running for RCSD board President with those visions.
Re: “Lovely Warren says city schools would be her first priority as mayor”
I applaud the focus of Lovely! Rather than telling us what we cannot afford and what we cannot do, she, is rolling out a plan with a solution to the most pressing problem we have! I do not know enough about school issues to say this will work...but, you never find answers without trying to find solutions. I, for one, will support someone with vision, not someone who tells us what we cannot do...we have that now!
Re: “Self-serving Senate's failed gun control legislation”
Kathryn Quinn Thomas - that's not democracy... it's freedom.
Re: “Lovely Warren says city schools would be her first priority as mayor”
So Ms. Warren does not want mayoral control, but besides spending $119 million dollars for education that is administered by the Superintendent, with oversight by the School Board, she now wants to have the main focus of the mayors office also being education. If education is Ms. Warren's prime focus, she should run for Commisioner for the Board of Education rather than for mayor. If we don't have mayoral control, then the mayors office has other priorities that should take precedence.
Re: “Self-serving Senate's failed gun control legislation”
Yikes! So if 90 percent of the country is in favor of background checks for gun and ammo purchases at conventions and on the Internet, which ARE NOT checked currently, meaning crazy people can purchase such weapons and show a up at a movie theater and kill people that could be my friends and family and that's democracy???
Re: “Self-serving Senate's failed gun control legislation”
The Senate took a stand for freedom yesterday. Liberals have a lot of nerve trying to "shame" Americans into voting for laws that restrict our rights and do NOTHING to prevent gun violence. These opportunistic big government socialists got a taste of what they deserve.
Obama wants to turn American into one giant Chicago, and many Americans don't want that. Despite the nauseating propaganda shoved down our throats by the liberal media. So cheers to the Senate for taking a stand against this tyranny. It may have not been a good day for Obama, but it was a good day for freedom.
Re: “Self-serving Senate's failed gun control legislation”
I don't understand why the day was "shameful" or why people are all upset with Congress. I, for one, was a little worried that they might actually shave some more of our rights in the name of "safety."
For the first time since the sequester, I'm pretty happy with the fact that Congress worked as it was supposed to: protecting the rights of Americans. Congress isn't always supposed to bow to the will of the majority. Sometimes Congress' role is to maintain the rights of a minority.
First: when was the last time Congress worked to INCREASE our rights in any way?
The history of America in the last few decades has been one of reducing the freedoms of individuals and groups who are not in the majority or in power.
Almost every decision of the Congress since at least 9/11 has been to reduce and restrict freedoms of Americans and other global citizens (Patriot Act to name only 1)
Second: why write new laws when older laws could have a significant impact on the problem IF enforcement is implemented. Writing new laws isn't the same as enforcing them.
I don't own a handgun. Maybe I will in the future, maybe not. That decision isn't on my mind, BUT, the freedom to make that decision is. The Bill of Rights isn't an a la carte menu. It exists to protect our rights and freedoms.
We have become a nation of simpering cowards responding with panic and hyperbole at every rare, outlier event that has a negative result. Why? I have no idea except that we have also become a nation that worships its children. The "safety" of the children trumps the rights of free Americans everywhere.
Not if I can help it. Hurrah for the Constitution. It's not completely shredded yet.
Re: “PETA bringing campus tour to UR”
It said it was supposed to there today 10-3. I went at 2 and didn't see anything. Has the date been changed??
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Any employee who whines about being held accountable for his or her job performance should be terminated. Only in the dysfunctional alternate universe of government-run "education" could such an ironclad principle qualify as either "reform" or a matter of controversy.
Re: “Could charters chew up the Rochester school district?”
Thank you RochesterParent for making the case more clearly and cogently than I generally do.
It doesn't matter if the students are picked by lottery. Simply entering the lottery indicates a higher level of "give a crap" than those who don't. Taking 3.000 of those kids out of the public schools basically reduces the percentage of students in the district whose parents do care enough (or are knowledgeable enough) to perform this advocacy for their children.
I suppose that eventually there will be 80 charter schools and what's left will be a few public schools where the students who are the worst problem children, or whose parents don't/can't advocate effectively will rot until they are 16, when they drop out to live on society's margins.
If public schools could expel problem children the way charter schools can, if public schools could claim hardship to prevent having to have a major special ed program, if public schools had the parent involvement that charter schools do, they'd be doing as well as charter schools.
I know that in some areas the charter school experiment has been a failure due to a variety of reasons, but here, the conditions I just outlined have helped charter schools to become successful enough. God knows our school has about 10 middle schoolers we would love to expel. Our school would run far better and the scores would improve immediately if we could. We can't, so we will be judged a failure for making an effort to educate some seriously difficult children who have arrived in middle school without the skills to do 5th grade work.
Let us not forget that my evaluation is tied to some extent to these children's ability to do middle school level work. I've spent my year trying to get them to that level.
Analogy: try to get a high school baseball player to be able to play in the major leagues. The kid's the right size, the kid's at his physical prime, but the kid does not have the experience or skills to do that. Is it the coach's fault the kid can't cut it in the major leagues? Or is it the decision of the person who foisted that kid on the hapless coach?
Carry the Analogy: Take a mid-level baseball team. Ship all the best players to other teams. Now try to make the playoffs. That is what charter schools are doing to the RCSD.
Re: “Could charters chew up the Rochester school district?”
I don't know if charters are good or bad per se, but you're assuming that this is a zero sum game due to our slow population growth. Every year plenty of middle class parents exit the city for the suburbs because they rightly or wrongly believe that their children won't have an opportunity for a quality education if they stay. If charters provide that opportunity then the overall pool of students within the city is larger, not smaller.
Re: “PETA bringing campus tour to UR”
Bill Benson,
Apologies for leaving out the date. The post has been corrected.
Jeremy
Re: “PETA bringing campus tour to UR”
I take it we're supposed to guess the date of this event since it wasn't mentioned in the article?
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Thanks ID for pointing that out.
Tim
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Tim, correction: Rhee did teach for three years - and there's a scandal there, too, regarding the testing results. That seems to have been hushed up, but her claims of her teaching excellence are suspect here as well. But Rhee had never been an assistant principal, a principal, a central administrator of any stripe (no directorship, assistant superintendent) - nada, zip - before being appointed chancellor at the age of 36.
Re: “Is support for gun control slipping?”
The left is showing it's true colors by this giant gun grab. Why not enforce the laws on the books and focus on helping the mentally ill? Because democrats don't care about safety and are exploiting this to achieve their long desired goal of disarming Americans.
Wolves in sheep's clothing.
Re: “Rochester parents want more music and arts in the schools”
Thank you for reporting on the School Budget hearing. I am a parent of a child at School 23 and I would like to restore our school's music program. Our children deserve a more robust music instruction program. Music and art are not "extras" but are vital to creating self-confident, wise, and appreciative future citizens. --GretaN
Re: “Governor proposes new anti-bribery laws”
Cuomo will try to cram this legislation through before the public has a chance to read or comment on it just like his gun control law. He even said he needs to 'strike while the iron is hot'. He has to do this and get it out of the public eye before there are any investigations into what other Democrats may be involved.
Re: “Lovely Warren says city schools would be her first priority as mayor”
So Mrs. Warren, after her dis-honest fumbling of the issue of gay marriage (the only thing on her twitter feed other than self promottion are quotes from Rick Warren, champion against gay marriage in california), now has sided with Jeb Bush and the so called education "reformers" who believe that privatization , union busting and more endless testing are the solutions to urban education. The identity politics alarm system at City newspaper must be shooting sparks! By the way, if Ms. Warren's full time job is working for David Gantt, does anyone think she is working full time in his office only in that capacity? Isn't she then basically running for Mayor full time while being paid by Gantt? So isn't David Gantt essentially paying her to run for mayor right now? I'm not accusing her of running for mayor for monetary reasons, but isn't kind of weird that David Gantt is paying her salary while she runs? Alex White is running his own business whilst running for Mayor and Richards spends about 100 hrs a week being Mayor. Weird. And no one will ever ask about it.