Palin, Phelps bring Teh Stoopid with a vengeance

You've gotta hand it to Governor Quitter; her ability to proclaim how words and phrases like "blood libel" mean only what she wants them to mean and not what anyone else intended is never-ending.

The ADL's official response can be found here; if she couldn't be bothered to have one of her staffers look the phrase up on Wikipedia, that says a lot about how careful she is in thinking her own shpiels through before going public with them.

Meanwhile, professional screaming asshat Fred Phelps gets exactly the kind of attention he doesn't deserve. Never let it be said that he's ever missed an effort to make a profound tragedy worse.

To answer unhipster's recent question...

It seems that the journalistic sh*thammer that blasted Andrew Wakefield's bogus autism study to pieces has, indeed, completely failed to convince Jenny McCarthy of anything other toeing than the Party Line. From Respectful Insolence: 

Unfortunately, dim-witted celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who thinks that her Google University education trumps the knowledge accumulated by scientists who have spent their careers studying autism and/or vaccines, keep it (the "vaccinations cause autism" meme) alive, science be damned, medicine be damned. In her arrogance of ignorance, Jenny McCarthy thinks that her ill-informed opinion about whether or not vaccines cause autism and whether or not they are safe and effective should be taken as seriously as the science-based views of real scientists.

So, Karen, if you made a bet with somebody, prepare to collect the money. Hopefully, it wasn't the type of bet that takes into account how many days it would take The Jennoid to author such an inevitable screed. Even so, I suspect you'd still be collecting on it.

Some good news, for once

Ohio "science teacher" John Freshwater finally got the hook from his school district for behavior that was just a little warped, and it's about time:

A middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Freshwater was accused of inappropriate religious activity in the classroom — including displaying posters with the Ten Commandments and Bible verses, branding crosses on the arms of his students with a high-voltage electrical device, and teaching creationism. After a local family sued Freshwater and the district in 2008, the board voted to begin proceedings to terminate his employment in the district. Finally, after administrative hearings that proceeded sporadically over two years, the referee presiding over the hearings issued his recommendation that the board terminate his employment with the district.

Let's just say that I'm displeased with the school board's mealymouthed announcement of the decision, which smacks of rewriting by a board-hired PR flack if nothing else:

"The decision has been made to accept the referee’s recommendation to terminate the employment of Mr. Freshwater ... It was not an easy decision. We don’t believe there are any winners or losers in this situation. It is a very difficult situation for everyone. We are glad it has been resolved. Hopefully we can put this behind us, the community can begin to come together again and relationships can heal and we can move forward."

The only real reason it was a "very difficult situation" is because of Freshwater's need to dig his heels in as deep as possible in order to continue the case:

Mount Vernon taxpayers will spend more than $900,000 for the process that determined whether an eighth-grade science teacher accused of melding religion and science should have been fired.

The largest component of the $902,765 bill that the Mount Vernon board must pay is to the school's attorney, David Millstone, a Cleveland lawyer with Squires Sanders and Dempsey who specializes in employment law. His firm will be paid at least $813,628.

Referee R. Lee Shepherd, who oversaw 38 days of hearing testimony, will be paid $35,749.

Court reporting costs for the hearing will be $45,747, along with security costs of $7,641 paid to the Knox County sheriff's office.

And all this in order to fire an overzealous idiot who engaged in happy little spates of behavior like this in addition to his verbal proselytizing:

The now-infamous incident where Freshwater burned crosses into the arms of two students, including the plaintiff in this case, took place on Dec. 6, 2007. On December 7, 2007, the parents notified the superintendent of schools, Stephen Short. of what had happened.

Here's the stunning part: Freshwater was not disciplined at all for it. The principal wrote a letter to Freshwater telling him not to do it again, but didn't even place a copy of that letter in his personnel file (he told the parents that if Freshwater disobeyed the letter, then they would place the letter in his file). That was it, the sum total of the school's reaction to Freshwater's actions.

Remember, this cross was 6 inches long on the kid's arm and it was made with a device that comes with a warning never to bring it in contact with human skin. It raised welts and blisters and was a serious burn that will likely leave a scar. A science teacher used a high voltage device to burn that cross into an 8th grader's arm, for crying out loud. Not only should he have been fired on the spot, the case should have been referred to the prosecutor's office.

So much for school districts and their supposed mission to adequately oversee the education - and protection - of the children under their care.