The Jefferson County teacher who used as an example the shooting of President Barack Obama while teaching lines and angles to his geometry class has been placed on paid administrative leave and faces possible termination, Superintendent Phil Hammonds said today.
Hammonds said his office has been flooded with phone calls from all over the nation since The Birmingham News reported that Corner High School geometry teacher Gregory Harrison used the assassination example while teaching. The calls were mainly from people who were upset because the school district had taken no action against the teacher.
However more than a bit troubling according to one student's account
The teacher was apparently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.
"He was talking about angles and said, "If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president," said Joseph Brown a senior in the Geometry Class.
Three cheers for Alabama - Man am I embarrassed to live in this state, especially my home county somedays
When I took a step back and decided to re-tool my series on white supremacy in mid-stream the other day, a commenter over at Correntewire asked my why. Basically, I said that I wasn't comfortable with some things I'd planned to say, and felt that I needed more to back them up. But I let her in on what I was looking for. I waited a while to post my theory here, because I felt as though I needed at least a little something to back it up. I've discovered some things since then that seem to confirm my thinking, and I am posting them here as an exclusive for the LiA community. Here's the theory:
I have a theory that these skinheads and klanners are arming up like crazy. I believe I see some institutional architecture that is growing to the point that it might allow a lot of these groups, who most people view as independent actors because of all the fuzzy names, to organize and act in a coordinated fashion under the banner of white nationalism.
Well, here's another piece of the puzzle. I've been banging my head against the wall looking for it since Saturday, and it was right under my nose all along.
(Continuation of geno's series on hate groups. A must read folks, even if it's disturbing. - promoted by piggieheart)
At the risk of hammering the same note repeatedly until people start to get a headache: here's FBI informant-turned-rightwing-nutjob Hal Turner informing his audience that some killiing is probably going to have to be done in the next couple of months.
Note - I don't see how this can be viewed as anything other than incitement. I am all about some free speech, but this looks like "yelling fire in a crowded theater" to me.
(geno was busy Sunday night. We need to stay on top of this stuff before it gets on top of us. - promoted by piggieheart)
David Neiwert has some interesting things to report about Bernard Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly on the Knoxville shooting. He has a link to the full text of the shooter, Jim David Adkisson's, manifesto, and I think that is worth a read. But this detail from the manifesto, in particular, is something that I think is worth discussing further (emphasis added):
If decent patriotic Americans could vote 3 times in every election we couldn't stem this tide of liberalism that's destroying America. Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them. Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great Nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is Kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather.
I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just Kill yourself, do something for your country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.
My original plan was to write three posts about white supremacy problem, but the more I look into it, the less inclined I am to publish the remaining two-thirds of the original essay I wrote.
I am sure most people who are reading this are aware by now that under the right circumstances, skinheads would make ideal brownshirts, and the KKK would be in a position to proselytize among destitute people by providing necessities and social services the way armed political groups have done in other countries for years. So I see no need to devote entire posts to observations such as those.
I need to focus on the most pressing aspect of this problem first, and then zoom out and take a wider view.
I strongly encourage everyone to read what Sara wrote over at Orcinus on Tuesday about the shooting in Knoxville last year. The guy got life in prison. A very good sign. He was inspired by GOP hate-talkers, and wrote a manifesto explicitly stating that he was committing a hate crime against people like us.
Sara has some excellent advice for dealing with this problem. I don't see how we can avoid an uptick in these incidents, and in public appearances by groups of white supremacists, at least in the short term.
I agree with her assessment that Limbaugh, Hannity, and their ilk are painting targets on us for the lunatic fringe. There are some eerie parallels here to the early stages of some very bad incidents in other countries that I have studied. I'm not saying this to alarm anyone. What I am saying is that forewarned is fore-armed.We can handle this if we stick together and locate some resources to educate ourselves and deal with this like good people. We do not have to lie down and take it.
I don't know what disturbs me more: the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Sarah Palin appearance I've now watched over half a dozen times, or the collective cognitive dissonance that overtook the national media -- and, apparently, almost everyone in America -- with respect to that appearance.
No, I did not find it -- or, needless to say, Sarah Palin -- charming. Certainly not "hilarious." Yes, she does, demonstrably, have "rhythm." No, the fact that she was able to be a "good sport" and appear on a television program that has been skewering her for weeks does not raise her in my esteem one single iota. And no, that sketch did not make me smile. It in fact made me want to vomit.
Where is my sense of humour, you ask? Am I, in fact, a dour liberal determined to glower through November 4th? What exactly is my f*@$ing problem? Glad you asked -- if, in fact, you asked. Yeah, I've got a couple of problems...
"We're seeing a lot of generalized white resentment," he said. "The conversation among many white people, particularly in the South, amounts to the idea that Jena was a black-on-white hate crime that is being widely misconstrued as a case of racial oppression of blacks."
So, nooses appearing in the "white tree" at a school in Jena, Louisiana, followed by the beating of a black student, followed by the beating of a white student, followed by black students charged with attempted murder, followed by a rally in Jena in support of the black students is leading white people to display more nooses?
In July, a noose was left in the bag of a black Coast Guard cadet aboard a cutter. A noose was found in August on the office floor of a white officer who had been conducting race-relations training in response to the incident.
In early September, a noose was discovered at the University of Maryland in a tree near a building that houses several black campus groups.
On Sept. 29, a noose appeared in the locker room of the Hempstead, N.Y., police department, which recently touted its efforts to recruit minorities.
On Oct. 2, a noose was seen hanging on a utility pole at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama.
Do we really want to repeat of the events in Jena all over the country? Y'all are making my head hurt.
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