Corbett wins one

Remember those "Jesus glasses"?

Teacher not financially liable for disparaging Christians in class (OC Reg)

A federal judge has ruled that high school history teacher James Corbett is not financially liable for disparaging Christians in class, in violation of a former student's First Amendment rights.
…
"Corbett is shielded from liability – not because he did not violate the Constitution, but because of the balance which must be struck to allow public officials to perform their duties," [U.S. District Judge James] Selna said in a 33-page decision issued from his Santa Ana courtroom.

In May, Selna determined that Corbett, 62, violated the First Amendment's establishment clause when he referred to Creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a fall 2007 lecture at Mission Viejo's Capistrano Valley High School.

But the judge on Tuesday shielded Corbett from financial liability under a "qualified immunity" defense, a form of federal protection available to government employees who have violated an individual's constitutional rights.
…
[17-year-old Chad] Farnan's attorneys, who were working on the case on a pro-bono basis through a nonprofit Christian legal group, vowed to appeal the judge's decision.

"We feel the judge erred in his ruling," said attorney Jennifer Monk of Murrietta-based Advocates for Faith & Freedom. "At the same time, we are happy with the May 1 ruling and it doesn't not take away from the fact that Dr. Corbett violated the establishment clause."

In his lawsuit, Farnan did not seek monetary damages, but he asked that his former Advanced Placement European history teacher be fired or that the court issue an injunction barring Corbett from disparaging religion in class.

Selna ruled against issuing such an injunction; Corbett remains in his teaching position at Capistrano Valley High….

Doobie, doobie, doo

Pot users with chronic ailments lobby City Council (OC Reg)


Medical pot proponents called their peaceful rally tonight at Lake Forest's City Council meeting a success, saying the turnout brought awareness to the many patients helped through the use of medicinal marijuana.

The group – about 150 strong, filling the council chambers to capacity – vowed to return for the next City Council meeting to work toward keeping city dispensaries going by collaborating with city officials on how to regulate them.

"The solution is to regulate them," said Ryan Michaels, 27, who works with several of the Lake Forest dispensaries, to assure they are in compliance. "I don't think the problem is the city of Lake Forest. They are being pushed by their attorneys. The solution is regulating them and mitigating them through patient fundraisers. Potentially, we can come to a compromise."
…
The group – made up of representatives for patients with cancer, AIDS, chronic pain and nerve issues also includes advocacy groups like Medical Marijuana Inc. and OC NORML, the local chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. The group is hopeful of changing the city's direction in the wake of its recent legal efforts to remove at least 10 pot dispensaries operating in some of the city's strip malls.

On Sept. 1, the Lake Forest City Council announced that it had filed civil complaints against 35 people associated with 14 medical marijuana dispensaries in the city and called on immediate prosecution and abatement of the storefronts

Yeah, but wait till the voters really take a gander at Peeve Boy

Wagnerian drama: a pact with the Devil

Yesterday, we learned that  former OC GOP chair Tom Fuentes is endorsing Don Wagner for the 70th Assembly District race. (Both are on the SOCCCD board of trustees.)

Today, Matt Cunningham of the OC Red County blog notes that, last night, the Orange County Young Republicans (OCYR) also endorsed Wagner.

Or so said Republican crony Adam Probolsky on his FaceBook page (he’s one of my “friends”).

I checked the OCYR site and, sure enough, the youthful goosessteppers (check out their pics!) held an event last night (at the “Club House” in South Coast Plaza). Their guest speaker was OC DA and corrupt rat bastard from Hades Tony Rackaucas, a close associate of Tom Fuentes. The Tonester has occasionally visited SOCCCD events over the years. Photo ops, you know.

Probolsky, you’ll recall, was Tom Fuentes’ busy little helper during the period of the latter’s curiously scripted appointment to the SOCCCD board of trustees in the summer of 2000, when Steve Frogue resigned. Since then, he has also been close to IVC’s Foundation (his bro has been close to Saddleback’s), and he has been very involved—ubiquitous, one might say—in Irvine and OC politics.

Mathur, Christina Shea, Anthony Kuo

As IVC President, Raghu Mathur, following the example set by his mentor Tom “let’s go to the spa” Fuentes (curiously, the two had met months before Frogue's resignation!), courted Republican youth (Mathur has served as advisor to campus Republicans), one of whom was the IVC ASG President Anthony Kuo. (It was during young Kuo’s tenure that Mathur’s boy Rodney Poindexter was inexplicably selected as ASG’s “Administrator of the Year”—at about the time that Rod went apeshit and had to be escorted off campus for the safety of all concerned.)

Later, as I recall, Kuo was a fixture in the county GOP scene as a member (and leader, I think) of the OCYR. More recently, he has worked for Christina Shea and other prominent Repubs. He's also been on the IVC Foundation board, natch.

It’s Fuentesland, Jake.

Fuentes and Wagner: very staunch

Tom's friends are just what you'd expect.

Whatever happened to humility?

Oil fire, Orange County, 1909

From David Brooks’ column this morning: High-Five Nation.

On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared [on the show “Command Performance,” broadcast on the radio], along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.

“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.
…
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

On the bright side, here's a fine discussion of UFOs (that's full of scientific humility):



Logicians talk about the "appeal to ignorance" fallacy. It works like this:

Nobody's disproved the existence of Bigfoot. That's evidence that Bigfoot exists!

OR

Nobody's proved the existence of Bigfoot. That's evidence that Bigfoot does not exist!

Wrong on both counts.

Sleeping under a bush at the Old County Courthouse

The home of the old "Fullerton News" (a century ago)

UH-OH, TOM 'N' DON ARE PALS! 

First, former OC GOP Chair Tom Fuentes has endorsed fellow trustee Don Wagner for Assembly.

Actually, that sucks. It means that Tom and Don are pals again. And that means they’ve buried the hatchet--in our heads--and so Raghu Mathur won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. (But what do I know.)

This news is in today’s OC/Red County blog, where contributor Allan Bartlett explains that he received the following press release from the “Don Wagner for Assembly campaign”:

Fuentes Endorses Wagner For 70th Assembly District
Longtime GOP Leader's Support A Strong Boost Among Conservatives 

...South Orange County Community College District President, and candidate for Assembly, Donald Wagner has announced the endorsement of Tom Fuentes, Chairman Emeritus of the Republican Party of Orange County.



"Don Wagner has been a tireless advocate for conservative causes and candidates and his professional credentials are tailor-made for him to be an effective advocate for Orange County and Republicans in the State Assembly," said Fuentes. "He will be a champion for our values and Republicans will be proud to have elected him." 



"Tom Fuentes is one of the most principled conservatives I have known and I have been fortunate to serve with him--and learn from him--on the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees," said Wagner.

"Tom is a respected voice and I am proud to have his support for my campaign for Assembly."



Tom Fuentes is a conservative activist and former Chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County (1990-2004). Fuentes oversaw the Orange County GOP as it became America's most Republican County. He is currently a Trustee for the South Orange County Community College District....

Trolley in Tustin, c. 1890

TOM 'N' CHRIS ARE PALS TOO

Meanwhile, over at the moribund LA Times, Steve Lopez (a thief! he stole my nickname for Mike Duvall, “Spanky”!) blathers about, well, Mr. Mike “eye-patch underwear” Duvall, yet another staunch conservative (who, as it happens, was endorsed by our very own John "Incompetent Civil Servant" Williams):

'Spanky' Duvall's conduct is grounds for a good thrashing

After a few humorous observations, Lopez commences discussing Duvall’s replacement:

Potential replacement candidates were popping up so quickly, you had to wonder if one of them was involved [in releasing the infamous video to the media].
My personal favorite replacement would be Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, 59, who in July married a woman in her early 30s.

Of course he did!

Norby is one of Fuentes’ pals, a real right-winger. Perhaps you’ll recall the slick maneuver that Fuentes and pals attempted when “Dot” Fortune resigned from our board (gosh, she remained trustee even though, some alleged, she lived elsewhere in the state!), opening up a trustee spot between elections. At first, Tom and his GOP pals grabbed Norby’s brother Eric (who works at Claremont McKenna College, which has close ties to the Claremont Institute, on whose Board sits Tom Fuentes) for the gig. But then the faculty union figured out that they could challenge this thing, and, anyway, Eric smelled a rat (i.e., yet another lowlife Fuentean machination), and so he bolted, cheese or no cheese. In the end, the union managed to get their man, Bill “Poppin’” Jay on the board.

Whew!

Forest Avenue, Laguna Beach (c. 1905?)

Surely you know how the rest of this is gonna go. Naturally, if Fuentes cozies up to a politician, that politician will be all staunch and conservative, prayin’ and pledging, kicking illegal orphans, and preachin' the "sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman." Meanwhile, in reality, some very impure stuff is bangin’ around in his closet:

As the Orange County Register reported:
"It is the fourth marriage for [Norby,] the 4th District supervisor, who last year came under fire for claiming $340 for a weeklong stay at a hotel during the summer of 2007, when his previous marriage was on the rocks. That same week he was also found sleeping under a bush at the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana."



Look, nobody's perfect.

That’s for sure. Especially not one of Tom’s Republican pals. Dang!

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Meanwhile the world goes on"

Vice president Joe Biden visited the World Trade Center at Ground Zero last Friday marking the eighth anniversary commemoration of the 9/11 attacks.

Biden read Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese."

Oliver won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for her collection American Primitive (1983) and the 1992 National Book Award for New and Selected Poems (1992). For her 40th birthday, one of Rebel Girl's colleagues gave her a copy of the Oliver book, The Leaf and Cloud - she cherishes it.

Here's the poem.


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Elitist prattle

Recently, a member of the English department acknowledged that I do have a “passing knowledge” of English and grammar and such. Boy did I feel special.

I do love all those wonderful controversies concerning grammar and syntax—you know, whether to noticeably split infinitives, whether to start a sentence with a big “but,” etc.

Here’s one of my pet peeves. Logicians know that “begging the question” is the fallacy committed when one assumes what one is supposed to be establishing. But some illiterate doodle-head decided to use “begging the question” to mean “forces the question upon us” a while back, and the world hasn’t been right since.

I’ll leave it to Jack Lynch, author of an online Guide to Grammar and Style, to explain:

Begging the Question.

It doesn't mean what you think it means. Begging the question — from the Latin petitio principii — is a logical fallacy; it means assuming your conclusion in the course of your argument. If you say "Everything in the Bible must be true, because it's the word of God," you're taking your conclusion for granted. If you say "The defendant must be guilty because he's a criminal," you're doing the same. It's a kind of circular logic. The conclusion may be true or false, but you can't prove something by assuming it's true.

This is very different from raising the question, though people are increasingly using the phrase that way. It's sloppy, and should be avoided. Here, for instance, is a piece from The Times (London), 30 Nov. 2004:

The behaviour of ministers is a matter for prime ministers, who appoint and dismiss them. But this begs the question of who should find out what has gone wrong on behalf of a prime minister.

No it doesn't. It raises the question; it prompts the question; perhaps it forces us to ask the question; maybe this question begs for an answer. But it doesn't beg the question.

"What are 'studies'?"—Register readers do not disappoint!

Dana Cove, 1960

Life among idjits: according to OC Reg readers, English, history and philosophy are just "empty bling"!

EARLIER TODAY, I noted Gary Robbins’ post about the UCI faculty who have signed a petition calling for a “walkout” on the first day of class. (See 73 professors join call for faculty walkout at UCI)

Robbins oddly notes that 50 of the signers are from the “soft” sciences, which he takes to be “the humanities and social sciences.” (Um, no.) Included among the latter areas are history, English, philosophy, and some fields that, in some circles, are associated with liberal or progressive agendas: Chicano studies and Women’s studies, etc.

I thought it might be interesting to read the Register readership’s response to Robbins’ post.

—Yes, I know. Entering into the Reg’s comment zone is a bit like entering a sleazy bar in a crummy part of town late at night. You don’t do that expecting to run into brainiacs.

I fully expected Reg readers to bash the so-called “soft sciences,” as Robbins oddly defines them. (It seems to me that the fields within the Humanities do not claim to be “sciences,” except in an archaic sense of that word.) Using that term was like waving a red piece-o-meat.

Sure enough, the right-wingers did not disappoint:

anonymous says:

yeah. They [i.e., petition signers] are angry that, “…The entire Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Division which houses American Studies, Asian Studies, Cognitive Science, Development Studies, Environmental Sciences, Latin American Studies, Media Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Studies, and six other hugely popular major and minor programs is facing likely closure….” [who’s he quoting?] along with other grievances.

I strongly agree that our US Citizens should be open to other cultures and peoples. But I am not against closing down these departments. There will always be Liberal Arts Colleges that will offer these majors, but let’s not try to do everything at our universities. we [sic] simply cannot afford it. Maybe encourage foreign study abroad a little more aggressively for that sort of exposure.

Bob says:

…do we need any more graduates whose employment will mostly include saying ‘and do you want fries with that’?

It’s time to shut down un-necessary, especially ’soft’ Departments, like any well-managed business would do - and not just in tight financial times.

Marc960 says:

What are “studies”?

Women’s Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, African American Studies,

—These can all be combined into “Racists, Bigots and Chauvinist Studies”.

I still don’t get why there are no “What is an American” studies. It seems to me someone [sic] best start teaching that before it is just another chapter of a History book.

Major Variola (ret) says:

About 50 of the signers are from the humanities and social sciences, the so-called ’soft sciences.” They include faculty from such programs as sociology, history, English, comparative literature, Chicano studies, Women’s studies, philosophy and languages.

These are not sciences, they are sinecure jobs for useless “scholars” that Calif. can no longer afford. Empty bling is out.

History, English, and Philosophy are "empty bling"? Guess so!

Evidently, that last one was too much even for Gary Robbins, who responded:

Sociology is a field of science. W. E. B. Du Bois was a sociologist. So was H.G. Wells. And Alexis de Tocqueville. And Alvin Toffler. And Margaret Mead. Michelle Obama majored in sociolgy, among other subjects.

My God, doesn’t Robbins realize that his list of sociological heroes are likely on the Major's list of Unamerican commie homo atheistic rat bastards?

(Wells and Toffler are sociologists? Well, sort of. M. Mead was an anthropologist; was she ipso facto a sociologist? Don't think so. Robbins is a knucklehead.)

There’ve been a few classic Register rude right-wing rants:

debaser [!] says:

Overpaid leftist punks want to stage a walkout. Cretins are lucky to have a job. Not a damn speck of sympathy for any of them. Ivory tower morons.

Yeah! (I've got to admit: I do enjoy this fellow's no-nonsense, stogie-chompin' writing style!)

Naturally, some commenters seem to be reading from the Fuentes/Wagner/Williams Bible of Fiscal Staunchitude, which advises that a college should be run like a business:

ocdisgust says:

Hmmm, 30 [sic] professors, UCI needs to cut classes, staff furloughs…Maybe these 30 should be the first to go. That should alleviate some of the budget mess. I believe in freedom of speech/expression, but when you are an “Employee”, you have an obligation to the employer and when you choose to neglect your responsibilities to that employer (ie. [sic] being in the class providing the education they pay you for), you should face the consequences. Any employee in any other company would face consequences for skipping work; so should they.

I don't know about you, but I'm really gonna miss the OC Reg.

But not its readers.