† Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”: The Associated Press reports that Chelsea King's parents “join a growing list of victims' families, law enforcement officials and other capital punishment proponents who have grown disillusioned with California's death penalty” and have “reluctantly agreed to a sentence of life in prison for their daughter's rapist and killer, calling the death penalty in California ‘an empty promise’”:

The decision to forego capital punishment for registered sex offender John Gardner, who this month admitted killing Chelsea King and another teen girl, has once again thrust the gridlocked system into the spotlight.

Five more inmates joined California's death row this year, pushing the population past a record 700 inmates, by far the nation's largest.

Florida is second with 394 inmates on death row, and Texas is third with 333, but both of those states regularly carry out executions.

Legal challenges over how lethal injections are administered to condemned prisoners in California have halted executions in the state since Clarence Ray Allen was put to death Jan. 17, 2006. The lawsuits are far from being resolved, and most observers believe it could be years before another execution takes place at San Quentin Prison. …

The system is so topsy-turvy that convicted killer Billy Joe Johnson last year fought for a lethal injection sentence rather than life imprisonment at Pelican Bay State Prison. The convicted killer said death row inmates enjoy better accommodations such as larger cells that they don't have to share and access to television.

When a jury and a judge granted the white supremacist leader his wish, he was packed off to death row last year knowing that nearly all inmates there die of causes other than executions. 

† Boobs And Brains Not Mutually Exclusive: Purdue University student Jen McCreight is doing her bit to strike a blow against “boobism” - the last acceptable form of anti-woman bias – after an ignorant Iranian imam blamed earthquakes on “women who not dress modestly.” She created a Facebook page to “[h]elp fight supernatural thinking and the oppression of women, just by dressing immodestly!” The idea: Women of the world should all flash some cleavage today to test the imam’s theory. If no earthquakes, um, “boobquakes” occur, his people will figure out he is the fool the rest of the civilized world knows him to be. The showy stunt does have its critics, though: Feminists fear men will spend the day ogling without thinking about why so many women are wearing low-cut blouses all of a sudden. The Stiletto doesn’t see this as a problem. After a woman has gotten a man’s attention, she can intelligently explain her mission. 

† Reality Check: Part IV: The New York Times reports that “nearly a dozen well-established House Democrats … are bracing for something they rarely face: serious competition … the latest sign of distress for their party and underlines why Republicans are confident of making big gains in November and perhaps even winning back the House”: 

The fight for the midterm elections is not confined to traditional battlegrounds, where Republicans and Democrats often swap seats every few cycles. In the Senate, Democrats are struggling to hold on to, among others, seats once held by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Democrats are preparing to lose as many as 30 House seats - including a wave of first-term members - and Republicans have expanded their sights to places where political challenges seldom develop. …

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he would consider anything short of taking back the House a failure. Republicans say they have not recruited strong candidates in all districts, but both parties agree that Republicans are within reach of capturing the 40 additional seats needed to win control. Republicans also are likely to eat into the Democratic majority in the Senate, though their prospects of taking control remain slim. …

To win the majority, Republicans would essentially have to run the table in races across the country fending off Democratic challenges to four vulnerable Republican seats in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio, and capturing 10 seats now held by Democrats. Even in this climate, Republican officials concede that an error-free year is unlikely. Republicans appear to have a shot at winning races in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

† Not Your Father's (Or Your) Sex Education (second item): The Washington Times warns that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is enacted, first-graders will be “forced into the classrooms of teachers undergoing sex changes”:

ENDA purports to "prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." Clever politically correct wording aside, this is a direct attack on common sense. On some matters, it is good to be discriminating. It is right to discriminate between honesty and dishonesty, between politeness and impoliteness, between right and wrong. And it assuredly is right to be discriminating in choosing who teaches our children. ENDA would make it impossible for a non-church-based charter school, for instance, to remove from the classroom a "she-male" who insists on exposing her pupils to her unnatural transformation.

This is no idle threat. ENDA would supersede the laws of 38 states that do not have laws treatingthose [sic] with an unusual "gender identity" as a legally protected "class" of citizens. Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition wrote in the April 20 edition of Roll Call about several examples of cross-dressing or sex-changing teachers who claimed protections under state disability laws (in the 12 states that do indeed protect "gender identity") and were able to remain in the classroom despite parents' protests. Perhaps the worst was at California's Foxboro Elementary School, where a music teacher underwent surgery to become a man, but parents originally were not even notified because administrators feared running afoul of medical privacy laws.

Click here to track the progress of ENDA (H.R. 3017), which is scheduled for a vote by the House Education and Labor Committee.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Lawyers and consumers are increasingly challenging debt collectors for “harassment, unscrupulous practices - and, most important to their litigiousness, violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act,” reports The New York Times:  

In fact, 8,287 federal lawsuits were filed citing violations of the act in 2009, a 60 percent rise over the previous year, according to WebRecon, a site that tracks collection-related litigation and the most litigious consumers and lawyers on behalf of debt collectors. …

Debt collectors and debt buyers are the targets of litigious consumers, since the debt collection law primarily applies to third-party collectors.

Peter Barry, a Minneapolis trial lawyer, is so bullish on the future of debt collection litigation that he holds several “boot camps” each year to share his secrets with other lawyers who want in on the action. If the debtor wins a court case under the act, the debt collector must pay the lawyer’s fees.

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: The Washington Post profiles Joey Baker, who attends Suitland High School in Prince George's County (VA), who used to be taunted by his classmates:

Back when was a freshman trying to find his way at, it was not uncommon for the aspiring opera singer to hear catcalls as he walked between classes.

Students at the overwhelmingly black school would teasingly call their white classmate "Justin Timberlake" or "Robin Thicke." Or, in the ultimate indignity, they'd liken Baker to hip-hop punch line Vanilla Ice, chanting, "Ice, ice, baby," as he tried to slip into math class. …

The catcalls faded and the social hierarchy shifted - maybe simply because time passed and people adapted, or maybe because everyone got to hear Baker, who has blossomed into one of the country's most promising young opera singers. At 17, he has already sung for the president, with Mary J. Blige and at the Kennedy Center.

These days, the charismatic Suitland senior with the outsize baritone -- one of the stars at the school's selective, high-achieving Center for the Visual and Performing Arts -- gets fist-bumps from the guys and hugs from the girls, and is repeatedly acknowledged by name. His name.

"When we walk to class, all I hear is 'Hey, Joey! Hey, Joey!' " says Baker's best friend, Tre'Von Bray. "I'm like, wow, he's really popular."

How popular? "Joey's just as popular as the quarterback," says Maria Saldaña, coordinator of the arts program.

That's no small feat given that opera "is not cool music," as Baker allows - and also that he's at a school of 2,436 students where roughly 96 of every 100 are African American and only one out of every 100 is white. 

The Stiletto couldn’t help wondering if the situation were reversed - a black student at a nearly all white school being similarly taunted - would school administrators have allowed him the time to earn the respect of his peers and be judged on the content of his character? Probably not – someone would have accused the students and school officials of racism and nipped any chance of interracial bonhomie in the bud. Instead of learning to like and value each other, the students would learn to walk on eggshells around each other.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Take The Veil Off, Or Go Home): French traffic police in Nantes fined a 31-year-old woman driver €22 ($29) for wearing an Islamic face veil that obscured her field of vision, reports The Associated Press:  

The driver gave a news conference Friday - while wearing the niqab veil, which covers the entire face except for the eyes - and expressed "a feeling of injustice" over the incident. 

"I didn't commit any infraction," said the driver, who declined to give her name. "I see just as well as you ... I have driven like this for nine years. I've not had any problems."  

The driver is French by nationality. The lawyer said she had never been stopped until now, after months of recent parliamentary discussion and government talk about possibly banning the veils.

President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the stakes Wednesday in France's drive to abolish the all-encompassing veil, ordering a draft law banning them in all public places. He insists the veils oppress women, and decided to defy France's highest administrative body, which says such a full ban could be found unconstitutional.

Despite this woman claiming to have driven for years with her peripheral vision completely blocked, Saudi women are routinely involved in DWV (Driving While Veiled) accidents in their own country - many of them fatal (second item) - so this is more a safety issue and less a clash of cultures.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Today’s Letter Is “I.” As In Ingrate.): After some 80 schoolgirls took ill in northern Afghanistan officials suspected Islamic militants who oppose education for girls are using poison to scare them away from school, reports The Associated Press:

The latest case occurred Sunday when 13 girls became sick at school, Kunduz provincial spokesman Mahbobullah Sayedi said. Another 47 complained of dizziness and nausea on Saturday, and 23 got sick last Wednesday. All complained of a strange smell in class before they fell ill.

None of the illnesses have been serious, and medical officials were still investigating the exact cause.

The Health Ministry in Kunduz said blood samples were inconclusive and were being sent to Kabul for further testing. 

Mr. Sayedi blamed the sickness on "enemies" who oppose education for girls. Presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said any attempt to keep girls out of school is a "terrorist act."

The Taliban and other conservative extremist groups in Afghanistan who oppose female education have been known to target schoolgirls. Girls were not allowed to attend school when the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan until they were ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

†Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II): With Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, President Barack Hussein Obama (last item) and Gov. Chris Christie (eighth item) having had some success in taking on the once-invincible teachers' unions, it looks as though the "children are our future" force field that hitherto successfully deflected all attempts at fiscal restraint and performance-based accountability is cracking. The latest pols to take a whack at taking down this public sector behemoth is Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, The New York Times reports:

With New York City schools planning for up to 8,500 layoffs … schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein [is in] a high-stakes battle with the teachers’ union to overturn seniority rules that have been in place for decades.

Facing the likelihood of the largest number of layoffs in more than a generation, Mr. Klein and his counterparts around the country say that the rules, which require that the most recently hired teachers be the first to lose their jobs, are anachronistic. In an era of accountability, they say, the rules will upend their efforts of the last few years to recruit new teachers, improve teacher performance and reward those who do best.  

“Nobody I’ve talked to thinks seniority is a rational way to go,” Mr. Klein said. “Obviously there are some senior teachers who are extraordinary. You recruit young talent you think is good for the future, and to just get rid of that by the numbers seems to me to be a nonsensical approach.”

This month city officials persuaded lawmakers in Albany to introduce a bill that would allow the city to decide which teachers to let go, although its chances of passing are slim. Similar legislation in California, where thousands of young teachers have received letters saying they could be out of work, moved forward last week, backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arizona abolished seniority rules last year, and this month its Legislature banned the use of seniority if teachers are rehired.  

Unions accuse administrators with wanting to jettison older teachers, who are paid more – as if this is necessarily a bad thing. Meanwhile, thanks to union concessions, teachers removed from classroom duty while under investigation for criminal conduct get full pay as do those whose positions have been eliminated because of school closings. Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this if teachers’ unions had been more reasonable and elected officials had been less craven.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on the volunteers who participated in Greater DC Cares’ annual Servathon to celebrate National Volunteer Week by helping out at the Washington Home, a nonprofit health-care facility for seniors in Northwest Washington. The Washington Post reports:

Sturn emptied the contents of her small cosmetics bag, filled with new emery boards, nail polish and polish remover, and asked Shirley Purney to pick a color. Any color.

Purney chose Hushed Blush. "It's a nice springy color," Purney said Saturday as she watched Sturn brush strokes of polish on her nails. …

"They were looking kind of bad," Purney said of her nails. "But she came just in time. … She's just doing a beautiful job."

More than 100 volunteers gathered at the home Saturday to clean windows, play checkers, wash baseboards, build planters, paint trellises, polish brass plaques and serve meals. But mainly, they talked and listened.

The residents were "asking questions about our lives, and I think that makes them think about their lives," said Tercy Hawes, who lives in the District and participated as part of her job's volunteerism program. "It's just been so pleasant - just seeing the smiles on their faces."

Richard Harris and Lewis Robinson played checkers with the volunteers.
I beat 'em," Harris, sitting in his wheelchair, said with a grin on his face. 

"I think she let him win," Robinson said. "Who's going to let a senior lose?