† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: Catherine Ariemma, who teaches an advanced placement course combining U.S. history with film education at Lumpkin County High School, has been placed on administrative leave and could be terminated after she allowed four students at the school - which is 90 percent white - to costume themselves as Ku Klux Klan members so they could act in a movie about the history of racism in America for a class project, reports The Associated Press:

A group of five students took on the subject, which included covering the history of the notorious white supremacist group which had large chapters in Stone Mountain, Ga. and Tuscaloosa, Ala. One student filmed and did not wear sheets. …

Ariemma said she led the students through a cafeteria to another location where they shot the scene. Later, she said another teacher approached her.

"That's when I heard there were a couple of students who were upset," she said.

Ariemma said she wasn't able to find those students to explain the project to them. …

She said the students who wore the sheets were shaken when they realized that other students were upset.

The Stiletto suspects that it wouldn’t have mattered whether Ariemma had explained the project to the black students and parents who complained. The students playing the Klansmen were “shaken” when they learned their actions had been misinterpreted, and it never occurred to them that their intentions (the KKK was cast in the villain role in their movie) were irrelevant to those who prefer to cry “racism” first and ask questions later – or, more accurately, never bother to ask the questions that would allow them to judge the content of the character of this teacher and her students.

† TSA (Thieving Security Agent): Is this another sleazy screener story, or is it evidence of incompetence that enabled a crime of opportunity? Paulene Showalter, 63, is suing the Transportation Security Administration, alleging that the $24,000 Rolex her husband gave her for her 50^th birthday disappeared after security agents at Norfolk International Airport in VA ordered her to take it off put it in a bin on the scanning belt before walking through the metal detector, reports The Florida Times-Union:

The lawsuit, filed in Jacksonville federal court this month, accuses TSA of negligence and bailment, a legal term that makes someone holding another’s property responsible if it is lost.

In a November letter denying Showalter, TSA’s claims office in Virginia said there were “no legally sustainable grounds” for a finding of liability against the agency.

Showalter’s attorney, Howard Coker, said TSA contends Showalter never had a Rolex on her wrist that day, something she vehemently denies. …

“We have eyewitnesses who say she did have this type of watch, including one who saw it on the day in question,” Coker said. …

When she was put through an additional security check, she again asked to be allowed to retrieve her watch first. Again, the answer was no, she said.

When she finally returned to the conveyor belt, the Rolex was gone.

“Basically they called me a liar. They treated me like crap,” said Showalter.

† The Media Love Obama, But He Doesn’t Love Them Back: Here's WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs telling the MSM to sit down, shut up and stop asking so many questions about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:
 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Look Before You Leap: Part II): More indirect evidence that late-term abortions are likely a gendercide of otherwise healthy girl babies. A study published in the journal BMC Public Health finds that “found the male fetal death rate increased in September 2001 and subsequently affected the ratio of boys born in a later month,” reports CNN:  

The shock and stress felt by pregnant women after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, may have contributed to an increase in miscarriages of male fetuses in the United States. …

"A huge population saw the consequences and carnage onscreen," said lead author Tim Bruckner, who is an assistant professor of public health at University of California Irvine, about the effects of 9/11. He examined this topic "because pregnancy is sensitive to stressors. I wondered whether pregnant women might have a physiological reaction to witnessing harm."

Bruckner examined only miscarriages of boys, because male fetuses are believed to be more sensitive than females to stress hormones.

Previous studies have suggested that the percentage of male births drops after natural disasters, economic decline or catastrophes. …

"In terms of the take-home message, we know very little about what affects fetal loss," Bruckner said. "There's very little research on it. This paper suggests that we can identify these population stressors that can affect the likelihood of male fetal loss."

More epidemiological research should be done on stressors, such as economic downturns and events that have a ripple effect in the population, Bruckner said.

And that is just what the OK Legislature is trying to do - over the objections of pro-abortion groups, who plan legal challenges - by overriding Gov. Brad Henry's (D) veto of a bill requiring women seeking abortions to first complete a 38-question form about their income, education and relationships and reasons for wanting to terminate the pregnancy, reports The Washington Times:

Doctors will be required to fill out an 11-question form about any complications that arise during the procedure. Those who fail to comply could face fines or the loss of their licenses.

The information from the questionnaires will be compiled by the Oklahoma state Department of Health and posted on the agency's website, but must not include the woman's name, address, hometown or other identifying information.

Supporters say the information will help lawmakers understand why women get abortions and craft policies to prevent more of them from occurring.

"This is to stop future abortions from happening," said Sen. Clark Jolley, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the Senate. "This is about gathering data to prevent the need for women to make this choice."

Editorial Note: Commenting on the study on post-September 11 miscarriages, Dr. Sarah Berga, chairman of the department of gynecology and obstetrics at the Emory University School of Medicine, noted that "We do know that the cellular machinery of males [and] females is more different than we used to think," she said. "We're in the cusp of beginning to understand it." Who knew that “a clump of cells” would be so complicated, and that anyone would want to bother to try to understand it?

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is The Iraqi Criminal Justice System More Efficient Than Ours?): Remember GA rape suspect Brian Nichols (AKA “The Courthouse Shooter”) whose “Dream Team” of private attorneys bankrupted the state’s public defender system? The ramifications continue to plague the state’s ability to expeditiously try capital cases. Jamie Weis, accused in 2006 of killing an elderly neighbor, is claiming that he has a right to be represented by attorneys of his choice, rather than those appointed by the court, even when taxpayers are picking up the tab, reports The National Law Journal:

Weis wants the justices to make clear that "lawyers are not fungible," said lead counsel Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.

Indigent defendants, Bright said, have the same Sixth Amendment right to continuity of counsel once the attorney-client relationship is established as do those defendants with the means to hire lawyers. …

His first lawyer was a local public defender who handled the arraignment but did little else on the case, Bright said. After the state announced its intent to seek the death penalty, the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, which oversees the state system, asked Robert Citronberg and Thomas West, well-known Atlanta capital defense lawyers, to take Weis' case.

For the next six months, Citronberg and West worked the case, filing numerous motions and traveling to Weis' native West Virginia to gather background and interviews with people who knew him. …

The two lawyers had budgeted roughly $300,000 for Weis' case, an amount subsequently approved by the state Public Defender Standards Council.

In mid-March 2007, the Council told the lawyers that it could not pay them after March 31.

The judge handling Weis’ case granted Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard’s request to replace the private attorneys with three public defenders but Weis moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that his right-to-counsel and to a speedy-trial had been violated. In March, the GA Supreme Court ruled that Weis did not have a right to his choice of counsel and it was his refusal to cooperate with his public defenders - as well as the nine motions for continuances and other motions filed by Citronberg and West - that delayed his trial.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder): Even as British environmental activists continue to insist that there is scientific consensus that climate change is a threat, the public has concluded that they’re all just crying wolf, reports The New York Times:

[In 2008] Parliament enshrined targets for emissions cuts as national law. But since then, the country has evolved into a home base for a thriving group of climate skeptics who have dominated news reports in recent months, apparently convincing many that the threat of warming is vastly exaggerated.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009. A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier. …

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

Politicians and activists say such attitudes will make it harder to pass legislation like a fuel tax increase and to persuade people to make sacrifices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenpeace spokesperson Ben Stewart, lamented that “Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics … This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat.” Um, no. This is happening in the context of opposing viewpoints and alternative theories being squelched, computer models being manipulated and the raw data from which they are constructed disappearing.