In Case You Missed It: Obama announces that troops will be out of Iraq at the end of the year.

State Senator Found Dead: Sen. Scott White of the 46th district in North Seattle was found dead yesterday in his hotel room.

And to the Republic… The new principal at John Stanford International School in Wallingford has upset parents by asking students to say the pledge of allegiance—a district policy and state law that was previously unenforced.

Federal Judge Calls It Like He Sees It: A federal judge accused two Alabama state senators of cooperating with the FBI on a corruption investigation only because of their “ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias.” Damn.

Now We Know Where The Appalachian Trail Ends: Former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford will be joining Fox News. He will bring his unique, too-much-information style of rhetoric to the network.

Maybe They’ll Have a Debate On The Subject: “Despite their inability to agree on the economy or much else, Republican presidential candidates spoke with one voice in reaction to President Obama’s announcement of a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq this year. They were against it.”

What Would Jesus Do? Officials at St. Paul’s Cathedral have asked Occupy London protesters to leave after closing the cathedral for “safety reasons.”

Protesters Making Shit Happen: Bolivian President Evo Morales has cancelled plans to build a highway through a nature reserve after a two-month protest march by Amazon Indians. Morales: “For me, this is called governing by obeying the people.”

This Will Make for Awkward Seating Arrangements: Pakistan and India both seats on the UN Security Council.

54 replies on “Morning News”

  1. Scott White’s death is shocking. I worked with him at King County. This is a genuine loss to me, our district, and Washington state.

  2. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in grade schools is a vulgar practice. I hope the John Stanford International School parents fight back against their new principal’s decision. Especially if “under god” is still part of the pledge.

  4. The pledge “controversy” shows perfectly what is wrong with public schools: The parents.

    Yes, it is probably foolish to require it be said, especially at an “international school” in Seattle, but that woman is making much too big a deal out of it. If it bothers her so much, I’m sure there are private schools that don’t say it, or she can always homeschool.

    I know that makes me sound like a conservative bore, but really – give it a rest, lady. I grew up saying it, and I’m about as far from some crazy-eyed Christian patriot as you can get. Worry about the textbooks and the reading list – not some silly run-on sentence that takes fifteen seconds to say.

  9. Why don’t those kids in Wallingford do what kids have been doing for generations now and just not stand for the pledge? What’s the school going to do, send every student to the principal’s office?

  11. @4: I think if you ask most teachers, they will tell you that parental involvement is not the problem in public schools. Lack of involvement is.

  13. @11, you might reread Catalina’s ending sentence there. It’s inaccurate to suggest she’s belittling meaningful parental involvement. In fact, she’s struck a blow in its defense.

  14. I think little indoctrinations like this are not great, but yeah, I sat through the pledge too or stood and just did it. But I didn’t really take that seriously, not much more seriously than I take any other formulaic prayer.

    But yeah, this is really a lot butt hurt when we could talk about a lot of other more significant things that are wrong with education.

    And: “Students who don’t want to participate will be allowed to sit or stand respectfully.”

  16. @13: I read it. I just don’t like the “there’s bigger fish to fry” argument. Most people are capable of dealing with more than one issue at a time.

    And pledging to “one nation under god” seems odd at an international school.

  18. @16

    Go fight your revolution then, while the rest of us put our energy into more important shit. Have fun! And fact is, most of the country/planet believes in some form of deity so you’re in the minority, sorry. You don’t like it? Feel free to homeschool your little atheist toddlers. The rest of us don’t give a fuck.

  19. Making children swear a loyalty oath is an outrage, and has no place in a decent education system. I’m not at all surprised that parents are worked up about it. Not only don’t I want my kids to say such a loathsome thing, I would prefer that they never even hear it.

    And the argument you’re all making baffles me. If it means nothing, and no one takes it seriously, why say it at all? If it really does mean something, then shouldn’t children be asked to think about it critically, rather than just repeat it? Yes, let’s drop all move on to bigger things in education reform, after we first get rid of some small mindless barbarities.

  20. @17 I realize you’re going for sarcasm (well done, btw), but you realize that the image at the end of that link updates every few minutes, right?

  21. I guess y’all ain’t too surprised, or care much about the racists in AL, the GOP’s knee-jerk “We Hate Obama,” Fox News’ hiring corrupt right-wing politicians, and kicking the demonstrators out of the church.

    Yeah, me neither. But how ’bout them Bolivian protesters, hey?

  22. Unfortunately, principals in Seattle are appointed by the Superintendent in secret. They are not accountable to the parents or School Board, and yet have the authority to determine the curriculum.

  24. Of course there are bigger problems than reciting the pledge. That goes without saying.

    But the kind of mind that thinks the pledge is a good idea is not the kind of mind that is likely to recognize or address the bigger problems.

  26. There is nothing wrong with reciting the pledge of allegiance even with under god in it. And its not like kids are forced to say it, if they don’t want to do it stand their quietly. And please don’t tell me kids will make fun of them if they don’t say it. In my elementary school nothing happened to the kids who didn’t say it, kids just don’t care if others choose not to say it.

  27. But the kind of mind that thinks the pledge is a good idea is not the kind of mind that is likely to recognize or address the bigger problems.

    Like School Board incumbent Steve Sundquist?

    “School Board President Steve Sundquist said he plans to talk with interim Superintendent Susan Enfield about enforcement of the pledge policy”

  28. “Unfortunately, principals in Seattle are appointed by the Superintendent in secret.”

    That is sometimes true but not always. Sometimes parents are part of the hiring committee.

    What’s interesting is the Steve Sundquist, the School Board President, is all for this except he never advocated it before and now he’s on-board? He and the other incumbents don’t enforce any other Board policies and making sure kids are saying the pledge is the one he stands up for?

    Another good reason to vote him out.

  30. To everyone who is downplaying the pledge: asking kids to recite it is a form of education. The message is:

    “Say this, even if you don’t believe it or even understand it. Everyone’s doing it. You can sit out, but the default of society is to stand and talk to a flag for a little bit. Someone made it a rule or something. Just in case you were wondering, here are some qualities of our country that you shouldn’t bother questioning much, just say them. For instance, we are indivisible. And for some reason we are ‘under god’. Don’t think to hard about it, it’s short.”

    I think this kind of thing helps “prepare” our future citizens, voters, and thinkers for a life of apathy, insincerity, and submission to authority.

    Just because some of you survived it in childhood doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy cause. Words have impact on kids, and language shapes our reality.

  33. Once I stopped saying it after graduation, I lost four inches. Thank heavens I could spare it. What I didn’t like was becoming suddenly divisible.

    Here is something from David Mitchell in the Guardian this week I think is rather on point. Which means it probably isn’t.
    http://gu.com/p/32tpv

  35. @30

    Exactly. It prepares our kids for their future living as a member of a society. There’s a lot of petty bullshit we all have to put up with as adults and just do, even if we disagree with it. I don’t believe in parking tickets. Why should I pay money for my car just sitting there doing nothing, not bothering anyone? But I fucking pay them when I get them. I suppose I could protest, refuse to pay, camp out at city hall over it, but I’ve got better shit to do with my time. Go fight the revolution over the pledge, mkay? Occupy the public schools or whatever. Or just STFU and get back to the (hopefully) more important shit in your life.

  36. How many other countries require kids to pledge allegiance to a flag every morning? I was once told the only other nation that did so was North Korea, but I don’t know how factual that was.

    I do object to the under god portion of the pledge that those right wingers in the 50’s had inserted. Whose god?

    Just wait – this will show up on Fox News shortly. Bill OLiely will spin it as some big controversy, and then the GOPs everywhere will start going after public school classrooms about the pledge and flags and such. Happened in AZ a few years ago….

  38. @36, I don’t know about the “to the flag” part, but I do know that other countries have a pledge of allegiance of some sort.

  39. Confluence of Angry Emotions @35 What are you talking about? No one said anything about revolution. Obviously you don’t mind the pledge but why the invective? Chill out.

    @36 I know in some countries they sing the national anthem each morning; depending on the length and the particular lyrics that is either better or worse than a pledge.

  41. For some people, objecting to the idea of a religious loyalty oath to nationalism, especially for children, means being less patriotic. This is, of course, nonsense, as is the pledge itself.

  44. Why not let the kids figure out the whole pledge thing for themselves? You can’t do all your kid’s thinking for them, and you can’t fight all their battles. Little Parker and Madison aren’t as precious as you think, and they’re not as dumb either. Besides, If the pledge makes makes us so subservient, how is it that so many of you of discovered its sinister meaning?

    And there’s a very good reason why parents and the school board aren’t involved in the Principal selection process: you’d have every neurotic brainiac parent, and a board full of political hacks and ambitious nutcase parents all trying to out-do each other in showing how smart they think they are. It would be the celebrated Seattle Process everytime they wanted to change the trophy case.

  45. Yeah, I’d have to say that the last thing anybody needs is that type. of patriotism. But I guess it does prepare us for the eventual airport gropings and the nakey scanner.

  46. @44, isn’t that like the arguments suggesting we teach creationism with evolution and let the kids figure it out?

    It’s not that the pledge creates subservient adults, or that most of them won’t eventually figure out that it’s complete and utter bullshit, but rather that it’s a complete waste of time, and it’s highly inappropriate for a public institution to encourage children to recite loyalty oaths to religious nationalism.

  48. The Pledge of Allegiance actually taught me about compromise when I was in 3rd grade. I became a flaming atheist that year (told a priest that transubstantiation was ritual cannibalism) and started refusing to stand to say the Pledge because it had “under God” in it (yeah, I’m old, but not so old I remember the days before that phrase was inserted). I got hauled in front of the principal, I made my case, and the resolution was that I was required to stand to show respect, but I was not required to recite the Pledge. There’s a perfectly acceptable compromise for anyone who doesn’t want their little snowflake to be indoctrinated; talk to them about why you, personally, object to the Pledge, then suggest that option to them (standing silently).

    It’s still the same thing I do when people around me insist on praying aloud at funerals or before dinner or whatever. (If you really have to pray before you eat your dinner, maybe you should invest in a better refrigerator).

  49. @4- “The pledge “controversy” shows perfectly what is wrong with public schools: The parents.”

    As a public school parent, let me cordially invite you to go fuck yourself.

    The Pledge is a waste of time at best, an endorsement of religion at worst. If my daughter’s school decided to re-institute it I’d complain too.

    The more involved parents are in their schools, the better the kids do. Parents who don’t give a shit about what goes on in their kids classrooms produce kids who don’t give a shit what goes on in the classroom either.

  50. @47- There is an objective truth to the second one: “it’s a complete waste of time, and it’s highly inappropriate for a public institution to encourage children to recite loyalty oaths to religious nationalism.”

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