High School Band Who Depicted Shooting Cops During Half-Time Performance Faces a Massive Penalty

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By Townhall. Last week the Forest Hills High School band’s half-time performance depicted police officers being shot. The school faced fierce backlash because two local police officers had just been killed in the line of duty.

Now, the band is being penalized by the the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) and could face up to a year-long performance ban, the Clarion Ledger reported. The school district will be allowed to appeal the decision, MHSAA president Todd Kelly said. . .

Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks, whose territory includes the high school, is defending the band.

“Let’s be clear, the band students of Forest Hill should not be punished due to a bad decision made by a teacher,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

A group of parents and community leaders held a press conference on Friday, saying the decision penalizes the kids, which they feel is unfair. (Read more from “High School Band Who Depicted Shooting Cops During Half-Time Performance Faces a Massive Penalty” HERE)

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High School Band’s Halftime Show Depicts Cops Being Shot – and That’s Not Even the Worst Part

By Townhall. A high school band in Brookhaven, Mississippi is facing fierce backlash after a half-time performance depicting police officers being shot. The Forest Hills High School band performed the skit at a neighboring high school less than a week after two police officers were killed nearby.

Pictures and videos of the band’s performance went viral on social media. Students were dressed as medical personnel holding SWAT team members at gunpoint.

According to Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick L. Greene, the performance was based loosely on the movie “John Q.”

(Read more from “High School Band’s Halftime Show Depicts Cops Being Shot – and That’s Not Even the Worst Part” HERE)

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Teacher Who Talked About Trump Adviser ‘Eating Glue’ Under Investigation

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By Daily Caller. A teacher who said President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller ate glue as a child is under review by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in California for disclosing information of the former student.

Nikki Fiske, 72, revealed accounts of having Miller, 33, in her class when he was 8-years-old to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday.

The school placed her on “home assignment,” which means Fiske is not at work but retains employment status, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) spokeswoman Gail Pinsker told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Pinsker emphasized that Fiske “is not suspended.”

“He [Miller] was a strange dude,” Fiske said to The Hollywood Reporter. “I remember he would take a bottle of glue — we didn’t have glue sticks in those days — and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it. . .

“The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is looking into this matter and has placed Nikki Fiske on home assignment pending the completion of the review,” Pinsker told TheDCNF over the email. (Read more from “Teacher Who Talked About Trump Adviser ‘Eating Glue’ Under Investigation” HERE)

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Teacher Who Recounted Trump Aide Eating Glue as a Child Is Placed on Paid Leave

By LA Times. A teacher who recounted how a senior aide to President Trump ate glue as a third-grader is in trouble with her employers.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has placed veteran teacher Nikki Fiske on “home assignment” while it decides what to do, if anything, about disclosures she made about a young Stephen Miller.

Miller, 33, has grown up to be a senior advisor to Trump. But his prospects did not appear so promising to Fiske when Miller was a student in her classroom at Franklin Elementary School.

“Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at 8,” Fiske recounted in an article posted Wednesday by the Hollywood Reporter. “I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there.” (Read more from “Teacher Who Recounted Trump Aide Eating Glue as a Child Is Placed on Paid Leave” HERE)

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California Teacher Accused of Molesting Children Dead in Apparent Suicide

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By The Daily Caller. A California teacher who was on trial for allegedly molesting five students was found dead Wednesday from an apparent suicide.

David Michael Bruce, 68, was found dead in his home near Los Angeles, The Orange County Registrar reported. Officials believe Bruce took his life pending an autopsy to determine the official cause of the death, according to Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Carrie Braun. . .

Bruce taught at Sycamore Junior High School in Anaheim, California, and retired in 2010, according to The AP. . .

Bruce allegedly admitted to performing lewd acts with male students during a phone call police arranged with a victim, The Registrar reported. Police also found erotic photos of young boys in Bruce’s home. . .

Bruce faced a possible life sentence if convicted, but the case was dismissed after his death. The retired drama teacher was arrested in 2015 and charged eight felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14 and two felony counts of lewd acts on a child age 14 or 15 after the sister of one of the alleged victims came forward. (Read more from “California Teacher Teacher Accused of Molesting Children Dead in Apparent Suicide” HERE)

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Ex-California Teacher, Former Mt. Pleasant Teacher, Dead on Last Day of Trial

By Morning Sun. A former Mt. Pleasant teacher and graduate, retired after a long career in California, apparently killed himself Wednesday while facing trial for molesting five students, the Associated Press reported.

Closing arguments were scheduled that day but David Michael Bruce, 68, did not show up in court.

He was found dead in his home in an unincorporated area of Anaheim south of Los Angeles.

“He was discovered by a friend or another individual, and they called law enforcement,” Orange County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Braun said.

Bruce was a graduate of Mt. Pleasant High School who taught art at Rosebush Elementary and Mt Pleasant High School from 1972 to 1979. (Read more from “Ex-California Teacher, Former Mt. Pleasant Teacher, Dead on Last Day of Trial” HERE)

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Football Legend Calls for CNN Host to Be Fired for Racist Comments About Kanye West

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Football legend-turned-activist Herschel Walker is calling for CNN to fire Don Lemon after the “CNN Tonight” host laughed when rapper Kanye West was referred to as “the token negro of the Trump administration” during a segment that aired Tuesday night.

The segment — which has been slammed as “racist” — began with Lemon asking if President Donald Trump is simply “using Kanye as a prop to win over black voters before the midterms.” . . .

Sellers’ remark prompted laughter from Lemon and fellow panelist Tara Setmayer, who followed up by saying West is “the token negro of the Trump administration.”

Walker, who has openly supported Trump, is also an outspoken advocate for mental health issues – which were also mocked during the segment. Walker took to Twitter to express his disbelief.

“Went to bed appalled over Don Lemon’s despicable behavior laughing at Tara Setmayer and Bakari Sellers’ awful remarks about Kanye West’s visit with [Trump]! Woke up wondering why CNN doesn’t take all three off the air?” Walker tweeted, adding the hashtag “#Shameful.” (Read more from “Football Legend Calls for CNN Host to Be Fired for Racist Comments About Kanye West” HERE)

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Senate Dems and Susan Collins Tell Americans They’re Too Stupid to Make Their Own Insurance Decisions

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Democrats don’t want you to be able to buy more affordable health insurance under Obamacare, and they made that pretty clear with a recent Senate vote.

Here’s the background: Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., used a discharge petition to force a vote on a resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to expand access to more affordable short-term health care plans that don’t have to follow Obamacare’s onerous coverage regulations.

The Trump administration’s move to expand these plans naturally follows the fact that more and more Americans are having trouble affording health insurance under Obamacare (something even the left-leaning Vox admits), but the Republican-controlled Senate can’t scrounge up enough support from its moderate wing to repeal the law, as Republicans have campaigned on for years.

The vote failed Wednesday by only a single vote. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined with every Democrat to bring the final count to a 50-50 tie.

Here are some of the prevailing arguments against what Obamacare boosters like to call “junk insurance” or “junk plans”:

Wait, you mean a more affordable insurance product might not offer the same amount of coverage as the astronomically expensive ones that working Americans are having trouble paying for? You don’t say.

The irony of this debate, of course, is that nobody is being forced to buy a short-term plan under this. But heaven forbid that we’d give free Americans the option to choose one of these short-term plans over the Obamacare-compliant plans that do all the things that made Obamacare so expensive in the first place.

By contrast, until the repeal of the individual mandate in last year’s tax cuts, people were absolutely forced to buy Obamacare-compliant plans, whether they wanted to (or could even afford it) or not.

Look, there are basically two arguments to be made against the administration’s move here: The guise of consumer protection or the preservation of Obamacare’s collapsing system.

The first says that you’re too stupid to make your own health care decisions and therefore should not have the freedom to. The second says that your health care decisions might undermine a sacred cow of American health care policy that can’t stand on its own, and you therefore shouldn’t have the freedom to find another option.

Neither of those arguments are going to hold up to many hardworking voters whose health insurance premiums match or surpass their mortgage payments. (For more from the author of “Senate Dems and Susan Collins Tell Americans They’re Too Stupid to Make Their Own Insurance Decisions” please click HERE)

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Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker

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On Tuesday, Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips spoke with students at the University of Georgia to see if any of them could name a single time conservatives “shut down a liberal speaker on campus” like progressives often shut down conservative speakers.

Phillips even sweetened the pot, offering a cool $100 to anyone who could provide a sufficient answer. . .

Later in the video, two students attempt to push back, arguing that progressive views are “more palatable” and “less hate-fueled.” Another student claimed that Phillips’ argument was a “red herring,” then backtracked, then couldn’t articulate why he disagreed with Phillips.

(Read more from “Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker” HERE)

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Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women

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By Reuters. Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars – much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.

“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.” (Read more from “Amazon Scraps Secret AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women” HERE)

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Amazon Built an AI Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women

By Business Insider. . .A year later, however, the engineers reportedly noticed something troubling about their engine — it didn’t like women. This was apparently because the AI combed through predominantly male résumés submitted to Amazon over a 10-year period to accrue data about whom to hire.

Consequently, the AI concluded that men were preferable. It reportedly downgraded résumés containing the words “women’s” and filtered out candidates who had attended two women-only colleges.

Amazon’s engineers apparently tweaked the system to remedy these particular forms of bias but couldn’t be sure the AI wouldn’t find new ways to unfairly discriminate against candidates.

Gender bias was not the only problem, Reuters’ sources said. The computer programs also spat out candidates who were unqualified for the position.

Remedying algorithmic bias is a thorny issue, as algorithms can pick up on subconscious human bias. In 2016, ProPublica found that risk-assessment software used to forecast which criminals were most likely to reoffend exhibited racial bias against black people. Overreliance on AI for things like recruitment, credit-scoring, and parole judgments have also created issues in the past. (Read more from “Amazon Built an Ai Tool to Hire People but Had to Shut It Down Because It Was Discriminating Against Women” HERE)

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If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans

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This month, the drama “Butterfly” will air in the United Kingdom on ITV, about a boy deciding that he needs to live as a girl. Interviewed for YOU Magazine about her role in the show, actress Anna Friel said, “Imagine how confusing it must be to get to the age of four and realise you’re a boy but you like girls’ dresses; being told that you’re not to do this or that, but you have this desperate need. And imagine how many people must have gone through that before transgender was something we talked about openly.”

As if being a girl is liking dresses. Girls don’t always like dresses, and some of us strongly dislike them. If liking dresses is enough to make a boy “really” a girl, is disliking them enough to make a girl “really” a boy? At what age should such an interest be counted as life-determining? . . .

Yet why is it considered a particularly miserable life for a boy to like dresses? Why is this treated as such a bizarre interest for a boy to have?

Is it the attraction to the sorts of finer textiles that have appealed to many of the wealthiest people of both sexes throughout history? Was it an unheard gender identity message that caused Joseph-Marie Jacquard to be so fascinated with producing elaborately patterned fabrics that he invented what later came to be hailed as a critical computer history milestone, the Jacquard loom?

Is it the interest in wearing a garment that’s shaped like a single tube below the waist, instead of a separate tube for each leg, connected at the hip? Consider this painting of Henry VIII, and think about why we shouldn’t describe him as a trans-feminine person in a fetching, gray silk minidress ensemble with leggings. It makes exactly as much sense as thinking that a little boy who likes trying on dresses at home probably needs chemical castration, using drugs prescribed to convicted sex offenders to manage their urges. (Read more from “If Liking Dresses Makes a Boy Transgender, Half the Men in History Were Trans” HERE)

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Alec Baldwin Says ‘Black People Love Me’ for Playing Trump. Actual Black People Seem to Disagree.

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Actor Alec Baldwin seems to feel that he has earned the universal adoration of the African-American community because he has mockingly portrayed President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live.”

Once he said that out loud, however, some black people took to Twitter to make Baldwin the butt of the joke, and to chastise him for his generalization of an entire race.

“I don’t know how to say this and I don’t want to get it wrong either, because everything is a minefield of bombs going off, but ever since I played Trump, black people love me,” Baldwin said. “They love me. Everywhere I go, black people go crazy. I think it’s because they’re most afraid of Trump. . .

Baldwin’s comments, which he made to The Hollywood Reporter, were apparently the first time many black people found out that black people “go crazy” for Alec Baldwin because of his satirical portrayal of the president.

“First of all, imagine thinking black people still watch SNL,” Ira Madison tweeted, before sharing a side-by-side screenshot showing that Baldwin’s comment makes him sound shockingly like the man he mocks on television.

(Read more from “Alec Baldwin Says ‘Black People Love Me’ for Playing Trump. Actual Black People Seem to Disagree.” HERE)

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Children Over the Age of 12 in This U.S. Town Can Be Jailed and Fined for Trick-Or-Treating

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Children over the age of 12 in Chesapeake, Virginia, will face fines and jail time if they’re caught trick-or-treating this year. . .

According to Chesapeake’s town code, any child age 13 and over could see up to six months in jail and be subject to fines ranging anywhere from $25 to $100.

The code states: “If any person over the age of 12 years shall engage in the activity commonly known as ‘trick or treat’ or any other activity of similar character or nature under any name whatsoever, he or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not less than $25.00 nor more than $100.00 or by confinement in jail for not more than six months or both.” . . .

“According to the City of Chesapeake, police will focus on making sure the evening is safe for everyone, not actively seeking out violations of the time or age limits,” the website reads. “For example, a thirteen year old safely trick or treating with a younger sibling is not going to have any issues.” . . .

For example, the cities of Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg/James City County, and York County all have the 12-years-old age limit. However, these cities and counties don’t have jail time for violators. (Read more from “Children Over the Age of 12 in This U.S. Town Can Be Jailed and Fined for Trick-Or-Treating” HERE)

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