Mroberts3

This is a joke, right? Almost makes you wonder about democracy sometimes...

Its a sad irony that all the people coming on here to attack the ACLU are named things like "patriot" and "American." If you guys think that anyone in this country does not have their Constitutional rights, especially those outlined in the First Amendment, then you don't truly deserve the name "American," not even on a message board. Do you attack public defenders for advocating the cause of a rapist or a mugger? Being a lawyer for someone's cause does not mean you agree with that person. Legal advice is a necessity in many parts of life, and you are seriously mistaken to equate the ACLU (or any law firm) with their clients.

Bryan, No matter how you want to slice and dice things it doesn't look good for Mr. P. See, he denied saying certain things in the meeting which he clearly did say in class. If he really truly had been answering a question ("If you are asking what the bible says...") why would he deny saying what he said in class? Besides, for someone who clearly talks about religion so much in class, the "if you are asking..." phrase seems to be a shield of sorts. My turn for an analogy. When I was in elementary school this meme went around where all the kids thought that somehow if you prefaced statements with "no offense," it was an appropriate thing to say. Needless to say, this ended up coining phrases such as "no offense, but i hate you," and other ridiculous things. What I am getting at is just because Mr. P says "if you are asking what the bible says..." and then launches into a 15 serm-err discussion about jesus, does not make it ok in a public school setting. What we have to look at here is the collective evidence, not minute pieces of "context." We have a teacher who thinks evolution is faith and that creationism/ID is legit, AND who talks about religion a lot in a class where it is not the main, or even tangential subject, AND we have evidence (admittedly anecdotal ATM due to less recorder wielding students) that Mr. P has always been like this AND he has been reprimanded for this EXACT behavior before! Whew! Short version is that the whole BODY of evidence show a man (consciously or not) bent on infusing he religion-based views into every class. cut and splice the context of any individual statement, but thats basically like a creationist looking for holes in the fossil record. Even where such holes exist, they do not ipso facto disprove the massive, massive, body of evidence behind it.

Bingo! Strife, in one sentence (ok, 2) you have struck the very foundation here. See, as bad as the taped incidents are, they can only go so far. Show that the tapes are not unique, but simply another day (3?) in the 14 year? pattern of Mr. P's behavior and he is in some serious hot water. If these tapes don't convince a judge (or a voting public) of what Mr. P has been up to, reams of depositions should. If it can be shown that Matthew was simply the first student willing to stand up to what had been going on for years, Mr. P and the BoE will most certainly wish they had dealt with the matter appropriately when it first came up. P.S. Strife, what is your relation to the people you talked to? Are you a KHS parent/student, alum etc?

Curious, the above post is mine. I forgot to log in. Cheers, Matt

"Patriot," you are either stupid or mean spirited. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say the latter. First off, NAMBLA is totally irrelevant to the case at hand, you have to be a very intellectually dishonest person to think otherwise. In addition, as others have said, the ACLU defends their right to FREE SPEECH, not their personal sexual habits, illegal as they may be. How would you feel if I said you did not deserve free speech because you are defending Mr. P's violation of the separation of church and state? I certainly would be at least closer to the subject, although just as diametrically opposed to the Constitution.

Hi VA, I am the guest to whom you are responding. (I finally decided to register ) anyway, here is one thing that I found, although not all that helpful. http://www.kearnyschools.com/BOE/POLICIES%...0Discipline.htm From what I have seen, there is nothing to indicate what, if anything, must be kept secret when dealing with a discipline case. Also, I would expect the BoE to explain why they aren't saying something if they indeed cant. What I mean is I have never heard of the Board saying something to the effect that they are not allowed, by regulation, to say. What bothers me more though, is this. http://www.kearnyschools.com/BOE/POLICIES%...g%20Devices.htm The BoE clearly was able to take action to ensure that another teacher could not be proven to be violating the law. Without recording devices, its a teacher's word vs the student, and we know who would win (no necessarily unfairly) in that situation. In other words, they quickly made sure that another Matthew wouldn't be allowed to bother them with "laws" and silly things like the separation of church and state. They did not, however, take swift corrective action after Mr. P did something wrong. In fact I believe he first denied the allegations before being confronted with the tapes. Apparently honesty is not all that valued in the Kearny school district either. Anyway, my long winded rant is simply to say that if the BoE's hands were tied by section blahbidy blah of article 8 billion in some obscure code, why wouldn't they say so? And even if it was, I would still expect to see some RESULTS, even if they couldn't talk about it. (After all they took the time to ban recorders, so I think we can assume they could address the problem of Mr. P if they felt like it.

Um, that your old man would beat you?