Day: May 23, 2006

A school board has decided to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action. The warning is aimed at student bloggers and users of sites like MySpace.com.

Officials in Community High School District 128 of Libertyville, IL won’t regularly search students’ sites, but will monitor them if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member.

Mary Greenberg of Lake Bluff, who has a son at Libertyville High School, argued the district is overstepping its bounds.

“I don’t think they need to police what students are doing online,” she said. “That’s my job.”

ABSOLUTELY it is, and the school board should be spending its resources to talk with parents about preventing stuff like this. I can understand if content promoting illegal activity (like selling drugs, prostitution, etc.) is found. In that case, the parents and the local authorities need to be contacted. Yet the school district also plans to watch for “inappropriate” behavior, and therein lies a problem. Who defines what’s inappropriate? The boards oversight opens a huge can of worms.

Parents are responsible for the actions of their children 24/7. School officials are responsible to keep kids safe while on school grounds. In this case, the district is out of bounds.

It looks like FBI agents are becoming more confident in their quest to find Jimmy.

A demolition company on Wednesday will start pulling down a barn at a horse farm that is the focus of the
FBI’s renewed probe into Jimmy Hoffa’s death.

Crews from Able Demolition are scheduled to arrive early in the morning with equipment to demolish the 100-by-30-foot structure and dig up its concrete foundation, said Wendy Sitek, the Shelby Township-based company’s office manager.

She did not expect the demolition work — which will cost about $6,000 — to continue beyond Thursday.

“We’ll demolish it and throw it away,” Sitek said.

Agents plan to spend a couple weeks trying to determine if Hoffa was buried somewhere on the farm. Officials have said the search would involve cadaver dogs, demolition experts, archaeologists and anthropologists.

So, what will they do if they find him? Press conference, flashing bulbs, smiles, congratulations all around, case closed. Most if not all the suspected individuals involved in his disappearance have already died, so there really isn’t anyone to go after. No buried treasure either. 

A bit anticlimactic, to say the least.

Senator Lloyd Bentsen died today. He was 85.

The guy started his political career in 1940. He spent six years in the U.S. House. He spent 22 years in the Senate and two years as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton.

Yet he’s remembered most as the guy who slammed Dan Quayle.

What a legacy.

The New York Times never-ending obsession with the Clintons takes front page real estate today with this story on the current state of their marriage ‘arrangement’. It seems some Democrats are worried about the effect of ‘Clinton fatigue’ on Hillary’s chances to become the next occupant in the White House. Their nervousness is not misplaced.

Democrats say it is inevitable that in a campaign that could return the former president to the White House, some voters would be concerned or distracted by Mr. Clinton’s political role and the episode that led the House to vote for his impeachment in 1998.

“There’s no question that it’s a complicated candidacy for a lot of voters because of the history of that relationship and what they’ve been through,” said Leon E. Panetta, Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.

The Times story attempts to frame the Clintons relationship as a struggle between distinct career paths and political calculations, all the while balancing those needs with a deep love for one another. That’s picture is largely manufactured, and most voters see through it. Bill and Hillary’s relationship is far from traditional, and no matter how hard the Clintons try to keep up the facade, they will never genuinely relate to millions of couples in America. After all, healthy loving marriages don’t survive very long when you spend life apart. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that, and this is where the Clintons window dressing falls down.

If I could give Bill and Hillary advice, it would be this. Stop faking it. Your marriage doesn’t matter to your circle of friends or the people around you who have political aspirations of their own. The other people who care about and believe in the importance of healthy loving marriages will not use the two of you as examples on how to make relationships work.

If Hillary ends up being the first woman president because of her “national appeal and national strength” as Bob Zimmerman suggests, why not be the first woman divorcee president? After all, there are a lot of divorced people out there and Hillary wouldn’t want to discriminate against that voting constituency, right?