The National Association of State Boards of Education will elect officers in July, and for one office, president-elect, there is only one candidate: a member of the Kansas school board who supported its efforts against the teaching of evolution...

-- Evolution opponent is in line for schools post, Austin-American Statesman

 Come on Kansas, don't let this happen again.

In another example of fundie Christian love and acceptance, a 13 year old girl in Hardesty, Oklahoma is now being homeschooled after having been basically run out of school by the local knuckledraggers.  Please watch this video. 

You're a brave girl Nicole.  Sorry for what you went through.  You should come live in Massachusetts.  We have plenty of religious nuts here too, but the area is pretty liberal, and therefore most of the Christians I know actually behave like Christians.

From University panel says student parody "harassed" blacks (AP via Boston.com):
...The parody of "O Come All Ye Faithful" calls black people "boisterous" and proclaims, "Born into the ghetto. O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas."

The lyrics also say, "No matter what your grades are, F's, D's or G's, give them all privileged status."...

I can understand that someone who is a conservative might have issues with affirmative action, a system that attempts to correct for the effects of years of injustice and discrimination.  But when you write "funny" songs called "Oh Come All Ye Black Folk" that indicate that black people come from the ghetto and have bad grades, you probably aren't doing your cause any favors.

But that's exactly what a Tufts University conservative campus newspaper "The Primary Source" did.  You can imagine how well the idea was received, especially since it was only last month that the same paper garnered the ire of Muslim students by posting parodies of Islamic Awareness Week advertisements in which they discussed brutality in Muslim countries.

There is a value sometimes in being shocking.  Sometimes it is necessary to shock someone into realizing that they are behaving in a manner they wouldn't tolerate from others.  Maybe that's what this paper was doing.  In order to be certain though, I'd need to see some shocking articles directed at white Christians, or something like that.  Barring that, it sounds like the students who imagine themselves to be Tuft's University's "one lone conservative voice" are abusing that voice by saying things that no decent conservative I know would say.

What do you think?

Perhaps you've heard of Stacy Snyder.  She was a 25 year old student pursuing a degree in education at Millersville University in Millersville Pennsylvania.  Ms. Snyder has a MySpace page, and on it she had posted a picture of herself attending a Halloween costume party.  She was wearing a T-shirt and a tiny pirate hat on her head, and drinking from a plastic cup.  The caption under the picture said "Drunken Pirate."  As inappropriate pictures go, this one was pretty tame.  I've seen it myself, and if the caption hadn't said "Drunken" you wouldn't have any idea at all what she was drinking, since she didn't look drunk.

Nonetheless she was reprimanded by the Dean of Education at Millersville University based on this picture, and was informed that it was unprofessional and encouraged underage drinking (note that she was not under age at the time the picture was taken.)  She apologized.  But apparently that wasn't good enough.  On the evening before her graduation, she was informed that she would not be receiving a degree in education, and instead received a degree in English.

Just so we're clear, this bright young woman had a perfectly innocent picture of herself drinking from a cup on her MySpace page, with the caption "Drunken Pirate" underneath it, and because of this, her years and expense in college are for nothing and she cannot teach, which is all she ever wanted to do.  Sounds a little harsh to me.  It's not like she was falling down drunk and flashing herself at the camera while a guy poured beer on her.

So now Ms. Snyder is suing the university for $75,000 and her degree in education.  I find myself thinking she deserves both.  Now.