Go Dog Go

As you know from many past posts, I enjoy good books and good games. And just as I have unsuccessfully written many good books, I have unsuccessfully made up many good games.

Edmund is following in my footsteps, and one of his favorite books is the classic P.D. Eastman masterpiece, Go Dog Go.

With scissors and glue, scrap paper, colored pencils, a scalpel, and some genius ideas (and I vainly pat myself on the back) two Saturdays ago I recruited Tracy’s aid and I made a test version of a new game: Go Dog Go.


We will make a more permanent version over the next few weeks, and may even start this afternoon. The “winner” (if winner there be) is the first to make it to the big tree at the end. But there’s no “dog party” until the others make it too.

Each player is a dog. You draw cards which have colored squares on them corresponding to the colored squares of the board (much like Candyland). Interspersed with these cards are event cards (either helping you along or holding you back) and party items that you keep until you reach the party tree (so far, we just have party hats and a birthday cake). One player can, if lucky, land on a square that gives you a blimp (also from the book) that allows you to go on a short cut track.

Edmund loves it.

My first successful game creation!

Constitutional Law Can be Fuzzy

In an 8 to 1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that school officials violated the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when they strip searched a teeanged girl suspected of concealing prescription ibuprofen to (allegedly) distribute among classmates in violation of the school's drug ban. Read opinion here.

Doubtless to the frustration of many, the Court concluded that Sovereign Immunity kept the officials from any liability to the girl and her parents for their outrageous actions.

The only dissenting justice was Justice Thomas, who is usually my favorite. He actually argued that the school officials did NOT violate the 4th Amendment.

Constitutional law can be really fuzzy. Thomas probably agreed with the other 8 justices and with most Americans that what these school officials did was ridiculous and should merit punishment. However, Sotomayor's style of ruling like a sympathetic latino woman is NOT what the Constitution dictates.

I haven't read the opinion in full. I have not thought deeply about the text of the Constitution and how to apply its 4th and 14th Amendments in Public school settings. I haven't read much of the Supreme Court's 4th Amendment jurisprudence, and what little I have was a couple of years ago. Constitutional law can be really fuzzy, and I'm really fuzzy on Constitutional law.

But here's something I'm not fuzzy about: the little enclaves of despotism known as public schools need to be severely "dealt with" by state legislatures, and anyone else with authority to make decisions regarding public schools. For instance, the school board of the school in question in this case should probably fire the people responsible for this on the spot, and attempt to do something significant to indicate their chagrin and repentence for what happened.

And more to the point, people need to get their kids out of these little enclaves of despotism and state indoctrination.

Professor Wagner, Constitutional Law professor at Regent University, and Ninomania blogger, had this to (not) say about the strip search case.

Well, as a colleague and supporter of the American Center for Law and
Justice, I probably shouldn't say much about today's decision concerning the 4th
Amendment and school "strip searches"; nor about my doubts about expanding an
already unwieldy rule-of-reason (really, rule-of-what-we-like-or-don't-like) 4th
Am regime; nor about my firm agreement with Prof. Akhil Amar that the 4th Am
NEVER contemplated judges (as opposed to juries) deciding what constitutes a
reasonable search; nor about my increasing agreement with Justice Thomas that
Tinker should be overruled immediately and that the idea that students have
rights inside public schools does nothing but perpetuate misleading fantasies
and sap support for home-schooling.
So here's me, NOT blogging about any of
these things.

U.N. protocol used to regulate homeschoolers

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=101371

This one's for Caleb.

The May-June Journal of the Missouri Bar has an article by Glenn Bradford, "Pursuing Perfection in the Practice of Law: An Imperfect Essay by an Imperfect Lawyer."

It's a good article, and hopefully it has done me some good. The key point is that the pursuit of perfection can lead to doing one thing your entire life and still not succeed. Pick priorities and pursue excellence. Do as good as you can with the time that you have for any given task.

Here's one example of me being ineffective because of my perfectionism: posting on forums, commenting to blogs and articles, and posting on my own blog.

I am constantly starting blog posts and comments and getting so bogged down in what I am trying to say that I end up either saving it for later (and later never comes, by the way) or deleting it altogether.

I owe Caleb a comment in the comments to this post. My response has been owing for months. Well, I finally did it. I finally sat down and wrote something. Did I say what I really meant to say? Maybe not. Did I say it well? Maybe not. Do I make sense? Maybe not. Should I have said more? Less? Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe. Maybe. Who cares! That's not the point. The point is, when something needs to be done, do it. If you only have five minutes to do it, then give it your full attention during those five minutes and then move on.

HSLDA home school update: Army of Homeschoolers Thwarts Power Grab

Yours Truly was part of the army.

And let me tell you, nothing beats leaving the law office early for a drive to Jeff City with the wife (stopping on the way for Panera, of course), beat up the legislators a bit, and then drive home enjoying delicious ice cream cones from Central Dairy, all the while listening to English Country Dance Music, including my new favorite tune called Softly Good Tummus (to which I wrote a dance called Mr. Tumnus's Bright Idea).

Missouri: Update--Army of Homeschoolers Thwarts Power Grab

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

When a last-minute legislative maneuver threatened to give the state power to decide when a homeschooler can graduate and how he must earn a high school credit, thousands of homeschoolers dropped everything and rushed to Jefferson City.

Senate Bill 291 began innocently enough as a new dose of public education reforms. But as lawmakers hurried to pass bills before the legislature closed on May 15, a provision was quietly inserted into S.B. 291 changing the end date for compulsory education from a child's 16th birthday to the date he had completed 16 high school credits toward graduation. This would have given the state power to define "graduation" and "credit" for homeschoolers, possibly with devastating consequences.

Alert Families for Home Education's (FHE) regional director learned of the change and put the spotlight on it. FHE and HSLDA worked quickly and on the evening of May 13 asked homeschoolers to rally to protest this attempted power grab. On incredibly short notice, more than 2,500 homeschoolers set everything else aside and gathered at the steps of the Capitol in Jefferson City at 1 p.m. on May 14.

Lawmakers and reporters were astonished that homeschoolers could organize such a large group less than 24 hours after the word went out!With this crowd on his doorstep, the lawmaker who had inserted the provision in S.B. 291 publicly apologized to the assembled families. He agreed to either fix the problem or withdraw the bill. In negotiations with FHE's lobbyist, Kerry Messer, he agreed to include a special definition of a "credit" for homeschoolers: 100 hours of instruction or more in a course.

With this definition in place, state officials are blocked from imposing their own. As finally passed, the bill also exempted any student reaching age 17.

The new law will go into effect August 28, assuming the governor signs it. HSLDA is reviewing the final language carefully to see if any additional changes should be sought next year. We will send out a bulletin soon with practical guidance about applying the new law.

Thank you for your willingness to sacrifice to come to Jefferson City. A new generation will have stories to tell about what you did to protect freedom, and how God used one ordinary person to sound an alarm just in the nick of time.

Sincerely,

Scott A. Woodruff
HSLDA Staff Attorney

http://www.hslda.org/elert/archive/2009/05/20090521164854.asp

Another Umbridge?

Hmmmm.....my Hillary Clinton picture where I compared her to Dolores Umbridge has apparently been taken off the internet. I read this article today, reminding me of Umbridge again. Not so much because I'm fixated on Umbridge, but because Tracy and I just watched the Order of the Phoenix a few days ago, and I'd like (given enough inspiration) to write about how the Harry Potter series (1) provides strong arguments in favor of the death penalty, and (2) in principle, seems to lambast publicly run schools.


There's a lot of clues that our public schools are unconstitutional, imprudent, and dangerous towards liberty. Perhaps one of these clues is the mass of seeming contraditions and difficult constitutional questions that arise out of public school issues.

In a home schooling situation, is there any question that a Mom can revoke many privileges if her child/student decided to call her a douche bag? Of course not. In fact, add a few spankings, a hefty allowance dock, added chores, and a lengthy grounding and the kid should be in his place. In the work place, the boss could and maybe should (without any impropriety) fire a worker in a heartbeat. Even in a private school, it is absolutely appropriate to maintain high levels of respect and propriety.

Herein lies the quandary. It's a school. We need efficiency and order and to accomplish this, it is reasonable and appropriate to punish disprespect. On the other hand, it's the government, and we do not want to, as law professor Jonathan Turley said (quoted at the end of the article) "teach[] students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities."

Have your cake and eat it too.

It's obvious that when Obama says empathy is better than reason when it comes to being a judge, he meant it, as evidenced by the quote below by SCOTUS nominee Sotomayor:

"'Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,' she declared. 'I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.'" WSJ article.

I'm a bit puzzled as to how "there can never be a universal definition of wise" while the conclusion that some conclusions are "better" than others is so obvious as to need no discussion.

There's no right or wrong, and by the way: I'm right, you're wrong.