After a long season, one with a huge gap in the middle and many ups and down, we have reached the end of Series Seven.

Gallifreyan: It’s the repair shop. What kind of idiot would steal a faulty TARDIS?

It was a proper ending. All our answers were wrapped up in a package, tied up with a ribbon and presented with a box of chocolates on the side to help us overlook the rougher parts. We were given a generous dose of the Paternoser Gang, who once again reminded us that it is seriously unfair they do not as yet have their own spin off for 2014. The most surprising was the River thread. Since somewhere along the way it got all tangled up in string and her life no longer ran backwards from The Doctor’s, like the show originally claimed it would, and our hello to her was no longer our goodbye, Moffat managed to twist time up just a little more so that the character got a proper send off.

Do you hear the Whisper Men?
The Whisper Men are near
If you hear the Whisper Men
Then turn away your ear
Do not hear the Whisper Men
Whatever else you do
For once you’ve heard the Whisper Men,
They’ll stop and look at you.

Then we got the twist.

Strax: It better be important. I was in the middle of destroying some very pleasant primitives.

The new monsters introduced were The Whisper Men. Faceless villains who are partial to iambic pentameter, how very British. I was upset to see them kill Jenny, but in tragedy comes opportunity, as we got more of the chemistry between Vastra and Strax one on one. Plus once again we saw how useful Strax is, as he then casually saves Jenny’s life. Too bad he can’t buttle.

Strax: This planet is now property of the Sontaran Empire. Surrender your women and intellectuals.

But it turned out these monsters were Great Intelligence body copies, and tonight the GI was defeated. Does that mean they were one and done? Perhaps they can be shipped off to the Paternoster Gang spin off as well. Plus any and all Scots that our Sontarian friend picks up as playthings.

Clara: So…how come I met your dead wife?
The Doctor: …I sort of made a back-up.
River: Left me like a book on a shelf.

This was River “post-Library,” so that meant she was already dead, having committed Suicide By Doctor when she reached the day that the Doctor returned and did not know who she was. On the surface, she snarked confidently, but it was telling that she prickled that Clara did not know she was female. All she wanted from The Doctor was a proper Goodbye, even though she knows he hates endings. She may have had to walk him through how to do it, but by god, it was perfect.

The Doctor: Well then, see you around, Professor River Song.
River: Till the next time, Doctor.
The Doctor: Don’t wait up.
River: Oh, there’s one more thing.
The Doctor: Isn’t there always?…..
River: Spoilers! Goodbye, Sweetie.

Fare thee well, Alex Kingston. I may not have always agreed with how Moffat handled your character, but you always handled her with aplomb.

The Doctor: I always thought I’d retire. Watercolors or beekeeping or something.

Trenzalore, the one place the Doctor must never go, turns out to be his grave, and the TARDIS his mausoleum. (Having cracked and itself dying, it’s finally growing bigger on the outside to match.) Inside, there is a twisting of light floating in the center of the room, which the Doctor introduces as “The Tracks of My Tears.”

The Doctor: Bodies are boring, I’ve had loads of them.

These are the tracks of his tears. Time travel is a tear in the fabric of the universe, and the Doctor has torn time more than anyone in the universe. It is an open wound on time. That is the master plan of the GI. To enter this wound and destroy him. As the Doctor lays dying on the floor, his life is undone and the galaxies and lives he’s saved start going out.

Clara: This time I will get it right. This time I will be “soufflé girl.”

I have over the course of this half season referred to Clara as “being spun out of the pattern over and over” which some of you might recognize as a Wheel of Time reference. I wasn’t that far off. We saw tonight that there are many copies, going all the back all the way to the First Doctor. And they have A Plan. Well, sort of. Clara follows the GI into the wound, where she is broken up into millions pieces, scattered along The Doctor’s life to save him over and over. Even the idiot leaf is explained, as it turns out this echo of her came flying in on it.

Clara: You know what? Run. Run, you clever boy and remember me.

All the Old Whos appear, though always running, and once or twice one can see the CGI lines around the insert. I loved seeing Clara styled in 1960s and 70s outfits to match. My favorite was her dressed in the same style as Susan Foreman, as she tells the First Doctor not to steal the TARDIS he’s headed for. “Steal this one instead. The navigation system’s knackered, but you’ll have much more fun.” We got to see what a TARDIS looks like de-skinned. Did it surprise anyone that it’s a plain silver cylinder that would not look out of place in a 1963 sci-fi television show?

The Doctor: I said he was me, I never said he was the Doctor.
Clara: I don’t understand.
The Doctor: …The name I chose is, “The Doctor.” The name you choose, it’s like a promise you make. He’s the one who broke the promise. He is my secret.

The Doctor could not let Clara just go and sacrifice herself. He had to enter his own timestream to rescue her. Inside we see…. Well, if you’ve been following the 50th anniversary filming, you would know rumors has it that John Hurt was cast as “The Doctor.” The theorists suggested this was Hurt filling in for Eccelston as the Ninth Doctor. Or this was like “The Next Doctor.” Perhaps this was the 12th Doctor? The one gaining traction (enough that it appears on Wikipedia) suggested this was a lost Ninth Doctor, and that the New Whos would have their numbers bumped. Is he in fact the lost incarnation of The Doctor who destroyed Gallifrey and ended the time war?

JohnHurt Doctor: What I did, I did without choice, in the name of peace and sanity.
The Doctor: But not in The Name of The Doctor!

And you thought the episode title meant we were going to learn his name. Silly Human. It was all just a prequel after all.

(xposted from IShouldHaveBeenABlogger. For more of anibundel’s Doctor Who posts, including previous recaps, click here.) 

The post Doctor Who Recap: The Name of The Doctor appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Doctor Who Recap: Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS Doctor Who Recap: “The Crimson Horror” Doctor Who Recap: “Hide”

That’s why I like getting out of the Washington echo chamber whenever I can — because too often, our politics aren’t focused on the same things you are. Working hard. Supporting your family and supporting your community. Making sure your kids have every chance in life.

More than anything, the American people make me optimistic about where we’re headed as a nation. Especially after all we’ve been through during the past several years. And that should encourage us all to work even harder on the on the issues that matter to you.

In a little over three years, our businesses have created more than 6.5 million new jobs. And while our unemployment rate is still too high, it’s the lowest it’s been since 2008. But now we need to create even more good, middle-class jobs, and we’ve got to do it faster.

Corporate profits have skyrocketed to an all-time high. But now we need to get middle-class wages and incomes rising, too.

Our housing market is healing. But we need to do a lot more to help families stay in their homes, or to help them refinance to take advantage of historically low rates.

And our deficits — well, they’re shrinking at the fastest rate in decades. But now we’ve got to budget in a smarter way that doesn’t hurt middle-class families or harm critical investments in our future. (transcript)

The post President Obama’s Weekly Address: Jobs and the Economy appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

President’s Weekly Address: ‘That Pain is Real.’ President Obama’s Weekly Address – Immigration Reform President Obama’s Weekly Address: Suspect in Custody

Further adding to this disregard for intersex people’s rights, the South Carolina documentation for the child’s surgery used the term hermaphrodite to describe him.  Hermaphrodite is quite an outdated term, one that some intersex people want to reclaim similar to “queer” or “dyke” by their perspective communities, but the overall consensus by intersex activists is that the term carries too much stigma from its mythological origins and from the abuse carried out by doctors who have performed unnecessary surgeries on them for years.

While the parents of M.C. seem to have his best interest in mind, the fact that this unnecessary medical procedure was done without thought adds to a greater problem: America’s ignorance about the lives and existence of intersex people as well as America’s need create fixed binary gender identities.  There are a multitude of gender identities in existence in the world that do not correlate with genitalia.  There are people who identify as two-spirit in many Native American and Indigenous North American communities (mixture of male and female), hijra in South Asian countries (born male or intersex but identify with femininity), third genders in Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, and many more countries, as well as a number of identities that fall under the transgender umbrella in Western countries.  This should show that gender is complicated, and assuming we know what someone’s gender is before they have the time to process that for themselves is dangerous.  Both for transgender people and intersex people, gender is a journey, one that should not be interrupted by coercive surgeries and correctional therapy.

You will be pleased to learn that the United Nations has made a step forward.  The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) released a statement in February denouncing the use of these surgeries to “normalize” intersex children.  According to the Ms. article  on the subject, “SRT invited Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC), a leader in the fight for intersex rights, to testify on the medical treatment of intersex. The hearings resulted in the SRT’s formal stance against irreversible, involuntary and nonconsensual medical interventions.”  The report states that, “these [genital-normalizing surgeries] are rarely medically necessary, can cause scarring, loss of sexual sensation, pain, incontinence and lifelong depression and have also been criticized as being unscientific, potentially harmful and contributing to stigma.”

Speaking as a someone who identifies as genderqueer, our society’s use of policing children to adhere to only the fixed binary terms of male or female will continue make transgender and intersex children suffer.  There needs to be a more collective opening of minds to the idea of gender as complex.

http://castrobiscuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/trans-pride-flag.gif (image to be used as header)

The post Gender Is NOT In The Eye Of The Beholder appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Mad Men Season Six Recap: “The Collaborators” Missouri GOP: No More DMV Because…OBAMA Stop Calling Obama a Murderer

A low-rider-y version of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” from the unreleased Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg mix, which eventually became Combat Rock (1982). I like this version better than the final Combat Rock mix because, as the Clash Wiki says, the “Rat Patrol mix features far more Spanish vocals from Joe Strummer, the way the song was initially performed live (such as the appearance on Saturday Night Live).”

Ah, yes. The Clash on Saturday Night Live. I remember it well: October 1982, my senior year in college. Which means – gasp! – I graduated 30 years ago this month.

That’s unpossible, as the kids say. (The kids still say that, don’t they? DON’T THEY???)

Anyway, speaking of thirty years ago, that’s when the Clash effectively came to an end. From the band’s official website:

The Clash’s last-ever gig featuring the three founding members from 1976 – Strummer, Jones and Simonon – took place on 28 May 1983 at the Us Festival, a huge outdoor event held at the Glen Helen Regional Park, Los Angeles. The festival was organised by the Apple computers guru Steve Wozniak, and The Clash headlined the ‘New Music’ night… . Before the show, the band had called an emergency press conference to explain they wouldn’t play unless the organisers made a $100,000 donation to a summer camp for disadvantaged children; this the organisers did, fearing the event would descend into chaos. The Clash eventually took the stage two hours later, and finished the evening fighting with a DJ whose onstage announcements after their last song was seen as an attempt to rob them of an encore. Three months later, Mick Jones left the group, effectively signalling its end.

So, yeah, that’s what the Clash were doing thirty years ago while you were busy worrying about your hair. What? Wasn’t everybody worrying about their hair thirty years ago?

Well, whether you had good hair or bad hair back in the day, here’s a solid live performance of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” from 1983, similar to the Live: From Here To Eternity version:

Turn it up, people. Turn. It. Up.

The post Your Friday Clash Song: ¡Esta Undecision Me Molesta! appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Your Friday Clash Song: You Can Be A Hero In The Age Of None Your Friday Clash: Drinking Brew For Breakfast … Your Friday Clash Song: Lightning Strikes In Old New York

First, Oberlander points out that the decision to subpoena those phone records may have violated internal Department of Justice procedures, referring to a section of the Code of Federal Regulations, 28 C.F.R. § 50.10 (.pdf), that governs attempts to obtain information from media sources. Among other things, Section 50.10(b) provides:

All reasonable attempts should be made to obtain information from alternative sources before considering issuing a subpoena to a member of the news media, and similarly all reasonable alternative investigative steps should be taken before considering issuing a subpoena for telephone toll records of any member of the news media.

Furthermore, Section 50.10(d) directs the DOJ to negotiate with a media outlet prior to subpoenaing its telephone records – which, apparently, did not happen here.

But assuming the Department deviated from its internal rules in the AP case, it’s not entirely clear what the legal ramifications are, because DOJ’s rules aren’t always mandated by law. Recall that during the Clinton years, DOJ took the position that intelligence agencies were prohibited from sharing information gathered through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with law enforcement, which was not an altogether unreasonable rule given that information gathered through FISA might not comply with the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions on search and seizure. Eventually, however, the FISA Court of Review held (.pdf) that that rule was not, in fact, required by law.

In any event, surprising as it may seem, our government sometimes errs on the side of protecting constitutional rights to such an extent that it adopts internal rules and procedures which exceed the actual requirements of the law. Whether the provisions of 28 C.F.R. § 50.10 fall into that category or not, I lack the expertise to say. But not every violation of internal DOJ procedures is, ipso facto (as we say in the law biz), a violation of somebody’s legal rights.

Oberlander’s main argument, though, is that by subpoenaing records from telephone carriers, rather than directly from the AP, DOJ effectively deprived the AP of notice that the Department was seeking those records and thereby deprived the AP of an opportunity to interpose objections before the records were produced. Here, she and the AP have a point. A subpoena is, in effect, a court order demanding that the recipient produce records or witnesses within a certain period of time. During the period between service of the subpoena and the date on which the party must comply, the party has the opportunity to file a motion with the court to “quash” the subpoena – essentially, to void it – or for other relief, such as limiting the scope of the information or documents requested, or limiting to whom the information or documents can be disseminated. So by serving subpoenas on telephone carriers rather than on the AP directly, the AP did not have the opportunity to interpose its objections prior to the time the records were produced.

And that sounds pretty bad. But, before rushing to judgment, it’s important to understand the nature of the objections the AP could have interposed, had it had the opportunity. Most of the commentary I’ve seen so far assumes that the AP could have asserted a First Amendment right to prevent the government from subpoenaing those records, the purpose of which was to reveal who may have leaked information to the AP. Not so, according to Oberlander. Rather, she notes, federal courts have ruled that journalists do not have a constitutional right to refuse to provide telephone records to a grand jury, even if the government seeks those records to identify a journalist’s source.

Nonetheless, as Oberlander points out, journalists have a common law privilege against identifying their sources, and, the courts have held, “phone records — even those held by a third party, such as a phone company — [are] subject to the same common-law privilege that would apply to the journalists’ own records.” Common law privileges are judge-made rules that protect information from disclosure in certain contexts – like the attorney-client privilege, the doctor-patient privilege, the priest-confessor privilege. But common law privileges are not absolute, as even Oberlander concedes when she refers to a federal appellate decision holding that “any common-law privilege [applicable to a journalist’s phone records] would be not absolute but ‘qualified’ — meaning that it could be overcome by a compelling government interest.”

Which leads to two important points: First, whether the government was right or wrong to issue the subpoenas in the first place, there’s no First Amendment issue here; and, second, the AP does not have an absolute, unqualified legal right to prevent the government from subpoenaing its telephone records. So, even if the government had subpoenaed the records from the AP directly, rather than from its telephone carriers, there’s no guarantee the AP would have been able to quash those subpoenas. Obviously, from the AP’s perspective, it would have been far better to have had the opportunity to present its argument to the court in the first place; but the outcome was far from predetermined.

Finally, I take issue with the implicit assertion in Oberlander’s piece that, having been deprived of the opportunity to interpose its objections prior to the telephone companies’ compliance with the subpoenas, the AP has now lost any opportunity it will ever have to protect its legal rights. In Oberlander’s words, DOJ “chose to avoid the court system — and its independent check on the Department’s power — by serving its subpoenas directly on the phone companies without telling the A.P.,” as if subpoenas magically appear out of thin air and no court can ever address a subpoena after compliance. A subpoena, as I indicated above, is a court process, and a court therefore has supervisory authority over it, over the party who issued it, and over the party who complied. So it’s not accurate to say the AP had no means of asserting its privilege after the fact; only that the remedy – for example, requesting the court to direct the government to return or destroy the records it received – may have been unsatisfactory to the AP.

In the end, though, what we have here is exactly what I suggested in yesterday’s post: A legal dispute between two parties, each of which has legitimate interests to protect. Having differing views of the law isn’t, as Oberlander suggests, “cowardly”; it’s not, as others have suggested, evidence of tyranny. It’s just a difference of opinion.

The post The AP ‘Scandal’ Part 2: An Opposing View appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

The AP ‘Scandal’ And The Death Of Secrecy Your Friday Clash Song: You Can Be A Hero In The Age Of None Your Friday Clash: Drinking Brew For Breakfast …

ABC’s “Scandal” has become a cultural phenomenon not just because it was one of the first prime time network shows with a Black woman as a lead character since the 70′s but the show has an unprecedented command of social media relations with its fan base. This influence is so prominent it may change the way Nielsen scores future show ratings.  During the current season, audience members tweeted more than 2 million “Scandal” related tweets.

Fans feel a certain ownership of the show. If you feel like you can get on Twitter and talk about it while it’s airing, it makes them feel like they’re a part of things. The more they feel they’re a part of things, the more invested they’re going to be in the show and that’s important. —  Shonda Rhimes, Creator

On Thursday’s #amTWiB, political strategist L. Joy Williams and the morning crew have a spoiler free discussion about the show Scandal, which wraps up its season this week, Columbia University’s Whites only fellowship, and a man charged with murder after slipping his girlfriend the abortion pill without her knowledge.

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download| RSS

The post #amTWiB: Scandal-palooza appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Obama Sucks so Hard, Soldiers are Killing Themselves? @amTWIB #66 | No Justice, No Lucifer More Of Lindsey Graham’s Rights And Wrongs

As a lawyer, I deal in secrecy. If there is a cardinal principle in lawyering, it’s that when a client tells you something in confidence, you place it in the vault. Or, if you prefer legalese, Rule 1.6 of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct says that “[a] lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client” except in certain limited circumstances, such as “to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm,” or to prevent the client from committing certain crimes.

So, if a client comes to me and says he’s going to kill his wife, I can rat him out; but if he comes to me and says he’s already done it, I am duty bound not to disclose that fact, even to the police. And if, in the latter case, I do rat him out, I will probably lose my license.

Most people accept the idea that secret keeping is an essential part of the attorney-client relationship, because clients will never tell their lawyers the truth unless they’re quite certain the lawyer will keep their secrets. Once they tell their lawyer the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the lawyer can figure out how to resolve their problems; but a lawyer can’t give a client good–and thorough–advice unless the lawyer knows all the facts, even the ones that are potentially harmful to the client. So, in that context, secret keeping has some real social utility.

I get the sense, however, that liberals think secrecy serves no legitimate purpose in most other circumstances. With groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous attaining demigod status on the left, it seems like we have adopted the McCarthy-era mantra that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide. While we scream like hell–and appropriately so–at any government intrusion into our own private lives, we grant free reign to organizations that profess to have the public interest at heart. When those organizations expose secrets, they’re heroes.

Of course, from a legal and ethical perspective, there’s a huge difference between government secrets and private secrets, although I note that WikiLeaks and Anonymous have no qualms about targeting private organizations like banks and churches when it suits their purposes. Nonetheless, the government has far fewer legitimate “privacy” concerns than do ordinary citizens and private institutions; and private exposure of government secrets does not raise the same constitutional concerns as government intrusion into private matters.

But are we really prepared to say that the government has no legitimate reason to keep secrets under any circumstances? Clearly, the answer is no. The government employs millions of individuals whose employment and medical records are entitled to the same confidential treatment as yours and mine; they are, after all, private citizens, even if they’re employed by the government. And the government employs lawyers, too. Surely government lawyers have the same obligation to protect the confidentiality of their clients’ communications as private lawyers have. If the government cannot keep secrets under any circumstances, does that mean public defenders–government employees hired to provide legal representation to private individuals–should not be able to keep their clients’ confidences? That’s madness.

Far more complicated, however, are the situations in which the government claims to have the right to keep secrets for purposes of national security. In such circumstances, ordinarily the government’s purpose isn’t so much to keep secrets from us, as citizens, but to keep secrets from potential enemies. But, of course, it can’t very well disclose sensitive information to its citizenry without disclosing it to the world at large, and so it tries to keep certain types of information off limits altogether, even though the public interest in such information is considerable. Unfortunately, the amorphous nature of “security threats” is such that the government’s use of that rationale can rarely be tested for accuracy. It’s very easy for the government to claim it’s withholding information on the basis of national security, but often there’s virtually no way to evaluate that claim.

Still, it’s hard to argue that when the government gets information about security threats–say, planned terror attacks–from an informant overseas, the government ought to be able to keep that informant’s identity secret. And if someone within the government happens to leak information that might tend to identify an informant, it stands to reason that the government should investigate the leak and, if appropriate, discipline or even prosecute the individual responsible for the leak.

That’s exactly what happened in the now infamous case in which the FBI issued a subpoena to the Associated Press to obtain telephone records. As more thoroughly explained by Bob Cesca at the Daily Banter, Raine Koch at the Four Freedoms Blog, and blogger Quad City Pat, the matter began last year when someone leaked details about a foiled al Qaeda plot in Yemen to AP reporter Adam Goldman. Apparently, as the story evolved, certain details of the informant came out, including his nationality, which could, theoretically, put the individual in danger. Congressional Republicans demanded an investigation into the leak, and the Administration acceded to Congress’s demands.

Now, in the process of that investigation, the FBI has subpoenaed records of the use of some twenty telephone lines at the AP over a two month period. The FBI did not, as some have suggested, tap phone lines, listen in on telephone calls, or otherwise obtain the substance of any conversations; rather, the information apparently was limited to telephone numbers, and dates and times of telephone calls. In other words, the purpose of the subpoena was to determine who might have communicated with individuals at the AP during the relevant time period.

More to the point, despite the histrionics coming from the likes of New York Magazine (which accused the Administration of “spying” on the AP) and the Guardian, the Administration didn’t “seize” any records. It issued a subpoena–which is part of the judicial process–and obtained the information legally. This is what happens in our adversarial justice system. Each party to a dispute has certain legitimate interests to protect, and so each uses the legal means available to it to protect those interests. Here, both parties assert the right to keep certain information secret: the government wants to punish a leaker for disclosing information about an informant, and the AP wants to keep its sources confidential. In the end, though, neither the government nor the AP gets to decide who wins and who loses. Instead, it is for a court to decide which party has the stronger claim.

But the challenging question in this case is not so much whether the mere issuance of a subpoena is some form of ham-fisted government abuse, but whether we believe anybody–whether private individuals, the media, or the government–has any right to keep secrets in the first place.

The post The AP ‘Scandal’ And The Death Of Secrecy appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Mad Men Season Six Recap: “The Collaborators” Missouri GOP: No More DMV Because…OBAMA Obama Says Guantanamo Should be Closed. Again.

Welcome back to So You Think You Can Dance‘s premiere, now broadcasting from The Motor City. Would you like to see what amazing artistic expressions you missed by your failure to tune in? (And yes you *are* failing to tune in. Last night’s premiere was beaten by a Voice clip show of all things. You disappoint me America! Mark Burnett is going to be well nigh insufferable if this keeps up.)

Let’s get to what you didn’t see. Cue music.

I was with Nigel on this one. It was so beautifully moving, I didn’t want it to end.

Amy was far too perky for my taste, but her audition more than made up for it. It even made up for forcing her poor dad on stage to be told he wasn’t going to Vegas.

Mo challenging tWitch to an abs-off immediately put me off him, and it didn’t help that he trotted out a dead grandma right afterward. His leaps were beautiful, but otherwise I thought his routine wasn’t that impressive.

Tap Dancer Alert! His name is Tyrone. I’m not sure Mary is right that he’s the best tapper they’ve seen in ten seasons, but he’s certainly formidable.

Sysko shows up to demonstrate “jittin,” which is Detroit’s home grown dance style. He’s not bad, but his semi male stripper routine that follows when Nigel asks about other forms of dancing is more entertaining. that’s not a good sign. He gets sent to choreography, which he does not pass.

He wins major points though because his performance inspires tWitch to take the stage.

I would watch an entire hour’s program of this. No lie.

We end the night on a group of boys who dance for a living by stripping. Smilez is a really good krumper, but can’t handle the  choreo round. His friend Prince Charming does not give up so easily and heads through to Vegas.

Next week, the show settles into its regular Tuesday at 8pm slot and Minnie Driver shows up to guest judge.

(xposted from IShouldHaveBeenABlogger. For more of anibundel’s SYTYCD posts, click here.)

The post So You Think You Can Dance Season 10 Premiere Part 2 appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

So You Think You Can Dance Season 10 Premiere Mad Men Season Six Recap: “The Collaborators” Doctor Who Recap: “Hide”

The State Attorney said that it extended “an offer of diversion of prosecution to the child,” typically a probationary program that allows the youngster to perform community service and avoid a criminal record. Kiera and her guardian signed the agreement, it said.

While they’re not calling it as such, it seems as if the court essentially offered her a plea bargain: we’ll drop the charges and give you community service, or you can fight us in the courts where you’ll probably lose. Either way, you’re still getting punished; we will not be denied. C’est la vie, I suppose. At least they gave her a choice, and she clearly made the wise one.

All in all, this is good news for aspiring bomb-throwers curious kids all over the nation, but like so many other things in life, the news does come with an asterix: while Ms. Wilmot no longer faces criminal charges, the expulsion verdict has stuck, and she will no longer be allowed to attend Bartow High School. Instead, she is required to attend classes at an alternative high school in order to complete her degree.

As someone who graduated from one of these so-called ‘alternative’ high schools, I can tell you right now that whatever kind of education she was getting at her current school is going to be halved, if not quartered, from here on out. ‘Alternative’ schools are for the following types of kids: those with severe learning disabilities, those who are too socially/behaviorally disruptive and/or violent to attend regular school, or some combination of both. What they aren’t for is bright, yet incredibly bored and mildly rebellious students who are expelled for minor drug offenses under a zero-tolerance district policy (like myself), or for bright, inquisitive teenagers who are interested in pursuing extracurricular activities and, I don’t know … forgot to ask for permission. Ms. Wilmot will be entering into the heart of darkness, the dark underbelly of our public education system: a place where the teachers are often as apathetic and disillusioned as the students, where the budgets are practically nil and educational ‘packets’ are considered an acceptable substitute for books and lectures, and where expressing a genuine desire to learn just might get your ass kicked.

‘Alternative’ schools are not designed for kids to actually learn anything; they’re de facto institutions designed to shuffle ‘problem’ kids out the back door with something approximating a diploma, so that the district can wash their hands of them. The mentality of these schools is as pervasive as it is pernicious, and I know that my experiences in ‘alternative’ education had a dramatic effect on my desire and ability to learn and grow for years afterward. I sincerely hope that, while the educational system has turned its back on Kiera Wilmot, that she does not turn her back on education itself as a result.

The post Kiera Wilmot’s Asterix* appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Kids Being Kids or … Terrorists? Thoughts On A Protest: Keystone XL Pipeline The Contradictory and Disgusting Politics of Terrorism

I mean, here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can, … They are the Taliban wing of American politics and we all ought to be a little worried about them.” - Julian Bond

“Truth hurts,” according to Bond.

While Bond doesn’t feel that the there was any wrong doing by the IRS, it will be up investigators to discover the truth. Only time will tell if this is the big moment before President Obama reveals that this whole time he was a patriot-shaming, constitution-hating, African-born-socialist.

Today on #TWiBRadio  #TeamBlackness discussed The NAACP’s Julian Bond dismissing parallels between the IRS targeting the Tea Party, the New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition dry snitching on fakes among their ranks, and ironically doing goodwill for the homeless. Listen here:

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download | RSS

And on #amTWiB, political strategist L. Joy Williams and the morning crew discuss lowering the blood alcohol level for DUIs, yoga guru Bikram Choudhury accused of rape and human trafficking, and Uni-Ball’s controversial new ad.

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe On Stitcher | Direct Download| RSS

The post NAACP Chairman: The Tea Party is our Taliban appeared first on This Week in Blackness.

Related posts:

Obama Sucks so Hard, Soldiers are Killing Themselves? Obama Loves Terrorists More Than Patriots Discrimination Is Apparently Awesome