178 Atlanta Principals And Teachers Caught In Cheating Scandal

CBSNews.com:

The Atlanta public schools are embroiled in a massive cheating scandal. It's a situation that's rippling far beyond the city's borders, because the alleged cheating involved the same sort of standardized tests used all over the country.


Most surprising is that it's not students who are accused, but 178 principals and teachers. Fifty-six schools were investigated, and cheating was found in 44, or nearly 80 percent, as CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports.


It's a scathing report: A decade of systemic cheating in Atlanta's school system by the adults. Dozens of educators erased wrong student answers on state standardized tests, and inserted the right ones.


In all, investigators accused 38 principals of cheating and said 82 of the 178 educators they identified as part of the scandal confessed.


"When educators have failed to uphold the public trust and students are harmed in the process there will be consequences," said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.


The motive for cheating? It was to show phony progress at often troubled schools, what the report calls "the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment."


Regardless, some parents are calling for heads to roll.


Atlanta's scandal is the biggest in recent years, but other school systems, in Baltimore, Houston and Detroit, have had isolated cheating issues on state-wide tests.

Atheists Challenge ‘Heaven’ on New York City Street Sign Dedicated To Firefighters Who Died On 9/11

Sick. And course, no way the lamestream media notes how almost all atheists are liberals:

A new street sign that reads “Seven in Heaven Way,” and that was recently unveiled in Brooklyn, New York, to commemorate seven local firefighters who lost their lives in the September 11, 2001 attacks has drawn the ire of some atheists, who say they’re prepared to go to court to have the sign taken down.


New York City Atheists, a group that opposes the public use of religious references, is challenging the new sign, which was erected in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.


“We’re supposed to be a secular nation - there really should not be any religious symbolism or signage in public places,” said Kenneth Bronstein, President of New York City Atheists. “We feel that any and all people who died in 9-11 should be remembered and honored. That’s not the problem.”


Bronstein calls the sign a violation of the separation of church and state, arguing that the word “heaven” is a clear reference to Christianity.


Bronstein has contacted the city with his complaint and has proposed an alternative street name: “We Remember the 7-911.”


Groups dedicated to honoring 9/11 victims did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Bronstein’s campaign.


But some New Yorkers told CNN New York affiliate WPIX that they disagree with the New York City Atheists.


"That's nonsense,” said Anbriena Insausti, who lives in Manhattan. “The families should honor their loved ones anyway they want."

CNN Cancels Eliot Spitzer's Show

Good riddance part two:

CNN on Wednesday canceled Eliot Spitzer’s 8 p.m. political talk show, “In the Arena,” after only nine months amid a broader shake-up that shifts Anderson Cooper’s 10 p.m. nightly newscast into Mr. Spitzer’s time slot.


Mr. Spitzer will sign off on Wednesday night, a CNN spokeswoman said. His show will remain in the time slot until August 5.


The cable news channel also said that Erin Burnett, a new hire from CNBC, would take over the 7 p.m. time slot on weekdays, replacing John King, who will move to 6 p.m.


The changes are intended to stabilize the sagging television ratings for CNN, which have been a source of frustration for the channel’s parent company, Time Warner. “We think it creates better flow from show to show, and we think that will improve the overall performance across the evening,” Ken Jautz, who was put in charge of CNN/U.S. last fall, said in an interview.

RELATED: Eliot Spitzer Signs Off With Teddy Roosevelt's 'Citizenship In A Republic'

Casey Anthony Acquitted In Daughter Caylee's Death

Shocking:

Casey Anthony was found not guilty Tuesday of killing her 2-year-old daughter three years ago in a case that captivated the nation as it played out on national television from the moment the toddler was reported missing.


Anthony wept after the clerk read the verdict, which jurors reached after less than 11 hours of deliberation over two days. The 25-year-old was charged with first-degree murder, which could have brought the death penalty if she had been convicted.


Instead, she was convicted of only four counts of lying to investigators looking into the June 2008 disappearance of her daughter Caylee. Her body was found in the woods six months later and a medical examiner was never able to determine how she died.


Anthony will be sentenced by the judge on Thursday and could receive up to a year in jail for each lying count. She has already spent almost three years in jail awaiting trial.


After the verdict was read, Casey Anthony hugged her attorney Jose Baez and later mouthed the words "thank you" to him.

Juan Williams: Media Matters ‘Ruins People’s Lives’ Over Political Disagreements

Mediaite.com:

Juan Williams appeared on Fox & Friends and told Brian Kilmeade it was laughable that Media Matters is considered a charitable institution when they are dedicated to silencing honest debate. Kilmeade was shocked that Media Matters searches for disgruntled Fox News employees to help with their campaign against the network, and now Williams and other Fox personalities seem ready to fight back.


Williams described the evolution of Media Matters:


“Obviously it’s not an honest watchdog group anymore. They used to monitor the media and point out things that were wrong, false, inappropriate, which is fine, but what you are hearing from Ari Rabin-Havt [Executive Vice President of Media Matters] is that really now they’re involved in opposition research. They are digging up dirt on people. They’re trying to ruin people’s lives and reputation because they disagree with their politics. And, in specific here, what they disagree with is conservative politics and they really don’t like Fox News.”


Williams mentioned that even his former employer NPR may be guilty of only giving one point of view, but that offense is nothing when compared to Media Matters, which sets out to destroy their political opponents. And with many Fox News shows now targeting Media Matters, it seems like a full-scale war between both sides has officially begun.

California Public Schools To Soon Receive Lessons On Gay History

It's what the gay mafia continues to do so well: milk the civil rights movement of the 60's for all there is and equate race to their sick, immoral sexual urges. Whether its defending "gay marriage" by pointing at laws that once opposed interracial marriage or getting their own "Gay History Month", for liberals/gay activists there's been nothing better to pushing the gay agenda than likening it to the rights blacks fought and died for decades to receive. And the fact that it's a gay, white male who's leading this latest fraud shouldn't fool you either.

Eric Holder Has Egg On His Face, CIA Exonerated For Alleged Torture "Crimes"

Surely, the 80% of the country that doesn't view themselves as "liberals" can recall how Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, with clear symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome, went out of his way to inquire into allegations of torture against the CIA during the Bush administration. Well, after a two-year investigation the Justice Dept. just announced that a special prosecutor appointed by Holder found no criminal wrongdoing by the CIA's handling of some 100 terrorists. This news not only leaves sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome again looking stupid, but a legitimate call for Holder to resign:

After reopening Justice Department investigations into use of CIA enhanced interrogation, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. admitted that he had not read the memos of his own department’s lawyers explaining why no criminal laws had been violated.

Now, John Dunham, the assistant U.S. attorney in Connecticut assigned by Holder to re-investigate the cases, has concluded that the lawyers who closed the case were correct, and no criminal charges are warranted.

The re-investigation subjected former CIA officers to the chilling prospect of going to jail. As seven former CIA directors who served under Republicans and Democrats have said publicly, the probe sent a message to CIA officers that if they take risks in defense of their country, they may suffer consequences.

“If criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be rendered meaningless,” the former directors wrote to President Barack Obama.

Such actions create “an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy,” they wrote.
As former Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey, who signed the letter, told me, “For the attorney general to reopen those in the way that he has, says very clearly to CIA officers that, even if your boss tells you to do something and shows you that he has Justice Department support, and even if you’re investigated and cleared, it’s not over.”

This is not the first time Holder has embarrassed himself while pursuing a clearly partisan political agenda:

• Holder said he opposed Arizona’s illegal immigration legislation but had not read the new law.
• Holder decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. District Court in New York without asking the police or the FBI whether that would jeopardize the safety of New Yorkers. In the face of bipartisan congressional opposition, he later had to back down.
• Holder testified that he believes the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding constitute “torture,” but he said he had not read classified reports that describe what those techniques entail.

If Alberto Gonzales, President George W. Bush’s attorney general, had engaged in such amateurish conduct, the press would have run him out of town. Indeed, it pounced on him over lesser fumbling, and he had to resign.

Politiks As Usual: In The News 4/7/11

John McCain: Americans 'Don't Want Compromise' On Tax Revenue Hikes

Media Matters Under Scrutiny

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Obama Health Care Law 

Why The Left Hates Michele Bachmann, Right About Minimum Wage

49 Members Of House Call For Elena Kagan To Recuse Herself From Healthcare Cases

New York Democratic Senators Participate In Anti-Gay Bullying Video  

Judge To Mom: 'You Don't Spank Children'


George Will: Can Congress Require Obese People To Sign Up For Weight Watchers


Connecticut's 'Anti-Christie' Gov. Malloy Plans Worker Cuts


NAACP Chief Hazel Dukes' Talk Of 'Slave Masters' Defames Charter Schools, Minorities

Liberal Media and Politicians Drop 'Global Warming' in Favor of 'Climate Change'

Interesting:

Over the past three years, the number of believers in anthropogenic global warming has been on a steady decline, while the number of believers in natural planetary warming and cooling cycle has been on a steady incline. The shrinking pool of people who still swear by Al Gore's Hollywood version of the climate trend is especially populated with journalists and politicians who refuse admit they were wrong and consider any science debunking manmade global warming.


As the numbers fail each year to match Gore's wild predictions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to form any logical support for Gore's gloom and doom global warming scenarios. To rectify the situation, the global warming community has quietly rebranded its cause as 'climate change,' which allows activists to push an environmental agenda without the threat of the earth's temperature not rising with it.


Following one of the coldest winters in history earlier this year, warmists are struggling to defend an ever imposing doom that global warming might in fact be an entirely natural phenomenon.


As Marc Morano reiterated Thursday at the sixth annual International Conference on Climate Change (or the 'Climate Denier Conference,' as the Washington Post would call it), warmists believe 'any weather event is proof of the theory,' whether it be snowfalls in April or hurricanes in November. In a world in which we can rarely predict ten-day forecasts accurately, it is astounding that such a large community still props up Gore's fabricated data and charts as explanations for every catastrophic weather event that occurs.


The shift away from the global warming rhetoric has actually come quite ironically. As Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Institute points out, the 'climate change' term was originally used by President George W. Bush in 2002. Of course, Bush was quickly lambasted by left-wing media for the move away from 'global warming.' One such hit came from the UK's Guardian:


The US Republican party is changing tactics on the environment, avoiding "frightening" phrases such as global warming, after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.


The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has "lost the environmental communications battle" and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.


[...]


The phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist", because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behaviour... that turns off many voters".


Today, though, the same people who criticized Bush for his coining of the 'climate change' term are now flocking to the buzz phrase to pretend they were right all along, that heavy winters, too, can be a result of global warming.


A study released earlier this year might explain the newly warm embrace of the term 'climate change,' which proved that skepticism of global warming drops to much lower levels when it is called 'climate change.' While the latter is traditionally understood to mean the climate change that occurs during natural cycles of warming and cooling, liberals have warped it be synonymous with global warming, enabling them to push the same environmental agenda under a more widely accepted moniker. According to the authors of the study,


Republicans were less likely to endorse that the phenomenon is real when it was referred to as “global warming” (44.0%) rather than “climate change” (60.2%), whereas Democrats were unaffected by question wording (86.9% vs. 86.4%). As a result, the partisan divide on the issue dropped from 42.9 percentage points under a “global warming” frame to 26.2 percentage points under a “climate change” frame.


As the lead author of the study, Dr. Jonathon Schuldt, explained, 'wording matters.'


Wording does matter, as the crumbling global warming debate has become emblazoned with a new vocabulary masking the same relentless green message, using the trendiest language to morph the science to their agenda. While the term 'global warming' failed as a catch-all, the term 'climate change' can be used as a convenient excuse to explain any weather pattern environmentalists want to blame on human activity and to impose ever more burdensome environmental regulation on us.

Rush Limbaugh: MSNBC's Response Different If Halperin Defamed George W. Bush

Of course Limbaugh's right. It's always a different standard for liberals on how to treat the President when a Republican is in there as opposed to a Democrat:

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, MSNBC has put Mark Halperin on indefinite suspension for making an intemperate remark about President Obama on "Morning Joe."


Just a few hours later, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his audience the network's response would have been much different if Halperin had said this about George W. Bush when he was president

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Now, let me ask you a question: If Mark Halperin had said this about say George W. Bush, would they be falling all over themselves to apologize? Nope. He would be, my guess is, “New ground had been broken. Finally, finally,” they would say, “a reporter has had the courage and the guts to tell the nation just exactly the kind of President we have. A gutsy move. It might have been over the line. It might have been a little bit risky. And it might be something he would never do again, but by golly, by gosh, the courage.”


That’s how they would play it had Mark Halperin said it about George W. Bush.


Taking this a step further, since Halperin apparently believed what he said was going to be edited out - he specifically asked if MSNBC was on a seven second delay - it's quite likely the technician that failed to bleep his comment about Bush would have been the fall guy - assuming there was one at all.


But because MSNBC is the leading television propaganda outlet for this White House and the Democrat Party, that certainly wouldn't be enough in this instance.


Something else to consider is it's unlikely the minor vulgarity bothered the network.


As Breitbart reported a few hours ago, MSNBC allowed an audible f-bomb on "The Last Word" during prime time Wednesday evening. Nobody involved in that show has been suspended including the host.


As Limbaugh pointed out there likely wouldn't have been this response if Obama was Republican, one must conclude the network just didn't like such a thing being said about a president it so faithfully supports.

Homosexual, Far-Left Sex Columnist Dan Savage Says Marriage Needs More Infidelities

Anyone who disputes that the real goal of the far-left's agenda is not to destroy every bit of what's left of America's moral fabric is either stupid or seriously in denial. To think, Dan Savage is the kind of liberal scum that Barry begs people to listen to:

Savage’s position on monogamy is frequently caricatured. He does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.


“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”


In their own marriage, Savage and Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about. Miller was initially opposed to the idea. “You assume as a younger person that all relationships are monogamous and between two people, that love means nothing can come between you,” said Miller, who met Savage at a club in 1995, when he was 23 and Savage was 30. “Dan has taught me to be more realistic about that kind of stuff.


“It was four or five years before it came up,” Miller said. “It’s not about having three-ways with somebody or having an open relationship. It is just sort of like, Dan has always said if you have different tastes, you have to be good, giving and game, and if you are not G.G.G. for those tastes, then you have to give your partner the out. It took me a while to get down with that.” When I asked Savage how many extramarital encounters there have been, he laughed shyly. “Double digits?” I asked. He said he wasn’t sure; later he and Miller counted, and he reported back that the number was nine. “And far from it being a destabilizing force in our relationship, it’s been a stabilizing force. It may be why we’re still together.”