Worst foster system nominee: No Muslims allowed

In Maryland, the foster care system has refused to allow a woman to be a foster parent because she is a Muslim and therefore won't have pork in her house, which violates the kid's right to eat pork. No, really, that's what they said.

We are denying your application because of concerns raised by statements made during the home study interview, specifically your explicit request to prohibit pork products within your home environment. Although we respect your personal/religious views and practices, this agency must above all ensure that the religious, cultural and personal rights of each foster child placed in our case are upheld. Your statement indicates that there could potentially be a discrepancy between your expectations and the needs and personal views of a child placed in your care.

As Ed Brayton said on his blog, where I found this, "Unless they also refuse every vegetarian and every Jewish person, this is pretty clearly a matter of discrimination."

As the current expression says, I am gobsmacked by this. How could any person with normal cognitive abilities imagine that putting a foster kid in a house that does not serve pork (or coffee, or Coca Cola, or okra, or brown rice, or Skittles, or any particular food) is harmful to the kid? How can they construe the first amendment to the constitution to mean there is a religious, cultural, or personal right to eat pork?

Does it mean that a Muslim or Jewish kid cannot be put into a Christian, Buddhist, Hindi, or atheist home, because they might see other family members eat pork?

Whoever made this decision should be given a nice job somewhere where he or she* won't be forced to make constitutional judgments.

*I first wrote "he, for it must be a he," and then I remembered Michele Bachmann.

Worst provider nominee: drugging the kids to sleep better

Two "former" workers at Covenant Apostolic Church Day Care in Cincinnati day care gave over-the-counter melatonin to kids to help them sleep at naptime. They put it in candy. "Parents had told investigators their children often seemed groggy after leaving the day care."  A co-worker told police. They have been charged with misdemeanor child endangering and misrepresentation by a child care provider, which is apparently the worst thing they can find on the books to cover the situation. They face a maximum 18 months in jail.

Worst provider nominee: running over the kids with an SUV

An unlicensed after-school child care center in Cupertino was closed by CCL in October when one of the teachers, who picked up kids at their elementary school, ran over and killed a 5-year-old boy, the only child of older parents, while leaving the center after dropping him of, on her way to take another kid home. I didn't hear about it at the time. Today's news story is that the teacher has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, which the article says is a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one year, and transporting a kid without a car seat.

This has so many things wrong with it. Unlicensed commercial child care. Child care providers who drive kids around without car seats. Not making sure the kids who get out of the car were out of the way before driving off. After it happened, going first inside to talk with the boss "for several minutes" rather than to the kid lying on the ground.

Worst school district nominee: Spying on kids with webcams

A Philadelphia suburban school district gave laptops with webcams to all 1800 high school students. They didn’t tell them that the webcams could be remotely turned on by the school. The school now says it was to find the laptops if they were stolen.

People found out about it when the school disciplined a kid for “improper behavior in his home” and used a webcam photo as evidence. They're being sued.

The articles I read about it said the actual behavior wasn't described, but the suit says that "'Should discovery disclose that Defendants are in possession of images constituting child pornography' as defined by Pennsylvania law, the family reserves the right to add that to its list of complaints."

There was no word on whether the high schools in question teach about the fourth amendment in civics classes, nor whether the administrators had read the constitution.

Worst parent nominee: waterboarding a 4-year-old for not knowing the alphabet.

I saw this at Andrew Sullivan's. An American soldier in Tacoma, WA, has been charged with submerging his 4-year-old daughter's face several times in water because she couldn't recite the alphabet. He said he did it because he was angry. He chose this particular punishment because she was terrified of water. He had been awarded custody of his daughter 4 weeks before.

[T]he terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat. Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: 'Daddy did it.'

Part of his punishment should be a vasectomy. With a hammer.

But afterward, the Army has to do a better job with its soldiers who get weird after a few tours of duty where people are trying to kill them.

Worst school policy nominee: Pulling dictionaries because of sexual definitions

The Menifee Union School District pulled and then replaced the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in its 4th and 5th grade classrooms because a parent said the definition of oral sex was too explicit. The definition was "oral stimulation of the genitals : cunnilingus, fellatio."

"The dictionaries have not been banned," said Betti Cadmus, a spokeswoman for the Menifee Union School District in conservative southwest Riverside County on Monday. "There was a growing concern by parents that some of the words were not age-appropriate."

A panel of parents, teachers and administrators (met) to comb the dictionary for potentially graphic words or definitions ...

"The dictionary will go back to the classroom but the parents will be given the option to determine if they want their kids to have access to that dictionary," said Betti Cadmus, a spokeswoman for the Menifee Union School District in southwest Riverside County. Students will take permission slips home and parents who don't want them to use Webster's 10th Collegiate Edition can opt for alternative dictionaries.

God, people get upset about trivial crap. I fondly remember scouring the dictionary for dirty words in elementary school. My parents wouldn't tell me anything, and what was the 99th percentile in reading ability good for if not finding out what dirty words really meant? I'd say in general that when a kid becomes curious about a word, that's the time to explain it's meaning. If she's too young, to understand, she won't. On the scale of things that can traumatize or badly influence a child, reading in a dictionary that oral sex is oral stimulation of the genitals is way down on the harmless end.

And what was that parent doing looking up "oral sex" in the dictionary anyway? Doesn't he already know what it is? If not, a Google search would explain it with a lot more flair than "oral stimulation of the genitals" and show pictures, too.

Worst school district nominee: Mandatory short hair for preschoolers UPDATE

The school board I posted about recently that kicked a preschooler out of school because his hair was tool long has voted to keep the hair rule and not make any exceptions.

“It’s a trade-off,” said one board member, Gary Bingham, an insurance agent, in an interview. “Do the parents value his education more than they value a 4-year-old’s decision to make his own grooming choices?”

Or does the school board value a foolish consistency more than allowing a 4-year-old to make personal decisions that don't affect them?

If you accept my argument about the genetics of political orientation, then the school board is trying to turn the kid into a conservative (belief in hierarchy and ordained roles), and the parents are trying to turn him into a liberal (self-reliant, autonomous).

I was once in an elementary school PTA executive board meeting where the principal told us, "If we make exceptions, we'll never be exceptional." He said it twice, to make sure we got it. I told him that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard a college-educated person say. We transferred our kid out of there soon thereafter, and the principal and I never became friends.

Worst parent nominee: feed the baby morphine

Münchausen syndrome by proxy is a mental illness characterized by causing illness in someone, usually one's child, in order to draw attention to oneself. This woman gave her 2-month-old baby morphine to get the father's attention.

She was already on probation for giving morphine to her other baby (then 10 months old) to get the attention of that baby's father.

She got 7 1/2 years in prision. She should also have her tubes tied.

Worst parent nominee: Beat up your friend's kid

I don't want to type the details of her horrendous abuse of a "friend's" child, because she didn't like his mom, but it's as bad as you've heard of. If  you read this regularly, you know I'm a serious liberal. That said, this lady should have her tubes tied as part of her long, long sentence. Maybe tied around her neck.

So what can we really do about people like this, besides put them in jail when we discover them, leaving their other kids without parents. (In this case, she abused her friend's kid but not her own, at least not to the same extent.)

But I'm more interested in stopping it from happening. The problem is I'm afraid the kinds of things I imagine might work would be too intrusive on the part of the government for me. I mean, suppose we found a gene allele that was instrumental in this kind of abuse, and we found a gene therapy (or cognitive therapy, or drugs) that could ameliorate it. Would we be justified in forcing the therapy on anyone with that allele, even if they had shown no tendencies toward abuse?

 If we did find a way to prevent people from hitting their kids, we'd have to:

• Sequence everybody's genome to find out who had the bad allelle (and the bad sets of alleles for other mental disorders besides being mean).
• Decide what psychotherapy or gene therapy or drug to use.
• Set up an organizational structure for forcing them to take it.
• Keep the government from abusing its power or from just screwing up.

 None of these would be easy, but I imagine Republicans in congress trying to "cure" homosexuality, or atheism, or liberalism when they get back in power. I think I'd rather put  up with some child abuse to avoid that.

Worst school district nominee: Mandatory short hair for preschoolers

The school in Dallas says, "students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live."

That's why the 4-year-old with his hair over his collar was suspended for a month and now sits in the  library instead of being in class with his buddies. His hair is too long, and he won't cut it. The dad says other kids have longer hair, and his kid is being singled out.

I don't know about that, but I do know that Einstein was a constructive member of our society.

I guess this is what "evidence based practice" means in Dallas. We believe what we believe, and if you disagree, that's evidence against you.

Worst school district nominee: Kid on a cross is a violent image

The assignment was to draw something that reminded them of Christmas. One second grader drew a stick drawing of himself on the cross, with Xs for eyes (maybe to show he was dead, like Jesus) and a smile (Always look on the bright side of life). He had recently been to the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, where he had seen crucifixion statues.

So of course, the school was alarmed, sent him home from school, made him get a psychological evaluation, and allowed him to return only after evaluators found nothing to indicate he would be a threat to others. The superintendent said they were following safety protocols.

The pendulum has officially swung too far toward safety. Not that it hadn't already, what with, just for a couple of examples of PC gone wild, a school expelling a kindergartener for bringing a plastic knife to cut her banana, and a parent bringing sexual harassment charges against a first-grader for kissing a classmate on the cheek.

I guess we're so traumatized by not identifying school shooters before they are set off that mindless bureaucrats (to distinguish them from the non-mindless bureaucrats, many of whom I work with on a regular basis and respect a great deal) will investigate far beyond reasonable bounds so as not to be blamed if the kid brings a gun to school next week and shoots somebody.

I heard about it from Andrew Sullivan, which has the drawing in question.

UPDATE: Someone asked me what the school should have done. The teacher or counselor should have phoned the parents and said your kid just drew a drawing of himself dead, and we'd like to talk to you about whether he is having any problems we could help with.

Worst center snack nominee: crack

The crack the center worker in Minneapolis found in the 13-month-old's mouth was wrapped in plastic, so no actual damage was done, but, presuming it wasn't staff (and licensed child care isn't a crack-friendly atmosphere, even in wide-open Minneapolis), somebody who signed in and out in the visitor's log has some 'splainin' to do.

"We're talking about an amount, about possibly the size of maybe a couple of jelly beans," said Jesse Garcia of Minneapolis Police.

The room was cleaned and scrubbed from top to bottom.

"I emptied out the room thoroughly and I had everybody with vacuums and hoses and Shopvacs getting in the corners. Anything that looked like it should be sucked up, suck it up," Thibodeaux said.

Moral: If you have a small child, always keep your crack wrapped up in plastic, in case it falls out of your pocket and the baby picks it up.

Worst initiative nominee: Mandatory Christmas music in schools

Merry Susan Hyatt and her brother David Joseph Hyatt have received permission to gather signatures for an initiative (PDF) that would require California public K-12 schools to "provide opportunities to its pupils for listening to or performing Christmas music at an appropriate time of year," with parental notification and an opt-out form.

In other words, they want to make parents fill out and return a special form if they don't want their kids hearing at school that Jesus Christ, the King, has come.

This is the sort of issue where creating the initiative indicates a severe personality disorder; signing it indicates a character defect; but circulating the petitions just means you get a buck or two per signature, and you could give a shit less what it's for.

My favorite part, where mischief might come, is Section 52711

52711. As used in this article, "Christmas music" includes, but is not necessarily limited to, carols, songs, and instrumental works whose subject matter relates to the celebration of the Christmas holiday or to the season during which that holiday is observed.

So Christmas music is music that relates to Christmas, or winter, or not. I can see other religions demanding that Christmas music include Jewish music, or Islamic music. I imagine mandatory Islamic hip-hop, rapping for the glory of Allah. And I can't wait for the Satanists to demand music by Black Sabbath.

Or an atheist principal could say the school is satisfying the regulation by playing Jingle Bells and Winter Wonderland.

On the other hand, I don't mind Christmas music at all, even in schools, maybe especially in schools. I would mind having it and it only required, but I'd just as soon routinely play the songs of every normal religion (that's pretty much all of them, but you'd want to keep out the ones that do human sacrifices or orgies, and the financial scams).

I think whether people believe in God or don't is a genetic or epigenetic accident, so we should treat belief as we treat homosexuality or left-handedness. It's one of the normal ways people are wired, and we can't hold it against them that they have a false belief. In fact, there is probably some evolutionary advantage to the group to have some theists and some atheists. And besides, listening to Joy to the World isn't going to turn somebody into a Christian. I grew up listening to it, and I'm about as serious an atheist as you're going to find.

We added Kwanza to our school celebrations; we should add Diwali and Beltane and Eid al Fitr anybody else's celebration, and play all their religious songs, and not have opt-in or opt-out, just a routine noticing of how some of us celebrate. You don't have to believe the words to like the music.

I extend this to crèches in public squares. When a big chunk of our population have a celebration of their big holiday, why not let them do part of it in the park? Or even a small chunk. Christians can have crèches on public property if I can have a maypole, and if everybody else gets to hold their celebrations there, too, Diwali, and Beltane, and whatever. We should let them have their Christian Pride event in December, and we'll have our Gay Pride event in June on the same grounds

I'd exempt from this privilege any religion that severely outrages public decency, such as child sacrifices, but I'm not sure how to make it so my view of what is outrageous prevails. I would probably be more inclusive than some people and less than others.

So my solution is to ride the pendulum. Become increasingly lenient on what we'll allow until it gets to be a problem, and then scale it back until it starts to chafe. Rinse. Repeat. That could be a general law of how to deal with social issues.

Worst parent nominee: Co-sleeping while drunk

At first I was very sympathetic to the mother. She went to sleep alongside her 6-day-old baby, and the baby died. Poor woman, and then they charge her with second-degree reckless homicide.

But then I read the article. There are unextenuating circumstances.

• It's not the first time. Last year, the same thing happened with her 2-month old daughter. Or the second.  In 1993, her other daughter died while sleeping with the grandmother.
• How it happened was mom was drunk on her ass from drinking Bacardi Hurricane, can't remember coming home, put her baby on her car keys on the couch, and laid next to the baby, pushing it's face into the back of the couch, and it suffocated.
• Mom is a damned child care worker (or was until she was arrested for killing her baby). She should know better.

Worst parent nominee: Suffocating a newborn

This girl in Nevada doesn't seem to learn. In 2006, she dropped a stillborn baby in the trash in a Las Vegas casino bathroom. She wasn't charged in that case, because she was 16. (Is it legal for 16-year-olds, or do they just not bother with kids? You'd think it would at least be against health codes to drop a body in a public bathroom trash can.)

This August, she said she smothered a newborn, because she was afraid her mother would kick her out of the house. She says she didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth, and when it popped out, she strangled it. An autopsy failed to confirm that the cause of death was suffocation.

Makes you wonder how still that first child was when it was born.

Makes you also wonder about the loving nature of the household, if the daughter is enough afraid of being kicked out of the house for screwing up that she will kill her baby to avoid being found out. This is a girl who should have noticed that she hadn't had a period lately and then invested in an abortion. It's also an argument against parental notification. This girl was afraid to go to her mother for advice on what to do when she was pregnant.

Mostly I'm passive about abortion, literally pro-choice, saying it should be up to a woman, after consultation with the father, her doctor, and her god. But other times I'm pro-abortion; that is, I wish certain women would choose abortion.

Being an atheist, I don't think there is any intrinsic moral issue involved. I believe a nation's morality is a sum of what feels right to the people in the culture. What feels right to any person is a complicated stew of genetic and epigenetic dispositions, what happens to us growing up, and what our parents, televisions, music, and (mostly) our friends tell us is right.

So in a case where a kid is likely to be unwanted (yes, including severely handicapped, if the mom can't muster as much devotion as it takes), I wish the pregnant woman would hit Control-Z and undo it until they're ready to be a mom. Freaknomics has a chapter on this issue, saying that legalization of abortion coincided with a drop in the crime rate in states where it was legalized. They attributed it to fewer unwanted kids. Later they had to back up a little, due to a data misinterpretation, but half of their effect stands. Whether kids are wanted is a big factor in the crime rate.

Worst provider nominee: Terrorist conspirator

A guy the arrested last November for "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists" ("inept but serious") turns out to have been living with his mom, who ran a small family home child care there. She has voluntarily surrendered her license, but licensing still wants to have a chat with her about why she didn't tell them on her renewal application that he lived there or notify them (within 5 days, as required) that criminal proceedings had been initiated against a household member. His background check would have come back "trained in terrorist camps in Syria." Or tried to; the Taliban apparently rejected him because he wasn't up to their standards.

Worst parent nominee: Prayer instead of medicine

As it is in Wisconsin, so is it in Pennsylvania, except this couple will stand trial for manslaughter for choosing prayer over medicine for their dying 2-year-old.

Their defense is they didn't know the kid was that sick. They thought they were praying to cure the flu or a cold, so it's not a religious freedom issue but a dumb parent issue. Frankly, I think that's a decent defense, if true, and I have no reason to doubt it. It's not like the parents had shown intellectual leanings before. They quit school after 9th grade. They work as teachers at their church. I wonder what level.

And we can thank Mr. Darwin for giving us the insight that, to the extent that whatever made these parents do what they did is genetic, there is less of it in the gene pool because of them.

Worst staff nominee: hidden camera in the bathroom

It pays to know your staff. A janitor in a Wisconsin child care center seems to have hidden a cell phone with a camera in a kleenex box with a hole in it in an adult bathroom.

I wonder how he rigged it to click. Or maybe he had it set on video.

He claims he accidentally dropped it in the kleenex and has no idea how the hole got in the box. In either bathroom. Maybe that's the way they come nowadays.

It's a misdemeanor.

Worst judge nominee: "No interracial marriage"

A judge in Louisiana refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple "because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves."

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the NAACP is not amused.
As Digby points out, the poor kid could grow up to be president.

The power of shame

The six-year-old who was sentenced to 45 days in reform school for bringing his cub scout eating utensil to school has been given a reprieve of sorts. The school district, which had been shamed in newspapers all over the country, changed their silly zero tolerance rule to reduce the punishment for kindergarteners and first graders from 45 days in reform school to a suspension of 3 to 5 days. They didn't eliminate the silliness, but they took it down a notch.

If they were smarter, they would just tell the kid not to bring his camping stuff to school anymore and let it go at that. But you can't let child-like behavior go unpunished. I guess. I mean what would it tell our kids if our grown-ups in charge looked at the circumstances before making up their minds?