Who Reads Yesterday's Papers?
-The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that an East Contra Costa County school can teach Islam by having the students pretend to be Muslim for three weeks. As part of a history course at Excelsior School for seventh graders, a teacher had students role-play being Muslim to help learn Islam. So the kids adopted Muslim names, read religious poetry, gave up something to simulate Ramadan, and stoned girls for not wearing burkas (kidding!). This got the school system sued by a couple of parents who thought that by "teaching" kids Islam, they were in fact "indoctrinating" them and thus violating their constitutional rights. The court, however, ruled that the school was only doing it for educational purposes and not trying to convert them. That's what science class is for.
-Speaking of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a little measure in the loathsome and cowardly budget bill passed last week (we're so upset by the shenanigans Congress pulled we can't even muster snarkiness) calls for the Ninth Circuit Court to be split apart. Most experts are against it and don't think it makes any sense, but as the Ninth Circuit has become famous for making "activist" rulings such as ones that protect the environment, poor people, and civil liberties, they have long been playa hated by Conservatives. In order for the court to be split up, it'll still have to make it through the Senate.
-There were a few good-byes in the sports world lately. The Giants lost assistant General Manager Ned Colletti to the hated Dodgers and relieving stud Scott Eyre to the Cubs. Colletti has long been Robin to Sabaen's Batman (or more like moustache to Sabaen’s mullet) and has earned raves for his work with the team. But not with LAist. We're not sure what this all means because we're no longer sure we know if the Giants' front office knows what they're doing. We wish him luck, though, as the Dodgers are so messed up right now the bastard offspring of Theo Epstein and Branch Rickey couldn't help them.
Also leaving are the San Jose Earthquakes of the MLS. After years of huffing and puffing about moving unless they got a new stadium, they finally went and did something about it. Like moving to Houston. We here at SFist are sad about this because we once went to a game a long time ago and had a good time. Such a good time that we said we'd like to go to another game, which, of course, we never did. This makes us think that we're somehow to blame for them moving. So, yes, Quakes fans, if you’re looking for somebody to blame about the team moving, blame us.
-According to our friends at the National Review, the passing of the recent anti-handgun measure is actually a good thing for the gun lovers. Because it forced a lot of relatively moderate people, people who normally hop on the anti-gun bandwagon, to say "wait a second." Of course, the measure passed, but it still drew criticism from the "radical" San Francisco Chronicle and Gavin the Good, who called it more a "public opinion poll." In other words, by actually making something long talked about in liberal circles a reality, it's forcing a bunch of supposed liberal people to reassess their positions.
-Finally, we were wondering something about the anti-gun measure. Already the thing is headed for court, which means not only will our tax money have to go preparing the defense of the measure, but many of the city attorneys are now going to have to work on the lawsuit instead of working on various other things. Is this really a good thing, especially in light of the fact the sucker will probably be thrown out? And we're not just talking about the handgun measure either: the same could be said for all these measures we have to vote on. As we all know, every election there's some hot button proposition out there (immigration, crime, gay marriage, etc.) that has no chance of ever becoming law, but is passed by an electorate who are in one of those yearly "send them a message" moods. So the proposition gets passed, the lawyers get rich, and no change is ever really affected. Again, is this a good thing? Is this any way to run anything?