In Another Universe

Think Progress returns to Silsbee, Texas, where a deplorable sexual assault of a cheerleader by a star athlete took place.

The timeline of events is not controversial, yet Think Progress simply can't or won't present the facts accurately.  And the facts do seem to matter.  From their summary:

According to court documents, H.S. was 16 when she was raped at a house party by one of her school’s star athletes, Rakheem Bolton. Bolton was arrested, but by pleading guilty to misdemeanor assault, he received a reduced sentence of probation and community service. Bolton was allowed to return to school and resume his place on the basketball team. Four months later, H.S. was cheering with her squad at a game when Bolton lined up to take a free throw. The squad wanted to do a cheer that included his name, but H.S. refused, choosing instead to stand silently with her arms folded.

“I didn’t want to have to say his name and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” she latertold reporters. “I just didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”

Several school officials of the “sports obsessed” small town took issue with H.S.’s silence, and ordered her to cheer for Bolton. When H.S. refused again, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad. Her family decided to sue school officials and the district. Their lawyer argued that H.S.’s right to exercise free expression had been violated and that students shouldn’t be punished for not complying with “insensitive and unreasonable directions.”

I am very sympathetic to her desire to not cheer, but...

In reality, Bolton was not playing basketball after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor assault.

As both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle make clear, the situation was much more ambiguous. The Houston Chronicle has the better overall summary, which includes this key point:

But when a grand jury declined to indict him in January, Bolton was allowed to rejoin the basketball team. He was legally innocent until proven guilty and an arm of the state had determined it would not prosecute.

The brief timeline is this:

Oct 2008 - drunken party, assault, arrest, Bolton suspended from football team.

January 2009 - grand jury declines to indict, Bolton re-instated, rejoins basketball team.

February 2009 - cheerleader declines to cheer for the alleged rapist.

November 2009 - Bolton indicted, kicked off football team and out of school.

September 2010 - Bolton takes plea deal.

With actual, rather than imagined facts in hand, one can see how school officials might worry that their representative, the cheerleader, is re-opening an assault allegation dropped by the state.  Could they be sued for slander?  I don't know; it would be interesting to speculate as to what legal advice the school might have received on that point.

Obviously, the school officials ought to have given the situation thirty seconds of reflection prior to sending the athlete and the cheerleader out to the same venue, and they should have come up with a sensible solution.

PILING ON:  Mark Kleiman of The Reality Based Community has the same facts as Think Progress:

A high-school cheerleader reports being raped by a star athlete. The athlete is allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanor assault, and returns to playing. The cheerleader refuses to cheer for him. The school district bounces her from the cheerleading squad. Her parents sue to have her reinstated.

Since he eventually concludes that the court decisions are defensible, I guess the real facts won't change his mind.

MORE PILING ON:  "ABL" at Balloon Juice claims to have researched this, but the recap doesn't show it:

So, to recap: a girl was gang-raped by by three assailants at a party attended by dozens of students***, one of whom was a student athlete named Rakheem Bolton. Bolton plead to misdemeanor assault, received two years of probation, community service, a fine, was required to complete anger management classes, after which he was permitted to return to school and continue to play basketball. Rather than quit the team in shame, like all good little rape victims should, the girl decided to maintain her position on the squad. And when it came time to cheer for Bolton as he stood poised to shoot a free-throw, the girl thought “fuck that noise!” and stood silently, arms crossed.

 And for her quiet dignified protest, she was thrown off the squad and has been ordered to scrounge up a cool 45 grand.

The invaluable James Joyner fluffs the facts but grudgingly supports the court decision:

TP’s account of the facts is accurate. 

Although he also notes:

Not legally relevant but noteworthy: Bolton had been convicted of no crime at the time of the incident; the assault plea came later.

Well, it's not just that the assault plea came later - the initial grand jury had declined to indict.

Finally, Eugene Volokh marshalls the facts and explains the law.

Comments

[Ignatz]

The timeline is important and ThinkProgress is the ne plus ultra of oxy[and I do mean]morons, but knowing what this guy was accused of, innocent until proven guilty or not, why couldn't the school just overlook her intransigence on a highly understandable point?
And on top of that they're sanctioned for a frivolous suit when the school won't relent. The decision was probably correct to dismiss the case, haven't thought about it too much, but I've seen many far more frivolous suits never sanctioned a penny.
Weird story all around.

[clarice]

I seem to remember discussing this case here before

[Motherofal818]

I dont need increased security for womenr wearing hats,glasses and raincoats.Its not like things in burcas or the guys who do that.I can help with whatever it is,really!

[Ignatz]

--I seem to remember discussing this case here before--

What's new is the family just got popped for $45,000 of the schools legal fees.
Of course if I was her parent I wouldn't have taken it to federal court but if I was the school I wouldn't have let it get there either.
As far as I can see the only person who did anything right here was the girl not cheering for the creep.

[Semenfilledcleo]

You puny facts are no match for our community-based reality, neocon.

[clarice]

Iggy, Texas seems to have had it with frivolous suits. The legislature just rammed thru the first loser pays laws in the country.

[Jim Ryan]

Think Progress salivated with glee at the recent devastation wrought by thunderstorms and tornadoes. Unencumbered by pesky facts about meteorology and climate, of course.

[BR]

If a leaf falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, did it fall? Did Obama do his CBS 60 minutes broadcast? Did anyone listen? Can't find any mention of it.

[clarice]

LI also has a post about hem being taken in by a hoax..They must be getting really desperate.

[clarice]

**Them being taken**

[narciso]

Wouldn't it more appropriate to say that Think Progress was a scam, scammed by better conmen, clarice.

[clarice]

Yes, it would, narciso. Excellent point. Amateurs, really.

[narciso]

And it seems like the ISI is burning another of our station chiefs, I'm sure Nick Kristof
will be all hot and bothered.

[Rick Ballard]

I wonder if President Leads From Behind will mention Daffy's success in his siege of Misrata this evening? Or will President Behind announce that he's issued a Wanted - Dead or Alive poster with Daffy's picture on it to the SEALs?

[Stephanie]

Isn't 60 minutes on on Sunday? As the previous thread attests, today is Derby Saturday.

[Semenfilledcleo]

Kleiman has updated his post by taking your puny facts and deftly twisting them to sound like they align with his predetermined community-based reality.

Face it, Tom, your pathetic right-wing reality isn't strong enough to drown out our narrative.

[narciso]

This is just one source, on the topic, in the LUN

[Brey King]

Obama Got Osama!!!!

[I hope this isn't the start of something big.]

narciso's link @ 9:33 shouldn't be missed.
==============

[MarkO]

This is just another reason public education is dying. In any Ivy school the boy would have been kicked out. He must be a good player.

The rule here: a girl raped by a good player has to cheer for him. She can't just sit out.

When not cheering becomes defamation, truth will still be a defense.

[Rick Ballard]

What might one anticipate the Paks would say had they been forwarding all AQ/Bin Laden communication to the NSA for years? Given the number of Mohametan nutters in Pakistan, I would not expect the ISI to proclaim that they had painted the bulls eye on Bin Laden years ago any more than I would expect publicity about the duplicity of the Egyptian military in having BOzo proclaim "Mubarak must go!" in exchange for helping to select his successor.

Why should the Pak narrative be any more believable than Obama's 72 Versions?

[Jack is Back!]

Sooner then later there will have to be a " coming to Jesus" meeting with the Pakis. We can't keep playing this Kabuki dance with them. What surprises me is that Bambi gets all thic TSC level info and is able to keep his egotistical mouth shut. How does he do it?

[Melinda Romanoff]

JiB-

Their level of toydom is a concern.

[urempiredronescackilalmaleswehaveclonearmy]

Its not just raincoats,what about nurses and secretaries.Then there s spies like Plame,see that picture of her in judges office when she was doing specter.The movie came out that year,really.

[daddy]

Hope you'll not mind an OT Saturday Night Book Report.

Just finished Oliver Sacks latest: The Mind's Eye.

He's the neuro-scientist that gave his catatonic patients el-dopamine years back in that Awakening's movie that woke them up from their lifelong coma's for a brief few months.

Anyhow, a fair read, comprising some very unusual mental cases that I found fascinating in trying to show how our brain works.

In 1 case a famous Pianist has a small stroke and loses the ability to read sheet-music. Not so unusual. But then in the next chapter a Canadian author of Detective stories has a small stroke and develops something called "alexia sine agraphia". He can still write, but he cannot read. Amazing. So he concocts sentences in his head, uses muscle memory to write or type the words he constructed in his head, but then can't read them, and has to use some device to hover over the computer and read them out loud to him, I suppose in a Steven Hawking's sort of artificial voice. The stricken author then wrote this novel: Memory Book, about his Detective waking up in a hospital bed having suffered the same stroke as the real author. Now saddled with this "alexia sine agraphia", the detective has to figure out what's wrong with himself and still crack the case. Fascinating. Anybody read any of this author's stuff?

Last was what I entertained my bar friends with in Japan the last few days. Sacks says that recent brain studies with electrodes shoved into people's heads, have shown that when you learn and read alphabetic characters like our 26 symbol a-z characters, you use 1 part of your brain. If you learn a Chinese type pictographic script where you have to memorize thousands of drawn characters over a long period, you use a slightly different portion of the brain from the Alphabetic section. Well in Japan, where they have Kanji (the many thousand character Chinese character script), and Kana (a 46 symbol phonetic script) they are now starting to verify the unusual rare occurrence among local Japanese folks who are fluent in both scripts, that following some mild strokes, they awake to discover they can no longer read one of the 2 scripts, depending on which part of the brain has suffered the stroke, but they can still read the other. Again to me fascinating.

Lastly I have to praise Sacks because he uses that last point to launch an interesting and unsettling question for an Evolutionist about the theory of Natural Selection: "Why should all humans have this built in facility for reading, when writing is a relatively recent cultural invention?

"Communication by the spoken word---and, therefore, it's neural basis---has every mark of having evolved thru the gradual processes of Natural Selection. The changing anatomy of the brain in prehistoric man has been worked out in some detail from endocranial casts and other fossil evidence, as have changes in the vocal tract. It is clear that the beginnings of speech go back hundreds of thousands of years. But this cannot be maintained in regard to reading, for writing emerged little more than five thousand years ago---far too recently to have occurred thru evolution by Natural Selection.. Though the visual word form area of the human brain appears so exquisitely tuned to the act of reading it could not have evolved specifically for this purpose."

Anyhow, that leads off to some interesting proposals to solve the question, which I won't go into tonight. Hope you don't mind me going off on this but I enjoy a good Abnormal Psyche book every couple years, as it's worthwhile to learn how much we still don't know about that melon on top of our necks. Not a great read, but interesting.

And Happy Birthday Sara and JimmyK:)

[bgates]

the visual word form area of the human brain appears so exquisitely tuned to the act of reading

My first thought on reading that was that visual pattern recognition is a pretty valuable thing, and perhaps there are natural analogues to the sorts of patterns in alphabets vs pictographs. Then I wondered what those areas of the brain looked like in humans who did not have exposure to the symbols, and I started to think of where we could find a population that did not have a system of writing - Papua New Guinea?

And then I remembered Detroit.

[narciso]

LOL. bgates, your competition, Iowahawk has the return of Zarkman, with his special guest; 'Mumbles'

[daddy]

bgates,

You are a world leading neuro-scientist as well as a great comedian. That was pretty much Sack's answer but you express it so much more fun:)

Off to pound Guinness. Later.

[BR]

Ahh, tku, Stephanie. You can tell CBS 60 Minutes is not a show I watch. But I'm wondering if Obama will wave any fake documents around on the AWOL president show.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Daddy: My Mom developed language aphasia after her 2nd stroke and had trouble coming up with the right words. We discovered, however, if we had her sing the sentence, she could get all the words right.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Speaking of speech (we were weren't we?), check out the comparison between Obama's speech on Osama and Bush's speech re: Saddam.

[daddy]

Interesting Sara,

The book has a section on stroke victims unable to speak until they are consciously reminded of music, in which case they can then say phrases, but only if they come out in musical lilts like from Eliza Doolittle or "enry iggin's" in My Fair Lady. Sack's previous book "Musicophelia" focused more on that musical imprinting aspect of the brain.

His topics are fascinating, but if he could get bgates to do the final chop on the kibitzing and editing I think he'd sell about a million more copies.

[Pops]

It appears Obama has double tap to the head fever, so Khadaffi and this kid better be looking over their shoulder.

[Jack is Back!]

If you go to my other post on "Derby Day" I mention the gentleman who at 80 had had 3 strokes but got up on stage at our jazz concert and sung 3 or 4 Sinatra hits. Only thing missing was a fedora and dangling cigarette. He could hardly walk, mostly shuffled, but boy could he sing. Signed off with "My Way". Incredible.

[Jack is Back!]

Clarice's Pieces is up at LUN.

Another "double-tap" pieces Clarice. Now I can have my breakfast.

[Cecil Turner]

As far as I can see the only person who did anything right here was the girl not cheering for the creep.

Yep. And if she'd just stayed home at that point, I'd be cheering for her. But if the decision is whether or not the court should award her damages (from the taxpayers on behalf of the school district), I have to support the "frivolous" determination.

[clarice]

Thanks, JiB

Re the Wisconsin recount, the Brookfield paper reports:

"Drum roll, please."

Those were the words uttered as elections consultant Barb Hansen read aloud the vote tally for the final polling ward for the City of Brookfield.

And with that, at 6:19 p.m., volunteer tabulators finished the meticulous three-day hand recount of the more than 14,000 votes cast by City of Brookfield voters for the state Supreme Court race on April 5.

Its finish is just the beginning for the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, who still have about 70% of the county's votes to recount, after 10 days of work including two consecutive Saturdays. That's in stark contrast to 67 other counties that have finished their recounts, and the four others that expect to be complete by Monday, leaving Waukesha alone in the spotlight.

But it was a milestone for tabulators because much scrutiny has been on the City of Brookfield's votes ever since Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus called a press conference two days after the election to announce a stunner: that in the razor-thin high court race in which Assistant State Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg had declared victory with a 200-vote margin out of 1.5 million cast, an entire city's votes had not been included in the statewide tally.

A city with 14,315 votes, about 76 percent of which went to the other candidate, the conservative incumbent, Justice David Prosser Jr.

The sudden "discovery" of votes that had not been previously reported — coming from one of the most conservative municipalities in one of the most conservative counties — had many crying foul. The votes, however, had been reported in a detailed ward-by-ward breakdown in a Brookfield Patch story four hours after the polls closed.

But after the three-day hand recount, the city's votes were for the most part upheld as accurate. The recount netted three additional votes for Prosser and one additional vote for Kloppenburg, for a final city margin of 10,862 to 3,457, according to Ellen Nowak, chief of staff for Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas.

The city's recount was not without disputes and controversy. It is yet unclear whether Kloppenburg will challenge any of the votes in court, such as more the more than 1,500 votes cast in the high court race by voters in the city's Wards 1, 2 and 3.

Those ballots were inside bags that were not properly sealed post-election and found partially open during the recount. Kloppenburg campaign representatives objected to the bags being opened and votes counted due to questions about the ballots' security and potential tampering.

But retired Waukesha County Circuit Judge Robert Mawdsley, appointed to oversee the recount in lieu of Nickolaus, allowed their recount, saying it would be up another court to decide, should it be challenged in court.

On Monday morning, Waukesha County Corporation Counsel Tom Farley will explain why more time is needed as the state Government Accountability Board asks a Dane County judge to extend the May 9 deadline for finishing the historic statewide recount.

And back in Waukesha, the recount will move to the cafeteria in the Administration Building, a much larger room than the first-floor conference room where it has been held since April 27. Double the number of tabulators will be on hand to try to speed up the county's recount, while still undergoing a more detailed process than many counties, recorded for posterity by a court reporter hired by the county."

[Rusher]

"Unencumbered by pesky facts about meteorology and climate, of course."

whether you call it climate change or global warming or global cooling, the weather is hinkey.

These are facts

http://news.discovery.com/earth/arctic-carbon-store-warming.html

[Mike Giles]

"My first thought on reading that was that visual pattern recognition is a pretty valuable thing,.."

Like our ancestors being able to tell the difference between sitting down on a branch - and sitting down on a python?

Getting back to the subject of the thread, a question - and one not referring specifically to this case.How often can a case be presented to a Grand Jury and do the have to provide new facts or simply present the original case?

[SteveM]

Oct 2008 - drunken party, assault, arrest, Bolton suspended from football team.

You meant to say "drunken party, alleged assault, arrest, Bolton suspended from football team."

[Cecil Turner]

These are facts [link]

Dunno about facts, but here's a truism for ya: write an article about the Arctic and insert a picture of a penguin and you torpedo your credibility. And it's precisely this sort of stupidity on the part of global warming/climate change/earth first proponents that makes many of us a tad more skeptical than we might otherwise be.

[daddy]

Thanks for the Wisconsin update Clarice.

So Brookfield was off a total of 4 votes out of over 14,500---3 for Presser and 1 for Klopp.

What happens next Henry?

[DMW]

Sorry I stumbled on this pathetic editorial that uses this girl's issues as a front to attack think progress. Pathehtic, you are actually going to side with the guy who allegedly raped a girl because she doesnt want to cheer for him. Please, I guess she is just doing it all for attention or dfid she ask for it.

[matt c]

I don't get how she should have been kicked out of the squad for not cheering for an alleged rapist?

[daveinboca]

"I guess the real facts won't change his mind."

With Kleiman, real facts don't have much raw material, i.e., his "mind," to work with. I've always considered that scurrilous broadsheet the single most misnamed blog in the entire blogosphere.

[daveinboca]

BTW, speaking of Wisconsin, does anyone have any word on whether that 26-year old teacher who threatened to kill all the GOP WI legislators in separate e-mails, while threatening their families as well, has ever been indicted?

The thundering silence over this atrocious behavior shows the absolute ascendancy that the lamestream MSM still maintains in all matters when a "Foley-like" affair blows up out of nowhere. That was a complete concocted confection, yet it got total legs in the MSM. This has sunk like a stone---and PuffHost has another WI post saying the GOP is frightened of losing its majority in the Senate through recall---with all sorts of allegations against the GOP and none against the union thugs for breaking into a Republican Green Bay recall office.

That dog that doesn't bark seems worth a follow-up.

[Anon]

Reply to Steve M's contention of "alleged assault":

From the Chron article linked in the post --

Later last year (2009), a second grand jury indicted Bolton and the other boys on sexual assault charges. Bolton accepted a plea bargain on a lesser charge of simple assault and received a one-year jail sentence. It was suspended in favor of probation with numerous conditions.

It may have been alleged at the time of the non-cheering incident, but it's not alleged any more, which makes the "frivolous" tag attached to her legal action incorrect.

[Nony Mouse]

Not that anyone will read so far down in the comments, but:

If she had cheered for her (at the time alleged) attacker, could or would that have been used against her/ the criminal case in a court of law? I can just hear the defense attorney now: "Why would she stand up and cheer for my client if she hadn't encouraged his attentions?!?"

[Cecil Turner]

. . . but it's not alleged any more, which makes the "frivolous" tag attached to her legal action incorrect.

Take it up with the Supreme Court. Oh wait, that's right, you can't. Besides, the issue isn't whether or not she was assaulted, or even whether she had to cheer (she was, and didn't, respectively). The issue is whether or not she has a constitutionally protected "right to cheer" . . . even if she didn't want to follow the cheerleader rules. And she doesn't:

“[S]tudents do not possess a constitutionally protected interest in their participation in extracurricular activities.” NCAA v. Yeo, 171 S.W.3d 863, 865 (Tex. 2005).

Yeah, most of us agree the Silsbee Independent School District is run by a$$holes. But the suit is still frivolous.

[Rush]

These are facts [link]

Dunno about facts,

Do you understand what happens when methane hydrates are released?

[Rush]

These are facts [link]

"Dunno about facts,"

Do you understand what happens when methane hydrates are released,

It doesn't involve penguins, to my knowledge.

[Rush]

whoa !

[Semenfilledcleo]

Any right-winger who provides facts, recites an accurate timeline of events, or corrects any of lies that Kleiman and ThinkProgress are spreading regarding this incident is objectively pro-rape. And a racist.

[jimmyk]

I can just hear the defense attorney now: "Why would she stand up and cheer for my client if she hadn't encouraged his attentions?!?"

Prosecutor: Why did you cheer?
H.S.: I was told I'd be thrown off the squad if I didn't, and I didn't want to let this monster hurt me again.

[Cecil Turner]

Do you understand what happens when methane hydrates are released?

Is this something like "trust me on the science, ignore the fact that I don't know whether we're talking about the North Pole or the South Pole"? Because if so, I hope you understand why it isn't very persuasive.

[Rush]

It's a direct, and I assumed, simple question.

Do you know what happens when hydrates are released into the atmosphere.

Facta are your specialty, right?

[narciso]

Ah, but you see, DiB, it's like those 'ripped from the headlines,' episodes of L & O, like one episode that pulled the hattrick of makes us try to feel sorry for the ZarQUAWI manque in the story.

[Rush]

Gotta go.

Permian–Triassic extinction event
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Permian-Triassic extinction event)

K–TTr–JP–TrLate DO–SMillions of years ago
The Permian–Triassic extinction event is the most significant extinction event in this plot for marine genera. (source and image info)
The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying,[1] was an extinction event that occurred 251.4 Ma (million years ago),[2][3] forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods. It was the Earth's most severe extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species[4] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct[5] It is the only known mass extinction of insects.[6][7] Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera were killed. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after other extinction events.[4] This event has been described as the "mother of all mass extinctions."[8]
Researchers have variously suggested that there were from one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction.[2][5][9][10] There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was likely due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event. Suggested mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, and sudden release of methane clathrate from the sea floor; gradual changes include sea-level change, anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.[11]

[Cecil Turner]

Do you know what happens when hydrates are released into the atmosphere.

So now we're talking about any ol' hydrate? Happens quite a bit, doesn't it?

[narciso]

It speaks of the remarkable egotism that some have of our ability to really alter the climate Cecil, that Crichton referred to in
'Jurassic Park', Nature is such a force, as to leave us humble at our impotence.

[Rush]

Dishonest

[Tom Maguire]

Pathehtic, you are actually going to side with the guy who allegedly raped a girl because she doesnt want to cheer for him.

I side with the law. And, in spirit, with SpellCheck.

Yeah, most of us agree the Silsbee Independent School District is run by a$$holes. But the suit is still frivolous.

Why can't I manage that kind of pith?

[Cecil Turner]

Gotta go.

Too bad. This was so informative.

Suggested mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, and sudden release of methane clathrate from the sea floor; gradual changes include sea-level change, anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.[11]

I really hope you're not suggesting climate change causes meteor impacts (or that there's any similarity between the two). But based on the scintillating reasoning exhibited in the earlier posts . . .

Meanwhile, here's an interesting article on attempts to release methane hydrates as an energy source: Popular Mechanics: Methane Hydrates -- Energy Source of the Future? They're not sure how it'll work, either, but they're concentrating on the Arctic. No word yet on the possible environmental impact on penguins.

[Rush]

'Frakking' is the perjorative term. Biut we know how important it is to get the gas, no matter the cost.

[clarice]

Yes,TM. ecil is a first rate pither. None pithier.

[Cecil Turner]

Aww shucks.

[clarice]

I meant every word, Cecil.

[mockmook]

I meant every word, Cecil.

Posted by: clarice | May 08, 2011 at 02:50 PM

Shouldn't that have been:

I meant every word, Cecil; even the unnecessary ones.

[Thomas Collins]

It is not at all clear to me that this was a frivolous suit. Stripping has a degree of First Amendment protection. It seems odd to me that it is frivolous to assert that protesting allowing a rapist back on the team has First Amendment protection if stripping has First Amendment protection. That the grand jury didn't indict the first time doesn't make the lawsuit frivolous. A protest against an allegedly incorrect decision by the school (allowing an allegedly disreputable character back on the team) or a protest against an allegedly disreputable individual does not lose First Amemdment protection because there has not been a criminal conviction.

Recently SCOTUS has sided with members of a so-called church that engaged in protests substantially certain to bring substantial emotional distress to the families of military members killed in battle. If stripping and protesting at funerals of military members have First Amendment protection, it is really hard for me to agree that the cheerleader brought a frivolous action. I believe the correct disposition of this case is to hold against the cheerleader's legal action but to leave each side to pay their own legal costs.

I just remembered that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has held that panhandling has First Amendment protection. The more I think about this case, the more I become convinced that frivolous action sanctions are inappropriate, given what courts have found to have First Amendment protection.

[PD]

Kloppenburg for dogcatcher.

[PD]

Biut we know how important it is to get the gas, no matter the cost.

It hasn't been my observation that E&P companies operate on the basis of "no matter the cost."

Anyway, you still haven't figured out the penguin thing, it seems, from your replies.

[Annoying Old Guy]

Mr. Collins;

You analogy is inapt. The fact that stripping of itself has First Amendment protection doesn't mean there's any such protection for being a stripper in a specific night club or venue. The school didn't prohibit the girl from cheering, only from doing so in its venue.

[Thomas Collins]

I respectfully disagree, Annoying Old Guy. If I was citing stripping as a precedent for the proposition that the school should be enjoined from firing the cheerleader, I would agree with your point. However, I am using stripping, panhandling and protesting at military funerals for the proposition that in determining whether an action is frivolous, a court should take into account the wide swath of activities, some of which, like panhandling and stripping, have marginal political content, receive First Amendment protection. I would also acknowledge that with each of my examples, you could bring up the time, place and manner point. I would assert, however, that in light of what is given First Amendment protection, it is not frivolous to argue that a silent protest while an individual is at the free throw line is protected by the First Amendment, even by a cheerleader who is part of a team. Keep in mind that I am agreeing that the case was properly dismissed.

[Rush]

"It hasn't been my observation that E&P companies operate on the basis of "no matter the cost.""

You are either a bean-counter or an emgineer.

'Cost' has many meanings and I suspect your personal appraisal of 'facts' has run it's natural, intransigent course.

[boris]

'Cost' has many meanings ...

Then it's not like algebra ... etc

[Rush]

Duh, boris, if you don't believe 'Cost' has many meanings then you should just go look on wikipedia. It's where I get all my information on everything, you should try it sometime so you don't come across as so ignorant on everything.

[Steve]

THANK YOU for posting this! We've been all over this topic on Common Cents...

http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oooh, Wikipedia.

It has moveable type, right? Just like its data points?

And Penguins have been known to freeze, PD.

Lots of them, especially in last fall's attempted swim off the continent by them.

Steve, just stop the attempted link stuff, write better, and receive better.

[sbw]

Mel, "Steve" just joins Lindsey, the jackass, Graham to become Steve, the jackass.

[cathyf]

Yeah, Mel, penguins certainly can freeze -- but not at the north pole.

[Susan]

You still believe there is Justice, Law and Order in America?

Crazy Fundamentalist! There is no Justice, Law or Order.

[Anon]

Penguins don't live at the North Pole. Story was about North Pole. Some idiot--probably an unpaid intern, but maybe an idiot art director or an idiot editor--attached a picture of a penguin. Therefore, all material in the article must be ignored as incredulous. Brilliant. Great to see such critical thinking in action. Glad no one here makes moronic claims disconnected from fact and logic.

[Ignatz]

--Some idiot--probably an unpaid intern, but maybe an idiot art director or an idiot editor--attached a picture of a penguin. Therefore, all material in the article must be ignored as incredulous. Brilliant. Great to see such critical thinking in action. Glad no one here makes moronic claims disconnected from fact and logic.--

Well the let's use this bit of stupidity from the article itself then:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is released primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

In fact all anthropogenic sources not just fossil fuels equal about 3% of the total CO2 annual budget.
Critical enough for you nitwit?

[Aakash]

Thank you for providing a good recap, of the situation, in this blog entry. (From what I've briefly-read about this case, it seems that many others provide only parts of the news story.)

And I am glad that this weblog is still active and online (& also, looks the same, as before... As said before, I am one who does not like change, including in re: the web!), after these years.

I wish more blogs would be, as such!

Keep up the good work, at this site.