Public Schools | NoisyRoom.net

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Thank God for Texas! There’s a sane federal judge in the Lone Star state that has blocked Obama’s insane edict on transgenders and bathrooms in public schools. He took a solid stance in opposition to the president’s mandate that a student should be able to choose the bathroom they wish to use based on their chosen gender preference rather than reality. Figures it would take a Texan with a set to stand against this Marxist bullcrap.

As excited kids headed back for a new school year this morning, they were informed that they should use the bathroom that coincides with their anatomical differences determined at birth. I’m sure students for the most part were relieved by this and radical liberals were ticked off. Schools should be allowed to weigh in on this and have a say. You cannot separate common sense and morality from the public school system… regardless of what liberals think.

From TheBlaze:

AUSTIN, Texas (TheBlaze/AP) — A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration’s directive to public schools that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms coinciding with their chosen gender identity rather than their biological sex.

On Monday — the first day of class for most public schools in Texas — hundreds of school districts awoke to news of the order by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor.

On Sunday, O’Connor ruled that the federal education law, Title IX, “is not ambiguous” about sex being defined as “the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.” O’Connor concurred with Texas Republican state leaders who argued that schools should have been allowed to weigh in on the directive.

Texas is leading 12 other states in taking a stance against Obama and his unconstitutional mandate. The Texas-led lawsuit was filed in May alongside Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah and Georgia. It also included the Republican governors of Maine, Mississippi and Kentucky. Two small school districts in Arizona and Texas — which have fewer than 600 students combined and no transgender persons on their campuses — also joined the effort to prevent the directive from being enforced.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a statement hailing the judgement:

We are pleased that the court ruled against the Obama Administration’s latest illegal federal overreach. This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform. That cannot be allowed to continue, which is why we took action to protect States and School Districts, who are charged under state law to establish a safe and disciplined environment conducive to student learning.

That is exactly what Texas and the other states are doing… they are protecting their students, who, should this mandate be implemented, would find themselves at the mercy of deviants and sexual predators. School would no longer be a remotely safe haven for our children and grandchildren.

Paxton pointed out that it was necessary to block the directive and its enforcement before school commenced, or the schools would risk losing federal funding because of non-compliance. Obama has made it clear that schools who oppose his mandate “are clearly on notice” and they must follow his order or lose that funding. Personally, I would tell him to stuff his funding and find another way. I believe that all schools should be privately held and not take anything from the federal government. But that’s just me. Texas receives approximately $10 billion a year in federal funds.

The Department of Education and Department of Justice did not immediately react to the injunction. Oh, but they will. This sets precedent and you can bet there will be a massive, harsh response.

This all started last May when the federal government decreed that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity. This followed the Justice Department’s lawsuit over a North Carolina state law requiring people to use public bathrooms that corresponded with the biological sex printed on their birth certificate. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch characterized the law as akin to the policies of racial segregation. Republicans have argued that such laws are commonsense privacy safeguards. And they are.

What Obama, Lynch and others have tried to force on America is not only unconstitutional, it is unethical and immoral. I’m just saddened that only 12 states have had the spine to fight and have kept their principles intact enough to dig in their heels.

I hope this spreads and that other judges follow this example. This directive must not stand… this isn’t so much about choosing your gender as using the bathroom meant for your biological needs. It’s about ensuring that those that would take advantage of such a directive will not get the chance to prey on our kids. Sexual preference should never be valued more than the safety of our children.

By: Benjamin Weingarten

Have you noticed that the passive voice — as in “Mistakes were made,” or “The YouTube video caused the attack,” — has become ubiquitous in American political discourse?

Leave aside instances in which its usage reflects an unwillingness or inability for individuals to take responsibility for failure. There is another set of circumstances in which it is used to pernicious effect.

Exhibit A comes to us courtesy of the New York Times, in an article written about the declining popularity of Warren Wilhelm, aka New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Now I will not hold the use of the passive voice in the Times’ headline “New Poll Shows Mayor de Blasio’s Support Has Eroded” against The Grey Lady, but I do take issue with her usage in explaining just why it is that de Blasio’s poll numbers have declined so precipitously.

The Times writes:

Mr. de Blasio has encountered a series of difficulties in recent months, including the tussle with Mr. Cuomo, also a Democrat, over a disappointing legislative session in Albany, and distressing headlines about a rising murder rate — even as city officials have noted that overall crime continues to fall.

The mayor was also recently the subject of negative ads from the car-hailing company Uber, which opposed a proposed cap on its growth that the mayor had promoted. (The city has, for now, backed away from the proposal.)

Administration officials were quick to connect the increase in disapproving voters — a four-point uptick since May — to the Uber campaign, noting that the mayor’s numbers also suffered for a time last year during a public dispute with advocates of charter schools.

You see, for the progressive Times, Mayor de Blasio is a hapless victim. He has “encountered difficulties” through no fault of his own.

Were it not for those damn “distressing headlines about a rising murder rate,” or “negative ads from the car-hailing company Uber” or “a public dispute with advocates of charter schools,” de Blasio would be held in the same esteem as Hizzoner Koch.

(Image Source: New York Post, July 11, 2015).

What the Times fails to note is that headlines about the murder rate — and “the bad old days” returning to New York more generally — are not being written in a vacuum. Mayor de Blasio has opposed his predecessors’ law enforcement policies (and attacked their enforcers), policies that coincided with plummeting crime rates and an infinitely more pleasant and livable city. Had Mayor de Blasio maintained the law enforcement status quo to the same effect of rising murder rates and savage attacks, cop killings and squeegee men, then perhaps the Times would be justified in making de Blasio a victim of sorts. In light of his own words and actions, we cannot.

As for Uber, the company’s highly effective anti-de Blasio ads came in direct response to a policy the mayor pushed that would have impaired Uber’s ability to grow. Again, these ads did not occur in a vacuum. And what made them particularly bruising was that they illustrated the hypocrisy inherent in a “progressive,” “inequality”-busting mayor siding with entrenched interests against an upstart competitor providing opportunity for thousands of New Yorkers and convenience for hundreds of thousands if not millions more.

On those “charter school disputes,” again disputes are not the proximate cause of de Blasio’s waining political support. In fact, the public loves a spat when a politician is perceived to be looking out for them. Rather, de Blasio’s opposition to school choice in favor of public schools and the politically powerful public teachers’ union — and apparent unwillingness to expend political capital in support of charter schools in the rare instance when he does champion one — reflects a controversial position. Rightly, many in progressive New York are able to set aside their ideology when it means a better education for their children. The “dispute” is not the issue for Mayor de Blasio. The issue is the issue for Mayor de Blasio.

Bill de Blasio has not “encountered difficulties.” He has created them through his own policies. He is not a victim of chance. He is merely paying a political price for the disastrous outcomes of his own progressive agenda.

The real victims are New Yorkers who must live with him. Next time they ought to choose their mayor more wisely.

Featured Image: YouTube screengrab/Uber.