Lawsuit Filed Against Texas School For Punishing Student Who Refused to Recite The Mexican Pledge of Allegiance

Because Texas had the audacity to refuse Obama’s Core Curriculum, along with the associated textbooks, they are under a major attack from the Progressive Commies who have flocked to Texas in an attempt to turn the state Blue. 

In the near future, expect to see more examples of teachers in Texas bullying students into compliance with Progressive ideals:

In one Texas School, Students have the Right to Opt-Out of Reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance . . . but Not the Mexican Pledge; Lawsuit Filed

ThomasMore.org

ANN ARBOR, MI – Just as the 2011 school year began, Brenda Brinsdon, then a 15 year-old sophomore at Achieve Early College High School (AECHS) in McAllen Texas, was thrust into the national spotlight after she refused to stand up, extend her arms straight out with palms down and recite the Mexican Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Mexican National Anthem.  Reyna Santos, the Spanish 3 teacher, required all her students to recite this allegiance to Mexico. Click here to see local news coverage.

When the time came for the students to stand up and recite the Mexican pledge, Brenda Brinsdon refused.   Brenda, born in the United States, is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and an American father.  Brenda is fluent in Spanish and English and is proud of her Mexican heritage, but she is a true blooded American.  So to Brenda, the words of the pledge have a deep meaning. Her conscience and patriotism would not allow her to participate in the assignment.  She believed it was ‘un-American’ and she was exercising her constitutional right not to be forced to pledge allegiance to Mexico.  The school punished her for her refusal.

As a result, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, along with local Texas attorney Jerad Najvar, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Brenda and her father William Brinsdon claiming that school officials violated Brenda’s  constitutional rights. Click here to read the federal lawsuit.

Ironically, the assignment to recite the Mexican pledge was given during the school’s celebration of Freedom Week, marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks and also on U.S. Constitution Day.  According to the McAllen School District policy for Special Programs, social studies classes during Freedom Week were required to recite the text of the Declaration of Independence.  However, excusals from recitation are granted for students who have a conscientious objection.

The longstanding Supreme Court decision, West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, (1943), and the school district’s own policy prohibit a school from compelling students to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance.  However, the School District ignored those rules when Brenda Brinsdon refused to recite the Mexican pledge.

Brenda’s refusal was not well received by her teacher, Reyna Santos, or the school principal, Yvette Cavasos.  Both tried to coerce her to recite the Mexican pledge, saying this was just an assignment.  Brenda attempted to discuss reasons for her refusal to pledge allegiance to a country other than the United States with both Santos and Cavasos. When Brenda did not back down, she was punished.

We’ve Got Email: Companies and Communities Pull Together to Help Friends and Families of Slain American Sniper Chris Kyle

This email was sent to us by a long time valued reader in Texas, Doc Autrey.

He received this email from a member of the Texas Federation of Republican Women who is a childhood friend of a Navy SEAL’s mother, Cheryll.

Cheryll has a son, Derek, who serves proudly in the SEALs and was a close teammate of Chris Kyle.  

It is Cheryll who shares this personal story with us concerning the patriotism and support given to the friends and family of Chris Kyle by several companies, along with the Texas community as a whole.

It is a truly wonderful email.  

Ronin and I thank Cheryll and Doc Autrey from the bottom of our hearts for sharing it with us.

P.S. – Congratulations to Doc Autrey and his new wife on their recent marriage.  You sly dog, you!: 

Patriotism, Texas and Chris Kyle

by Cherryll

I just wanted to share with you all that out of a horrible tragedy we were blessed by so many people.

Chris was Derek’s teammate through 10 years of training and battle. They both suffer/suffered from PTSD to some extent and took great care of each other because of it. 2006 in Ramadi was horrible for young men that never had any more aggressive physical contact with another human than on a Texas football field. They lost many friends. Chris became the armed services number #1 sniper of all time. Not something he was happy about other than the fact that in doing so he saved a lot of American lives.

Three years ago, his wife Taya asked him to leave the SEAL teams as he had a huge bounty on his head by Al Qaeda. He did and wrote the book The American Sniper. 100% of the proceeds from the book went to two of the SEAL families who had lost their son in Iraq. That was the guy Chris was. He formed a company in Dallas to train military, police and I think firemen as far as protecting themselves in difficult situations. He also formed a foundation to work with military people suffering from PTSD. Chris was a giver not a taker. He along with a friend and neighbor, Chad Littlefield, were murdered trying to help a young man that had served 6 months in Iraq and claiming to have PTSD.

Now I need to tell you about all of the blessings:

Texas School Curriculum Calls For Designing Socialist Flags For a New Nation

Yup.  The great lone-star state of Texas refused to adopt Obama’s Common Core Standards.  So, the Progressive Communists are busy infiltrating and indoctrinating them;   Preparing them for the slaughter, as it were.   

UPDATE:  Yesterday, the yellowhammer state of Alabama passed a resolution rejecting Obama’s Common Core Standards for its schools.  Looks like the commies have some more work to do… 

Texas 6th graders assigned to design flag for new socialist nation

JOE NEWBY – Examiner.com

Sixth-grade children in many Texas public schools are being tasked with designing flags for a new socialist nation as part of the state’s curriculum, EAG News reported Monday.

“Notice socialist/communist nations use symbolism on their flags representing various aspects of their economic system. Imagine a new socialist nation is creating a flag and you have been put in charge of creating a flag,” says a lesson plan being used as part of CSCOPE, the curriculum being used by over 70 percent of Texas school districts.

“Use symbolism to represent aspects of socialism/communism on your flag. What kind of symbolism/colors would you use?” the lesson plan asks.

According to the Associated Press, witnesses told the Texas Senate Education Committee last week that the program promotes liberal values they described as “anti-Christian at best and openly socialist at worst.”

“Does that sound like we’re sympathizing with those types of countries?” Sen. Larry Taylor (R-Friendswood) asked regarding the flag assignment. He later said that he found it “very egregious as a Texas and an American.”

“Committee Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, called it ‘a mess.’ One witness compared the system to ‘mind control,’ and an algebra teacher wept as he described quitting because he felt he was ‘aiding and abetting a crime’ by using CSCOPE in his classroom,” the AP reported.

An article at Texas CSCOPE Review was even harsher in its criticism, accusing Obama of “teaching our children how wonderful socialism is and that communism is even better.”

New York Public Schools Doling Out ‘Morning After Pills’ Like Candy

Welcome to Libtardsville, New York, where you can’t even freakin’ supersize your soda or carry a gun for protection, but your daughters are encouraged and assisted by the city in the killing of innocent babies without your knowledge or permission:

NYC schools giving out tens of thousands of doses of the ‘morning-after pill’

By SUSAN EDELMAN – NYPost

Plan B has become Plan A in the Bloomberg administration’s stealth war on teen pregnancy.

Handouts of the “morning-after pill” to sexually active students have skyrocketed under an unpublicized project in which health centers in public schools offer girls a full menu of free birth-control drugs and devices, records obtained by The Post show.

Last September, the city revealed it had started giving out Plan B and other birth control in the nurses’ offices of 13 high schools. At the time, officials said 567 girls had gotten Plan B.

But the birth-control blitz was much bigger than the city had acknowledged. About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, according to the newly released data.

About 22,400 students sought reproductive care from January 2009 through last school year, records show. Under state law, minors don’t need parental OKs to get contraceptives.

The revelations stunned Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, whose 14-year-old attends a Manhattan high school.

“I’m in shock,” she said. “What gives the mayor the right to decide, without adequate notice, to give our children drugs that will impact their bodies and their psyches? He has purposely kept the public and parents in the dark with his agenda.”

Davids, who is black, noted that most school-based health centers are in poor neighborhoods.

“This was population control on blacks and Latinos without our knowledge,” she said.

Reason 1,000,001 to Get Your Children Out of Public Indoctrination Centers

Libtarded teachers just can’t help themselves:

More on this story HERE over at Neal Boortz’s website.

Connecticut School Massacre – Open Thread

Thought I’d give everyone a place to post links and chit-chat about the shooting.

Personally, I think if schools allowed teachers to carry guns, this wouldn’t have escalated into a massacre.  But, I digress.  Now is not the time.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends who have lost loved ones.  Having lost a child before, I can certainly empathize with what the parents are going through.  

May God be of comfort to them.

 

 

 

Liberal NYT’s Writer Has An Epiphany: Maybe Conservatives Are Right About Welfare

Well… Duh!  

If you give a lab rat a chunk of cheese every time it sits in a maze doing nothing, and then don’t reward it when it actually does manage to complete the maze, your rat is going to learn fairly quickly that the best thing it can do to ensure its continued survival is absolutely diddly squat:

NYT: Conservatives May Have a Point About Welfare Dependency
via Breitbart

In an eyebrow raising article, liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof offered a startling concession: “This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.”

Writing from Jackson, Kentucky, Mr. Kristof reported that numerous poor parents in Appalachian hill country are yanking their kids out of literacy classes in order to bag a $689 monthly Supplemental Security Income (S.S.I.) check per kid. The checks continue until the child reaches 18 years of age.

“The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going to lose the check,” said Billie Oaks, who runs a literacy program here in Breathitt County, a poor part of Kentucky. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Cornell University Economics Professor Richard V. Burkhauser says parents are inducing illiteracy to keep the taxpayer-funded welfare checks rolling in. “One of the ways you get on this program is having problems in school. If you do better in school, you threaten the income of the parents. It’s a terrible incentive,” said Professor Burkhauser.

Such government dependency, says local school district official Melanie Stevens, traps poor children and families in a cycle of taxpayer-funded dependency that replaces dreams with welfare checks: “The greatest challenge we face as educators is how to break that dependency on government. In second grade, they have a dream. In seventh grade, they have a plan.”

[…]

Conservatives have long advocated marriage as the best anti-poverty program going. The logic is simple: two paychecks are twice as much as one.

Radical feminists, however, have eschewed such economic logic, suggesting that the two-parent model is patriarchal and outmoded. As the former head of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Kim Gandy put it, “Marrying women off to get them out of poverty is not only backward, it is insulting to women.”

But the New York Times’ Kristof appears to have found religion on the economic and developmental virtues of marriage as well: “A growing body of careful research suggests that the most effective strategy is to work early on children and education, and to try to encourage and sustain marriage,” Kristof writes.

The New York Times is by no means changing its ideological stripes. But Mr. Kristof deserves a hat tip for acknowledging what conservatives have known for decades: marriage reduces poverty, and boundless welfare vaporizes human flourishing.

Obama Eliminating Traditional Fictional Literature, Classics, and Poetry in K -12 Schools

Uh, yeah.  That’ll really help ’em get a leg up when they take Our money and go off to college… /sarcasm:

Obama’s stealthy education takeover
Exclusive: Barbara Simpson exposes nationwide ‘dumbing down of America’s children’
WND

It’s amazing what you learn if you just pay a bit of attention and ask questions.

Because of my reporting on the sex-abuse problem at Joaquin Moraga Middle School in Moraga, Calif., I’ve spent a lot of time attending Board of Education meetings there.

Aside from addressing the sex-abuse issue, the main theme of the meetings has been the alleged lack of money.

That theme never ends. As soon as voters approve school money, there’s another plan to ask for more. They do it every time.

California used to be No. 1 nationally when it came to public education.

No more – despite the fact that hundreds of billions of dollars have been dumped into the system over the years and despite the fact that because of a voter-approved initiative, nearly 50 percent of the annual budget automatically goes to the schools.

Of course, the response of the unions and the teachers is that they need more money.

Of course.

Then, there was the Dec. 7 news story in the Contra Costa Times that in recent vocabulary tests, California’s national rank is fifth from the bottom.

Fourth graders were below every state except Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico and the District of Columbia, which was dead last.

Eighth graders were also fifth from the bottom, only above Hawaii, Mississippi, Louisiana and D.C.

California did not volunteer to have the 12th graders tested.

I can’t imagine why.

The test, known as the Nation’s Report Card, also showed that California is doing worse than states spending less on education.

So much for lack of money being a problem.

Then there was the school-board meeting I attended where there was a complete computer presentation of a new method of teaching that is now being implemented in the schools.

I had no idea what they were talking about.

They explained classes would be reconfigured, curriculum content was being revised, teachers are being retrained on how to teach and what to teach, how every student would have a laptop, books were to be virtually phased out – but some new books would be created for this whole new education system.

We were told it would take a couple of years to get everything in place, but by the time that happens, it would be in every school and every grade in California.

There was no question of refusing because the governor had agreed to it. It’s happening, and no one is exempted. It’s called the “Common Core Curriculum,” and it’s a national program, courtesy of the Obama administration. In fact, it will affect all schools from K-12th grade.

Until that point, I’d never heard of it, and there had been nothing in local newspapers and only one column since. Parents have virtually no idea what’s being planned for their children, especially since practically no one attends board meetings.

But then there was Obama himself – during the debate moderated by Bob Schieffer – who was talking about that he’s accomplished, and he said: “You know, under my leadership, what we’ve done is reformed education, working with governors, 46 states.” He said bad schools were improving.

I couldn’t believe it! He said it! But no one called him on it. No media pursued what he was talking about. No one wondered why not all 50 states were involved. No one asked what it meant

I found out.

Most traditional “fictional” literature, classics and poetry are eliminated. Nothing long, only short pieces Children will read what’s described as “informational texts,” government reports, computer manuals and technical bulletins. There will be more “reading” in science and math classes. The focus will be on computer literacy with little, if any, actual “writing.” Cursive penmanship is already being phased out. Supposedly all this will make children more college ready.

North Carolina School Orders 6-Year-Old Girl to Remove God from Veterans Day Poem

Here’s a tip for all you brainwashed educators out there:   Just because a student is attending a federal indoctrination center does not mean that said student abdicates his/her religious rights once he/she walks through the doors:

School Orders 6-year-old to Remove ‘God’ From Poem

By Todd Starnes – Fox Radio News

A North Carolina community is embroiled in controversy after a school ordered a six-year-old girl to remove the word “God” from a poem that she was supposed to read during a Veteran’s Day ceremony.

The girl is a first-grader at West Marion Elementary School. She was supposed to read the poem during a school assembly marking Veteran’s Day. The poem honored her two grandfathers who had served during the Vietnam War.

“He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength,” the poem read.

A parent reportedly found out about the poem and expressed concern about mentioning the word God during a school event. The parent did not want the Almighty’s name mentioned anywhere in the program, according to one account.

“We wanted to make sure we were upholding the school district’s responsibility of separation of church and state from the Establishment Clause,” Supt. Gerri Martin told the McDowell News.

Martin told the newspaper she made the decision in consultation with the school’s principal and vice principal.

“We jointly decided that we must err on the side of caution to prevent crossing the line on the Establishment Clause of the Constitution,” Kirkpatrick told the newspaper. “As a principal of a public school, I must put aside my personal religious beliefs and follow the law — which upholds that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but that we, as public schools, cannot endorse one single religion over another.”

Fox News contacted the parents of the child but they declined to comment on the controversy.

The incident has sparked widespread concern across this western North Carolina community — called by many the buckle of the Bible Belt.

“I’m reserving my opinion at this point – but I’m very concerned that the young lady’s First Amendment rights have been broken,” said Scott Hagaman, senior pastor of Marion’s First Baptist Church.

He told Fox News that ministers across the community are alarmed what happened and many are asking questions.

“It’s saturated the community,” he said. “I’m quite sure it will be handled appropriately and fairly but right now there is a lot of concern that this child was not treated appropriately.”

The issue is expected to be addressed by local residents at next week’s school board meeting.

“I am outraged that a school would deny a six year old child her First Amendment rights — especially during an assembly to honor our nation’s veterans,” Trudy Pascoe told Fox News. “It is unacceptable for schools to continue to deny students rights because of their Christian viewpoint.”

Chris Greene, who happens to be employed by the school district, spoke to board members earlier this week.

“My question is this, when do the rights of one outweigh the rights of another,” he asked in remarks covered by the local newspaper. “I believe that this little girl’s rights were violated and that those who worked so hard to prepare this program should receive an apology.”

Pastor Hagaman said it’s no surprise that the First Amendment debate has reached their small town.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the country where you can hide from these issues — with the culture changing so quickly,” he said.

UK: Muzzie Parents Sentenced 25 to Life for “Honor Killing” Their Daughter

I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with Islam…  /sarcasm:

‘Honor Killing’: Pakistani Parents Found Guilty of Suffocating Teenage Daughter Who Refused Forced Marriage to Her 1st Cousin

Billy Hallowell – The Blaze

LONDON (TheBlaze/AP) — In a startling case, the Pakistani parents of a teenage girl have been found guilty of murdering a daughter who rebelled against a forced marriage to her cousin — a conviction that was clinched with the girl’s younger sister testifying that she saw her parents suffocate her older sibling.

Justice Roderick Evans on Friday sentenced Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, to life for killing their daughter, Shafilea, in 2003. The couple — first cousins from the Pakistani village of Uttam — were ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.

“She was being squeezed between two cultures – the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace, and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose on her,” Evans said during the sentencing at the Chester Crown Court in northwest England.

In Britain, more than 25 women have been killed in so-called honor killings in the past decade. Families have sometimes lashed out at their children, often believing they have brought them shame by becoming too westernized or by refusing a marriage.

Shafilea was only 10 when she began to rebel against her parents’ strict rules, according to prosecutor Andrew Edis. The young girl would hide make-up, false nails and western clothes at school and then quickly change before her parents picked her up. But it was the last year of her life that proved to be the most traumatic for Shafilea.

During the trial that began in May, jurors were gripped by testimony from Shafilea’s younger sister, Alesha, who said she witnessed the murder when she was 12.

After an argument about Shafilea’s dress, her parents pushed her down on a couch, stuffed a thin white plastic bag into her mouth and held their hands over her mouth and nose until she died, Alesha testified. As she was struggling, her mother said, “just finish it here,” according to Alesha’s testimony.