tvc184

I love Christmas music but two months is a bit much…..

Allowing an individual to do as he wishes is fine. That is a big difference than requiring it. If a student wants to carry a Bible around in school, that is OK also if the school allows any books to be carried. They cannot allow some books and restrict others….. Unless it causes a disruption in the school, if we can figure out what does that. 😀 As far as the Constitution and probably all state laws, you don’t necessarily have to swear something under oath. Even more than 200 years ago the intelligent men that wrote the Constitution, did not require you to swear something under oath. Several times it has the phrase “Oath or Affirmation”. I believe that is because some people think that swearing an oath is swearing to a religion like swearing on the Bible whereas being under affirmation is just saying “yes” or “ I will go along with it“. Article VI in the Constitution specifically says there will be no religious test as a qualification to hold public office.

I can guarantee it scares some (most?) of them because they don’t know what to do. There is an organization called ACLJ (not ACLU) / American Center for Law and Justice which sometimes fights these battles and I believe most of the time they win. There are already court cases in place so I think most the time they just send letters. It is like, a teacher going oh my gosh, I heard a kid in the hallway between classes mention Jesus. Panic!! Call the school board! So I wonder how PAISD is doing with the mask mandate……

This topic has spun way off of the PAISD mask mandate but as long as we are talking religion in school…. I have see opinions repeated several times that when they removed prayer from schools, our problems started. If your child is waiting to get to school to find prayer, your problems started way before that. I don’t understand how you can be a Christian or any other faith and be a true believer but when you get to school, if they don’t lead you in prayer, you have somehow lost the faith. “I am 18 years old and have been a Christian and been baptized into my church but my teacher did not lead me in prayer today so I am now at atheist”? No……. As far as prayer in school, the Supreme Court has never outlawed prayer at public schools as claimed by some people. That is a myth. What they have banned was the government leading the prayer. One of the big cases in religious history was from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It originally had no bearing on the rest of the country but it was cited by the United States Supreme Court later. In that case it was Christian versus Christian. The school led prayer from the King James Bible but Catholic parents protesting because the Catholic Bible was not allowed. Therein lies the problem with the government, a public school district, determining what you hear. It was an atheist against Christians, it was them against themselves. In another case a Jewish parent brought suit. The children were told to put their hands together in prayer at the beginning of a class. The father who brought the suit said he had no problem with the Christian faith and their praying and he believes in prayer also. His complaint was that in the Jewish faith they don’t put their hands together to pray. Maybe they cannot force his son to place at hands together but that would make him an outcast an open to ridicule because the government has now determined what prayers they would say. But by Supreme Court rulings, can students pray at school? Certainly. They can pray privately or they can meet in non-classroom time in groups and pray. Being on school property has no bearing. The prayer cannot be led, encouraged nor discouraged by the school. Some schools have wrongfully attempted to stop such prayer and the Supreme Court has upheld that right to pray at school. The popular way at one time of doing so was meet at the flagpole. If there were students who wished to pray, they got together before or after class. Schools cannot restrict religious writings at school such as an essay in class. Some schools mistakenly believe(d) that if you write anything religious in a class assignment it is unconstitutional but that has been ruled incorrect. If the assignment in English class is to write an essay on McBeth, then the essay would have to be on that topic. If the essay was for example on anything that interests you, the school would be violating a student’s rights by restricting religious speech in such an essay. So prayer is not forbidden at school, it is not forbidden in essays if that fits the topic at hand and it is not forbidden on school property. In fact to try to restrict it would be unconstitutional. Supreme Court has said that a moment of silence in school is allowed but again prayer cannot be led and neither encouraged nor discouraged by the school. The only issue is when the government tells you which prayers you will say or listen to.

Both of our posts ended with, “extent of the injuries“. 😂

😀 I just answer that for mat.

It depends. From just a new story it appears that he suffered what is usually considered a class A misdemeanor assault or in the Penal Code, an assault with bodily injury. Under the Texas hate crime law, a class A misdemeanor cannot be enhanced to a felony. An Assault could be upgraded to an Aggravated Assault but there are two ways to make that under Texas law. One way is to use a deadly weapon and the other way is to cause serious bodily injury. I have not seen any claim of a weapon so assuming there was none, it goes to serious bodily injury. That is not defined as how it looks. If a person slapped you on the arm and you said you felt pain, it would be the same penalty as getting a blackeye and a busted nose. It is all considered bodily injury. Serious bodily injury is an injury that causes death, could cause death or there protracted/extended loss of a bodily member or organ. So a broken arm in my opinion would be serious bodily injury because for four weeks, you will lose the use of that arm because it will be in a cast. If a person gives you a blackeye but it causes your eyes to be shut for two weeks, could a jury consider that a serious bodily injury? I think they might. If you had broken bones in your face due to such an assault and a surgery to repair the damage caused you to have a patch on your eye for a month, would that be considered serious bodily injury under loss of an organ for an extended period? Just from appearance this appears to be bodily injury only but the video said the man would need surgery to repair the injury. If that is true, I suspect that the man arrested will have the charges enhanced from merely bodily injury to serious bodily injury and therefore Aggravated Asssault. It will depend on the extent of the injuries.

That could be a yes or no answer. Evidence of a crime is whatever can be brought to the witness stand. It can be physical evidence or it can be testimony. A jury is given the task to determine what weight any evidence has. In Texas a hate crime it’s not a crime in itself. It is like conspiracy to commit a felony, an attempted crime or organize crime laws. Those laws are not crimes and have to be attached to other laws either to enhance or lower penalties. To that extent, bias crimes in Texas can be enhanced to a higher level. For example a class A misdemeanor carries up to a year in the county jail but has no minimum. If a jury finds it was due to bias, it has a minimum of 180 days but still a one year maximum. Other crimes to be raised one level such as a B misdemeanor if deemed a hate crime by a jury, can become an A misdemeanor. So to your question, would lack of a video lessen the crime or punishment? Again, yes or no. The law gives no specifics what can be used to prove a crime although there are some limitations such as hearsay for example. Even if there was no video and the DA decided to attempt enhancement of the penalty due to bias, he could do so on testimony from the victim or witnesses. On the other hand, even if video did show a racial slur, a jury could determine that there was an assault but it was not because of bias and that the racial slur was simply an anger reaction. I don’t hate women in any profession or position in life but I can think of some pretty bad names to call them if I was mad. Does that mean I am biased? That is why the answer could be yes or no whether there is video or not. The DA has the authorityi to prosecute for a hate crime enhancement with no video if he wishes or if such a video existed, a jury could give the verdict that it was not a hate crime. Whether a DA attempts to enhance a penalty in this case due to racial bias is completely on him. The weight given to any such evidence, is completely on the jury. You ask a very good question but here is the true answer. Will the DA go to trial for a hate crime if he does not have the video as evidence, particularly if there is only the defendant and the victim as witnesses? It comes down to what we call he said/she said. It is your word against mine and in my experience, most of the time the DA will not bring such an argument to the table. Let’s play the what if game. What if there is video of the man assaulting the victim as claimed in this case? The video is shot from the perspective of the victim. As such, he controls when the video starts and I believe in the article, he said he started it “after” he suspects started advancing on him. Okay…. What if the claimed victim was using racial slurs towards a suspect, flipping him off, etc.? Once he got the reaction he wanted, then he started videoing. Does that change it? I doubt that happened but that is why it is best to wait for all evidence to come out. How many times do we watch football games and a player will shove another player but the referee only sees the retaliation?

The destructi of a booming American economy because of Covid shut downs invigorated people.

….. and my background has nothing to do with it. I don’t think you have to be in law-enforcement to believe that the Constitution should be upheld. My opinion did not change when I was almost 30 years old and was sworn into office. My knowledge has considerably.

No, I put a lot of stock in the Constitution because I believe it. There are plenty of laws that I completely disagree with and have no faith in whatsoever.

What does religion have to do with manners in school? When did we abdicate teaching children manners or discipline to a public school district? None of that is forced in any case. You do not have to send your child to a public school. In fact you don’t have to send him to school at all but the government does require attempted learning even at home. Apparently some people have a very difficult time understanding constitutional rights with laws that have nothing to do with rights. I mean by your argument, we should be able to drive 120 miles an hour do a residential neighborhood because of freedom. That is nonsensical. The freedoms that I am talking about all the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States. None of your comment has anything to do with that.

A Republican has not won a state wide office in Virginia for 12 years. Why would this be an easy Republican win? You are correct that people that voted for Biden probably held their nose in voting because he offered nothing. It is a strange campaign when the candidate for the presidency is hitting in a closet. It seems like Biden‘s main campaign strategy was, don’t say anything. I doubt that Trump will win the Republican nomination in 2024. Whoever the nominee is, Trump seems to have invigorated the conservatives and they are not going to vote for the Democrat and it does not matter who the Republican or the Democrat is on the ballot. If the country continues on the same path as the first nine months of the Biden presidency, if Trump wins the nomination in 2024, he will win in a landslide in the general election.

Going by the article with accompanying video, the evidence appears to be overwhelming that it was an assault. I am curious about the cell phone video evidence but I am reasonably certain the suspect probably was motivated by race and use racial slurs. If he actually needs surgery, that might enhance the crime from Assault to Aggravated Assault.

Absolutely true. But being right you’re talking about is it right in your mind only. You’re entitled because no government can tell you what to think. Even China and North Korea cannot control people’s thoughts. They can only control what they say and do in public. So you can pick any topic you wish and say “I disagree”. Of course if you say so publicly, you’re going by the United States Constitution under your freedom of speech. It doesn’t make you right, it just makes you legal.

Youngkin doesn’t matter. He will not run in 2024 but that is not the issue here. What should have been an easy Democrat victory was a loss. Midterms are not usually kind to the party in power in the White House. In Obama‘s first midterm, he lost 63 seats in House. If only five seats flip in 2022, Pelosi will be sent out to pasture. Heck, we might even see Joe Biden get impeached if he is still in office by them. Anybody that thinks this is about Youngkin Is deflecting the issue. Biden carried Virginia by 10 percentage points. He has been in office approximately nine months and Virginia has now gone Republican in the governor, lieutenant governor and Attorney General. Youngkin?

Constitutionally there is absolutely something wrong with it. I find some humor that people fall back on constitutional rights until it goes against one of their beliefs. I have the right to freedom of speech! I have the right to own firearms! I have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures! i am not to keen on the freedom of religion though….

A lot of things are not harmful. That does not mean you should be forced to do them under the guise of freedom.

I wasn’t either but it was common in most school districts before I started school.

The new Republican Lt. Governor of Virginia.

But the VA Governor and Lieutenant Governor are now Republicans.

Allowed is much different than having children say Christian prayers at the beginning of every day in public schools.

I did not see any of it but I hope so. Had this been locally, I don’t think he would have been indicted.