Wikimedia Commons

This one’s kind of wild, folks. A teacher in Montgomery County, Md., had a 13-year-old girl taken out of class by police after the girl refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance two days in a row.

Raw Story has the story:

A 13-year-old female student at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance on Jan. 27. The teacher reportedly ordered the girl out into the hallway, where he threatened the girl with detention and then sent her to the school counselor’s office.

The next day, when the student again refused to stand for the pledge, the teacher called school officers to remove her from the classroom and take her to the counselor’s office once again.

The ACLU is on the case, which looks like slam-dunk against the teacher.

In this Feb. 2, 2009 file photo, John Griffiths, a handler of the weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, holds Phil in the air after removing him from his stump at Gobbler

Wednesday’s silliest and most asinine story concerned an organization that is infamous for its ridiculous publicity stunts:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to replace the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, with a robotic stand in.

From the Associated Press:

PETA says it’s unfair to keep the animal in captivity and subject him to the huge crowds and bright lights that accompany tens of thousands of revelers each Feb. 2 in Punxsutawney, a tiny borough about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. PETA is suggesting the use of an animatronic model.

Which caused a colleague of mine to wonder out loud at the question in the headline.

What a stupid organization.

By some estimates there are as many as 77,000 stutterers in Virginia, according to a national stuttering support group.

And if each one of those stutterers has two sympathetic non stutterng friends or family members, that works out to roughly 240,000 reasons why Sheila’s Johnson’s weak attempt to deride state Sen. Creigh Deeds’ mild speech defect was a really dumb move for the Bob McDonnell campaign.

Remember, Deeds’ and Bob McDonnell’s last head-to-head match up occurred only four years ago and that attorney general race was the closest statewide election in Virginia history. McDonnell won by a few hundred votes, and the final result wasn’t in until weeks after the election.

It’s not clear just yet that this is a Macaca moment, a la ex-U.S. Sen. George Allen. Unlike in that case, the candidate himself didn’t make this offensive comment, and then dig his hole deeper.

It would be unfair to hold McDonnell, who seems slightly ahead, responsible for every dumb thing one of his supporters says. And Johnson has apologized.

But how angry are the stutterers and those who sympathize with them? Can a tight race hinge on them?

Stay tuned.

A red-light camera in Springfield, Ohio / Wikimedia Commons

The city of Roanoke is considering whether to install red-light cameras at nine intersections in the city.

During the upcoming debate we will hear this is much more about reducing accidents, and much less about revenue these cameras will rake in.

Roll your eyes. Allow yourself a snicker. And don’t believe that cockamamie argument for one second.

These cameras are ALL about the money they haul in. That’s why I call this odious scheme “the robotax.”

The safety argument is fallacious window dressing, and that’s the gentlemanly way to put it.

How do we know? Read the rest of the column here.

Do you have a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for other types of “cams” the city of Roanoke should install around town? Post it as a comment here, or email me. We’ll review the best suggestions in Thursday’s column.

Plenty of folks on this blog have defended Sgt. James Crowley, the Cambridge, Mass. police officer who arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates.

But now it appears that Crowley may have made up at least a portion of his police report. Specifically, the portion that says that outside Gates’ townhouse, Crowley spoke with the woman who called 911, Lucia Whalen, and that she told him the men/possible burglars she observed were black.

Crowley’s report is quite specific about that conversation. It takes up most the the third paragraph.

But now Lucia Whalen’s attorney is saying that conversation never occurred.

Crowley defenders: look at the third paragraph of Crowley’s report. Look at the story on CNN, in which the woman’s attorney is quoted saying:

“Let me be clear: She never had a conversation with Sgt. Crowley at the scene. . .And she never said to any police officer or to anybody ‘two black men.’ She never used the word ‘black.’ Period.”

The idea that Whalen never used the word “black” is supported by the transcript of the 911 call she made.

Does that make you wonder if there’s anything else in the police report never occurred? Such as Gates’ alleged “I’ll speak with your mama” comment, which Crowley also wrote about?

And tell me, do you still believe the sergeant’s actions were 100 percent correct and that he is blameless in this matter?

Thursday night, Gates and Crowley will be sitting down for a beer with President Barack Obama at the White House. I’d like to be a fly on that wall!

Lotsa stuff flying out there about the Cambridge, Mass. cop who arrested famed Harvard professor and black studies scholar Henry Louis Gates at his home earlier last week. What do you think?

Here’s the police report.

My observations:

1. The police were correct to dispatch officers to the home, after a neighbor reported what looked a burglary in progress. Gates was, in fact, breaking into his own (rented) home because the door was jammed.
2. When Gates produced his identification and Sgt. James Crowley realized there was no burglary, Crowley should have dropped the matter.
3. Gates inflamed the situation by loudly suggesting the police targeted him because he is black. Not a wise move, but acting like an ass is hardly criminal. Racial profiling does happen, even if it doesn’t happen all the time.
4. The cop should have ignored Gates’ ranting and left the house, rather than reacting to it. Arresting him was wrong, as the police already have admitted by dropping the charges.
5. The officer, who denies being at all racist, should apologize. (He refuses).
6. So should Gates.
7. President Barack Obama called this one correctly — the officer acted “stupidly.” So did Gates.
   
8. But should the president have weighed in at all?

Your thoughts?

UPDATE:

Sgt. Crowley explains his actions (audio).

You have to feel sorry for those poor truckers, eh? They thought they were merely filching a little candy from a shipment. Instead, it was laced with LSD:

Police got suspicious when a truckload of 138 kilogrammes of chocolate arrived at the Ibiza port last week from the Spanish mainland. The chocolate was unbranded and marked only as “pure chocolate”. The two truck drivers said they had hallucinations after they tasted the chocolate. Each of the 5,000 bars of chocolate was found to contain LSD.

If the Virginia Tourism Corp. ever gets a hankering to replace its 40-year-old advertising slogan, Virginia is for Lovers, it can look to The Roanoke Times readers for alternatives.

Many, of course, are bladder-in-cheek ideas sought by my column last week. And the majority were spurred by the Virginia Department of Transportation’s recent decision to close down 19 of 41 rest areas along interstate highways throughout the commonwealth, around the kickoff of the summer tourism season.

For that reason, you need to be willing to tolerate a bit of bathroom humor — or stop reading right here.

First up is Steve Moeller of Roanoke. His fecund mind produced a motto that could both relieve drivers and fertilize our roadsides at the same time.

“Virginia: Pee On It.”

The rest of the column is here. Don’t forget to vote on the best suggestion!

One of the greatest things about this journalism business is there’s no shortage of opinions out there. And, dear readers, you have proved that once again.

Sunday’s column about Katherine Gwaltney’s arrest downtown Thursday by Roanoke police Officer Reinhold “Bill” Lucas during a performance art project elicited a blizzard of e-mails, phone calls and posts to my blog.

If there’s one conclusion you can draw from those, it’s that almost nobody feels ambivalent — about the incident or the column.

Some correspondents said Lucas’ action was an example of Keystone Cops on steroids. Other blamed Gwaltney, 27, for what they said was her evident disrespect for police. A few thought your humble columnist did a “shameful” job in putting a bit of light and (I hope) levity on the subject.

Read the rest of the column here. And don’t forget to leave a comment!

Are you feeling safer yet?

Last week in the Roanoke Valley, the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrapped up the final cases against a local heroin distribution ring that was selling at least 130,000 bags of heroin a year.

The FBI managed to maintain no-bail status for a small gang of young men alleged to have plotted fearsome kidnappings of women out of their Southwest Roanoke County homes.

The Roanoke Police Department created a Web site listing the names of 2,480 people wanted on outstanding warrants.

Meanwhile Thursday, a Roanoke police officer busted a woman for the subversive act of pretending to watch TV.

Did you get that? He protected the citizenry from performance art — in the center of a town that desperately wants to be the “Arts Capital of the Blue Ridge.”

Read the rest of the column here. And don’t forget to post comments!