cannabisnews.com: School Board Stands by Plans to Appeal 





School Board Stands by Plans to Appeal 
Posted by CN Staff on May 10, 2006 at 16:53:44 PT
By Eric Morrison, Juneau Empire
Source: Juneau Empire 
Alaska -- The Juneau School Board took a brief but potent hit of public comment Tuesday afternoon from parents and voters angry about the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. The School Board held a special meeting at noon with about 10 minutes of public comment prior to an executive session, after acknowledging it had not notified the public of a similar meeting a week earlier.
Tuesday's meeting discussed the board's decision to appeal a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the suspension of then-Juneau-Douglas High School student Joseph Frederick for displaying the "Bong Hits" banner while at an off-campus school event in 2002.A bong is a device used for smoking marijuana, and school administrators punished Frederick for displaying a drug-themed message. The appeals court said that punishment for an action outside of school during an Olympic Torch rally violated constitutional speech protections."The reason I came out today is because the School Board's refusal to acknowledge that students have free speech rights is disgraceful," said Paul Grant, a Juneau lawyer.Grant was one of six speakers to address the School Board in the cramped confines of the Juneau School District's central office conference room. Four speakers asked the board to reconsider its attempt to bring the case to the nation's highest court. Two speakers encouraged the board to pursue a Supreme Court hearing to clarify administrators' rights.Carl Rose, executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, said the issue has become clouded as a First Amendment issue, when he feels it is really a question of administrators' rights."My comments were that the issue right now before us is, what authority does the School Board have and what responsibility does a principal have to interpret the law?"Rose said the ruling in Frederick's favor has left administrators across the country on a slippery slope. He said administrators could be subject to termination for not enforcing district policy, or if they do enforce policy, they could be sued."It is unclear now what the authority of a principal is in the eyes of the courts," he said.Grant said he went to the meeting to speak because he thought the School Board's message was disingenuous and politically motivated, and that the board needed to be called out on the matter."Where the district goes wrong is thinking that they can suppress or punish speech and that it won't take place," he said."Aside from being anti-American and anti-First Amendment, it's not effective," he said. "If they want an effective anti-drug message, then they need to have an effective anti-drug message."Leslie Longenbaugh, a parent of two high school students, questioned the School Board's decision to accept the free services of prominent lawyer Kenneth Starr, who is widely known as the independent counsel who investigated former President Clinton."My concern is that our School Board, it appears to me, did not look hard enough at Ken Starr and his assistance for them," she said. "Is he a lawyer that they would go out and hire? Then why hire him? Just because he'll work for free doesn't mean they haven't hired him and linked their name with him."Longenbaugh, a lawyer who formerly represented the Juneau Empire, presented a letter to the School Board at the meeting that cited associations with groups that she said are questionable. She said one association that "contrasts with the School Board's claimed concern about 'bong hits'" is Starr's alleged work for the wine industry and his opposition of groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving attempting to limit the ability of minors to purchase alcohol over the Internet.A statement by School Board President Phyllis Carlson was released after the executive session saying the board is continuing to pursue the matter with the assistance of Starr and the law firm of Kirkland Ellis."The board believes it is important to take this action because we need clarification on when our administrators are at risk of liability for damages for enforcing our policies and the circumstances in which we can enforce our policies restricting pro-drug messages," Carlson's statement said.Grant said the district hasn't learned its lesson in the four years since the incident."The solution to speech that you don't like is not to punish it," he said. "The solution is to have a better message, and that's the lesson these people need to learn." Note: Public objects as district continues legal battle over 'Bong Hits' banner.Source: Juneau Empire (AK)Author: Eric Morrison, Juneau EmpirePublished: May 10, 2006 Copyright: 2006 Southeastern Newspaper CorpWebsite: http://www.juneauempire.com/Contact: letterstotheeditor juneauempire.comRelated Articles: 'Bong Hits' To Supreme Court?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21812.shtmlProtecting The Right To Dissenthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21682.shtmlBanner Suit Filed in Court http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12653.shtml 
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Comment #10 posted by Richard Zuckerman on May 13, 2006 at 14:38:41 PT:
BABY SITTERS
I have sent many letters to School Boards of Education, PTAs, State Legislators, and Congress, asking for the curriculum of public schools to be improved in order for the students to learn the dark side of government, including the wonderful history of the Cannabis plant. Less than three years ago, one Congressman submitted a Bill which would require High School Civics Teachers to attend a federally sponsored seminar so that they would learn to teach gun control and anti-Marijuana.Please attend your PTA and Board of Education meetings to share the www.johntaylorgatto.com web site and ask for the curriculum of public schools to be improved so they teach the dark side of government? E.g., President Bush's Grandfather and Great Grandfather, along with Rockefeller, financed 40% of Adolph Hitler's steel production, according to www.John-Loftus.com.Please check out www.johntaylorgatto.com? I awaiting the appellate oral argument to ask the panel of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey to establish a cause of action for Retaliation under the State Constitutional Liberty of speech, which trial judge Nicholas J. Stroumtsos, Jr., J.S.C., Middlesex County, wrote in his Letter Opinion has never been established. Is there one single court decision in YOUR State allowing you to sue for Retaliation for violation of your State Constitutional provision for freedom of speech?Please consider voting for 3rd party candidates, such as Libertarian Part and Green Party (although Mitchell Cohen issued a statement about eight months ago warning that the Democrats have infiltrated the Green Party)?Richard Paul Zuckerman, Box 159, Metuchen, N.J., 08840-0159, richardzuckerman2002 yahoo.com.
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Comment #9 posted by jose melendez on May 12, 2006 at 08:18:20 PT
alleged!?
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=19990308&s=ferguson
 "Pressures on the big tobacco companies long antedated Bill Clinton's arrival in the White House, of course. Nevertheless, the industry's political effort, which was massive--and quite bipartisan, though with an elective affinity to the GOP's stout laissez-faire traditions--gave it formidable protection. Though one of Clinton's first acts as President was to ban smoking in the White House, the evidence is that the Administration was not then looking for a major confrontation. Dr. David Kessler, whom the Administration kept on as head of a Food and Drug Administration that was already under siege from many other industries, only slowly decided to broaden the campaign against tobacco, which his agency traditionally had not sought to regulate.Several developments eventually changed this situation. An inevitable consequence of bringing together the advocates of sweeping healthcare reform was the bringing together of the advocates of a wider campaign against the tobacco industry. In addition, the logic of the Administration's health plan ran sharply counter to the interests of the tobacco companies. As a proven cause of massive medical expenditures, the industry was naturally suspect. No less important, however, tobacco was a vulnerable source of new tax revenues in a period when raising taxes was politically very costly. Indeed, to fund the health plan, the White House proposed a huge increase in excise taxes on cigarettes, from 24 cents a pack to 99 cents.This proposal immediately sent the industry to battle stations. What happened next, however, moved the conflict--and in the end, it appears, US politics--to a whole new level of vehemence. Studies that suggested smoking might fall sharply if nicotine were reduced persuaded the FDA's Kessler that nicotine might in fact qualify as an addictive substance in the technical, legal sense of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. This had sweeping implications, for regulating tobacco would then fall squarely within the FDA's purview. As a report for CQ Researcher put it, "If the FDA successfully claims jurisdiction over tobacco, the agency could not only determine how much nicotine would be allowed in cigarettes but also how they are labeled, marketed and distributed. In short, the FDA would gain virtual control over cigarette production and could even totally ban tobacco products.... FDA regulation 'could mean, ultimately, removal from the market of tobacco products containing nicotine at levels that cause or satisfy addiction,' Kessler wrote in February [1994]. 'Only those tobacco products from which the nicotine had been removed or, possibly, tobacco products approved by the FDA...would then remain on the market.'"In the spring of 1994, Kessler testified to Congress that the industry had known for decades that nicotine was addictive but concealed that from the public. He also argued that tobacco companies had calibrated levels of nicotine in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked.The tobacco industry counterattacked. Taking out full-page ads in newspapers and turning loose a legion of lobbyists, it fought back on many fronts. But while it succeeded in scaling back the proposed cigarette tax even before the Clinton healthcare plan's fiery crash landing, the industry's efforts to ward off the FDA were unavailing.At the end of June 1994, talk of the industry's sweeping campaign and possible compromises surfaced in the national press. In July, however, the New England Journal of Medicine published a major study by two researchers whose previous work, according to the Washington Post, "has been heavily relied on by the FDA." The new study, which the Post suggested "also could prove influential" in shaping a forthcoming report by an FDA advisory panel, presented a case for compelling cigarette makers to reduce the nicotine content of their products by about five-sixths over a period of years. The newspaper report noted that the study's authors readily conceded that such proposals "might seem drastic to some." Quoting an FDA spokesperson's praise of the report as providing "the kind of information that the advisory committee will be working with in August," the story reported that the FDA group planned to begin hearings into "nicotine addiction and dosage" on the first of August.That report, and an accompanying denunciation by the Tobacco Institute, appeared in the Post on July 14, 1994. That very day Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, the two conservative Republican senators from North Carolina, the state with the biggest stake of all in tobacco, met Judge David Sentelle for lunch in Washington. Sentelle, like Faircloth (who had once headed North Carolina Democrats for Helms before switching parties and winning election to the Senate) a Helms protégé, had formerly chaired the Republican Party of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. He had also served as a delegate to the 1984 Republican convention from the Tarheel State and named one of his daughters "Reagan" in honor of the President.Because of a quirk in the law governing special prosecutors, Sentelle had recently regained a position of extraordinary sensitivity. In early 1992, as special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's investigation of Iran/contra neared its climax, Chief Justice William Rehnquist had suddenly named the very junior Sentelle to replace moderate Republican Judge George MacKinnon as head of the three-judge panel that supervised special prosecutors. Subsequently, however, the law had lapsed, so that when the Whitewater scandal first burst upon the American political scene, Attorney General Janet Reno had named the first special prosecutor, Republican Robert Fiske. Thanks to the reinstated statute, Sentelle and his two other colleagues once again had authority over investigations by special prosecutors. Faircloth and Sentelle subsequently denied that the then widely discussed Whitewater investigation figured as a topic at their lunch. Shortly thereafter, however, Sentelle's panel rejected Reno's request that Fiske be allowed to continue and replaced him with Kenneth Starr.The appointment was a milestone, in many senses. Starr worked at Kirkland & Ellis, a prominent Washington law firm. According to an article in Salon Magazine last November 18, he represented the tobacco industry; he was also peripherally involved in friend-of-the-court activities on behalf of the lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against the President.As Starr's investigation proceeded, the battle between the industry and the Clinton Administration escalated. One careful, though necessarily incomplete, attempt to estimate total contributions by the tobacco companies in American national politics noted that in the 1991-92 election cycle contributions by the industry totaled at least $5.7 million, of which about 57 percent went to Republican candidates for President or Congress. Total contributions during the 1993-94 cycle--the Clinton Administration's first two years--ran at roughly the same level despite the absence of a presidential campaign (which normally swells expenditure levels), while the percentage of contributions in favor of the then completely out-of-power GOP rose to 68. Thereafter, both total contributions and the percentage in favor of GOP candidates exploded, as Democratic campaign rhetoric increasingly singled out tobacco for special attention. In the 1995-96 election cycle the tobacco industry donated more than $10 million to national political campaigns, with more than 80 percent of the funds headed for Republicans. Incomplete figures for the 1997-98 cycle show the industry giving more than $7 million, with about 78 percent of that going to GOP candidates. Lobbying expenses, it should be noted, normally run many times the level of an industry's formal political contributions.A case this strong does not need to rely on overstatement.*"http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/cellbiol/1998-September/009656.html " . . . Kenneth W. Starr is
the private attorney for BIG TOBACCO, whose agents, servants, and/or employees
have for years committed perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of
justice, for testifying that "tobacco is not addictive."http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2006/03/ken_starr_to_le.html"The newly formed Specialty Wine Retailers Association has put together what can only be called an "All Star Team" to help push their attempt to agenda of getting retailers included in laws that open states up to direct-to-consumer sales.Leslie Berglund, President of the SWRA, revealed to FERMENTATION today that both Ken Starr, former Independent Counsel, and Kathleen Sullivan, Dean of the Stanford Law School, are crafting the legal strategy that will hopefully lead to retailers being able to lawfully ship wine to consumers in states across the country. Starr and Sullivan were instrumental in the Supreme Court victory last year."They are helping to craft our (SWRA) legal strategy in the same way they helped in last year's legal battles," Berglund said.In addition, Tracy Geneson, who headed up litigation at the Coalition for Free Trade, the organization that helped bring a number of lawsuits against states, has come on board as SWRA head of litigation. John Hinman of Hinman and Carmichael, the best known and highly respected wine attorney based in San Francisco, has also joined SWRA as Chief Counsel. "
*Drug war is crime. We have proof.
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Comment #8 posted by runderwo on May 12, 2006 at 01:49:06 PT
hmm
** "She said one association that "contrasts with the School Board's claimed concern about 'bong hits'" is Starr's alleged work for the wine industry and his opposition of groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving attempting to limit the ability of minors to purchase alcohol over the Internet."Actually, to me this makes perfect sense. The alcohol lobby is uniformly against cannabis legalization or even normalization. What reason would they have to be interested in it anyway? It is a substitute for their products and the unintended consequences they cause.
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Comment #7 posted by John Tyler on May 11, 2006 at 19:26:02 PT
bad move
The school board in question now looks very stupid. Rather than make a big stink about it (the incident didn’t even have anything to do with the school system) and have the whole thing blow up in their faces they could have sent the kid a letter and told him they disapproved of his action and why. The whole affair would have been over and done with. Now they have just wasted a lot of time and money trying to curtail free speech. It seems no one is as drug crazed as a drug warrior.
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on May 11, 2006 at 08:58:19 PT
OverwhelmSam 
What's going on in Alaska? Well how can I put this in a nice way. Let's see. When a mean dog is cornered it comes out fighting. 
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Comment #5 posted by OverwhelmSam on May 11, 2006 at 08:45:40 PT
What Is Going On In Alaska?
Freaking out over something as safe as marijuana. School boards appealing first amendment rights, legislators re-criminalizing marijuana. Time for a state wide campaign to de-elect the idiot prohibitionists zealots.
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on May 11, 2006 at 07:09:28 PT
AP: School Will Appeal Drug-Banner Ruling 
'BONG HITS 4 JESUS': Supreme Court will be asked to hear student case. The Associated Press May 11, 2006 JUNEAU -- Despite some opposition from the public, the School Board intends to appeal a court decision it lost after punishing a student for displaying a banner off school grounds referring to Jesus smoking marijuana. The board last week announced that former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr would help appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue is whether the school can discipline a now-former high school student who held banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during the 2002 Winter Olympic Torch relay through Juneau.An April decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said school officials violated Joseph Fredrick's free speech rights when they suspended him for 10 days. Frederick was a senior at the time of the incident. The court also noted that Fredrick's off-campus message did not disrupt school functions and was not part of an official school activity.Board members said the decision has left school officials at a loss when trying to enforce policies against illegal drug use.The board met in executive session Tuesday over the appeal, but heard from about six people before the private session started."The reason I came out today is because the School Board's refusal to acknowledge that students have free speech rights is disgraceful," said Paul Grant, a Juneau lawyer who was one of four people asking the board to drop the appeal process.Grant said the School Board's message was disingenuous and politically motivated, and that the board needed to be called out on the matter."Aside from being anti-American and anti-First Amendment, it's not effective," he said. "If they want an effective anti-drug message, then they need to have an effective anti-drug message."Two speakers encouraged the board to pursue a Supreme Court hearing to clarify administrators' rights. There is no guarantee that the nation's high court will hear the case.Carl Rose, executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, said the ruling in Frederick's favor has left administrators across the country on a slippery slope.He said administrators could be subject to termination for not enforcing district policy, or if they do enforce policy, they could be sued."It is unclear now what the authority of a principal is in the eyes of the courts," he said.Board president Phyllis Carlson said in a prepared statement after the executive session that the board would continue to pursue the matter with the assistance of Starr and the law firm of Kirkland Ellis."The board believes it is important to take this action because we need clarification on when our administrators are at risk of liability for damages for enforcing our policies and the circumstances in which we can enforce our policies restricting pro-drug messages," Carlson's statement said.Copyright: 2006 Associated Presshttp://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7716929p-7628017c.html
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Comment #3 posted by freewillks on May 10, 2006 at 19:21:52 PT
Sup. Court will uphold rulling 5 -3
The libs on the bench will uphold the rulling along with Thomas. The bush picks and scalia will decent. This is how the scales of justice work, 90% politics 9% BS 1% truth.
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Comment #2 posted by whig on May 10, 2006 at 18:33:47 PT
mayan
Mushroom Sammiches 4 Jesus!
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Comment #1 posted by mayan on May 10, 2006 at 18:21:26 PT
Sour Grapes
The Juneau School Board is making themselves look dumber by the minute. Aquiring the services of Ken Starr ought to go over well! What a circus! If Frederick's sign had said "Cheese Toasties 4 Jesus" would there be an outcry? If he wasn't on school grounds then who made the school board God? This is purely political maneuvering on the part of the school board. The thought police are watching you!THE WAY OUT IS THE WAY IN...World leaders suspect the Bush administration of involvement in the 9/11 attacks:
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/110506leaders.htmVeteran Assaulted and Banned By VFW Post For Questioning Official 9/11 Story:
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/110506Veteran.htmAlex Jones Interviews Michael Berger - MP3 Download:
http://www.911blogger.com/2006/05/alex-jones-interviews-michael-berger.htmlImprobable Collapse:
http://www.improbablecollapse.com/Surely the "Hand Of Allah":
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/handofallah.phpChicago Truth Conference Commercials (spread em'):
http://www.colorado911visibility.org/chicago%20commercials/Bullshit Artist: The 9/11 Leadership Myth (Paperback):
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/206 
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