Tag Archives: Missouri

“Tell them there that Missouri’s daughters and her sons are yours no more”

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An old, yet still compelling, story came my way today (h/t Matt), of a young man who sought to express his Scottish heritage, but was shunned by school officials who don’t think men should wear dresses. This all played out in Missouri.

A Granite City High School senior doing research on his family’s Scottish heritage purchased a kilt made out of the family’s tartan and decided the garment’s coming out party would be at the senior prom.

School officials, however, said no.

William Carruba was denied again Tuesday by the Granite City School Board, where he had turned in hopes of having the school’s denial reversed. Officials there said kilts are “nontraditional” and that they do not fit into the district’s dress code.

“I understand full-heartedly,” Carruba, 19, said of the board’s decision after the meeting. “I’ll just … wear pants.”

Superintendent Harry A. Briggs told the 65 people in attendance that the denial was not simply about the kilt.

“We must adhere to our (dress) policy,” Briggs said. “To do otherwise would be reckless on our part.”

While he said he respects the tradition of the kilt, Briggs, who said he is of Scottish-Irish heritage, said normal attire must be worn to school functions.

“It’s not what we call normal wear,” he said of the kilt, adding that “attending the prom is a privilege, not a right.”

Okay, fair enough, what with school policies and all. Maybe the problem is with the policy itself (unless the goal is to keep kids from expressing themselves, which it might be.)

I’m tempted to break out some Braveheart quotes, a la “Go back to England and tell them there that Scotland’s daughters and her sons are yours no more. Tell them Scotland is free.”

What this really needs, though, is some Scottish-highland-dancing McGuirk:

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Distraction-Free Football in Missouri

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Girls-running

Photo by Eric Blumberg. What were we talking about?

I came across this mildly amusing story during my daily wanderings of the internet (much of which I get paid for, which still blows my mind…) This occurred back in August.

Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel must be taking the Tigers’ move to the SEC very seriously.

So seriously that, apparently, he feels the presence of coeds at his practices to be an unwelcome distraction for his team.

Sports reporter Eric Blumberg of KOMU-TV in Columbia tweeted a photo on Wednesday morning of two women in athletic shorts and sports bras running stairs at Faurot Field. Blumberg says that a Missouri coach asked the two women to “come back later.”

As has been pointed out on Twitter, maybe the coaching staff feared these were SEC spies.

Coach Pinkel apparently viewed the women as a distraction.

This might not have been such an auspicious start for Mizzou’s entry into the SEC. I don’t really know anything about college football conferences. Apparently the major teams in the South are in either the SEC or the ACC, and I have no mnemonic device to remember which schools are in which conference.

I did confirm that Florida State, the school that produced Jenn Sterger, is in the ACC, so Mizzou players will not have to worry about distractions from the likes of her. That is not intended in any way to impugn the fans of the SEC, of course. It just got me wondering, if Mizzou players are distracted by two women running bleachers in sports bras, how do they handle game days?

In the interest of science, and because I am terrible at valuing my own time, I did a quick Google search for “Missouri football fans” and “SEC football fans,” to see how much distraction Mizzou can expect to face from now on. It was, uh, distracting. Continue reading →

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The Congressman who Cried “Menace to Civilization”

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JackassMissouri Republican Representative Todd Akin had some fun zingers recently in Columbia.

Why hasn’t Congress impeached President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder? Rep. Todd Akin says it’s simply a lack of votes. But he says that may change eventually.

Because impeachment has never, ever backfired on Republicans…

“I think some of the thought was, he’s coming up at this point for election and the best way to impeach him is the ballot box,” Akin said. “So I think that’s the thought, because you’re never going to get something through the Senate. That doesn’t mean that at a certain point you just say enough, I don’t care enough about the Senate, duty calls us to just get up and just impeach this guy. And maybe he’s not quite gotten to the point where you’ve got the Republicans — basically all the Republican bloc is not quite mad enough for that.”

Well, that’s saying something.

I suspect this is just some shameless pandering to the unwashed masses. Still, Akin has been the Congressional representative for Missouri’s 2nd District since 2001, and he’s been something of a nut for far longer than that. He has a masters of divinity supplementing his “management engineering” degree, and I can’t even think of an appropriately snarky comment regarding divinity degrees. I feel as though someone who has written extensive fan fiction mashing up Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Grey’s Anatomy ought to receive a comparable degree.

Anyway, Akin really doesn’t like the President. He doesn’t much care for liberals, either:

Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican, was discussing NBC’s recent removal of the words “under God” from a clip of the Pledge of Allegiance during coverage of the U.S. Open.

“Well, I think NBC has a long record of being very liberal, and at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God and a belief that government should replace God,” Akin told radio host Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. “This is a systematic effort to try to separate our faith and God, which is a source in our belief in individual liberties, from our country. And when you do that you tear the heart out of our country.”

Akin, who is running in the GOP primary for Missouri’s senate seat, released a statement Tuesday apologizing for his comments.

Akin, a Christian, expressed that he and his family would never “question the sincerity of anyone’s personal relationship with God. My statement during my radio interview was directed at the political movement, liberalism, not at any specific individual.”

Getting back to the point of this post, he seems to be saying that impeachment could be an option in the future. The Constitution allows impeachment as a remedy for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a term that still has no clear definition after roughly 225 years of constitutional jurisprudence. We know it can include getting/lying about blowjobs in the White House. It can also cover the high crime of, uh, being Andrew Johnson. What has President Obama to merit this most extreme of acts?

Still, Akin said he had plenty of relevant concerns: Obama, he said, “ignores the Constitution, he ignores the laws, he wants to impose all of the czars, he completely ignores the train wreck of the economy, which he’s causing with trillion-dollar-plus deficits every year you go along.”

Translation: if Obama does it, it’s impeachable. At least Akin advocates waiting until after the election, if applicable. If Obama gets re-elected, he will either lose all his hair by 2016, or it will all turn some sort of super-gray.

Seriously, though, Rep. Akin is talking about impeachment, the Congressional attempt to remove the President of the United States from office outside of the usual electoral process. It requires sober reflection and dispassionate consideration. What say you, Rep. Akin?

“He is a complete menace to our civilization,” he said. “The question is what’s the best way to get rid of him, I think probably at the ballot box next election, we need to get that done.”

Our civilization??? Yeah, this is going to be a long election season.

Photo credit: ‘Jackass’ by Izmaelt (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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