The headline:

Palatine School District Approves Full Bathroom Rights For Transgender Students

Had transgender students been denied “full bathroom rights” until now? What are “full bathroom rights” anyway? Do students who are not transgender still have them at Palatine School District?

The suburban high school district at the center of a national debate over transgender student rights voted Thursday night to gives its transgender students full access to school locker rooms and bathrooms.

So they can go into all of them? While students who are not transgender have to pick those for girls or those for boys?

The debate over transgender student access started four years ago when a student charged that the district’s practices discriminated against transgender students. The

Nick Robinson of the BBC tweeted a few days ago:

Should the law treat me as a woman if I chose to identify as one? Yes @lucianaberger
of the @LibDems told me on @BBCr4today despite criticism by some women that their rights are being ignored.

Jolyon Maugham QC commented about this wrongthink about self ID. (More on this post.)

A woman replied to Maugham:

If Nick says he’s a woman that doesn’t mean he is. The Lib Dem’s would believe and treat him as a woman. That is ludicrous.

Maugham QC:

If Nick says it he’d be lying. Which is why his tweet is so reductive, and loaded.

Oh. He would? How does Maugham QC know … Read the rest

Humanists UK warns against a stealth evangelical campaign disguised as Xmas presents for children in need:

Schools are being warned not to support the Operation Christmas Child appeal run by an evangelical US charity Samaritan’s Purse, which unbeknownst to many parents uses donors’ gifts to evangelise to vulnerable children, after it emerged that more schools are collecting donations for the scheme.

Operation Christmas Child sends shoeboxes full of toys, books, and other shiny presents to vulnerable children in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. But alongside the packages put together by schools, the charity also adds religious literature which aims to convert children to Christianity.

Can you say “strings attached”? Can you say “sneaky godbothering shits”?

Today it has emerged that 

Jane Clare Jones:

The most notable thing here – other than 50, 000 some ppl liking a dude saying ‘fuck those evil witches’- is how many read it as identical to an affirmation of trans rights. This is how the discourse is structured. Being pro-trans is signaled, above all, by being anti-TERF.

The tweet she is commenting on is alas by Adam Savage, the Mythbusters guy. I saw it yesterday and sighed and moved on.

TERFs are shit. https://twitter.com/charliejane/status/1195156950394097665

It’s all women’s fault, as usual. Radical feminist women “are shit.”… Read the rest

A student residence in Bolton goes up like a torch.

Firefighters have been tackling a huge blaze at a university student accommodation block.

Crowds of students were evacuated from The Cube in Bolton when the fire broke out at about 20:30 GMT on Friday.

At its height about 200 firefighters from 40 fire engines were tackling the blaze which was affecting every floor.

A witness said the fire was “climbing up” the six-storey building. One person was rescued by crews using an aerial platform.

@JoLiptrott tweeted a Guardian article from last year about Grenfell-type cladding on student residences:

Thousands of students arriving at university for freshers’ week face sleeping in high-rise accommodation wrapped in combustible Grenfell-style cladding, the

@AirdalePhil tweets:

… Read the rest

Charles Pierce at Esquire says goodbye to Roger Stone’s career as a ratfucker.

On Friday, during a recess in the committee hearings into one of his former boss’s other abuses of power, Stone was convicted on all seven counts on which he’d been called to the bar, and no sartorial cock-of-the-walk narcissism can save him this time.

I remember being nauseated watching him get treated like a star at the Republican National Convention in 2016, and even more deeply nauseated watching him gallivant around the Capitol dressed like Mr. Peanut’s evil twin during the inauguration that same year.

…

Moreover, to those of us who have followed politics for a while now, watching Roger Stone go to the sneezer

Trump’s press secretary issued a statement, which I can’t find any source for other than news media saying so – I don’t know if she said it aloud in front of a camera or put it on a billboard or what. It’s evil and filthy enough to share though.

The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to. This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process — or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.

Right. The president is entitled to … Read the rest

Impeachment hearing chapter 2 of the day: the Guardian Live reports:

Fox News anchors described the testimony of Maria Yovanovitch as a “turning point” in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Anchor Bret Baier predicted that Trump’s tweet smearing Yovanovitch’s reputation as the longtime diplomat testified would lead to a new article of impeachment against the president.

That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time.

That’s a Fox anchor who said that.

Trump says the gutting of the State Department is a good thing.

We

And it’s not even Mississppi or Idaho, it’s Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch:

The Ohio House on Wednesday approved legislation that would protect student rights to religious expression in public schools, including prayer, school assignments, artwork and clothing.

Lawmakers passed House Bill 164 by a vote of 61-31 and sent it to the Senate for consideration.

Let’s hope the Senate says Nah.

The bill, dubbed the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019,” would require schools to:

‒ Give student religious groups the same access to school facilities for meetings and events as secular groups have.

‒ Lift bans limiting student expression of religion to lunch or non-instructional periods.

‒ Abolish any restrictions on students from engaging in religious

There is no limit. They will do anything to cling to power.

The Senate confirmed Steven Menashi to the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday by a vote of 51–41. Every Republican present except Sen. Susan Collins supported Menashi; every Democrat present opposed him. With this confirmation, Donald Trump has flipped the 2^nd Circuit to a majority of Republican appointees—a momentous shift in the balance of power that could help the president shield himself from criminal liability and congressional scrutiny in a jurisdiction, New York, which he previously called home.

Unless any of the other Republican judges have any limits. Menashi certainly doesn’t.

Menashi, a 40-year-old White House attorney, is one of Trump’s most controversial

The Express covers Nick Robinson’s conversation with Luciana Berger:

Host Nick Robinson said: “Turning to equalities which is the subject of your launch, one part of that is respecting the expression of gender identify. Can we be clear on what that means? Is it now the Liberal Democrats view that if I identified as a woman, you want the law to treat me as a woman?”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Berger said: “Yes. There will be many people who will share with you their very personal experience of being born with one identity and actually experiencing as another.

“For anyone who has to go through that very difficult experience, they should be respected.”

But “respected” … Read the rest