First off, these students that were removed from campus had their first amendment rights violated. Second, Cinco De Mayo means nothing to America the same way that Columbus day means nothing to me. Third, let the lawsuits begin.

This is what it all comes down to here in California, where school faculty is more concerned with people’s feelings than what it right and wrong. These kids were protesting by wearing the shirts in the CAPITAL of protesting, San Francisco!

The shirts were deemed by the faculty as incendiary and that they would cause fights? If wearing the shirts had caused any fights you can bet that it would have been the students that walk around campus with the “Viva La Raza” and “brown pride” shirts that would have started it.

As for the students that said they were “offended” because the other students were wearing the shirts on “a Mexican holiday” I have news for you idiots. ITS NOT A MEXICAN HOLIDAY! Cinco de Mayo isn’t a holiday in Mexico dumb ass.

On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal’s office.

“They said we could wear it on any other day,” Daniel Galli said, “but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus.

“They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended,” Dominic Maciel, Galli’s friend, said.

The boys really had no choice, and went home to avoid suspension. They say they’re angry they were not allowed to express their American pride. Their parents are just as upset, calling what happened to their children, “total nonsense.”

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel’s mom, said. “All they were doing was displaying their patriotic nature. They’re expressing their individuality.”

But to many Mexican-American students at Live Oak, this was a big deal. They say they were offended by the five boys and others for wearing American colors on a Mexican holiday.

“I think they should apologize cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

As for an apology, the boys and their families say, “fat chance.”

“I’m not going to apologize. I did nothing wrong,” Galli said. “I went along with my normal day. I might have worn an American flag, but I’m an American and I’m proud to be an American.”

The five boys and their families met with a Morgan Hill Unified School District official Wednesday night. The district released a statement saying it does not agree with how Live Oak High School administrators handled this incident.

The boys will not be suspended and they were told they can go back to school Thursday. They may even wear their red, white, and blue colors again, but this time, the day after Cinco de Mayo, there will be no controversy.

We Never heard of Jordan Brown until Google ran the story.   He is accused of killing his father’s fiance.

On a chilly morning in February 2009, state police found 26-year-old Kenzie Houk in her bed with a bullet though her head. She was eight months pregnant.

The search for her killer ended with the most surprising murder suspect residents of Wampum, Pennsylvania, had ever seen: 11-year-old Jordan Brown, the son of the victim’s fiancé.

He is one of the youngest suspects in the country to be charged with homicide, legal experts say. There are two counts of homicide, one covering the fetus.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges in May.

In Pennsylvania, there is no lower limit for the age someone can be charged as an adult with criminal homicide. If convicted, Jordan, now 12, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The question of age is being raised in the Supreme Court this year where the practice of sentencing young people younger than 14 to life in prison without parole is being challenged.

After nearly a year of silence, Jordan’s family, friends and attorney are bringing attention to the case as more court hearings loom. They say Jordan is innocent and should be tried in juvenile court. This month, they will launch the Jordan Brown Trust Fund to raise money for his defense.

A decertification hearing, at which Jordan’s attorneys will ask the judge to move the case to the juvenile system, began this month. A decision on whether the case will be tried in the juvenile system or adult courts will likely be made in March, attorneys say.

The suspect’s father has not publicly discussed the case, and CNN has been unable to reach him for comment.

“Our first step is decertification, because we feel like he is amenable to juvenile rehabilitation,” said attorney Dennis Elisco of New Castle, Pennsylvania. “Not only do I know he’s amenable, but I know he’s innocent.”

In almost half the states across the country, children can be prosecuted and tried in adult court, according to the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Many of the laws passed were passed during a time when juvenile crime spiked in the 1980s and 1990s.

But sentencing experts say a majority of homicide cases involving children as young as Jordan are tried in juvenile courts, where the records remain sealed and sentences are less harsh.

At the time of the slaying, Jordan was a chubby fifth-grader with dark brown hair and an energetic smile. He liked riding bikes and reading Harry Potter books. Since the third grade, he played quarterback in his community’s football league.

Family and friends describe him as an “all-American boy.”

On weekends, Jordan hunted alongside his father, Chris Brown, who purchased the youth-sized 20-gauge shotgun state police believe was the murder weapon. The gun was given to Jordan as a present for Easter, and the boy’s lawyers say he only used it for hunting.

Jordan’s family friends say they never saw him exhibit any violent behavior. And he had no prior brushes with the law.

“He always got along with everybody, and he was always smiling,” said Lonnie McConahy, 43, a co-trustee of the Jordan Brown Trust Fund. “It was always ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, ma’am.’ ”

After his arrest, Jordan was placed in the Lawrence Country Jail, a facility for adults. But authorities transferred him to a juvenile center in March after his attorneys argued that the adult jail couldn’t accommodate an 11-year-old.

Most juveniles who enter the Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Detention Center come and go within a few weeks. But Jordan has spent a birthday and Christmas there. He missed a much-anticipated fifth-grade overnight field trip to Gettysburg and didn’t get to play his final year on the junior football league.

His attorneys say Jordan is still unable to grasp the magnitude of what is happening to him. He is doing well in counseling, his attorneys and family say.

Jordan’s detention facility locker holds his books and board games. His school friends and football teammates shower him with letters, cards and magazines.

He is showing signs of reaching puberty. He has grown several inches and has gained about 20 pounds. He’s starting to look like a teenager.

Although it is rare to charge someone so young as an adult in the United States, the prosecutor in the case says Pennsylvania law left him with little choice.

In the case of homicide, “my choice is either to charge him as an adult, or don’t charge him,” said John Bongivengo of the Lawrence County District Attorney’s Office. “Not charging him at all wasn’t feasible.”

It also is rare for an 11-year-old to commit a violent crime. In his 30-year analysis of juvenile homicides, Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox found about 500 cases of children younger than 11 who were suspected of murder.

Brain science has been central to the debate on whether juveniles should be punished as adults. It’s only in the past decade that there’s been any significant scientific research on the adolescent brain. .

Laurence Steinberg of Temple University explained why juveniles lack control.

“The teenage brain is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake,” wrote Steinberg, who is considered among the foremost experts in the field. “With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.”

The U.S. Supreme Court took into account the growing body of adolescent brain research in 2005 when it banned the death penalty for juveniles.

“For all of the reasons the Supreme Court has rejected imposing the death penalty on children and all the new brain research, those reasons are magnified when thinking about a child as young as 11,” said Marsha Levick, director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

Jordan’s defense argues that there are no witnesses to connect him to the crime, but prosecutors are relying on the statements of the victim’s oldest daughter, who was 7 at the time. She told authorities she heard a loud boom before leaving for school with Jordan.

That sound, prosecutors say, was the noise of a 20-gauge youth shotgun that state police believe is the weapon responsible for Houk’s slaying.

But Jordan’s attorneys say the witness, now 8, is unreliable because she didn’t say she heard a “boom” the first two times police interrogated her. It wasn’t until a third round of questioning that she told them about the noise.

The victim’s body was discovered by her youngest daughter, just 4.

Prosecutors allege there was tension between Jordan and Houk, who had moved into the father’s farmhouse. They say Jordan was jealous of Houk and her two daughters. The unborn child would have been a boy.

“There are no signs of forced entry,” Bongivengo added. “No signs of a robber or burglar.”  Jordan’s supporters deny any rivalry or bad feelings between the boy and his would-be stepmother.

Prosecutors also allege that there is strong physical evidence linking Jordan to the crime. Police found gunshot residue on Jordan’s shirt. A state trooper testified that the gun smelled like it had been freshly fired. His defense team argues that many of Jordan’s shirts and guns had residue because he frequently hunted with his father.

Also, police said they discovered a blanket covering the gun with a quarter-sized hole burned into it.

With outcome of the decertification hearing still months away, there is little consolation for the victims’ family.  The victim’s family wants Jordan to be charged as an adult for taking two lives, they say.

They remember Kenzie Houk as beautiful, friendly and popular. Family members say they miss attending weekly bingo nights, cooking dinner and watching Steelers games with her.

“She’d give her last penny to everyone,” said her mother, Debbie Houk. “She loved everyone and didn’t have a mean bone in her body.” Debbie Houk, said she never expected to be a mother again. But after her daughter was slain, she now cares for her grandchildren.

“The day Kenzie was murdered, the whole family was served with a life sentence,” she said. “There are a 4-year-old and 7-year-old who are serving life right now. They are never going to see their mom.”

This is a great headline from the BBC News in England. It was expected to see headlines like these. President Obama is as arrogant as they come. Like G.W. Bush before him, the man will not listen to his cabinet or his advisors. Obama seems to think he can walk about Washington like a king that has to answer to no one. This is the same thing that ruined G.W. Bush’ presidency.

One cannot imagine the powerful feeling a person must have when being elected to the highest office in the land. Its easy to see how it can make a person think that they are beholden to no one. But that is not how the U.S. Constitution works. The Constitution was written in such a way to hold elected officials accountable, and President Obama is no exception.

But like a little boy in a sand box fighting with the other kids over the pail and shovel, President Obama intends to press on with his agenda. Its as if Obama can’t see the forest through the trees. People are rejecting not just the Obama agenda, but the level of arrogance coming from the Obama administration. Just the same way they rejected G.W. Bush and his administration.

Meanwhile, the national media is trying to say that this was not about health care reform. They are right to a certain extent. I don’t think it was just about health care reform. I think its about the economy, its about the banking scandals, its about the Obama stimulus that the President himself knew was going to bonuses and not bailouts. Its about President Obama’s complacency in the middle east and for that matter all foreign affairs.

This is something that we have all seen before. It happened back in the early 1990’s to President Clinton. Watching what happened yesterday in Massachusetts was almost like watching history repeat itself. Bill and Hillary Clinton were having backroom meetings with lawyers and insurance industry leaders when they tried to pass health care reform. It blew up in their faces. In 1994 the democrats in the congress and senate suffered a stunning defeat. Democrats lost 56 seats in the house because of Clinton’s arrogance and ignorance of the people and their ire over health care.

Roy Sekoff, Chief idiot and editor of The Huffington Post called yesterdays election “A mild heart attack for democrats.” It was more like an 8.0 earthquake, and Sekoff is just another liberal in the media that is in the “denial phase” of the Brown victory. Sekoff is showing the level of contempt that liberals have for the democratic process with statements like this. Its as if Sekoff and the liberals think they have a God given right to govern.

Next will come the apologetic attitude from President Obama and his administration. Then the democrats in the congress and senate, especially the ones up for re-election in November, will suddenly start finding issues and concerns with the health care reform package that “will not allow them in good faith, to vote yes for such sweeping changes to the nations health care system” and they will gracefully bow out or abstain from voting all together.

When the dust settles, Obama will be left with an empty shell that was once his agenda for “change.” The people of America want change. They want to change the way Washington works. Instead of a government that simply takes the taxpayer for granted, they want a Washington that considers everyone and not just the poor. I don’t think that this is asking too much. JD

Polls across the board show Republican Scott Brown about to take the Massachusetts Senate seat that has been in the Kennedy clan since JFK. The Obama/Pelosi partnership is about to get scrambled, and the White House is looking to the Reagan presidency for guidance.

Reagan faced a similarly bleak economy, huge unemployment and a backlash against his economic program. He famously vowed to “stay the course” but suffered midterm losses and allowed some of his tax cuts to be rolled back.

The economy made a powerful recovery and Reagan was easily re-elected. But the Pelosi view of the Obama presidency as a chance for a liberal rebirth will be rethought. The “big bang” theory of trying to do as much as possible in the first year — when a president’s political capital is highest — is over. Democrats feel health reform took too long and diverted them from focusing on jobs. Reports from Massachusetts — the model for the national health bill — tell of a voter backlash against health reform and deficit spending. If Brown wins, it’s hard to see politically how Democrats muscle the health legislation through Congress, whatever their technical options.

Independents outnumber both parties and have swung recent elections to Republicans in Virginia, New Jersey and now apparently Massachusetts. Stanford University political scientist Morris Fiorina has argued that the electorate is not nearly as polarized as most people think. Independents are also notoriously fickle and lack the deep ideological commitments animating voters in both parties. Watch for a swing to the middle and a search for something like Clinton and Gingrich’s welfare reform. Republicans smelling blood will make that hard to pull off, but the administration shows signs of looking toward education policy as a place to start.

So this is what it all comes down to. The difference between becoming a socialist nation or holding on to the last few threads of freedom. A special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in the senate is where the battle has been fought, and the only real victims here are the Massachusetts voters.

President Obama made a cameo appearance yesterday, in an attempt to shore up support for the floundering Martha Coakley, who seems to have lost touch with the voters. As expected, Obama did exactly what he should not have done, blamed all the ills of American society on President Bush, saying that we would not be in this economic mess if it were not for the actions of the previous administration.

Apparently President Obama doesn’t realize that this is a global recession that had to happen because one country cannot survive in a global economy when all other countries are failing. The anointed one the decided to throw health care into the mix. This would be the health care reform that has the independent voters in Massachusetts going out to vote against Coakley in the first place.

This is something that most people don’t seem to understand. This health care plan is hugely unpopular, and as people become more aware of how intrusive the government will become in our day to day existence, the more we realize that this is not good for us.

Obama knows this. This is why he took the huge political risk of going to Massachusetts in the first place. Obama going to Massachusetts says it all really. It proves that passing health care is more important to Obama than the will of the American people, and come hell or high water, Obama needs health care reform to pass. The failure to do so will render Obama a lame duck president and Obama knows this.

The Obama administration has been taking a beating as of late. What with Obama’s inaction in Afghanistan (it took Obama six month to decide what to do there) and his constant blunders and foibles, it was only a matter of time before the media put ratings and web hits in front of their own socialist agenda. More important to even the liberal media is the almighty dollar, and keeping a job of course.

Now Obama is playing for all the marbles. The Massachusetts election to fill Ted Kennedy’s senate seat will be the defining moment of Obama’s presidency as well as the democrat party, because a Coakley defeat will be perceived by the media and more importantly the American voter as a rebuke of Obama and the democrat agenda. JD

We here at the BrokenCountry have a few questions for President Obama. How much of the taxpayers money is President Obama spending to go to Massachusetts and stump for Coakley? Is the tab being picked up by the Democratic National Committee? What other pressing issues is he ignoring to make sure that the democrats maintain a “super majority” in the senate? Why is this such an important issue to Obama?

These are just a few questions that I want asked and answered. I think this may be a first. I am probably wrong, because I am wrong quite frequently (but at least I can admit it) but I cannot remember a sitting president traveling to stump for a party candidate in a mid-term election.

It should also be noted that, should Coakley lose the race, it will look incredibly bad for President Obama. Obama is pulling out all the stops for Coakley, and if she doesn’t come up the winner in Massachusetts, a state where virtually every congressman sent to Washington is a democrat, it will be incredibly embarrassing and a virtual rebuke of Obama’s liberal agenda.

By going to Massachusetts, Obama is almost condemning the democrat party should Coakley lose. House and senate democrats will have no choice but to turn their back on Obama’s agenda if his presence cannot produce a victory for Coakley. Could it be that Obama is so egocentric that he thinks that his mere presence makes it a slam dunk for Coakley? Even after the Copenhagen, Olympic Games debacle?

One can only wonder. We see it as a republican victory even is Scott Borwn loses the election. Think about it. Here is the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. A seat not held by a republican since 1955, and there is a good chance that a republican is going to replace a Kennedy in one of the most liberal states in the union.

The liberal naysayers and Obamatrons will be out in force with either outcome of the election. If Coakley wins, the libs will call it a victory for Obama and his agenda. If Brown wins, they will say it was because of republicans running a smear campaign and spending millions of dollars in a state that they would normally ignore.

But not a word will be said about the expense of sending a sitting president, in Air Force One, with his three support aircraft, a second Air Force One as a decoy for the terrorists, three hundred people that make up the presidential detail, military escort including aircraft, and the press pool to Massachusetts to stump for a senate seat. JD

Many Massachusetts workers could face reduced medical benefits under a proposed tax in the US Senate’s health overhaul bill that is designed to pressure employers to offer less costly insurance coverage.

Dubbed a “Cadillac’’ tax because it was originally aimed at highly paid executives with premier health plans, the measure now looks more like a Ford or Hyundai tax, according to health care industry analysts. They say the penalty will eventually affect a wide spectrum of people with middle-class incomes but high-cost benefits, particularly in Massachusetts, where insurance premiums are the highest in the nation.

Under the Senate bill, employer health plans with premiums above $23,000 for families and $8,500 for individuals would be subject to a 40 percent surcharge on the portions exceeding those levels, starting in 2013. Labor leaders yesterday struck a deal with the White House to delay the tax’s impact on unions and increase the thresholds slightly. The compromise was seen as a way of moving the health bill forward.

Few employees in Massachusetts now have coverage that exceeds the proposed caps, but given the trajectory of health costs, a substantial number soon might. By one estimate, the tax could affect 34 percent of the state’s employers by 2016, compared with 24 percent nationally.

While the aim is to give employers an incentive to keep insurance costs down, critics fear the tax will reduce the quality of coverage for some workers. Analysts say companies will try to stay below the cap by increasing deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for employees, and through measures like dropping dental and vision coverage.

“You’re likely to reach Cadillac status pretty quickly’’ in Massachusetts, said Robert W. Seifert, a health overhaul specialist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Health Law and Economics in Charlestown. He said the goal of the measure is to encourage employers to keep costs down. But “The danger is that the incentive would be strong enough so that you’d solve your problem by pushing it to the individuals.’’

Linda J. Havlin, a partner at Mercer, a benefits consulting firm based in New York, said the tax emerged as a way to help pay for expanded health coverage across the country. “During the process of refining the reform provisions, the focus on executive medical plans seemed to disappear,’’ Havlin said. “Instead, the idea of taxing any ‘generous plan’ emerged.’’ It was Mercer that predicted one-third of the state would be affected by the tax by 2016.

But what the Senate bill deems “generous’’ may come as a surprise to many. According to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, the state’s second-largest insurer, some small businesses – like a beauty salon with a half-dozen employees – are already at the tax threshold, with a type of plan that costs the shop’s employees $25 to visit a doctor and $1,000 for a hospital stay. Other plans that require copayments but do not have large deductibles could soon fall into the “Cadillac’’ camp as well.

“This will drive people into less-rich consumer plans,’’ said Vin Capozzi, a senior vice president at Harvard Pilgrim, which, like many insurers, has lobbied against the tax. “The reality is, it will impact middle America, right smack in the middle class.’’

Donna Kelly-Williams, a maternity nurse at Cambridge Health Alliance and president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said a tax on premiums will not improve the nation’s health care system.

“The more you attack the coverage . . . of those of us that are currently insured, the bigger the problem,’’ Kelly-Williams said. “It turns out to be less health care for all of us.’’

Unions have been among the loudest critics of the proposal, saying it is unfair to workers who have traded larger paychecks for better insurance coverage. They prefer the House version of the bill, which imposes a tax on those earning more than $500,000 as a way to finance health overhaul – a measure that does not have Senate support. The two bills still must be reconciled by the House and Senate.

John Brouder, a partner with Boston Benefit Partners, a consulting and brokerage firm, said there is a misconception that a Cadillac plan means patients “get a $2,000 trip to the Mayo Clinic.’’ In fact, he said, many plans that offer fairly basic coverage happen to be expensive.

Last year the average plan in the state cost $14,327 for families and $5,731 for individuals, according to the UMass Medical School’s Center for Health Law and Economics. While average plans might not hit taxable thresholds until 2021, more expensive insurance could get there as early as 2016, according to the center’s projections. At Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, for instance, a family plan for employees already costs about $17,000.

Industry and geography play a big role in insurance rates. Insurers charge the highest prices for workers in health care and government, based on data showing those groups tend to use their health plans more than others do. And in places where health care providers are abundant, such as in Massachusetts, people tend to use medical services, driving up costs. In rural areas, with fewer people and providers, coverage can cost more because insurers have less leverage to negotiate prices.

Age is also a key component in setting rates. Companies with a higher percentage of older employees and more medical claims pay more than those with younger, healthier workers.

Coverage offered to the 1,000 members of the Plumbers and Gasfitters Local 12 in Massachusetts might not strike most people as extravagant, but it comes with a price tag of about $19,000. The HMO features $20 copayments for doctor visits and $50 copayments for trips to the emergency room. There are no deductibles, but no dental coverage, either. The plan also helps cover benefits for retirees and disabled people, something the union’s members might not be willing to do if costs keep rising.

Officials at the union local say that under the Senate bill its members could be punished simply for signing up for decent health insurance. Roger Gill, administrator for the union’s trust funds, said revamping the health care system should not mean taking away workers’ hard-earned benefits.

“There’s no question that it’s going to be easier to get to those thresholds in some of the higher-cost states,’’ said Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. If employers cannot negotiate better rates from insurers, he said, “Over time, more and more plans will be exposed to this Cadillac tax.’’