High School Drug Testing

My town is considering drug testing for students in sports and other "competitive" activities.

This study discusses such programs and demonstrating that there are good reasons to "just say no" to such drug testing. (This is an ACLU related Study -- see the link below for a Cato Institute study)

Some key points from the study:

QUOTE
• Drug testing is not effective in deterring drug use among
young people;

• Drug testing is expensive, taking away scarce dollars
from other, more effective programs that keep young
people out of trouble with drugs;

• Drug testing can be legally risky, exposing schools to
potentially costly litigation;

• Drug testing may drive students away from extracurricular
activities, which are a proven means of helping
students stay out of trouble with drugs;

• Drug testing can undermine trust between students and
teachers, and between parents and children;

• Drug testing does not effectively identify students who
have serious problems with drugs; and

• Drug testing may lead to unintended consequences, such
as students using drugs (like alcohol) that are more
dangerous but less detectable by a drug test.
END QUOTE

This study from the conservative Cato Institute has raised similar questions:

"In this paper, I explore the conditions under which the random drug testing of athletes will lead to the perverse outcome of increased student drug usage. As I will show below, the threat of this policy backfiring is not fanciful, but rather is quite real and should worry policymakers and others who are concerned with the high level of drug use among students. Civil liberties issues aside, the random drug testing of athletes may be a very risky policy innovation."

See also, in Salon magazine:

Why drug tests flunk

"If the Supreme Court rules in favor of drug testing in public schools, will students come clean? Kids at schools in Indiana, where drug tests rule, say no way.

"Apr 22, 2002 | According to the students at rural Rushville Consolidated High School, there are a dozen ways to pass a drug test. "


[On Edit - 5-13]
I've done more digging and found some "pro testing" websites:

There is, of course, debate as to whether these programs "work" and whether there are potential negative consequences. I'm digging in.....

http://www.preventionnotpunishment.org/pubs.html

This site appears to be linked to another site: http://www.ibhinc.org/ Which appears to be principally the work of Robert L. DuPont, M.D. -- bio at http://www.ibhinc.org/biorld.html

http://www.studentdrugtesting.org/index.htm

The Student Drug Testing Coalition web site reports that “The Coalition is a project of the Drug-Free Projects Coalition, Inc.”

I have not been able to find any information on the internet as to the Drug-Free Projects Coalition, Inc.

The Cost of "Free"

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

The Cost of “Free”

Rep. Pete Sessions, head of the House Republican committee tasked with electing more GOP members, has a unique theory as to why unemployment continues to rise: Obama wants to wipe out free enterprise.

Sessions told the Times that Obama's plan is to "diminish employment and diminish stock prices." By doing so, Obama "intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it" as part of a "divide and conquer" strategy to consolidate power.

(Remember, in the past, Sessions has argued that the Republican Party ought to emulate terrorists. The GOP, Sessions famously argued in February, ought to model its "insurgency" after the Taliban. "Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," he said.)

“Free enterprise” really took off in the second part of the1800's, with the industrial revolution. It worked so well that giant monopolies formed, the antithesis of free enterprise as described by Adam Smith. (Few know or remember: Adam Smith did not think much of corporations .)

So we, the people, came up with anti-trust laws, taking a bite out of the “free”

And just as one group of people organized to leverage the return on their assets, through stock companies, another group of people organized to leverage the return on their assets, through trade and labor unions. (They had a pretty tough go of it though, given relative political power.)

Another bite out of the "free."

Free enterprise led us into the Great Depression. So we came up with business and finance laws, taking another bite out of the “free.”

As industry grew, to maximize their profits and return for shareholders, which is what they were supposed to do, free enterprise got rid of their wastes as cheaply as possible, leading to widespread pollution.

So we, the people, came up with environmental laws in the 70's, taking another bite out of the “free.”

Capitalism and enterprise with restrictions (“sort-of-free enterprise”) have generated much wealth and, in many ways, a much better world.

Our latest experiment with easing the rules by which business is governed, “sort-of-freer enterprise,” the financial and economic meltdown of the first decade of the 21st century should have again shown us that “really-free enterprise” leads to pretty high costs for "free."

One essential part of our governance is the structure of checks and balances. The need to restrict the freedom of the executive, of the judicial and of the legislative is understood by all and is seen as a response to human imperfections.

Free commerce, without checks and balances simply hasn't worked well over our history.

Cries for "free enterprise" are simply denial of this basic human truth.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Whistling Past The Graveyard Department:

Sunday, 5/10/09, on ABC's This Week, John McCain expressed his view that the problem for Republicans was not that Americans had rejected their right-wing policy ideas, but that they had not communicated those policy ideas well enough in the recent past.


Okay. If that's what you need to think...., I'm all for ya.....

It's Gotta Be Tough

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

I have been aware for awhile that it’s got to be tough to be a Republican these days.

The moderate Republicans have been eschewed and discarded by their more passionate “compatriots” to their right; the right wing shoved its ideology down the American throat only to have it (semi) promptly regurgitated -- in public.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has pinned the tail on the elephant: he says the GOP is at risk of becoming "irrelevant as the Whigs;” that the GOP would only further decline in influence should it "alienate social conservatives."

The social conservatives are, to a large extent, incapable of accepting other views and they are repelled by the idea of associating with others with mildly differing values.

Remember, to a large extent, these are the folks who think a retail store which doesn't include “Merry Christmas” in its winter season greeting is attacking, literally attacking Christianity.

Asking them to accept difference views is, in their minds, attacking them and thus alienating them.

In an interview with the California newspaper The Visalia Times-Delta, Huckabee "Throw the social conservatives the pro-life, pro-family people overboard and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs."

As some have noted in another area of societal battle: “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without them.”

The Importance of Being Spicy

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

The Importance of Being Spicy


Referring to the left's reaction to the right wing fascination with Obama using an style of mustard based on a French recipe, another recent arrival in the blog world,William A. Jacobson, noted:

"Dijongate was a metaphor for the larger issue of media bias which helped Obama get elected...."

Which would be a wonderful observation if it made any sense. I was an English major, I know metaphor when I see metaphor, and Professor Jacobson, that tweren't no metaphor.

But, to give credit where it might possibly be due, apparently, he is a "the-media-is-liberalista" and found significance that one channel edited out the end of President Obama's sentence where he specified spicy or Dijon style mustard as yet another proof of the liberal bias of the media:
Published here

Not alone in his condiment-phobia among conservative commentators, he then felt it, ah, thrilling? that their concern with Obama's mustard choice was mentioned by several "nutroots:"

"Check out the links to the original post, and you will see that many of the high profile nutroots blogs have linked. If you check out the links and comments, you will see that the full foul-mouthed, abusive intellect of the nutroots has been brought to bear.

[Query: is referring to people with other views as "nutroots" an example of either foul-mouthed or abusive intellect? I'd say no-- rather, use of such a descriptor is evidence of a lack of intellect, as the word is commonly used. Or, as we used to say in Torts class: "res ipsa loquitur."]

"So I kept updating the story, with further links to Obama's choice of condiment, in part as a reaction to the reaction. Which has driven some people even crazier. Now the story has gone national, being picked up by the Washington Post blog.

"What gives here? Why the out-sized reaction? If this is a non-story, why is the left obsessed with it?

Published here

Perhaps some on the left are obsessed - there are "nutroots" on both sides of the aisle.

For me: I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with his blog.

I mention it for two reasons: First, maybe I can get a mention on his site and build my hits. Economic self-interest, you know.

And second, I am in favor not only of highlighting idiocy on the right, but in actively encouraging it and promoting its day in the sunshine. I hope you hit the evening news.

You go, boy, er, Professor - keep showing the world the thinking processes of today's right wing intellectuals. The conservative branch of the Republican Party is in search of new ideas*, and the president's mustard choice is just about the best you guys have come up with.

I suspect you couldn't do more for liberalism in the US if you tried.

========================
Footnote:
*A wonderful, but apparently wholly unconscious admission that today's conservative ideology now has less vitality than Enron and Chrysler combined: by definition conservatives revere and want to reinstate the past.

The very fact that they are seeking "new ideas" demonstrates that their Holy Grail of life -the good old days - has come a cropper.

How we miss conservatives who had something to say. There are still some, but even they are drowned out by the prevailing loud voices in Lambaughstan.

National Day of Prayer in the White House

If you're going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind.....

National Day of Prayer

Should the National Day of Prayer be highlighted by a public White House event?

Not according to experts:

Matthew 6:5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

Listening, Learning & Teaching

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!


Rush Limbaugh May, 2009: “We do not need a listening tour. We need a teaching tour. That is what the Republican Party , or slash, the conservative movement needs to focus on. Listening tour ain’t it.”

Membership in the Republican Party is dropping - down to 21% according to recent news reports.

Republicans lost electoral ground in 2006 and even more in 2008.

And Rush believes that “they” don’t have to listen, they have to teach.


OK. As a Democrat with primarily progressive beliefs, I hope Rush’s view prevails within the remaining faithful still residing in Limbaughstan.

I wish them the best of luck with that battle cry.

Because I believe the American people have been listening to the conservative teachings over the past decades and have learned that the extreme views of today's "conservatives" don’t work.

(I believe there are thoughtful, reasoned conservatives and " we" can and should give their views consideration, and that we can learn from those who are reasoned and thoughtful. If nothing else, to find common ground and areas where we can all compromise and "hang together.")

And, I believe that if you’re going to pursue truth, you have to be willing to change your mind.

That, to able to change your mind, you have to be willing to learn and listen

I.e. you have to understand that learning never stops.

Judicial Activism ('4 of 3')

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

Our Activist Judiciary = Checks and Balances (Part 4 - See Parts 1-3 below)

In a NYTimes analysis in 2005, Professor Paul Gewirtz and Yale Law graduate Chad Golder gave an interesting set of facts on “judicial activism.”


They define judicial activism in terms of overruling Congressional acts on grounds of unconstitutionality: “Declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional is the boldest thing a judge can do. That's because Congress, as an elected legislative body representing the entire nation, makes decisions that can be presumed to possess a high degree of democratic legitimacy. In an 1867 decision, the Supreme Court itself described striking down Congressional legislation as an act ‘of great delicacy, and only to be performed where the repugnancy is clear.’”

So, who are the “activist” judges?

From 1994 to 2005, in cases challenging constitutionality, the each of the justices voted to rule a congressional act at this rate:

Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O’Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %

So, the “conservative justices are generally the “activist judges.”

So much for conservative attacks on “judicial activism.”

Following, an historic look at judicial activism from the perspective of “judges making law.”

(Some call this “legislating from the bench”, but that’s a simply a misuse of language in an attempt to backdoor a constitutional argument: that Congress has the sole right to legislate and so courts shouldn’t. Judge made law is simply the creation of common law - which has been at the core of our legal system since long before the adoption of the Constitution -- dating back to pre-colonial England.)