Congress is not permitted to reduce the power of the unitary executive to waterboard our children. After all, what if we need to get information out of them? Lots of kids are on the terrorist watchlist.

Watching Congress is not for the faint of heart.

Or good for the stomach. Nauseating..

What?!? Bobby Bright voted for it? That must be a typo. Alabama's going to accuse him of being soft. This is a state where teachers duct tape children to their chairs - and is damn proud of it.

All the trouble in the schools nowadays is because they stopped beating the kids, dontchaknow. That and they started learning the evolution instead of the Ten Commandments.

I wouldn't even chalk this up to Anti-Statism. The Tea Party types, in my experience, correlate strongly with the types who believe corporal punishment is a social cure-all.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the most common mistake coastal liberals make about the American Right-Wing is that they don't have the slightest idea how much these people appreciate violence for its own sake.

I was so proud to see that my representative in the People's House, John Shimkus, bravely voted against this unwarranted and probably socialist intrusion on states' rights.

What a tool.

Unfortunately, my congresscritter is LaTourette; as a former prosecutor, he should have been wholly in favor of this legislation.

But no-ooo, he puts the will of the GOP caucus ahead of Ohio's children.

Let the Dresdenization of this child-endangering fool-of-a-GOPer begin....

I suspect that a Bill of Gravity- the necessary precursor to the Law of Gravity- would have a hard time making it through this Congress unscathed.

-Z

The mistake was in not getting Sarah Palin's endorsement. Then only an act of Limaugh (or a positive word from the President) would have prevented it from getting Republican support.

At this point, if congress tried to pass a national holiday for Ronald Raygun, and President Obama voiced support for it, Republicans would object and filibuster because Reagan was a tax and spend liberal.

All true libertarians know that the only roles that governments, above the county level, should be allowed is to provide for the national defense and to provide for our system of roads.

Any true libertarian will tell you that there should be NO role for state or federal government in education. As such, this horrible piece of legislation will prevent us from correctly and fully addressing the educational needs of our communities.

Again, this socialist pretend president and his lackies in the democrat party are interfering in our rights as American citizens. It is our right to beat our retards and the other social misfits that we are forced to pretend to provide an education for!

Can someone tell me, does this bill mean that a teacher cannot send a disruptive child out of the classroom to sit by himself or herself and cool off by themselves in some kind of time out?

I may be reading this wrong, but it seems like a bit of micromanaging of school discipline, if that is what it does. Can someone clarify?

This takes away the power to detain, torment and/or beat the gay student or the sexually active student. Of course the crazy christian party members voted against it.

Wow, way to go, Bobby Bright!!

Signed,
Your one blue constituent

as a teacher who works with children with moderate cognitive disabilities (TMH) - including some with some pretty severe emotional and behavioral disturbances - i can just say one thing: in. fucking. credible.

candide: As defined in the bill, "seclusion" refers to locked isolation and does not include time outs.

Well, there it is then---this legislation would prohibit the evil man-child (Dick Cheney) from hiding in one of his man-sized safes.

@Winkandanod 12:51 PM:
How about if it were renamed the Sarah & Trig Palin Protection Act? It could have an amendment declaring the use of the word, Retard, and all its diratives, a crime. The penalty would be listening to multiple hours of Rush Limbaugh's retard parodies.
Just a thought!

Liberal though I am, this does seem to me to be (1) micromanaging and (2) an intrusion into matters best left to the states. Is there a national epidemic of inappropriate physical restraint of children and is there a reason why state remedies are inadequate? This sounds like a "feel good" piece of legislation that is designed to appease certain interest groups or influential people.

I really hate to say this (and I don't think I've ever said it before), but I think I'm with the Republicans on this one, absent some compelling reason for Federal intervention in this issue.

Where were these dickweeds when No Child Left Behind was being forced down our standardized throats? Even the proponents of NCLB now admit it was a catastrophe!

[It's been obvious all along that NCLB is a bullshit education policy. Unfortunately, it seems that the only people with credibility on the issue are former conservative policy makers who have finally seen the error of their ways.]

Watched some of it yesterday on C-Span, and as a former teacher, I was absolutely disgusted. That so many Republicans (and a handful of Dems) feel that it is fine to sanction schools to use solitary confinement, depriving even young and physically disabled and emotionally disturbed children of water, food, and access to the rest rooms is outrageous! Failing to promptly and properly notify parents seemed okay as well. It seems clear to me that there are racial overtones to this bill. There's a reason that corporal punishment is alive and well in the South. To the Virginia Foxxes (a former English teacher) of this world constraining scary, threatening wild animals is perfectly acceptable. After all, blond, blue-eyed white kids from good Christian families in NC are either home schooled or attend private schools. .

Perlmutter? really? WTF?

So, let me get this straight: issues of school safety are best left to states and localities but issues of teacher and student performance are strictly enforced by the feds through NCLB.

Am I missing something? Ahh, yes, of course. Most teachers are union members and union members MUST be controlled by Republicans in Washington.

Is there a national epidemic of inappropriate physical restraint of children and is there a reason why state remedies are inadequate? -DRF

Yes. Mostly red states. There was a study done on punishment in schools last year that found that southern states disproportionally use corporal punishment, including retraints and solitary confinement as well as spankings with or without instruments, and found that number of incidents per child increase when narrowed specifically to learning disabled students.

The states were given an oportunity and they failed. I applaud the federal government for standing up here, especially for those who could not stand up for themselves.

NCLB is great if you make money making tests and generating reams of trivial data.

The massive effort of NCLB can be revealed as a sham when you look at who makes the tests (friends of George).

Education reform will not happen at the State level.

Education reform will happen when we spend our dollars on instruction and technology and less on standardized tests that profit a few.

I listened to this one on CSPAN. The opponents (and not all Republicans were opposed) thought this an unwarranted intrusion into state responsibilities in violation of the Tenth Amendment, and further that Congress had not collected enough empirical data to demonstrate this was an issue showing a Federal interest, especially as regards to private (particularly religious) schools.

Proponents pointed out cases of adult teachers sitting on seven year old kids until they sufficated TO DEATH.

Not to mention the fact that states like California collect data, BUT DO NOTHING WITH IT.

There is nothing more disgusting than listening to Representative Fox of NC telling us that yes we want to protect children but no, she won't vote to do it.

My understanding from listening is the law is to collect data on these incidents, tell schools what they can do to control children, require only trained personnel do the controlling, and let parents know that their children have been/are being controlled with these methods.

Hardly Federal overreach.

Well I also work in a school filled with kids with severe disabilities, like so severe they have been taken out of their schools for it and placed with us. I understand that there is a lot of abuse and I like that this is dealing with that but there need to be some more exceptions (which I assume there aren't, I haven't read the bill except for the quick excerpt that steve gave.) Crapping in their pants and then throwing it at you? Running and trying to pee on you? Completely destroying a classroom including pulling down clocks, boards, dumping garbage cans, and clearing off all desks? Throwing soda, water and various liquids at you? Pulling multiple fire alarms? Ripping down a water fountain? All not a immediate danger to them or others but all things that I would hope I would be able to move them to an area where they would not be able to do these things without breaking the law.

someone, everything you just mentioned falls into the category of presenting an immediate danger to self or others. Why not read the bill or a summary before saying "There needs to be some exceptions and I assume there aren't"? You could have skimmed a summary in less time than you spent writing this post.