wisconsin

Chris Knight's avatar

The inmates of a prison in Wisconsin have so far failed to mount a successful legal challenge against their being banned from playing Dungeons & Dragons. According to the article, the staff of the prison deemed Dungeons & Dragons inappropriate because “one player is denoted the Dungeon Master… [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players… [which] mimics the organization of a gang.”

Seems pretty silly to me. The prison banning Dungeons & Dragons, that is. I just can’t see how a game like this is going to encourage gang activity. If anything, Dungeons & Dragons might be quite a productive use of the inmates’ free time, since it constantly engages skills such as creative thought and mathematics.

Or maybe the guards are simply afraid that the prisoners are going to use Dungeons & Dragons as a “gateway” to some legit black magick!

Worth noting again that Gary ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Betsy Ramsdale of Wisconsin apparently likes guns. Nothing wrong with that. And she likes them so much that she posted a picture of herself aiming a rifle on her Facebook page. Nothing wrong with that either: it’s her own account, she gets to do with it on her own time whatever she likes and if Facebook doesn’t think it violates the terms of service, nobody else should hassle her about it.

Except that Betsy Ramsdale is also a teacher employed by what is all too often the modern monstrosity of public education. And when officials at Beaver Dam Middle School were “alerted” to the photo, they immediately placed Ramsdale on administrative leave.

So what it all comes down to is that Betsy Ramsdale is being punished for practicing her freedom of speech and right to privacy, by her implied advocacy of the Second Amendment. That’s a heckuva civics lesson ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Wasn’t there an episode of King of the Hill about this?

An elementary school in Wisconsin is under fire by a Christian radio network – the head of which seems to have nothing better to do with his time – because it hosted an event that encouraged students to dress as members of the opposite gender.

As part of Wacky Week at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg, students were encouraged to dress as either senior citizens or members of the opposite sex. Which was all good and fine… until some busybody told the Voice of Christian Youth America about it. The radio network’s director and host of nationally-syndicated show “Crosstalk” Jim Schneider promptly took to grandstanding. He said that “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

And the death toll might be 7, if another hospitalized victim loses the fight for his life.

Here’s one story that I’ve found so far about Tyler Peterson, a 20-year old off-duty sheriff’s deputy in Wisconsin who, overcome with anger after an argument with his girlfriend, stormed her house with a gun and opened fire on ten teenagers, who were having a party with movies and pizza. At least seven were hit, with six dead including Peterson’s girlfriend.

I’m hearing some reports that in spite of his age, Peterson was already a member of the sheriff’s department’s SWAT team. Which if true would add an even worse angle to this story. Nobody that young and inexperienced needs to be put into the situation of being a SWAT member. Personally, I think that SWAT teams are something that lend themselves toward tremendous abuse anyway: the trend is that we see these ...

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