Samson's Jawbone

Last week the Hamilton County Indiana school district where I substitute teach banned unimmunized students from several of their schools  and related activities. In response to the recent measles outbreaks in Indiana and other states the students are effectively quarantined, even though they had not been exposed to any illness, nor had they exposed others. While the state allows parents to decline immunization for religious or personal reasons, recent outbreaks of measles in the state and California have caused some to insist that parents who chose that options for their children should be denied access to public schools; in other words, separate them from the rest of us. Quarantine them! Quarantines are usually imposed on those who have been exposed, not on those who are at risk for exposure. In the last 50 years courts have usually ruled quarantines illegal. Banning children who are legally unvaccinated from the classroom is an unconstitutional denial of their civil liberti...

Many of us who live in Greater Binghamton New York, myself included, are still shocked by the mass shooting at the American Civic Association downtown. People outside of this city do not know its history: a century ago the slogan of many immigrants coming into Ellis Island was, "which way E.J." It was the only English phrase many immigrants had learned on their pilgrimage to the American dream. They were asking where they could go to find Endicott-Johnson Corporation, a shoe factory in our town. Binghamton has a legacy of welcoming and assimilating immigrants. Although they might not have specifically heard of Binghamton,and the town may not have have been their destination, the town is a symbol of the hope of America's huddled masses. What went so terribly wrong, then, last Friday, that one of those immigrants lashed out at his fellow immigrants and his new country, then took his life, and why have shootings become all to common across America? Some will no doubt ...