Seems the Supermax Prison in Colorado seems to be dominating the headlines these days.  Richard Reid,

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also known as the Shoe-Bomber, was convicted in 2003 of trying to detonate a bomb on an American Airlines scheduled to land in Miami.  Because of a weeks-long hunger strike, prison officials have now decided medical intervention was required to prevent him from killing himself.  He is reported to still be on his hunger strike, despite being intravenously fed and hydrated.

He filed a federal lawsuit that claimed he wasn’t allowed to follow his Sunni Muslim faith since being in custody.  Despite requests from the prison for the judge to dismiss the suit, a US District judge has refused to do so.  He’s currently in the prison’s medical wing and will likely remain there until he abandons his hunger strike, if he ever does.

Reid isn’t the only notorious prisoner who’s in the prison’s custody and making headlines.

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was convicted of crime in 1996 after having been the target of a 15-plus year manhunt.  He sent 16 bombs, killed three people and injured 23.  He’s now going to court in an attempt to prevent his personal diaries from being auctioned.  He’s already lost one court battle, but it’s now up the Supreme Court to decide the fate of these documents, should he decide to appeal.  If he does choose to appeal, he only has until Monday to do so.  If he loses there, his diaries will be auctioned and all of the proceeds will go to his victims.  It’s said there are close to 40,000 pages that he handwrote over the years.  Along with the diaries, the hoodie jacket and sunglasses that were drawn in the now-familiar sketch that was used in a worldwide distribution in an effort to locate him before his capture are also expected to be sold.  Creepy as it sounds, you can be sure there are many who would pay a pretty penny to own these things.

Surely there are ulterior motives behind their motives.  Reid is likely doing his best to further his cause with his hunger strike and for all anyone knows, there’s some hidden message in every move he makes that some extremist is deciphering.  Kaczynski is probably less likely concerned with who sees his personal thoughts before his capture and is more upset with where the money from this sale will go, or rather where it won’t go.  Either way, neither of these two will ever see the light of day as free men.

Are classrooms across the country so lacking in subject matter that they must now resort to how-to guides for designing and implementing an act of terrorism?  It looks that way for a school in Colorado.  One hundred middle school students were given an assignment that required them to develop an act of terrorism and how each of them would go about implementing it in this country.  They were allowed two minutes to develop it in their minds.  There are countless parents who are not only angry, but are disgusted and sickened by this

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assignment.  The teacher’s credibility is being questioned too, especially since he/she can’t come up with any kind of a response to the many questions being asked.  The teacher does say it was just an exercise meant to illustrate terrorism by a foreign country on American soil.  Most will agree it has been illustrated enough over the past several years.

The school superintendent isn’t helping matters either and insists the students must have misunderstood the assignment.  That’s not likely since there are over 100 kids relaying the same story - anyone who’s ever had teenagers knows how impossible it is to get two teens to agree on anything, much less 100-plus.  He explains the assignment must have been misunderstood because had any student actually illustrated such an act, it would have resulted in immediate expulsion.  This redefines a vicious cycle.

Anything related to this project that was memorialized on paper has been destroyed.  Still, it’s not like the blackboards we remember from school - you can’t erase this.  With the end of the school year nearing, this will most likely go down as a poor choice of assignments and will be forgotten as soon as the kids barrel through their school doors for the last time this year.

There are questions that still linger, however.  This couldn’t have been part of curriculum and if it was, a major revamping effort is overdue.  There’s very little, if any, educational benefit from assigning this project and certainly not within the 120 seconds each student was allotted.

I’m sure most of these parents believe there was a better way to close out the school year than this.  It was in poor taste with no obvious benefits.

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Now that the newest president of the United States has been decided, we can once again watch national news channels without those frustrating three-tier tickers dancing across the bottoms of our screens and the familiar red and blue banners with up to the minute projections of the latest polls. Still, last night proved to be less than the brouhaha we might have expected. And that’s not a bad thing.

You might be interested to learn some of the propositions and decisions citizens made on state levels. I didn’t realize there were so many controversial initiatives and the combinations of what passed and what didn’t pass make for an image of what might be best described as “fickle”. Chalk it up to human nature.

Arkansas residents voted to ban single people from becoming foster parents, as well as shooting down any hope for singles to adopt. Not sure about this one. With the national foster care system desperate for safe environments to place foster children, it seems as though the losers in this decision will be the little ones who are desperate for some kind of normalcy and the undivided attention kids need.

Remember my post a couple weeks ago regarding the couple who disagreed on the fate of several embryos since their divorce? Well, in Michigan, voters decided to allow donated embryos that wouldn’t be implanted to be made available for stem cell research, provided the owners or donors (depending on how you define “embryo”) allowed the release. The initiative, better known as Proposal 2, doesn’t affect the illegality of human cloning.

Speaking of previous posts, read here for a recent post on assisted suicide. In Washington state, voters have decided to become one of only two states that allow terminally ill people to seek physician assisted suicides with no legal repercussions. Those wishing to end their lives must be declared competent with the probability of only six months or less before they would succumb to their diseases.

California’s initiative on gay marriage was not approved, along with Arizona and Florida’s own initiatives not passing either. It’s been suggested any same sex marriages that were performed in the window of a few months that the Supreme Court made it legal in California will not be deemed unlawful.

Another California proposal that was rejected was one regarding prostitution. Those in San Francisco who wanted it legalized insisted it would have saved tax dollars that are now used to arrest prostitutes and their clients and the other costs associated with these arrests.

And yet another California bill was regarding abortions. Voters decided to not require a minor’s parents be notified prior to performing an abortion. This rejection also applies to a two day waiting period for minors.

In Colorado, voters decided human life didn’t begin at conception; thereby ensuring abortions will remain legal. Not only that, but there were concerns that if this bill passed, it might lead the way for solid arguments against certain birth control methods. Again, another post can be read here.

Whether we agree or vehemently disagree with those chosen to run the country the next four years or any state-level decisions made during yesterday’s elections, one thing is clear - the 2008 election is finally behind us. And now we look forward to holidays that, if your family is like mine, will include way too much food and way too little time spent with family. By the time the Thanksgiving turkey is carved, the past few days will be a distant memory as we anticipate the results of our choices.