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Hunt

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Everything posted by Hunt

  1. Take another look at the Seventh Circuit's opinion: http://www.bsalegal.org/downloads/Seventh%20Circuit%20opinion%2005-3451.pdf. Look at page 16, where it says: "Even assuming that it is correct to characterize the BSA as a 'religious' organization, this statute is for the purpose of assisting the military in persuading a new generation to join its ranks and in building good will. This is a secular and valid purpose." Despite the fact that they end up deciding on standing grounds, the opinion nevertheless trashes every other argument ACLU (and the district court) made. I would also add that
  2. I just read the ACLU's brief to the Seventh Circuit (http://www.aclu-il.org/news/archives/winkler.pdf), and they had a problem when talking about the expenditures. To get the relief they wanted (having the Jamboree Act declared unconstitutional), they had to argue that all or the vast majority of the expenditures had no military purpose. Although they pointed out some specific expenditures (including the cookie dough), their real argument was that the whole thing lacked a military purpose. This part of the brief, however, is extremely weak. It's certainly inadequate to counter the military
  3. "For the record, the scout did not show any sign of remorse, regret, contrition or repentance. His attitude was "hey, stuff happens." In fact, he was proud of the fact that he was living the baby's mother with and "supporting my child" (as much as you can with a part-time minimum wage). He was an "avowed" fornicator, and proud of it." What if he had said the following: "I really regret what happened, and I truly wish we had waited until we got married. I also wish we had been more careful. But I didn't think it was right to ask her to get an abortion, or to give up her baby, I'm living
  4. Sometimes there's a problem if the first couple of events are (or seem) too challenging for new scouts. For example, if the first outing is a backpacker or a canoe trip, Mom may not want the new boy to go. The campout at the church sounds like a good beginning event. My son's troop generally has an "advancement" campout (car camping) when there are a number of new scouts.
  5. "What culture can possibly think it is ok to for a 17 year old boy and girl to make a child without being married?" After thinking this over, I would agree to your proposed rule, as long as we first ask all adult Scouters if any of them have ever had sexual relations outside of marriage, and expel all the ones who admit to having done so. Then those who are left can begin casting stones at the boys.
  6. "Develop a more attractive program and those non-attending boys will suddenly chose Scouts over some boring baseball game, band practice, or video game." I think there are (at least) two kinds of boys that show this problem, and the statement above applies strongly to one group, but not so much the other. The first group are what you might call "slacker" kids who need motivation to do much beyond playing video games--to get them to attend, you need an exciting program, and you probably also need to have the PL call them before every meeting to remind them to show up. You hope that a kid
  7. "Small, floundering units should be routinely shutdown by their Council." I think these units should be encouraged and assisted to merge with other units--the emphasis should be changed from the number of units to the strength of units. This change alone would enhance the Scouting experience for large numbers of boys.
  8. It seems to me that in trying to get a good read on an issue like this, you should ask who is most likely to have an opinion worth listening to. It's probably not a politician or pundit of any stripe. It's probably a scientist who studies the climate. The inescapable fact is that the overwhelming majority of such climate scientists believe that climate change is a serious problem and that human activities are a major cause. There are a few scientists who disagree, as there generally are with any broad scientific consensus. Personally, I don't have any basis for thinking that I know better
  9. "Unfortunately, in a case like this, you can't "undo" the deed and make it go away." That's true of all immoral acts, and everybody has committed his share. To me, there are only two elements of this one that make it different: (1) the results of the act are apparent to everybody, and (2) at least arguably, immoral behavior is continuing. To me, the first of these is not that important. Thus, for example, I make no moral distinction between a person who is arrested for driving drunk and a person who drives drunk and kills somebody. The sin is the same; the consequences are tragical
  10. I never meant to suggest that a First Amendment violation is petty. Rather, I meant to say that people who perseverate about a minor detail in a much broader context appear petty to most reasonable observers. But people with extreme views can't seem to understand how they undermine their own credibility by focusing on those details and not the big picture. People like that are never satisfied, even if they get the vast majority of what they want.
  11. "I also don't know why folks think that a trip to the Doctor for Suzy would make it all better and Johnny could still get his Eagle. That is the furthest thing from my mind." Unless you plan to ask every Eagle candidate whether he has impregnated anybody, this will be the effect. I guarantee you that pregnancies that end in abortions will often not be common knowledge.
  12. "Hunt, the amount isn't relevant; it was cited as one example of military spending that was unrelated to military readiness. You seem to think that constitutional violations that are small enough are somehow OK." Don't put words in my mouth. What I said, and what I meant, is that if there were small improper expenditures, that would not require the entire event to be prohibited. Furthermore, what I said and meant, which you just don't seem to get, is that in the context of $8,000,000 of appropriate expenditures, an improper expenditure of $6,000 is insignificant. That doesn't make the
  13. "We are constantly asking our POR people questions as to how things are going. This is not a nice little fire-side chat, it is a flat out question relative to their POR." It seems to me that this approach, along with the idea that the boy is "in trouble" if his answers are "not acceptable," reflects too much adult involvement in the operation of boy leadership. I don't understand, for example, why an adult leader would be asking the QM where the dutch oven is. Perhaps I don't really understand the context.
  14. "So I finished reading the e-mail from a Star Scout Mom that started "**** has completed his six months of service its time to arrange for a Board of Review...." Third, she copied the whole troop, second, if I'm not mistaken there is the question of a Scoutmasters Conference, and FIRST... why isn't her son making this request! He is the Senior Patrol Leader, is suposed to set the weekly agenda and does routinely ask if anyone needs a SM confernce or BoR." Respond: "It's great that Johnny is progressing so well! He can talk to the SM about scheduling." Repeat as necessary.
  15. "Well Hunt, you don't seem to understand what a "not-exhaustive" list is; just for future reference, the ACLU lawsuit didn't attempt to list every improper expenditure, just a few typical examples." I understand what a "not-exhaustive" list is, but I also understand that if the example you choose to emphasize is only $6,000 out of $8,000,000, the whole list probably doesn't amount to much. Do you know what the total cost of consumable items like cookie dough was? I guess the plaintiffs' lawyers thought that people would be outraged tht our military was giving cookie dough to the Boy Sc
  16. Of course principles are important, but if the only improper expenditure out of $8,000,000 is $6,000 for cookie dough, it's such a small detail that it's certainly not worth all the legal machinery. But the plaintiffs don't really care about the cookie dough per se--that's just a colorful example they used to try to get the courts to rule that all the DOD expenditures were improper--and it's clear that this argument is a failure, because DOD made a strong argument that they had good reasons to support the Jamboree. Note that it's not just training and readiness, but also PR and recruiting th
  17. "Part of the lawsuit against the DoD cited expenditures that obviously only benefited the boy scouts without any sort of "training" rationale, like $5000 worth of cookie dough." Even if it were true that providing the cookie dough only benefits BSA (which is debatable), it still wouldn't mean that the overall support of the Jamboree was unlawful. In fact, DOD policy requires that any expenditures must not solely benefit BSA. DOD's brief does a good job of defending $8,000,000 of expenditures on the basis of training, PR, and dual-use improvements to Fort A.P. Hill. I think BSA would gl
  18. The question of whether BSA is a "religious organization" is not really relevant, since everyone recognizes that BSA imposes a religious requirement for membership. This is something that a government entity cannot do, and thus, a unit owned by a government entity cannot legally do this. It's really that simple.
  19. "The BSA is a private youth group that has religious requirements for membership." That's right, Ed, and that's why a public school can't sponsor a BSA unit. "My question on SSScout's hypothetical open membership policy: would that be sufficient? Anyone could be a member, but it's still a religious organization. Would that meet the non-discrimination requirements of govenment organizations?" Again, you have to be clear what you're talking about. If you're talking about actually having the government organization charter and own the unit, I think the answer would still be no, b
  20. "BSA is a private group, BSA can decide who joins, who doesn't. Schools can have clubs like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Gay, BI Straight Homo alliance groups, chess club, glee club, band, baseball teams, Spanish club, German club, etc. It now seems the only club schools can't have is BSA units." I wish you guys would stop arguing with Merlyn about something he's actually right about. A public school simply cannot sponsor an organization that discriminates in its membership based on religious belief. It can, however, ALLOW such a group to meet on school grounds, and it MUST do s
  21. It's my observation that on average, mothers are more protective of their children, fearful of risks, concerned about eating properly, concerned about cleanliness, etc. In fact, I would say that the averages are strongly skewed in this direction. As a result, it is not really unreasonable for boys to have an expectation that a mom on a campout will exhibit these kinds of concerns. However, it's also my observation that a mother who doesn't fit this stereotype will be accepted and respected by the boys--and that a dad who is too overprotective will be criticized.
  22. Well, it's a non-sectarian religious organization. But my point is: What will Justice Scalia say it is?
  23. I don't know about other places, but I notice that my kids have much more homework than I ever did--it has a real impact on the amount of time they have for other activities. Plus, kids around here (including mine) tend to have a lot of scheduled activities, like music lessons. I think you can add that to the factors that others have mentioned, like more electronic entertainment at home and a reluctance to allow kids much freedome of movement.
  24. "And three judges of the 7th circuit are not the same as the supreme court, so they can hardly preview what the supreme court "would" do." So maybe the plaintiffs will roll the dice. If they do, they shouldn't complain if the current Supreme Court does some wide-ranging thinking on just how beneficial Scouting is to various government operations, and just how non-sectarian BSA is, etc. Be careful what you ask for.
  25. I would just like to add that if you approach the dad to discuss this, you should use discretion and not do so where others can hear--especially boys. There may be a reason for this sleeping arrangement that they prefer not to broadcast, such as bedwetting or a health issue that they prefer to keep private.
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