Appleton Wisconsin is a small city, about half an hour South of Green Bay, almost two hours North of Milwaukee. It is a relatively peaceful community in the Fox River Valley. So, it was unusual to have a case of felony property fraud in Winnebago County, the first in over five years. Even more surprising is Erik Hudson's planned defense of religious rights to the property he stole. The counterfeit property transfer is best explained by the Northwestern.
The document, in which Appleton resident Erik Hudson claimed to transfer ownership of property at 312 E. Cecil St. to the Moorish Science Temple of America, also contained pages outlining the religious beliefs of the temple, which is based in Washington, D.C..
That aroused suspicion, which led to the discovery that Anchor Bank had purchased the property in a January 2011 sheriff's auction and Hudson had no legal claim to it.
Hudson, who also uses the name Kabir Karim Bey, was charged in October with criminal slander of title, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. In its criminal complaint, the state of Wisconsin claims that the deed Hudson filled out is "false, a sham, and frivolous."
After filing the bogus deed, Hudson began to rent the property to a Neenah woman, according to Winnebago County Circuit Court records.
Court documents filed in October state that Hudson, who claims to be a representative of the Moorish Science Temple of America, "admitted he had filed the document, and had various unusual political and legal theories that he believed supported his conduct."
Among these theories is Hudson's belief that "the Americas" are under possession of the Moorish Science Temple of America and that the church has lawful authority to exercise this jurisdiction through its members, including missionaries, Grand Sheikhs and sheikesses.If one truly believes that religious law must supersede American law, then Mr. Hudson, Sheik Bey, must prevail. One must ask to what degree religious liberty warrants protection from the government. The First Amendment could be interpreted to mean that Winnebago County and the State of Wisconsin should not interfere with the Moorish Science Temple of America.
Or we could come to our senses and respect religion under law, and not the other way around.
6 February 2012: Original Pedantic Political Ponderings post.
28 February 2012: FollowUp 1.
"the implications of religion triumphing over civil law are serious"
ReplyDeleteInteresting you should say that about the implications of the First Amendment, which specifically states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", which technically makes any imposition of birth control on Catholics illegal. And yet you seem perfectly comfortable with the woman's right to privacy, which is not even expressly stated in the Constitution, overriding the once perfectly legal right of the fetus to life. The fact that the latter was once a part of American law didn't stop the Supreme Court from abolishing it as supposedly unconstitutional, even though there's absolutely nothing in the Constitution, which would unequivocally support such a decision.
There is no imposition of birth control on Catholics in the law or in any proposed law. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called ObamaCare, requires that birth control be a covered part of healthcare, but does not require anyone to use that coverage.
DeleteYes, I am comfortable with a woman's right to privacy. That right to privacy dates back to an 1890 article in the Harvard Law Review that was titled "The Right to Privacy", by Louis Brandeis (who would later serve as a Supreme Court Justice) and Samuel Warren. In terms of reproductive healthcare, in 1965 the Supreme Court found that there was a right to privacy in a case called Griswold v. Connecticut.
While there are a few details that might be worth quibbling over, basically I do not believe that a fetus has rights. The woman who carries that fetus does have rights because she is a full human being. The fetus is a potential human and not without value, but not a full human.
Correct me if I misunderstand your stance on this, but you seem to somehow distinguish between making Catholics use contraception (which clearly can't be done, as it would violate their privacy) and making Catholics pay for and provide contraception to others (which, according to you, can be done, even though it would violate their religious conscience). Thus, it seems to follow from your opinion, that as long as Catholic organizations want to exist in America, it's perfectly appropriate to violate their freedom of religion and association by forcing the Catholics in charge of those organizations to do anything that the state deems to be in its interest.
ReplyDeleteJust like in the case described by you in the post above, what we see here a clear conflict of rights and interests, but the comparison pretty much stops there. In the situation described by you, the applicable clause of the Constitution, which allows the government to violate one's religious conscience, is very clear-cut: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State." The territorial interest of the United States, thus, takes precendence over the demands made by Erik Hudson based on his religious beliefs.
However, one would be very hard-pressed to find a constitutional clause, which would give the US government the blanket permission to force compliance with any law that would violate one's religious conscience and freedom of association. As a matter of fact, the whole point of the First Amendment is that it ensures that any potential "interests of the state" and those of the majority, which are not already expressly stated in the Constituion, but can potentially be embodied in the law, wouldn't automatically override or interfere with the right of individuals to practice what they preach (as it were). That same principle of the government not having the blanket right to impose certain patterns of behavior on idividuals also happens to be at the heart of the individual's right to privacy.
In the case of forcing Catholics to provide contraception and abortions as part of health care coverage, the woman's rights to privacy and reproductive health conflict with the Catholics' aforementioned constitutional right to practice what they preach and not to be told by the state how to do it. Of course, while defending the woman's reproductive right as being superior to the Catholics' First Amendment rights, you're not referring to any particular clause of the Constitution. Instead, you're referring to an opinion piece on the Constitution, which effectively narrows the limits of one's freedom of speech by widenening the scope of a one's privacy, which, according to the new standards set out in the article, should be protected under the law. Not only does the article say absolutely nothing about how the woman's right to privacy relates to the fetus's right to life. But it also does talk a quite a bit about how, with the development of our civilization, more and more aspects of our personhood must be recognized and protected by the law. Thus, there's nothing in the article you referenced, which prevents us, the society, from affording the status of a human being to the fetus and thus giving it the same rights that are enjoyed by a newborn. Considering the rapid medical and technological advances, which keep limiting the woman's ability to abort human life due to our increased ability to save that life outside of her womb, it only makes sense for us to recognize that noone can actually credibly draw the line between a fetus and a human being.
"Correct me if I misunderstand your stance on this, but you seem to somehow distinguish between making Catholics use contraception (which clearly can't be done, as it would violate their privacy) and making Catholics pay for and provide contraception to others (which, according to you, can be done, even though it would violate their religious conscience)."
DeleteProviding a complete healthcare package should be part of employment (unless we are shifting to a state healthcare system, which Republicans vehemently oppose). The employee should not have the employer making such religious decisions. In the "clear conflict of rights and interests" I favor the individual, not the institution. That problem, however, was solved by the Obama Administration by shifting that financial burden (actually a financial benefit, as providing complete reproductive healthcare coverage saves money) to the insurance company.
I do believe that the employer should not be inflicting religious beliefs upon an employee unless that is part of the job (being a minister, assisting in religious rites, or something like that). You are making Constitutional arguments that I see as irrelevant. The Church can still preach whatever it wants and its adherents can follow the Church's directives to the extent they wish. I don't see a conflict.
That one cannot say precisely when a fetus is viable or when it is imbued with a soul (assuming that there is such a thing as a spirit or soul), does not make it the right of the government to prohibit a woman from making decisions about that which is growing in her body.
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DeleteI've already addressed most of your arguments, which you repeated later.
DeleteBut just to recap:
By demanding that the Catholic individuals' contributions to their Catholic cause sponsor abortions and birth control of their employees and students, you're demanding that the Catholics in question violate their conscience. The fact that you don't see it as a violation of their conscience is absolutely irrelevant, because you're not Catholic. Catholics and Catholics alone should decide whether something is a violation of their conscience. And since they say that it is, we, the non-Catholics, must accept that it is so, because it is their conscience and not ours.
Like I said before, the only thing you're actually encouraging here through unnecessary government intervention is the exclusion of non-Catholics from all the great services the Catholics are providing to them. If the kind of coercive and hypocritical law you want imposed on Catholics was being imposed on me, you bet I would find perfectly legal ways around it. So, I'm assuming the Catholics will, too - and to the detriment of the same people, whose needs you're trying to accomodate here.
It's so strange to me that you're bringing up the issue of soul or spirit again. I thought I had made myself very clear right from the start: since I'm not religious, I consider the idea of spirit or soul completely irrelevant in this argument. So, I would greatly appreciate it if you argued with me on the merits of my arguments, and not somebody else's. In that sense, what you wrote earlier, in a different chain of comments, sounded much more like a response to my arguments:
"Where we appear to disagree is about when a fetus should be considered a child. Doctors and scientists disagree as to the time when that clump of cells should be considered a person. I don't have the answer either."
Yes, that's exactly where we disagree. Since I see no fundamental difference between a clump of cells that is a human fetus and a clump of cells that is you or me, I would like an equal level of protection for all of us. And just like I don't like the idea of my life and death being at somebody's sole discretion, if I end up in a vulnerable situation of not being able to stand up for myself, I don't like that idea for anybody else being in that situation either.
The situation, in which a woman decides to get "that which" (what an acknowledgment, by the way) is growing in her body killed, just because she doesn't want to be a mother to the baby living for about 9 months in her uterus, is no different to me from the situation, in which one decides to kill a defenseless human outside of one's uterus, who happens to be in one's complete power and an inconvenience to one's life. And the fact that the government by all means interferes in the latter case, but only partially inteferes in the former, is merely the reflection of our hyporcisy and unwillingness to take responsibility for the most defenseless and vulnerable of all human beings - the babies inside women's wombs. For now, just like our ancestors, we choose convenience of both women and men over that which deep down we know is right. But hopefully, eventually we'll take it upon ourselves to protect babies inside women, just like we've taken it upon ourselves to equally protect all people outside of women's wombs by recognizing those people's "fully human" status, regardless of their race, sex or physical and intellectual abilities.
Why, if "the idea of spirit or soul completely irrelevant in this argument" should we possibly care about a clump of cells. It hasn't been born and thus is not yet human. Without a spirit or soul, fingernails are as human ... must they not be clipped or filed? They are just a clump a cells.
DeleteFully human becomes a meaningless phrase without the trial of survival of gestation as proof of being human.
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DeleteAt the very beginning of our discussion you wrote, "The religious argument that I offered is explicitly in response to a religious argument that a zygote is already imbued with the human spirit."
DeleteI concluded that you didn't believe in spirit or soul, since their existence have yet to be proven to non-religious people. That is why I got confused by you bringing up the issue of spirit and soul again.
If you actually believe in the existence of spirit or soul, I would be curious to know what your basis for believing in it is.
Since I'm pretty much agnostic on the issue of soul and spirit, my understanding of this subject is as follows:
No fingernails, hairs or other human matter have any chance of spontaneously turning into someone like me or you, unless that human DNA is extracted from them and cloned into an embryo.
Once it's an embryo, however, it is already automatically a growing and living human being, who deserves the same kind of protection as you and me. There's absolutely no sophistry about it. It's plain and simple, unlike the idea of a human embryo becoming a human being ONLY after a certain point and only after meeting certain criteria, which no scientist or doctor, let alone the average person, can determine with any kind of clarity. In you own words, "Doctors and scientists disagree as to the time when that clump of cells should be considered a person. I don't have the answer either." I find it quite interesting that, while you admit to not having the answer to this question, you're willing to give the pregnant woman or, perhaps, her doctor the power to decide when the life inside her is still not quite a human being. It's also unclear to me how you can think that no "actual humans" will be killed in such an arbitrary process. Of course, what is even more mind-blowing to me is the idea that it might be acceptable to you to have what even by your own undefined standards are real human deaths as the collateral damage of the woman's "right to choose".
Also, it's quite interesting that while you see a violation of privacy by government interference in a ban on abortions, you somehow seem to justify such a violation and government interference in making Catholics pay for abortion and contraception of others. That double standard begs the following question: is getting free contraception from Catholics really worth creating the precedent, which would mean that the majority can impose its views on the minority in the form of constitutionally dubious laws, which violate the conscience of the minority? I really don't think getting free contraception through Catholic organizations is worth creating the same kind of precedent, which, should we find ourselves to be a member of an unpopular minority, can backfire against us. As it happens, the precedent in question gives the majority the perfect excuse to impose their idea of what and how we should practice what we preach, thus violating our conscience AND the very right to privacy that we're trying to protect.
ReplyDeleteIn this particular case, the non-Catholic majority clearly has the choice of keeping the conscience intact and of getting their free contraception elsewhere by simply opting out of Catholic organizations, but Catholics are not given a similar choice of opting out of a program violating their conscience, without being penalized for such behavior. Thus, it would seem that, unlike in the example you cited in your post, in this particular case the Constitutional provisions seem to clearly side with the religious minority, as the women's rights to privacy and reproductive health are actually not jeopardized by the Catholic minority nearly as much as the Catholic minority's constitutional rights to free exercise of their religion are being jeopardized by the kind of demands of the government that aren't expressly supported by the Constituion.
As I wrote above: Providing a complete healthcare package should be part of employment (unless we are shifting to a state healthcare system, which Republicans vehemently oppose). The employee should not have the employer making such religious decisions. In the "clear conflict of rights and interests" I favor the individual, not the institution. That problem, however, was solved by the Obama Administration by shifting that financial burden (actually a financial benefit, as providing complete reproductive healthcare coverage saves money) to the insurance company.
DeleteWomen are not going to be "getting free contraception from Catholics". They will have the option of getting it from their health insurance company. A fine line distinction? Sure. Religion is filled with such fine line distinctions.
"Catholics are not given a similar choice of opting out of a program violating their conscience, without being penalized for such behavior." Nonsense. No Catholic is to be forced into using contraception (although polls indicate that most do) and no Catholic is to be forced to undergo an abortion procedure. I would join you in objecting if those were to be the case.
""Catholics are not given a similar choice of opting out of a program violating their conscience, without being penalized for such behavior." Nonsense. No Catholic is to be forced into using contraception (although polls indicate that most do) and no Catholic is to be forced to undergo an abortion procedure. I would join you in objecting if those were to be the case."
DeleteIt's interesting that you called something nonsense whilst completely misinterpreting the meaning of what I'd written. If Catholics were actually being FORCED to use contraception and get abortions as part of any program, we wouldn't just be talking about violation of their conscience or privacy. We'd be talking about the US sadly having turned into a full-blown Nazi regime.
Thus, during my whole speech, I was only considering the fact that Catholics running their organizations would be forced to co-pay for contraception and abortions of others. To a Catholic who believes in God it's no trivial distinction at all and we must respect that, unless we want to one day end up in their shoes.
And no, you're not favoring the individual in this conflict. The Catholics running Catholic organizations are individuals, who are providing a lot of very useful services to non-Catholics as well. In this conflict, you're favoring government intervention on behalf of the non-Catholic individuals, who want to partake of those useful services provided by Catholics while making those Catholics pay for the services that are objectionable to the Catholic individual's religious conscience.
"The Catholics running Catholic organizations are individuals, who are providing a lot of very useful services to non-Catholics as well."
DeleteThey are not paying as individuals, it is a corporate (religious) group. And, after the compromise that was worked out, they are not paying at all. The insurance companies are paying (actually saving money) to provide reproductive healthcare. Their services is not the issue.
The government intervention is that everyone gets an individual choice. No one is forced to have any medical procedure they don't want.
Yes, Catholics are paying as individuals, including through the contributions and donations that allow a lot of the Catholic organizations to exist in the first place. The purpose of those donations is definitely not to pay insurance companies for birth control and abortions of the people the Catholic organizations employ or educate. And it's highly naive to think that insurance companies will somehow not be using the funds provided by Catholics to pay for the birth control and abortions of the non-Catholic employees and students in question. It's bad enough that Catholics have no control over how their money is actually spent when they pay taxes or where the money they pay for their own insurances goes to, without the government forcing the Catholics to provide funds to insurance companies with the express purpose of providing birth control and abortions to the employees of Catholic organizations.
DeleteBy forcing the Catholic individuals to sponsor abortions and birth control of the employees and students of Catholic organizations, the government leaves the Catholics no choice but to either close their organizations down or to exclude the non-Catholics from these organizations.
Evgenia, you have now slipped into lies. Neither individuals nor Catholic religious institutions are paying for the insurance companies to cover reproductive healthcare. The Roman Catholic Church has many choices and is not limited to the false dichotomy that you present.
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DeleteIn order to support my view that there still in fact exists a major controversy on this issue, I'm going to quote a relevant excerpt from a non-Catholic source, which includes the results of a poll conducted by a non-Catholic organization, which you're probably much more likely to put your trust in than me (source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Contraceptive_coverage_for_employees_of_institutions_controlled_by_religious_organizations):
Delete"Contraceptive coverage
Contraceptive mandates
With the exception of churches and houses of worship, the Act's contraceptive coverage mandate applies to all employers and educational institutions. The mandate applies to all new health insurance plans from 1st August 2012. Controversially, this includes Catholic hospitals, Catholic Charities, Catholic universities, and other enterprises owned or controlled by religious organizations that oppose contraception on moral grounds. Regulations[194] made under the act rely on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, which concluded that birth control is medically necessary “to ensure women’s health and well-being.” In February 2012, this resulted in a major political controversy with candidates for the Republican nomination for President viewing the regulations as a "direct attack on religious liberty".[195] The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken the lead in opposition to the regulations[196] Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stated that the provision "represents a challenge and a compromise of our religious liberty."[197] Other organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, supported the provision.[198]
According to Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and issued on 25 July 1968 by the Roman Catholic Church, contraception is forbidden by the Law of God.
Similarly excluded [as lawful] is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.[199]
The Agudath Israel of America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America have also opposed the regulations. According to Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel’s Vice President for Federal Government Affairs, "this mandate, which is binding on all faith-based entities other than a narrowly confined group of religious institutions, offends First Amendment principles."[200]
The regulations issued under the act are also opposed by Christian fundamentalists who are active in the Christian right.[201]
The Obama administration proposed changes in response to the criticism. Under the proposed new regulation, birth control medication would be provided by the insurers, without direct involvement by the religious organization. The Catholic Health Association (CHA) accepted this compromise. The CEO of the CHA, Carol Keehan, stated, "The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed." The vice president of Catholic identity and mission at Mount St. Mary's University, Stuart Swetland, said, "It shows [Obama] and the administration are listening to our concerns", but reserved the right to "examine the details". However, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops continued to oppose the regulation, saying that the regulation still requires Catholics in the insurance industry to violate their consciences.[198] Catholic opinion is split with a New York Times/CBS News poll showing 57% support of the regulations among Catholic voters and about the same by non-Catholics"
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ReplyDeleteI would also appreciate it, if in the future you kindly refrained from accusing me of lying, that is of saying something I don't actually believe in. Since I'm assuming that you're intelligent enough to know the exact definition of the word "lie" and since I know for a fact I've given you absolutely no basis for accusing me of it, I'm very much hoping for an apology. Otherwise, I'll have to think that I've spent the last couple of days having what I thought was an intelligent and honest debate with a person, who is so deeply disturbed he thinks that all his ideological opponents are trying to deceive others. I'm a person who's still very much new to the American culture and, as a result, much more open-minded to my opponents than most, so I would hate to have to start associating your world view with the kind of hostility and paranoia you displayed in your last comment.
ReplyDeleteEvgenia, you have certainly written a lot here. You are making quite a few assumptions that are incorrect and you are making statements that are wrong. For example, I am religious, just obviously not of the same set of beliefs as you. You claim that you are not religious, but your arguments are based in religion. Without the religious basis, there is no scientific basis to object to contraceptives. So, you appear to be a liar.
DeleteChurches do not pay for the part of health insurance that covers reproductive healthcare. You keep saying otherwise, so you are a liar.
An insurance company is not a church. The Roman Catholic Church is lying when it says otherwise. You are a liar when you repeat a lie.
Now you call me "deeply disturbed". Further insults on that level will be deleted. You are a guest to my blog and I am being as patient as I choose to be. If you think that I am hostile and paranoid, you are, indeed, naive regarding much of the debate that occurs in this medium (and the United States is not guilty of holding the most hostile debates). If this is too much, then please take your arguments to some place on the Internet where people don't argue back and recognize lies when you write them.
While I welcome opinions that differ from my own, I do not agree to change my opinions based on inaccurate information. Similarly, I would certainly have no intention of changing my faith based on some human saying that my faith is in error.
One of my points in the Claims of Threat to Religious Liberty posts is that religion should not dictate civil law. Your arguments that contraception should not be mandated as part of health insurance are entirely based on a false threat to religion. That is why I am very comfortable calling you a liar.
"You claim that you are not religious, but your arguments are based in religion. Without the religious basis, there is no scientific basis to object to contraceptives. So, you appear to be a liar."
DeleteWhile I did talk a lot here about not believing in abortions for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with religion, nowhere did I actually say that I personally don't believe in contraception. Having disclosed that I don't hold Catholic beliefs, throughout this whole conversation I was merely defending the Catholics' right to stay true to their conscience, which has absolutely nothing to do with how I personally feel about contraception. In a similar manner, I would defend anybody's right to stay true to their world views, no matter how much those views might differ from my own.
The fact that you've been constantly twisting my words and then "comfortably" resorted to an ad hominem attack by accusing me of lying, is extremely offensive to me. By contrast to you expressly accusing me of lying and then calling me a liar again, I didn't actually call you "deeply distrubed", but simply expressed hope that you're in fact NOT deeply disturbed.
I've had many a heated debate with a lot of Conservative Republicans, with whom I also happen to disagree completely on a lot of important issues, but this is the first time an American has called me a liar and treated me with so little respect.
Contrary to what you may think, the word "lie" means the following:
"a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth"
I'm a reasonable person, who doesn't claim to know the "holy truth" and thus is always open to the possibility of being proven wrong. And while I'm perfectly fine with you politely disagreeing with any statement I make, you claiming that I am lying, i.e. INTENTIONALLY misrepresenting facts is... well... an example of either your complete misunderstanding of a very basic English word or, what's more likely, a slanderous lie in itself. In either case, what you've demonstrated here is a complete lack of respect towards a stranger, who's been completely open and honest with you about her views.
By accusing someone who's admitted to being new to the American culture of deliberately misrepresenting the facts, you're being more than unreasonable and more than ugly. By not even giving me the benefit of the doubt before accusing me of lying, you showed me, a recent immigrant, who's still trying to get the lay of the land, that your words, intentions and ideas are not to be trusted. I must say: as far as ambassadors of American views go, you have failed miserably. Unfortunately, the only thing someone like you can succeed in doing is alienating anybody who doesn't already hold your exact views.
By coming to this blog, I was hoping to have an honest and mutually respectful discussion with someone who was presenting the other side of the story, which I was very much interested in. Not only have your accusations dashed my hope of an open dialogue with you, you've made me associate your side of the story with mistrust, hostility, slander, ignorance and a complete lack of dignity and respect towards one's opponents. So, I must thank you, teacher, for the useful, though somewhat sad, lesson on your particular segment of the American society. And now, since I have no desire whatsoever to be further slandered by someone who purports to be a supporter of women's dignity, but in reality doesn't seem to care about other people's dignity at all, I must say goodbye!
For anyone besides Evgenia who might be a tad confused at this point, that might be because of several large gaps in the logic.
Delete1. A liar is one who does not tell the truth. Intent may color one's reaction and response, but does not change the status of liar.
2. If someone else chooses to think that I am a liar, then you are encouraged to go elsewhere. There is no debate when that level of distrust exists.
3. Whether someone was born in America or is new does not change how I respond to what appears to be lies. As half of a bi-national couple, I am not opposed to 'aliens' ... and that is certainly not the basis of any aspect of my arguments. (The 'ugly American' implication is bizarre, particularly if one compares the debates on blogs that have abortion as a primary topic).
4. This blog is not intended as "an ambassador of American views", nor do I claim that role for myself. This is about the opinions of an individual who has stated in the title that it is pedantic. Sometimes a title gives a big clue.
5. Since "My Name is Evgenia" and "Some Teacher" are both obviously pseudonyms, an accusation of slander rises to the level of humor. Absurdity! (As I have stated elsewhere, I maintain a nom de plume so that my classroom can remain completely separate from any political activism on my part. While I write what I believe here, much of it is not school appropriate and any employment could be jeopardized.)
6. Finally to "My Name is Evgenia", if you bother to read this far, goodbye.