Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Well, I could be wrong about that looming presidential endorsement:

The NEA New Hampshire endorsement is now in the books (Hillary), but hold on. The Illinois Education Association yesterday announced its endorsement of Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, AFT is already very active in Iowa in support of Hillary, and coordinating its efforts with AFSCME and Emily’s List.

At this point, I think Dennis Kucinich is the only Democratic candidate who has not been endorsed by a teachers’ union (although I’m sure I’ll get an e-mail proving me wrong).

I don’t know how long it will take to hear about what happens in this weekend’s NEA board of directors meeting, but I would be very surprised if we don’t have some national news out of there by Monday morning.

MSNBC reported yesterday that NEA New Hampshire will announce it has endorsed Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations, respectively. The timing of the announcement steals even more thunder from the upcoming NEA national endorsement, likely to come in the next 10 days.

NEA President Reg Weaver said he hoped other state affiliates will wait to “concur or not concur” with his recommendation.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reports NEA New Hampshire “plans a big announcement tomorrow in Manchester, possibly with Senator Hillary Clinton there. A separate event for Huckabee has not been put together.”

James Buss, the Wisconsin teacher and former union president who thought it would be funny to post anonymously on a conservative blog the following:

“Kids like Eric Harris and Dylen Klebold members of the Young Republicans club at Columbine. They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time!”

is now a cause célèbre for free speech advocates who want the charges against him dropped.

“If you look at all the factors in this case, it ‘s pretty clear it would be a mistake to charge,” said Larry Dupuis, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. “At worst, it was somebody expressing admiration for somebody who did something reprehensible. But the more reasonable explanation is this is somebody who is trying to mock the conservative view of teacher salaries.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Donald Downs says Buss is protected by the First Amendment because his post was a parody.

“It has to be intended to incite violence. If it’s tongue-in-cheek, there’s virtually no way they can claim that,” he said. He said the “First Amendment protects all sorts of unsavory, controversial speech.”

For the record, I agree that Buss should not be criminally charged. After all, I once threatened to take a hostage at the NEA convention if Dennis Kucinich tried to sing “Sixteen Tons.” But I wonder how forgiving these folks would be if Buss had turned out to be a former president of the local NRA, instead of NEA.

UPDATE: Buss will not be charged. But the police report was entertaining.

* Buss told police he “just wanted to see if the hate towards teachers from other posters was so strong that other posters would endorse my facetious post.”

* Buss, who in a statement described himself as politically “moderate,” told police he misspelled words and used incorrect grammar and punctuation to enhance his characterization of “Observer” as “a right-wing zealot.”

* Buss told police that he did not intend his post, which he called “mischievous,” as a threat, but he understood how someone could perceive it as “advocating a Columbine-like attack on schools.”

* During a search of Buss’ home, police seized two computers and two rifles.

In an “update” to his tale of Disney persecution and woe, EdWize’s Leo Casey does exactly what you might have expected:

“UPDATE:

“Michael Antonucci, an anti-teacher union, anti-public education blogger who has crossed swords with us at Edwize many times in the past, asserts that Disney’s deletion is not what it appears to be — that it is simply some sort of technical glitch.

“As I made quite clear in my original post, I don’t pretend to know the exact timing of the change in the Disney web site. What I do know is that I went to that very same page of honorees by year to identify names of teachers I could contact when I circulated the Stossel protest letter, and all of the 1992 honorees whom I knew were listed at that time, as was my own name. I obviously would have noticed if my own name was missing when I read the list. At some later point, someone went into the web page and removed my name. This is simply not a case of some tired intern doing a poor job of translating one list, in which every honoree is list alphabetically, into another later list by year, as Antonucci suggests without any evidence. I linked to the Google cache simply because it was the available proof that the honoree list on the web site had been changed, and that my name had once been there.

“It is also the case that contrary to the assumptions Antonucci makes, the Disney executive who dealt with American Teacher Awards knew full well who organized the protest letter — an email solicitation from me to another honoree was forwarded to him, and he sent out an email to a number of honorees that named me, and it was forwarded back to me. Moreover, both the email and regular solicitations had those who wanted to sign the letter return their consent to me.

“I did check to see if a number of the teachers who signed the letter also had their names removed, and noted this was not the case. If they had, I would have made that point in my post.”

As much as Casey would now like to make this story about me, I’ll simply repeat the facts, which he refuses to address in the context of his accusations that Disney removed his name from its web site in a deliberate act of retribution for the Stossel letter:

* Twenty-five honorees signed the letter. Twenty-four remain on the page.

* Twenty-five other honorees who did not sign the letter and who are not associated with Casey in any way are also missing from the page. All of the missing names are honorees from the years 1990-1995.

* What you have to believe if you believe Casey’s story: That someone in charge of that particular portion of the vast Disney web site, sometime after October 1, 2007, (some 19 months after Casey’s letter) decided in an act of petty vengeance to delete Casey’s name from a web page that lists the past recipients of a now-defunct award. That they singled out Casey from among all the signatories of this letter for this act, and, to disguise their insidious plan, randomly omitted 25 other names from the same five-year period to insure plausible deniability.

* The evidence that Casey produces to support his claims: His name is missing from the web page.

Despite being a card-carrying member of Disney’s shadowy conspiracy to irritate Leo Casey, I truly don’t care if you choose to believe his tale. Just choose to believe it after you have considered the alternatives.