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A high school social studies teacher who was put on leave after comparing President Bush's State of the Union address to speeches made by Adolf Hitler defended his lecture on Tuesday, saying he was trying to encourage students to think. "My job as a teacher is to challenge students to think critically about issues that are affecting our world and our society," Jay Bennish said on NBC's "Today Show." Bennish is on paid leave from Overland High School in suburban Aurora, Colo., while Cherry Creek School District investigates whether his Feb. 1 lecture violated a policy requiring that balancing viewpoints...

The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the "news" industry they serve doesn’t seem to care. If you want political opinion, you’ll find it in Associated Press dispatches. If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns. On February 22nd, Walter Williams, a Townhall.com columnist, scooped the mainstream media. Williams reported that high school teacher Jay Bennish lectured his geography class stating: 1) "[President Bush’s State of the Union Speech] sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say." 2) "Bush is threatening the whole planet." 3) "[The] U.S. wants to keep...

COLORADO high-school sophomore Sean Allen couldn't convince his father that his geography teacher was as over-the-top as he contended. So Allen taped one of his teacher's rants on his MP3 player. Too bad for Jay Bennish: His 20 minute lecture ended up on talk radio. As aired on Mike Rosen's show, Bennish said President Bush talks like Hitler: "I'm not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same," but that the two share "eerie similarities." Peruvians and Iranians arguably have "a right to bomb North Carolina" because the state grows tobacco. On Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda operatives were...

by Mark Finkelstein March 7, 2006 Turns out the real culprit in the Colorado kerfluffle over the teacher who compared Pres. Bush to Hitler is . . . the student who complained about it. Just ask Matt Lauer. Interviewing teacher Jay Bennish this morning, Lauer laid out this sympathetic scenario: Lauer: "The family here, the student's family, didn't go to the school board with this tape." Bennish: "They never contacted me." Lauer: "They shopped it around to conservative media outlets and finally released it to one and created an uproar. On the tape you can hear Sean Allen [the student...

Student 'starting to get crucified,' his dad says By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News March 4, 2006 Sean Allen's dad says he isn't handling this week's media attention and threats as well as his son. "Sean has handled this way better than his father," Jeff Allen, Sean's dad, said in an interview with Sean Hannity, syndicated talk show host with Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes. "To read some of these e-mails that are attacking Sean is just devastating," he said. "It looks like the tactic is to turn it around, to make it about Sean and not about the...

March 2, 2006 — A Colorado school is in upheaval following the suspension of a teacher who was recorded comparing President Bush's rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler. More than 100 students at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo., walked out of class this morning to protest the decision to put geography teacher Jay Bennish on administrative leave. The school administration made the move after a student went public with a 20-minute recording of Bennish's comments to his class. In the tape, the teacher is heard saying there were similarities between remarks Bush made in his State of the Union...

Hamas politburo chief says group willing to hold talks with any international factor, except ‘Zionist enemy’; adds that threats by U.S., European countries to cut off aid to Palestinians ‘indicative of their double standards, which contradict the democratic slogans they wave’Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal said his organization is willing to hold talks with any international factor, including the United States, without predetermined conditions. “During these talks we will protect our nation’s rights because the popular trust bestowed on us gives us this responsibility,” Mashaal said. However, he reiterated that Hamas would not have any contact with the ‘Zionist enemy.’...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his country needs to develop nuclear weapons to avenge Hitler and carry on his vital work. “Adolf Hitler was one of the few leaders astute enough to recognize the Zionist threat, honest enough to speak out about it, and courageous enough to take action,” said Ahmadinejad. “There was no holocaust. Hitler was acting in self-defense to carry out a noble effort to rid the world of the Jewish pestilence. This was cut short by the American crusaders unleashed by the Jew Roosevelt. We will carry on Hitler’s effort beginning with the elimination of Israel and...

Cracks Between Religious-Zionist Public and Army 11:54 Feb 02, '06 / 4 Shevat 5766 By Hillel Fendel The Military Police arrested a young 2nd Lieutenant last night on suspicion of having leaked Amona operational plans to anti-destruction protestors. He was interrogated, and if the suspicions are substantiated, he stands to be indicted by the Military Prosecution. O.C. Central Commander Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh - the yarmulke-wearing brother of former Health Minister Danny Naveh of the Likud - made statements irksome to both sides in the current dispute. Yesterday, he said the police "were close to being in danger of their lives"...

Segments of the French Muslim community are disputing the contention that Muslim youths were the primary participants in the recent turmoil sweeping the French nation. Ibn Arsholl, spokesman for the French-based group calling itself the “Muslim Majority,” says the apparent riots were staged by Zionists. “We know that Jews control the media and the French government,” said Arsholl. “It is, therefore, simple for them to perpetrate such a hoax.” The Muslim Majority is not completely unified in its view, though. One line of thinking holds that Zionist agents carried out the acts of destruction just as they did on 9-11....

Tens of thousands of Iranians staged anti-Israel demonstrations across the country Friday, repeating calls by their ultraconservative president for the destruction of the Jewish state. This is adding fuel to the fire that was lit on Wednesday Iran's hard-line president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state. “Wiped off the map”! . . .

The best way to confront the US and EU3 dictatorship is to "impose an embargo on oil sales to those countries, said an English-language paper here Sunday commenting on last Thursday "unfair" resolution of the UN nuclear watchdog against Iran. The 'Tehran Times' suggested in its editorial that the world oil-rich states should form a united front in order to confront "Western neocolonialist countries." Criticizing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution against Iran, the paper said that it was ratified "to meet the objectives of the Zionist regime and the United States." It added that the resolution, issued under...

can guess who might have written this? JK, 25 April 2003 Folks, here is part of an official dispatch; see if you can guess who might have written it: "There is one point about the present situation in Palestine where I think there's been some confusion of thought at home as well as in neighboring Arabic-speaking countries. There are two aspects to it and they should, for the clearer understanding, be rigidly separated. The first, with which we can allow ourselves to sympathize, is the purely Pan Arab one. And, Palestine has centered itself on an unrelenting hostility to the...

Sabbah’s Blog life, politics, art, culture, science, technology & me! « Royal Metropolis: The Jordan Gate & Royal VillageRe: Here’s some good news from the Jordan: Israel, Iran, Syria, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Palestine Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, Jordan and many other countries from around the globe (click below graph for a list of other countries), need no “Open SESAME magic” to be able to cooperate on an advanced scientific project. In Al-Balqa’ Applied University, just north of Amman - and at a comfortable distance from the spotlight thrown by political conflicts - representatives of these countries are...

JERUSALEM – Iran's government-sponsored media yesterday blasted Pope John Paul II for what it perceived as his closeness with Israel and the Jewish people, saying Israel should be considered an enemy of the church and not just of the Tehran regime. "Not only did the pope never condemn the crimes of the 'Zionist regime' in the territories, the Vatican officially recognized its existence," the official Jomhuri Islami newspaper said in an editorial. The paper claimed the worldwide expansion of Islam had been "a constant worry" for a pope who had been "compromised [by] the 'Zionist regime.'" Another Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri,...

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) - Presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday called Israel the "Zionist enemy," a marked escalation in his campaign rhetoric. Abbas spoke to thousands of supporters after seven Palestinians were killed by an Israeli tank shell earlier in the day in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. "We came to you today, while we are praying for the souls of the martyrs who were killed today by the shells of the Zionist enemy in Beit Lahiya," Abbas said during a campaign stop in the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Abbas, the front-runner in Sunday's...

It's the laziest cliché in the travel-writing book to describe a place as a country of contrasts. Usually this means that - hold the front page! - a country's got both a beach and a city. And sometimes these weak words become weasel words, as when used about Brazil, the country with the largest gap between richest and poorest in the world. In this case, 'a country of contrasts' comes down to the fact that some people pick their teeth with golden gewgaws while round the corner, families literally live on, and from, rubbish heaps. So I hope that you'll...

Condoleeza Rice’s statement – reflecting the US policy – regarding the US-Muslim relations, friendship and partnership made good news. Since US policies are made after extensive studies and estimates, assisted by think tanks and studies done at various institutions, there is little left for reasoning by observers. Although Rice claimed that the USA helped many Muslim countries like Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet she failed to gauge the feelings of the beneficiaries on receiving kindness from the superpower. I cannot make a Rand-type study straight away but I can offer some views. I want to refer to two books,...

I would like to highlight a comment posted by Bahraini Terp which is well worth highlighting. Thank you Bahraini Terp for this very eloquent response and clarifications on where you (and I as well as most of us regulars here) think Arabs SHOULD stand today: I'd like to slap some myths upside the head here, close the book on things a bit. Isolationist America did a fantastic job of taking in immigrants. No other society has been as open to diverse populations for as long as the United States. That said, American society was able to do this mostly by...

  Tuesday, August 03, 2004 Wall Sight Journal Jerusalem occupies space in the international headlines that is wholly incommensurate with its size. Big news, but a tiny city. We live on the southern side of the city, almost at the edge (Bethlehem would be a ten minute drive if we could get there at all), but can get to the northern edge of the city, if traffic isn't too bad, in just over fifteen minutes. As one heads north, to the Hebrew University campus for example, you pass the Old City, then a relatively upscale Arab neighborhood called Sheik Jarakh,...