No Charges
West Bend - Washington County District Attorney Todd Martens has decided not to charge Oak Creek high school teacher James Buss for online comments he made on Nov. 16, facetiously saying the 1999 Columbine High School killers “knew how to deal with overpaid teacher union thugs” when they opend fire on students and staff.
And we find out who made the complaint. No surprise there: West Bend School District Superintendent Patricia Herdrich.
I guess the ACLU scared them our of it.
Posted by Fred on December 05, 2007 at 1622 hrs
So Owen, was that your 15 minutes of fame? If so, what a jip.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1639 hrs
Fuck you guys, you can’t arrest someone for posting a comment or god damn thought on the fucking internet. You don’t own it. If you didn’t like his comment, fucking delete it you pricks. If he thinks what the school shooters did was right, he can sure as fucking hell post it all over the internet if he wants.
Fuck you assholes. Grow a pair of nuts you ignorant fools.
Posted by james buss on December 05, 2007 at 1730 hrs
I guess the prosecutor actually know the law and the constitution. I hope the poster learned his lesson. Now he will probably sue for false arrest and First Amendment violations.
Posted by PV Beella on December 05, 2007 at 1741 hrs
People make a mockery of the US Constitution all the time. Most of them are in the White House. No surprise it came from a teacher and superintendent this time. Explains why education is so poor and people don’t want to fork up to pay teachers whom might deserve it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1817 hrs
I guess everybody is taking themselves way too seriously, eh?
Patricia Herdrich Super of Schools. Patricia, babe, You need to get laid.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1835 hrs
This issue seems to have brought out a host of foul mouthed idiots. I hope this is not indicative of the future for B&S;.
Posted by Charlie Hillman on December 05, 2007 at 1845 hrs
I guess the prosecutor actually know the law and the constitution.
No, I think somone needed to correct the prosecutor’s incorrect thinking. The prosecutor got the search warrant for this man’s home. He was an idiot for doing that. He should have known when he got the complaint that it was nothing and that he should do nothing about it. We need to learn why he thought this was all necesary up until today when he decided it was not necesary. This has been nothing more than a waste of resources and an attempt to slam the left…ala John Jazwiec.
Seems like the right-wingers have let their imaginations run wild for a little too long. They are starting to believe their own BS even when it is directly opposed to reality.
I hope it doesn’t take too long for Mr Buss to sue owen,the city of West Bend and his ISP. They all need to be ‘taught a lesson’ and show the other overzealous prosecutors that saying “Oops, so sorry” doesn’t cut it.
How many people are suing Verizon right now for turning information over to the goverment without warrants?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1846 hrs
I plan on emailing Dr. Patricia Herdrich, the district superintendent who reported Mr. Buss, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and urging her not to fire him. I am also going to encourage her to take a writing or speech class so she can recognize satire and sarcasm. What an idiot.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1912 hrs
If anyone wants to contact the school board and urge them not to fire Mr. Buss, this is their contact page: http://www.west-bend.k12.wi.us/wbsd/admin/admin.htm
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1915 hrs
A liberal posing as a conservative makes idiotic comments on a conservative blog. A school superintendent (who, I am guessing, is not a Republican, since most people connected with the educational system in this country are not) readss , the post, panics and complains. The police investigate. The teacher is suspended without pay (again, a decision made by largely Democratic school admininstrators).
And a poster says it’s the Republicans who have let “their imagination run wild?” No, Mr. Logic-Challenged Bone head, it was Buss’s imagination running wild that started this thing in the first place.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 1920 hrs
Hold on jmstroup. Mr. Bruss does not work for the West Bend School District. He works in Oak Creek.
Posted by Charlie Hillman on December 05, 2007 at 1921 hrs
If anyone wants to contact the school board and urge them not to fire Mr. Buss, this is their contact page: http://www.west-bend.k12.wi.us/wbsd/admin/admin.htm
Posted by jmstroupOnly problem, jmstroup, he doesn’t teach in West Bend… he teaches in Oak Creek.
I’m amazed at how LITTLE people actually read before they post.
Posted by Fuzz on December 05, 2007 at 1922 hrs
Here’s the irony…
The union will file a grievance and get Mr. Buss his job back along with back pay. It will turn into nothing more than a nice little paid vacation for him. The detective, DA, and judge all have realized that this was a waste of their time and effort and money. The WB superintendant can feel good that even though she didn’t get her $100+ million referendum, her students and teachers are safe from this potential threat (which in reality was not a threat at all).
With exception of the students, everybody in the above paragraph is paid for by the tax payers… please don’t do crap like this again then turn around and ask for more of our money!Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 2011 hrs
I can’t believe how many people don’t know anything and yet post. I’ve paid very little attention, but it doesn’t take long to figure out who doesn’t have a clue.
-West Bend firing the teacher??????
-right-wingers have let their imaginations run wild???????My favorite is: I hope it doesn’t take too long for Mr Buss to sue owen,the city of West Bend and his ISP….....
Mr Buss would sue Owen on what grounds. How is Owen required to protect anyone’s identity. Did Owen lie resulting in a Slanderous statement about Mr. Buss. No he did not. I think some people must believe in the stop snitching garbage so much that they think anyone who talks to the police should be thugged either in the streets or the courtroom. Sue the city of West Bend? for making a complaint. I wish you could sue people for complaining the Left would be flat broke. That’s all they do is complain. Sue the ISP…....
The scary part is that in this day and age it could actually work
All these post are just funny
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 2049 hrs
A) I bet Oak Creek school administration allows Mr. Buss to return to work. There will be some community “push-back” (one side that feels he should be fired, another side that feels he should stay - probably 50/50 split on that). Personnel actions are messy & expensive, and the guy was never actually charged with anything. Contrition will go a long way, and Mr. Buss has a vested interest in keeping his job & benefits. Worse case scenario is that maybe he gets a letter in his personnel file. Oak Creek administration has a lot of wiggle room to let this one slide - the complaint did not rise to the level of being something worth a misdemeanor charge, so it will probably not rise to being fired over. Especially since he did it on his own time & computer.
B) Lawsuits? HA-HA-HA. Anything is possible, but really. Consider the jury pool in Washington County - people are conservative (it is a Republican county) - even in medical malpractice suits, awards have been very reasonable. The school referendum failed 62% - see how much sympathy that bunch has for an educator’s internet problems. And the county is majority Republican - see what they think of Mr. Buss’s comments about the connection between the Young Republicans & the Columbine actors. Mark Belling the radio host is very popular too - let’s see how the statements that Mr. Buss attributed to him sit with that crowd.
Mr. Buss is welcome to piss his money away down a rathole if he wants by filing a lawsuit, but I suspect he just wants get back to normal and hope that this all fades from memory. I think he wants to be “anonymous”.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 2123 hrs
It will be interesting what happens in Oak Creek. If one of my kids had this guy as a teacher,,,, well I’m not sure what I would do. I would be thinking hard about talking to the principal about the teacher. Any Parents out there that would comment on this?
Does anyone know what he teachers?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 05, 2007 at 2141 hrs
You know what? I think everyone involved did the right thing.
I think Dr. Herdrich was right to play it better safe than sorry. Odds were that it was a crank (either a whacked out conservative or a lib posing as one as the case may be) and nothing would come of it. But when someone posts a threat of violence against school personnel, I want the leadership to take it seriously. If it had been an actual crank with actual plans to shoot teachers, we would be hailing Dr. Herdrich as a hero.
I think that Owen did the right thing in turning over the IP address. As he pointed out, the search warrant to get the IP address would have been issued had he not given it over and there is no reason to protect idiot commenters.
And I think the DA did the right thing by not pressing charges. Once the investigation was complete, it was clear that Buss posed no harm to anyone and I’m guessing that he learned his lesson. Without the threat of actual violence, this was an idiotic posting that is protected by the First Amendment.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 06, 2007 at 0243 hrs
So now all is clear. The West Bend School boss who loathed Owen for his exposure of their bloated school referendum reports it.
She wants to hurt his reputation and maybe close down his site. That would make her sooooooo happy.
So she finds this “parody” and thinks AH HA! Ive got you now Owen. I will teach you to let these neocons express their first ammendment rights. what about my rights to drain 100 million dollars from the West Bend taxpayers?
So she calls the Police.
And then it turns out the poster is a teacher too
This whole event is just too delicious for words.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 06, 2007 at 0757 hrs
read the journal sentintel article in todays paper.
everything that was supposed and speculated is now clear.he was posing-he put in mispellings to “reinforce that it was a right wing zealot”
So if you dont want to waste money on overbloated and lavish school spending you are stupid and cannot spell.
thats what they think of people who disagree with themAnd that cannot be argued or disputed after today
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 06, 2007 at 0806 hrs
And once again, they do it all on our dime. Is it any wonder people are resistant to $119 million tax increase. And, a correction, I said back pay in my previous post, Mr. Buss is on paid leave…
A new annual study sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reports results that are deeply troubling.
The report issued in 2006 looked at graduation rates on a district-by-district level and found that they are shockingly lower than previously reported by the education bureaucracy. In big-city public school districts like Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas and Denver, fewer than 50 percent of high school students graduate on time. In three districts, the public schools graduate on time fewer than 40 percent of their students: In New York City, the graduation rate is 38.9 percent; in Baltimore, it’s 38.5 percent; and in Detroit, incredibly, only 21.7 percent of students who enter public high schools will graduate on time.
Consider this finding for a moment. If only 21.7 percent of students graduate from Detroit schools on time (25% in the 2007 report), that means that 78.3 percent of students fail to graduate. Almost 80 percent of students—four out of five—are failed by our educational system. Why do we tolerate this level of failure? Cheating the children is wrong. The fact is, in most aspects of life, we don’t. If a private company took the money from its customers and then failed 80 percent of them, it would be closed in a day.
Reports on our public schools like this latest one should have us all shouting “Save the Children.” Every time we allow policies that favor the education bureaucracy over our children, we not only hurt our children, we hurt our country and our prospects for future safety and prosperity.
http://www.americansolutions.com/General/?Page=3157f0f0-3705-4bec-93df-80b82ab193dd
The public school system is failing our children. The teachers union is doing everything they can to stop the very citizens that pay their salaries from trying to improve it.
http://www.bootsandsabers.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/weac_wins_legal_victory_over_parents/
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 06, 2007 at 0851 hrs
The detective, DA, and judge all have realized that this was a waste of their time and effort and money.
The detective investigated a report of a potential threat and determined it was unfounded.
For him that’s not a “waste of time and money.” That’s a large fraction of his typical working day.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on December 06, 2007 at 1156 hrs
We’ve all seen “Bowling for columbine” and I really appreciated the way the moderator presented the fire arms problem all over the United States. No matter what the reason was, killing innocent people is not an option. If there’s a problem, the authorities should be called in to make investigations. Nobody should take the law into their own hands.
Posted by water damage restoration on February 12, 2008 at 1815 hrs
So I guess that the right of free speech is a fake diploma that doesn’t mean absolutely anything.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 29, 2008 at 1125 hrs
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