Pam, in order to get the protection for the kids is not an all encompassing non specific law better? They are still minor children in any case and there is no excuse to ever bully. Criminalize all bullying for any cause and follow up with individual districts to police the progress. As more is needed more can be done, but I would suggest that it needs to involve area parents so that "carpetbaggers" will not be telling the locals what to do.

Without criminalizing all bullying the kids will pick on the kid with the birthmark, MS, a limp, a harelip, a stutter, not the right shoes, etc. They are going to pick on something because they are kids.

I myself prefer to see statutes such as this cover all things rather than state specifics. In setting up the guidelines for our new religious organization we stated that membership, clergy etc would be available in a non-prejudicial manner.
Right now I am involved with the rewrite of the bylaws for a large traditional martial arts organization I want to push for a change in how the wording is done so that it doesn't have a limited list of things and so is inclusive of everything. I need to be able to prepare things because i can see a possible showdown over promotion issues developing and I just want to head those off. So when it come at the board level I can argue that the transgendered folks are protected in the bylaws already. So to do that I gotta get the bylaws changed. The funny thing is that the board members who may balk at credentialing a transgendered instructor will approve the change and not see it coming at this time.

I know one of the critisisms of the Florida bullying bill was that it was generic. That leaves anti-gay bullying up to school officials to support. In rural schools with anti-gay administration, do you think they'd enforce it? Especially when it's not spelled out that they have to?

Pam, please forgive my apparent illiteracy. Did an LGBT amendment get recommitted, or did they recommit the whole anti-bullying bill because it would include LGBT kids? The latter sounds like a story to me: they don't want to protect your kids because the bill might have protected every kid?

Non specific, all encompassing should even cover Nikes. By getting bogged down with specifics are we not protecting only bullies?

Pam is a Democrat, but one of those able to look at the real world and assign fault to the Democrats. She says “… if all of these Dems had shown up, the bill would have passed.”

The NC events were a replay of the policies of the national Democrats, especially the Obama campaign, that's taking extraordinary steps to distance themselves from the ‘fringes’ of society. As usual we're'the fringes' and, again as usual, we’re being herded off to Siberia for the duration of the campaign, and if their history is any guide, we’ll be there for quite a while after it's over.

Following their butchery of our legislative agenda – ENDA and Hate Crimes murdered, DOMA and DADT retained after two years of Democrat control of Congress – Obama is moving into the bigot’s camp in a big way with his initiative to expand the taxpayer financed bribes cult leaders get in exchange for votes – the so-called ‘faith-based’ charities law.

Reliance on Democrats is a failed and consistently self-defeating tactic. We need a massive campaign including demonstrations and alliance building to demand tough, all inclusive laws against harassment and violence plus laws that enable us to sue the cults and political groups and figures who campaign for bigotry, i.e., laws against hate speech. That kind of struggle is far more important than electing the latest version of the lesser evil to come don the pike. Our youth come before partisan political activity.

It's too true - the Democrats think that issues like protecting kids in schools aren't winners, so they back off. No wonder people instantly associate "flip-flopper" with "Democrat" - it almost seems like they have no principles.