Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Cleveland Plain Dealer]

The easy way out would have been to tell the graduates of Westlake High School that the misspelling on their diplomas was a final test.

A test. Yeah, that’s it.

Instead, Principal Timothy Freeman fell on his red pen, shouldering responsibility for the diplomas issued to 330 Westlake graduates at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland on Saturday that read board of “educaiton,” not “education.”

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m sure Bob Cleveland will love this one!  I’m just thankful it isn’t a school in my home state!

What do you think?

[BBC News]

A Church of England vicar accused of spitting at and intimidating his parishioners has been ordered to leave his Cambridgeshire post by his bishop.

Rev Dr Tom Ambrose, 61, of St Mary and St Michael Church in Trumpington, has been disqualified from carrying out any of the functions of his office. A church tribunal last year recommended the move citing “pastoral breakdown”. Dr Ambrose has issued a denial he ever spat at parishioners and said the allegation was never put to him. Dr Ambrose had clashed with parishioners over his plans to modernise the church.

The tribunal heard evidence of “arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty behaviour of Dr Ambrose”.

In the decision letter to the vicar and those who brought the tribunal, the Bishop of Ely Dr Anthony Russell wrote: “I am astonished and dismayed that there are recorded two occasions on which it is said that Dr Ambrose spat at parishioners, allegations which were not challenged in cross-examination.”

Read about it here.

[From me] 

Maybe it is way of baptizing his parishioners!

What to you think?

[NJ.com]

Twenty-nine eighth graders at a Hunterdon County school received two days detention after they paid for their $2 lunches with pennies, officials said.

Read about it here.

[From me]

O my.  Good thing I didn’t think about this when I was in school.  Of course my friends and I never ate in the lunch room because we skipped to go eat at Taco Casa in Tuscaloosa!

What do you think?

[TC Palm]

Police arrested a 28-year-old man Sunday on a cruelty to animals charge after he yelled an obscenity at a police dog in a patrol vehicle, according to an arrest affidavit.

Moses Rogers Jr. faces a disorderly conduct charge in connection with the 2:24 a.m. incidents. Police say Rogers yelled an obscene statement in the window as he walked past a patrol vehicle that contained a patrol dog “causing (the dog’s) behavior to become overloaded, tormenting the dog,” the affidavit states.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Cruelty to animals for a word? What, did the dog get it’s feelings hurt? I could see a charge of abuse to an officer since the dog is an actual officer. Man.

This reminds me of a story a police officer in my church in Ft. Worth told me. His family adopted a retired “police dog” and he became their pet. The officer’s daughter took the police dog for a walk and went to a neighbors house. The dog began to rip up the couch in the neighbors house and found cocaine. I guess the police dog can retire but you can’t retire his “NOSE.”

What do you think?

[BBC]

A university employee who claimed she had been continually taunted because of her chronic flatulence has lost a discrimination claim at a tribunal. The unnamed woman told an employment tribunal in Leeds that staff at the city’s Metropolitan University made cruel jokes about her condition.

The woman said she suffered from severe irritable bowel syndrome.

Her claims of disability and racial discrimination and constructive dismissal were rejected by the panel.

The tribunal heard one of the woman’s colleagues had said the office window had to be opened because of the smell and “we shouldn’t have to put up with it”.

A colleague at Leeds Metropolitan University said of her: “She stinks the place out.”

Read about it here and here.

[From me]