Tea Party Crasher Placed On Leave During Ethics Probe

Tea Party Crasher Placed On Leave During Ethics Probe

www.personalliberty.com

An Oregon middle school teacher who attempted to organize efforts to "infiltrate" and "dismantle" Tea Party demonstrations has been placed on paid administrative leave while state officials investigate whether he used school time and resources to develop his website, CrashTheTeaParty.org.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The teacher in question, Jason Levin, counters with:

"The fact that teachers are held to a higher standard when exercising their right to free speech (in their private lives) is patently unfair," Levin told TalkingPointsMemo.com

I think the school is in the right on this matter; It's not a matter of being a crackdown on Levin's Right to Free Speech that's in question here...It's the question whether he was authorized to use school property & resources to do it. Clearly, the schools are pretty much forbidden to advance any particular political idealolgy, especially an idealology that attempts to use "stealth-tactics" & "infiltration" to simply make another political idealogy look bad in front of the press.

Levin's response is completely off the mark! He intimates that it's his "political viewpoints" that are being investigated, not his ethics. As pointed out in the article:

Conservative radio host Lars Larson explained on his show on Wednesday that it is not a matter of free speech, but rather an issue of trusting someone to work with children who furthers their political goals "by lying, stealing and damaging somebody else’s reputation."

The article wraps up by mentioning that Levin says that his website, CrashTheTeaParty.org, is up for sale...

Well, this news desk happens to be one of many that likes to leave some space open for comments from the reading public. Normally, I only read the first few (or so) comments, just to get an idea on the opinions of other readers...Sometimes, there's a lot of good, common sense brought to light that gets missed by the article itself. One comment in particular caught my attention, but I shall not name any names here (you can see who left this comment by looking at the link for yourself).

They had pictures in our small town paper showing a couple of the infiltrators and some of the members of the Tea Party had them surrounded with their own signs with arrows on them pointing directly towards them. One said Perpatraitors—>.

"Perpatraitors"...Heh! I like that!

www.personalliberty.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I agree with you, this isn't the government being harsh for no reason. The teacher in question is not being fired. They will just do a probe, find nothing of value and leave him alone.

If they find that he did use school property and time to create his website then he should face the consequences, even if it involves being fired. He's there to teach children, not to further his political beliefs.

So what proof is there that he usesd any school property? If he made up a site that accepts money for charity they would not have said anything. The principle reamains the same. Unless there is some cause for suspicion then these charges are obviously trumped up charges and the majority of the town sympathetic to the tea party. His mistake was getting caught as an infiltrator.

reply to post by liquidself


That's what the probe is for. They're trying to determine if he used school time and property, thus using taxpayer funding, to set up his website. That's misappropriation of school property if he did, and if so then he should accept the consequences. If he did it on his own time with his own property, then nothing more will come of it.

Was there any indication that the teacher used school resources? or is the teacher being singled out because the teacher's political ideology is in contrast to the school board?

Using school resources for this is something that should be met with appropriate punishment; however, evidence of usage of school resources should first be discovered before they conduct an inquire and suspend the teacher.

P.S. if the schools policy was that teachers can use work assigned laptops for personal use during off hours, will this still be considered using school resources? I smell a lawsuit!

[edit on 20-4-2010 by Aggie Man]

For a school to have an internal investigation into this they would have had to have suspected something to begin with.

Also, I found this article on Fox that has a bit more info than the one in the OP along with this part that I find particularly disturbing:

In a now deleted post on his "Crash the Tea Party" Web site, he called on his supporters to collect the Social Security numbers -- among other personal identifying information -- about as many Tea Party supporters as possible at the numerous rallies that took place on Thursday, Tax Day.

"Some other thoughts are to ask people at the rally to sign a petition renouncing socialism. See just how much info you can get from these folks (name address, DOB, Social Security #). The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!" he wrote.

The state agency is investigating whether this is a hint at identity theft, and whether it is appropriate behavior for a public school teacher. It also will investigate charges that Levin used school computers during school hours to work on his Web site. Levin teaches 6th, 7th and 8th graders about computers and technology.

Just the type of person I would want teaching my children.

This type of story is exactly why I left Beaverton...

And exactly why many native Oregonians that had lived in Beaverton and surrounding towns (BTW INTEL® has numerous, massive computer processor 'farms' where the pentium chip was designed and manufactured more than a decade ago) were choosing to leave that area and move to Alaska.

I had heard quiet comments from many people that they were sick of the Californians moving there from Silicon Valley (like I did, but I'm not Progressive Californian) and that if things kept getting worse they were off to Alaska.

In my opinion, when I lived in Beaverton, Lars was becoming a rarity in the Portland area.

He's an Über-Conservative (maybe progressive, that's why it works for him) in a growing sea of Progressives & Liberals fleeing from the devastation they created in California (only to start their misguided agenda in Oregon.)

Conservative radio host Lars Larson explained on his show on Wednesday that it is not a matter of free speech, but rather an issue of trusting someone to work with children who furthers their political goals "by lying, stealing and damaging somebody else’s reputation."

"If you ran a Klan website on your own time, do you think you would be excused?" Larson asked. "If you ran a porno website, which is also legal, do you think you would be excused in that kind of job?"

Meanwhile, Levin told the news source that he is now looking to sell his website to anyone who is interested.

Those angry calls more than likely originated from outside the state. Lars still has an excellent point though.

Good find!

Edit to add: When they decide to 'take back their state' they will certainly be dialing 911 for assistance with that.

[edit on 4·20·10 by DrMattMaddix]

This one made me laugh.

"The fact that teachers are held to a higher standard when exercising their right to free speech (in their private lives) is patently unfair," Levin told TalkingPointsMemo.com

Of course they are! They are teachers! As a teacher it is your sole responsibility to not only enlighten the minds of tomorrow but set a good example for our children to follow. Of course you would be held at a higher standard than everyone else (even during off time). I don't understand why you would have the gall to think otherwise...

[edit on 20-4-2010 by DaMod]

Zero tolerance should be applied to teachers as well.
He should be fired!

Originally posted by Alxandro
Zero tolerance should be applied to teachers as well.
He should be fired!

Fired, straight up, for his political views? Or do you mean he should be fired once the investigation is complete and it reveals that he did, in deed, misuse school resources?

reply to post by Aggie Man


Educate yourself. Monitering software operates in realtime, taking screenshots every second. The software systems manager for the shcool , or any administrator can check this record, which is admissable evidence in court. The records an accessable in real time
also. There is no need for a "lengthy investigation" to suspend him.
Now, the lenghty investigation that goes on from here well that will be the fun part. .

This Jason Levin was encouraging his "minions" to collect social secruity numbers from Tea Partiers, in order to create havoc.
He since removed that from his website, but believe me, there are hundreds of us that took screen shots of it, and saved the webpage.
Hope he likes the color Orange!

Sorry Jason Levin, if you had as much brains as you did hate you would not be in this downward spiral into the pit of unemployment, and multiple lawsuits coming your way sure to bring about judgments that will remain on your record for years to come.

Originally posted by burntheships
reply to post by Aggie Man

 

Educate yourself. Monitering software operates in realtime, taking screenshots every second. The software systems manager for the shcool , or any administrator can check this record, which is admissable evidence in court.

The article specifically states:

placed on paid administrative leave while state officials investigate whether he used school time and resources to develop his website

An investigation is not proof of wrong doing. The article mentions nothing of evidence already discovered.

So, rather that telling me to "educate myself", you should stop jumping to conclusions and pretending to be a know-it-all.

Originally posted by Aggie Man
Was there any indication that the teacher used school resources?

My response was in answer to your question. It does not take weeks and months to find an indicataion that Levin used school computers to access his webiste, promote it, or send out e-mails.

There is ample evidence and several reasons to suspend him.
Any teacher found to be lying, stealing and attempting to damage somebody else by means of collecting personal information should be fired.

His website is for sale, any takers?


[edit on 20-4-2010 by burntheships]

Originally posted by liquidself
So what proof is there that he usesd any school property?

He has admitted to using the schools computers already!

On Wednesday Levin explained the portion of his Web site code “BSD” that has come under scrutiny and has led to the allegations he built and worked on the Web site on school time.

On April 3 he registered the domain name and on April 4, while grading papers at school, he said he remembered he needed to get something up (on the Web site). He said he opened Microsoft Word on his school computer and typed “COMING SOON”. He then saved that file to a thumb drive and took it home where he said he used his personal computer and software to upload it to the Internet later that night.

It appeared on Wednesday that the “BSD” had been removed from the site and a KATU News reporter noticed both the “BSD” and the “COMING SOON” in the source code of the Web site on Tuesday. Here’s the “COMING SOON” code:



Code with the “BSD” removed:



1
0
2010-04-06T22:32:00Z
2010-04-06T22:32:00Z

thestir.cafemom.com...

reply to post by Jenna


I went to the web site cache and found nothing but posts from Tea Party Members POed.

Not that I don't trust Fox News...

If the premise of the site was as Fox describes it then the teacher has issue and I personally wouldn't want him teaching my kids about politics.

I wouldn't want my kids attending a Tea Party rally either...

How about rational, honest discourse?....

Originally posted by maybereal11

How about rational, honest discourse?....

Yeah, how bout it? You certainly can not consider a person who
encourages others to impersonate racists a man who is engaging in honest discourse?

Even the NAACP is involved now, and can not support this hater.

Skipper Osborne said he cannot support Levin and his crashers if they pretend to be racists and homophobes.

www.katu.com...

reply to post by maybereal11


I didn't see the post for myself either, but that's reportedly what was on it. By the time I went to the site all that was left was a link to buy a tea party crasher t-shirt. I did find the google cache of what the homepage use to look like, and I have to say just the tactics outlined there are pretty underhanded and despicable... But I couldn't see the cached pages of posts, it kept telling me I wasn't authorized or that I needed to log in to see it. Maybe somebody has a screen shot that they could post up for the rest of us to see?

There apparently was an article on news.infoshop.org but it's gone and their archive for the last three months is cleared out as though there have been no new articles since January.

Edit: I found a screenshot here that came from this page here. It has screen shots of other posts from the crash the tea party website as well.

[edit on 20-4-2010 by Jenna]

Wow, you people are quick! Right after I saw my first source, I typed up the initial news entry in Wordpad, performed an ATS Search to see if someone else beat me to it, then posted just a few hours ago. At that time, I decided to check out a couple of other areas of my interest here at ATS, intending to check the thread & follow up with more research...But I see that your research has already uncovered more than my original source!

Kudos to you all!

Now I have to check out your researches before I can do any more of my own...Thanks for increasing my work load.


[edit on 20-4-2010 by MidnightDStroyer]