The constitutional question of this Supreme Court case was the following: “Is Cheryl Perich a minister?” If Cheryl Perich is not a minister then all federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws protect her even if her employer is religious.
The Hosanna-Tabor case was about a teacher, Cheryl Perich, whose job was to teach secular subjects as well as some religious teaching. At first, she was not hired as a real teacher but after taking education courses she became a qualified teacher. Her job was pretty much the same before and after she became qualified however. Later, Perich began to fall sick from narcolepsy and left the school for medical reasons. When she returned months later, the church told her that her job was unavailable and she could not return. Perich wasn’t having that, so she threatened to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying that the church should have worked with her so that she could keep her job. Instead of scaring them into giving her the job back, it just made it harder for her to get it. The church said that if she sued them then she would no longer be welcome as an employee because they believe that all disputes should be resolved peacefully. They said that she failed to take advantage of an internal procedure, rather than court. However, they never told Perich about this “internal procedure” until after she had mentioned her intent to use the ADA.
When Justice Ginsburg if it was in the handbook, the church’s representative, Professor Douglas Laycock, completely dodged the question, saying that the handbook was irrelevant. So basically he knew they were wrong. He just didn’t want to admit it so they wouldn’t lose the case.
I think that Cheryl Perich will win this case primarily because she was not a minister, only a teacher, which means she has all the laws by her side. The church has none except that you cannot sue the church. However, she was not suing the church, she was suing the employers. Also, the church’s story was backwards and there were some questions they refused to answer or tried to dodge because they knew they were wrong. It’s obvious, so they’re going to lose.
Robert Brady and I are pretty different people however we have the same belief when it comes to amnesty day. He was born and raised in Philadelphia while I was born in New York, raised there for a while and then moved to Philadelphia. He graduated from St. Thomas More High School then later became a carpenter and was soon part of the leadership of the Carpenters’ union. He is still a member of both the Carpenters’ and Teachers’ unions. On January 5, 2011, Congressman Brady was sworn into office for his 8th term representing the first congressional district of Pennsylvania.
Congressman Brady is very supportive of helping foreign countries. Foreign policies are his biggest interest. Some of the policies he supports are democratic institutions in Pakistan, stopping foreign arms transfers to China, keeping the Cuba travel ban until political prisoners are released, $156 million to IMF for 3rd-world debt reduction, $15.2 billion for foreign operations, allowing Americans to travel to Cuba, and much more. I find this pretty awesome because it seems as though he is more understand of foreign need than the rest of the congressmen and women. It explains why he is also supportive of another amnesty day.
Robert Brady is very active within the community, as previously stated, he is still a member of both the Carpenter’s and Teacher’s union. He has also improved dogs’ working conditions, shows interest in sports like citizens, speaks out about ways to help demolish poverty and get more people employed, and many other things that benefit us in our community.
Congressman Brady and I seem quite a like. He seems like the simple thinker that I am as well, and we think of some of the same solutions to problems in our state.
http://www.issues2000.org/PA/Robert_Brady_Foreign_Policy.htm
http://brady.house.gov/
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I chose the Federal Election Campaign Act for my bill because I had already done some research for it with my lobbying topic assignment. From that research, I knew that the bill was changed multiple times because of a variety of outside influences, so I figured there would be plenty of information to get for my project. As you can probably tell by my 11-minute video, there was indeed plenty of information to cover. I thought that a video would be the best format because I just didn't see a prezi or presentation providing a proper explanation. With topics like this, the best way for me to get the facts out, is if I verbally discuss it. Of course, visual aids would be necessary too. So, a video it was. When I started my project, I didn't realize just how much was done to the bill over the decades, and its history started a lot earlier than I thought as well. I had to do a lot of research to figure out all the big and all the really small changes and amendments of the bill. This took more time than I thought it would, and it was little hard to understand some of the court decisions as well. Figuring out the "why" was really the hardest part. But, I was able to figure it out the best I could and managed to put it all into words for my video. If I could do my project differently though, I would make the most changes to my video itself. It's a little dry. Because of problems with my audio, I had to keep re-recording it, and I didn't have time to really put in music or anything like that. Plus, I wanted the slides to be a little bit more animated. I didn't have time for that kind of stuff. Also, it is a longer video than I intended. I probably could have summed up my court cases and my reflection at the end a little better and more concise. Well, at least my viewers will get the information. I understood the basics to how a bill became a law, but (especially in my particularly bill) I didn't realize just how much the Supreme Court can play a part in appealing and causing amendments to the laws. I knew about the public opinion aspect and how the political air of the time had a major impact on the laws of the time, and this was definitely true in my law. So, I kind of figured that with this particular law it probably wasn't easy because there would be plenty of people who want to twist their money around in politics. I didn't think they would so much legal standing to just make things difficult for Congress though.
http://www.academicamerican.com/progressive/topics/progressive.html
http://www.campaignfreedom.org/blog/ID.124/blog_detail.asp
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/11/news/companies/supreme_court_citizens_united.fortune/
http://www.enotes.com/major-acts-congress/federal-election-campaign-act
http://www.govexec.com/basics/hatchact.htm
http://thisnation.com/question/004.html http://www.fec.gov/info/appfour.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/
Safe Water Drinking Act
It messed up a bit but here you go
Child Labor and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
View my benchmark here.
Sources:
"A New View of Society" by Robert Owen
http://www.skeptically.org/literaryworksofjk/id1.html
"The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era" by Micheline Ishay
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
http://www.archive.org/details/ReportOfTheAnnualSessionsOfTheFederationOfOrganizedTradesAndLabor
National Child Labor Committee Collection
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=59
http://www.nationalchildlabor.org/history.html
http://www.lawnix.com/cases/hammer-dagenhart.html
"Federal income tax, war-profits and excess-profits taxes" by George Edwin Holmeshttp://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1921/1921_657
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAchild.htm
http://www.shrm.org/LegalIssues/FederalResources/FederalStatutesRegulationsandGuidanc/Pages/Walsh-HealyActof1936.aspx
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_laws.html
I chose to do a project on child labor laws, because as a 16-year-old, few laws have a bigger impact on me personally. I think it's incredibly important to keep kids from neglecting schoolwork and personal growth in order to pursue money, especially now that popular movies and TV shows like Gossip Girl make it seem like it's normal for teenagers to live their lives completely independent of any adults.
I chose to present my project as a timeline because child labor laws didn't simply "happen" as a single event. There were many events over numerous decades that led up to the anti-child labor legislation that we have today. It would have been difficult to convey these in any other format without getting too complicated.
The biggest challenge in this project was actually just finding a way to make a timeline. I went through seven online timeline-making sites, not counting Prezi, before I found Dipity.com. It allows for some minimal formatting, it doesn't have absurdly low character limits, it allows for but doesn't require a start AND end date, it doesn't demand that I know the exact second of every event (looking at you, tiki-toki.com), it says I can use images and actually DOES let me use images, and it doesn't limit me to NINE events. Unfortunately, Dipity is often slow and buggy. At the moment, the whole site is down.
If I could do the whole project again, I would add more information about what happened after the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, such as data on literacy levels and income. I might even include information about people who currently oppose child labor laws. Utah Senator Mike Lee, for example, calls child labor laws "unconstitutional."
I was actually surprised at how easy it was to find helpful information on child labor laws. Often, when I research a topic, every source tells me the same thing. However, the history of child labor laws is so complicated that I found new details everywhere. It also helped that the National Child Labor Committee commissioned thousands of photos of child labor, since it provided me with fantastic primary sources.
Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002. {Semaj Smith.}
I wanted to chose a bill that I could really get into and that would hold my attention for more than 5 minutes and the only thing that I could think of was children. So I researched bills that dealt with children and the bill that stood out the most was the "Born- Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002" Once I started reading into what the bill was and what it stood for I was hooked.
I chose to do a Prezi because I personally think everyone chooses to a Keynote or an iMovie which eventually gets boring once a teacher has seen 32 of those types of presentations. A prezi to me is more fun because you can literally chose any path and format that you want and it looks creative. Although Prezi is very hard to figure out once the product is finished it looks really amazing. While completing this project some of my challenges were trying to find the actual timeline for my bill. I found many important dates but I couldn't find an actual list of all of the events that took place to make this bill a law. I think if I were to do this project over I would chose a different form of presentation just because I found out there were so many other ways I could have presented this that would have been more unique than a Prezi. Also, I would try to find some video on my bill so that my presentation was a little more interactive. From all of my research I understand and realize that there was no time wasted when it came to this bill, the bill was passed within a day with no changes or arguments about it so I know that it was taken very serious.
The process was easier than I though it would be because I though I woud need to dig deep into history to find out simple things on my bil but every time I researched my topic there were new things I learned about that I was able to incorporate into my timelines.
The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (Lola Akinsola)
I chose the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 because I wanted to get
deeper into the process of how they signed the bill into a law. I'm
surprised they even made the bill. You would think that since the
country was run by a bunch of prejudice men, minorities would never have
civil rights and there would be nothing that they could do about it
because they don't run anything. Minorities were completely powerless in
the government yet they still got what they wanted.
I chose to create a powerpoint presentation as a last resort. I
initially wanted to create a video using iMovie but it seems as though
my computer has some new version that it much more confusing than the
original. I didn't start my project early enough to ask for help or play
around with it until I knew how to work it. I feel that podcasts are
just as boring as powerpoint presentations but take much more work just
to get the same reaction; boredom. I don't do well with Prezi either. It
just gets messy when I use it and it drives me crazy. I felt like my
only option was a powerpoint so that's what I decided to do.
The only challenge I had other than figuring out a way to present
my information was finding the information. In Google I would type in
"Civil Rights Bill of 1964" and get information about civil rights
movements and the march on Washington that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
led. It was good information to use in my project, but it only filled up
a tiny part of my project. What I really needed to find was the process
from a bill to a law. Then after getting help I found that I needed to
type in "Civil Rights Bill of 1964 congressional debate" to get
everything I needed to complete the project.
If I had to do the project over again, I would definitely create a
video. I had a lot of ideas in my mind about how to make the video that
would make it interesting. To do this I would have to start the project
early. iMovie is tricky so having a lot of time would be necessary to
complete the video properly. I would also do more research for my topic.
I felt like there were some things that were missing from my project.
It seemed too straight forward for there not to be anything else to it.
However, like I said, I started the project late so I could only
research for so long.
What the research and investigation told me about the creation
process from idea to bill to law was that the only reasons they passed
the bill as a law was just to shut the minorities up and get their
votes. The nicer they were to the minorities, the greater chance they
had of being reelected. That's really all it was about. I think if
President Johnson did not sign that bill into a law he would have been a
half-term president. One of the people who "supported" the bill was
only worried about votes. Plus it seemed as though minorities were
becoming more rebellious leading marches, protesting, and boycotting. It
would scare me if I was a white person walking down the street looking
at angry black people. I would feel like I'm in danger. Passing the bill
as a law would calm them down.
The process of passing the bill was actually just as I expected it
to be. Of course there were going to be congressmen who totally
disagreed and there were going to be some that were a little bit more
understanding and would vote for the bill. I expected people to try and
talk the bill down to death in a filibuster. I'm not surprised at all at
how the process went.
Ali Ahmed Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
I chose this bill because it was very relevant in today's political and social system. It is arguably the highlight of Obama's presidents how well it does will shape how these four years will be viewed in history books. I decided to use a keynote because it was relatively easily accessible and made text easier to view. It was hard finding information on the beginnings of the act. Most information was centered around the after math. I would have liked to know more about how this law turns out. If I came back to this topic in a couple of years I would have a lot more information. The creation of a bill is very sneaky. The politicians try to pass bills with as little publicity as possible. I thought the information would be much more easily assessable and easier to understand yet it was pretty vague and oddly worded. It would be nice if people who are experts in the topic could make more plain english translation so the general public could be more involved.
Elisa Hyder AmGov Benchmark: Federal Election Campaign Act
I couldn't upload my video, so I put it on google docs. Here's the link
Reflection:
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/millionaire.shtml
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2008/2008_08_205
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2006/2006_06_969
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1674
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2007/2007_07_320
http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation_CCA_M.shtml
