I'll have a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce?

This is the start of the infamous "McDonalds drive-thru rap" on youtube. Maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't. I personally had never heard this quite interesting rap until my little brother was shouting it into his phone [ I later found out he was leaving a lovely voicemail for a friend]. He's 13 and he loves it. Thinks its the most hilarious thing he's ever heard and many a time I've heard, "When I can drive, I am so going to do this!" Alriiiiight. Way to go little bro. Let's end up like these kids who did it and wound up getting a ticket:
Teens cited for burger ‘rap' in drive-thru. And in case you're interested here's the video :

McDonalds drive-thru rap

Really, I see this as a case of "Disgruntled Minimum Wage Employee Syndrome". If kids want to rap their order, go for it. At least they're super-sizing their order, sheesh. No need to go all commander McDonalds manager on them and call the cops. Using his powers of authority, he took down the license plates of the offenders and proceeded to escalate the issue into a monumental offense. Local authorities then tracked the meddlesome children and "gave all four teens the equivalent of a speeding ticket on the charge of disorderly conduct for disrupting business." Kids are kids. They come up with stupid raps and spout them in public. The teens claimed no one was in line and that their performance wasnt disrupting anyone. Only in American Fork, Utah would this be an issue. Statements to police from employees said that the "workers felt threatened". "It was basically harmless," one of the teen's mother said. "It wasn't interfering with anything, and it's just hard to believe a ticket would be issued for that." Here in the great nation that is America, you can get a ticket for just about anything. Jaywalking,
possessing silly string between the October 31st and november 1st on Michigan streets, and if you're in good 'ol Texas you can't shoot at a Native American from a trolley car. Only in America folks.

What part of our public school system is failing those children deemed mentally ill?

While browsing in the local category of The Dallas Morning News online, I came across the story of a young boy failing to adjust to society. Not just any teenager having trouble fitting in, but a Hurricane Katrina refugee living with his mother in the Texas town of Tyler. What drew my eye was this headline:
Student held in Tyler teacher's stabbing had long history of mental illness.
Upon further reading, I found out this boy had:
A) A diagnosis of schizophrenia, psychotic episodes and probable mental retardation.
B) A track record of being in mental hospitals in Texas and Louisiana.
C) A past stay in a Smith County juvenile lockup and then in a Texas juvenile prison for stabbing his sister.
D) Family history of mental illness, namely his uncle who brutally murdered his grandma.
and most importantly a discharge from TYC, the Texas Youth Commission, for being more of a burden than they could handle.

Now what is a mother left to do? Home with a son with a disturbed mental state, in addition to trying to support 3 other kids in a single parent household, she has no other option but to put her troubled kid into the public school system. According to state laws, every kid must be accepted into the system, no matter the needs the child has. Here he could not properly be handled as any other special needs student. He had violent tendencies and even had trouble walking in the hallway with other students. It was in this public school, Tyler High, where he fatally stabbed his teacher Todd Henry. Who is to blame here? The Texas Youth Commission for dismissing him when he was not suitable to be dismissed, or the mother for putting him in school? Mind you, his mother had taken him to many a psychiatric hospital and gotten the same diagnosis. Her child was too unstable for them to handle. Then theres the state law that kids must be in school. Therefore, I see her as left with no choice but to enroll her child in high school, despite his dark past. Byron's court-appointed lawyer, James Huggler even said that he was "Absolutely amazed that he was released from TYC, given his mental state and the fact that he was apparently kept in isolation with no effective treatment and no effective after-care program for his return home". He insisted that treatment is what his client needs rather than punishment. I'm thinking Huggler might be right here. His past hospital stays and reformative juevenial center sentences were less than effective. For future cases, troubled teens like Byron need to be properly accounted for in the public school system. Its a tragic instance that a teacher was killed before this was realized.

Are Journalism ethics dead?

I would say for the most part journalists adhere to the "Code of Ethics" in which their job entails. They set out to gather the news and portray their findings in an honest and sincere fashion. But as in every occupation, there are those radicals that misrepresent all of those in their field. The journalists who go for the "shock factor" of news rather than what is honest and fair and ethically correct. These here, are the exceptions. Yet on the other hand, every day thousands of journalists adhere to the code of ethics and portray news as how they traditionally set out to do so.

Newspapers and broadcast media have their standards. What they can and can't say on air, what they ethically or morally should or shouldn't say. But sources like twitter and blogging are in a league all of their own. The writers behind these sources are not held to any moral light; they can write and represent their information in any way they choose. Their bias can saturate every inch of what they write. This is their private writings that they can share with the world as they please. They are not employed to comment on events, so therefore private citizens can blog how they choose to. They are not obligated to "Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error." Many times this can be blatantly obvious. Just are we studied in class, many people obtain their information through the Two-step flow model. Peers are a major source of news information. When we depend so heavily on others for our current events, there is eventually going to lapses in truth. Every once in awhile I stumble upon someone's twitter, and they frankly have no idea what they're talking about. People like this spout off information that they've heard without bothering to check their sources. Who needs to? Blogs and twitters are like the opinion columns of a newspaper. But certainly much less refined and polished.

Newspaper journalist are held to this Code of Ethics, while those not employed to write are not. Twitters, blogs and the infinite other sources in which a private citizen can write, are wildly opinionated and informal sources of information. They do not follow under the lines of traditional journalism regulations.