Bill of Rights translation (PDF, 33 kb)

Above find the Bill of Rights translation packet from Friday, January 23.

Your assignment is to translate and annotate each amendment, then rank them in order of personal importance.

Finally, you are to write a brief essay explaining your rationale for choosing the order that you did.

Readings on foreign policy (PDF, 2.8 mb)
Goals of American foreign policy (PDF, 22 kb)

Reading: The 9/11 Presidency (link, Wall Street Journal)

For your assignment, you may write a three-paragraph response or post your response to your page on the class wiki.

Choose one of the following prompts:

1. Define and describe three successes and three failures of the Bush presidency, either as defined in the article or based on your own outside research.
2. Through outside research, find three areas of foreign policy that Obama intends to change from the Bush years.  Describe each in detail, and give your response — positive or negative — to each.
3. Respond to the author’s position on the Bush presidency.  Do you agree or disagree?  Defend your position.

Course syllabus (PDF, 32 kb)

Welcome to “The Law and You.”

On this site, you’ll find everything you need to succeed in my class. Every announcement, assignment, lecture, and study guide will be posted.

I’ll also use this site to supplement our classwork — if we don’t have time to talk about it in class, we’ll talk about it here.

All files are Adobe portable document files (PDFs), which are readable on all computer operating systems. The free software to read these files is available here.

To reach me outside of school hours, students and parents are encouraged to e-mail me at tripodij@bsd.k12.pa.us.

-Mr. Tripodi

Tuesday, January 12 for sure.  We’ll need to discuss availability for other meeting(s) at that time.

http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d108/d108laws.html

Worksheet packet (PDF, 80 kb)

For our in-class activity, choose any of the bills listed below.  Some were signed into law; some were vetoed; some died on the floor of the House or Senate.

Using the back sheet of your packet, chart the progress (or lack thereof) of this bill in congress.  If it passed, how did it pass?  If it didn’t, where in the process did it die?  Did it make it to the president?  If so, what happened?

Choose from the following (or clear an alternative with me):

High Performance Computing and Communicating Act of 1991
State Children’s Health Insurance Plan Act
Impeachment of Dick Cheney
Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005
Partial Birth Abortion Act
Water Resources Development Act
USA PATRIOT Act
Civil Rights Act of 1964
National Voting Rights Act of 1965
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Taft-Hartley Act
Fugitive Slave Act

Thursday, 1/29 5:30
Plaintiff vs. Beaver (B)

Monday, 2/2 5:30
Defense vs. Quigley

Thursday, 2/5 5:30
Plaintiff vs. New Brighton (B)

Monday, 2/9 7:30
Defense vs. Riverside

For this assignment, you will choose one military operation from the American Revolutionary War.

You’ll become an expert on this element of the war.  Using the classroom laptops, you will spend the better part of two class periods researching your component.

Your job:

1. Research.  Fill out the worksheet distributed in class Monday.  There’s another copy of it available here.
2. Report.  You can write a three-paragraph essay, or create a web page at the class wiki.  If you create a page, please name it us8****revo, replacing the **** with your last name.

This assignment is worth 40 points — 15 for the worksheet and 25 for the report.

Click the link below to see the many battles of the war from which you may choose.

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We’re meeting twice this week with Mr. Andrascik, our attorney advisor. We’ll be done by 5:00 both nights.