A Federal judge has ruled that it is okay for the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness to continue with its lawsuit against CNN for its failure to closed caption online.  The judge rejected CNN's arguments such as that its refusal to caption online was an exercise of its First Amendment rights.  CNN.com, getting the message yet? All we want is access!

By now, almost everyone knows what happened to Trayvon Martin in Florida.  I can easily imagine a similar situation happening with any deaf person in Florida. Picture someone like George Zimmerman calling out "Hey! What are you doing here?" to a deaf person walking in the neighborhood. When the deaf person does not answer, the "neighborhood watch" person runs up, clearly irritated at being "ignored" and that there was no response and pushes the deaf person out of frustration. The deaf person, startled by the push from a stranger, instinctively reacts in a physical way. A fight starts...the "neighborhood watch" person shoots...deaf person is dead.

What I am trying to say is, the "stand your ground" law as it is now in Florida (and several other states) could easily result in the unpunished deaths of deaf people walking around innocently due to impatient, or trigger-happy, hearing people. Then those killers, if no witnesses saw what actually happened, can claim "it was self defense! The deaf person punched me!"

Florida's insane stand your ground law has got to go or be modified so it doesn't result in the unpunished deaths of innocent people, black or deaf.

Fox News Latino has a report about how a Latino mother threw herself into learning sign language and becoming part of the deaf community, when her three sons were born deaf. This mother holds weekly sign language classes in her own home. Her active involvement led to her becoming a parent mentor in a Department of Education program for parents of deaf children.

Last week Gallaudet University announced it was offering a new master's degree in Public Administration. The article quotes the Gallaudet president citing the need for such a degree to help deaf and hard of hearing government and nonprofit employees advance. The new program starts this coming fall.