In my understanding the kids may be identified in elementary but the gifted programs do not really start to the kids get out of elementary. this is a tougher subject to bring up with people. are you kids gifted... when do they start with gifted kids classes. So perhaps some districts take those kids and put them in new classrooms in elementary school... but I doubt it. It probably does not happen until the kids have different teachers for different subjects.
you missed my point... you are interpreting the 5th amendment broadly and applying it to areas the courts have not. I am not concerned about your interpretation. here is the 5th amendment... you see it specifically addresses being held to answer for capital and infamous crimes... it does not say a public servant testifying before a congressional oversight hearing.... not unless she is being held to answer for a capital or infamous crime. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.[1] from my quick search on the net.... no case law has applied 5th amendment protections to congressional ovesight hearings. congressional investigations are not capital or infamous crimes. they are investigations. In short this has not been tested...your spin is far to broad. the courts may have to decide.
and if you the 5th amendment closely it does say criminal case. are you arguing a public servant testifying before a congressional oversight committee is a criminal case. its not.
This is how it works. The person's testimony is being compelled, and that testimony can be used against them in a criminal case. It's just like if the police question you. Even though there's no criminal case against you, you cannot be compelled to answer their questions or even a grand jury's questions. If you remove the possibility that the testimony can be used against them, then they can be compelled to amswer, ie through a grant of immunity. There's nothing in the Fifth Amendment though that says they can't fire you. That's Obama's policy, "don't be a snitch."
Jem, you are making the mistake of thinking that the Constitution means what it says . The Court has decided for you what the Constitution means and the Court does not agree with you. Here Jem. Read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution It will explain the 5th amendment right to remain silent and where it applies and where it doesn't. You'll note that it applies to legal proceedings, criminal and civil. Congressional hearings are legal proceedings, as the committee has the subpoena power. See also Ohio vs. Reiner.
I remember a union contract like that. The "contract" was 60 pages long. But when it came to a test, I learned from union management that the real contract was "the contents of that filing cabinet", thanks to numerous prior cases and decisions.
from your your link... Refusal to testify in a civil case[edit] While defendants are entitled to assert that right, there are consequences to the assertion of the Fifth Amendment in a civil action. The Supreme Court has held that "the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them." Baxter v. Palmigiano,[49] "[A]s Mr. Justice Brandeis declared, speaking for a unanimous court in the Tod case, 'Silence is often evidence of the most persuasive character.'"[50] "'Failure to contest an assertion ... is considered evidence of acquiescence ... if it would have been natural under the circumstances to object to the assertion in question.'"[51] In Baxter, the state was entitled to an adverse inference against Palmigiano because of the evidence against him and his assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege. Some civil cases are considered "criminal cases" for the purposes of the Fifth Amendment. In Boyd v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that "A proceeding to forfeit a person's goods for an offence against the laws, though civil in form, and whether in rem or in personam, is a "criminal case" within the meaning of that part of the Fifth Amendment which declares that no person "shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself."[52]
lets be clear piezoe ...you / we do not know whether a public servant has the right to take the 5th in a non criminal hearing in front of congress.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/us-news-blog/2013/may/22/lois-lerner-irs-fifth-amendment-congress Legal scholars have debated, hotly, whether the fifth amendment even provides the protection Lerner and so many others have claimed. Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling professor of law at Yale University, has long argued against sweeping fifth-amendment protections in cases of congressional testimony. Amar has pointed out that while witnesses have a right to justice, society has a right to the truth. Writing about Lay's successful use of the fifth in 2002, to avoid disclosing details of how Enron cooked its books, Amar asked: "By what right do Enron bigwigs stonewall Congress?" The Fifth Amendment prohibits a person from being compelled to be a witness against himself in any 'criminal case', but a Congressional hearing is hardly a criminal case ⦠sometimes a truth-seeking society needs to be able to compel a person to speak outside his trial â in grand jury rooms, civil cases and legislative hearings, for example. Amar proposes a "a narrow type of testimonial immunity" for congressional witnesses. The difficulty of threading that needle was illustrated at the Lerner hearing by an argument among oversight committee members as to whether she had forfeited her fifth-amendment protections by delivering a statement. As Lerner rose to leave, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina), objected. "She waived her right to testify by issuing an opening statement," said Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor. (He apparently meant that Lerner had waived her right not to testify.) "She ought to stay and answer questions." Ranking member Elijah Cummings, (D-Maryland), also a lawyer, intervened. "Unfortunately this is not a federal court and she does have a right," Cummings said. "And we have to adhere to that." Committee chair Darrell Issa excused Lerner, with the provision that she could be called back if it had been found that she had indeed, as Gowdy claimed, waived her fifth-amendment right. Issa's staff will have to sort through a truly daunting overhang of case law if they are to answer that question. The argument wends through a bramble patch of supreme court precedent and heavy-hitting entries in the Journal of the American Bar Association. A Harvard law school dean, Erwin Griswold, mounted the seminal defense of the practice in a 1954 essay titled The Fifth Amendment: An Old and Good Friend. Revolted by the personal destructiveness of the McCarthy era, Griswold drew a comparison between criminal courts and congressional hearings: In our criminal courts, we would never think of requiring an accused person to answer questions. He doesn't have to take the stand at all, and if he does do so, he has the protection of an impartial judge, and the right to have his counsel speak in court on his behalf. Why should it be so different in a legislative inquiry, when the information that is sought relates to the witness' own conduct? ⦠The more I think about this, the more it seems to me to be an unsound practice. To those on the political right outraged today at Lerner's refusal to testify, there may be some consolation in the knowledge that the politics cuts both ways. In 2007 Monica Goodling, an underling in President George W Bush's justice department, took the fifth to avoid telling Congress about the Bush administration's sudden dismissal a year earlier of six US attorneys. A justice department investigation later concluded that the firings were inappropriately political; one of the dismissed attorneys seemed to have been fired for not aggressively prosecuting supposed voter fraud by Democrats. Goodling was implicated because she was one of the few to have been clumsy enough to explicitly describe the administration's plan in writing. She took the fifth, was never charged with a crime, and today she works in PR.
by the way I just found this very good run down of the situation. http://www.pointoforder.com/2013/05/22/taking-the-fifth-before-congresThis raises a number of legal questions, which we will proceed to consider. 1. Why can a witness invoke the Fifth Amendment before Congress when the privilege against self-incrimination applies only to criminal cases? With surprisingly little controversy (but see here for an academic view to the contrary), it has long been accepted by Congress and the courts that a congressional witness may invoke the Fifth. The theory is that if a witness were forced to testify in a congressional hearing, that testimony could be used against her in a subsequent criminal case. Note that this theory only holds if in fact the testimony could be used in court. 2. When can the witness invoke the Fifth? The witness must have a reasonable belief that her testimony might be used against her in a criminal prosecution. This does not mean that the witness must believe that she has actually committed a crime or that her truthful testimony would lead to her conviction. It just means that there is some realistic possibility that the witness may be criminally prosecuted for a matter to which her testimony might be relevant. This is a fairly low bar. 3. Can government officials invoke the Fifth before Congress and keep their jobs? Although I personally find it difficult to understand how a government official (particularly a senior official like Lerner) can refuse to testify before Congress, which is constitutionally responsible for overseeing the activities of her agency, it is fairly clear that she cannot be fired for doing so. My view is that at the least the President should be able to fire cabinet officials and others who serve at his pleasure for invoking the Fifth, but even this view was controversial when the issue arose during my tenure on the Hill. In any event, Lerner is a career employee, and my understanding is that she cannot be subjected to adverse employment consequences (unlike a private employee) for invoking her self-incrimination privilege.s/ more good info follows... at the above link.