Jason Levin, Conestoga Middle School

UPDATE, April 16, 2010: Teacher Who Sought to 'Demolish' Tea Party Placed on Leave From School

An Oregon teacher who announced his intention to "dismantle and demolish the Tea Party" has been placed on administrative leave until his school district finishes its investigation into whether his political activity crossed the line.

The state's Teacher Standards & Practices Commission is also conducting an investigation into Jason Levin, a media teacher at Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton.

"Jason is on paid administrative leave," Maureen Wheeler, the school district's spokeswoman, told FoxNews.com. She described the suspension as "standard practice during an internal investigation."

Levin has come under fire for saying he'd do anything short of throwing rocks to bring down the Tea Party. In the last two days, the Beaverton School District has received thousands of e-mails and phone calls from people across the country who said they were outraged at his behavior.

The school district is defending Levin's right to free speech, but it's investigating whether he used district computers to spread his political message or worked on his "Crash the Tea Party" Web site during school hours.

Levin is on PAID leave.

I suppose it's worth the taxpayer's money to pay to keep Levin out of the classroom and away from kids.
____________________

Jason Levin, father of "Crash The Tea Party," teaches at a Beaverton, Oregon middle school.
This is priceless:

Mr. Levin believes that the purpose of education is to help create more successful, and more productive members of our society.

Do productive members of society attempt to smear fellow citizens?

From Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian:

Jason Levin, the Portland man who caused a ruckus over his plans to "infiltrate" Tea Party protests in an aim to discredit them, teaches in a Beaverton middle school and now faces an investigation by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.

Melody Hanson, the commission's director of professional practices, said Wednesday that the agency opened an investigation because "there was enough concern that there was some neglect of duty" on the part of Levin.

Levin teaches in the media lab at Conestoga Middle School, although he described himself in an interview earlier this week with Talking Points Memo as a technology consultant.

Levin started a web site called "Crash the Tea Party" that he said was aimed at encouraging people to pose as Tea Party protestors while acting in outlandish ways in hopes of discrediting the movement.

Both the school district and the teachers licensing commission received calls protesting Levin's actions and saying it was inappropriate for teachers.

So, Mr. Levin, how are those 15 minutes of fame working out for you?

What price fame?

From WorldNetDaily:

The man who threatened to crash tea parties with protesters wearing Nazi uniforms, carrying misspelled signs and making wild claims on TV, is an Oregon middle-school teacher who may have been working on his tea-party infiltration effort during school time, according to reports.

Some tea partiers claim Jason Levin, a teacher at Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton, Ore., has been working on his "Crash the Tea Party" website when he should have been teaching, according to Portland's KATU-TV.

If that's true, it's a problem that Levin was working on his scheme on taxpayer-funded time.

And then there's Levin's "My Personal Manifesto," published on a blog in May 2008.

From Verum Serum:

(WARNING: Explicit language)

First, I’d like to tell you a little about my intellectual evolution over the past 10 years: In Pennsylvania I was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal…After moving to California and living in the dessert for a year I was offered a job in the San Francisco Bay Area (right around the time George W. was APPOINTED president by the supreme court). While living in the Bay I experienced an odd sensation. I found that living in a liberal fishbowl did not appeal to me. The fact that everyone thought exactly the same way did not inspire intelligent political discourse. In fact, as a gun owner I learned quickly that there is an orthodoxy to the left that is just as pig-headed and irrational as those on the right…So I am No Fan of Nancy Pelosi, or members of her ilk. More than ever, I find myself following the Libertarian tenants of personal responsibility, and choice as the core of freedom…In essence, my philosophy revolves around a simple central ideal: True Freedom is the greatest thing a society can offer it’s constituents…

Oregon is the only state in 50 with a “right to die” law (something I support strongly) and where marijuana is basically legal (something I also support). Basically, Oregon is the “Leave Me the Fuck Alone” state…

I was one of the first people I know to posit the theory that we are intentionally fucking up Iraq to destabilize the middle east, and to allow Iran to fight a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. If that is our plan, then I have nothing but respect for those geniuses in the pentagon. We need to sit back and let those bastards kill each other [instead of us] and then have a cold war with the Caliphate that rises from the ashes…But if this is indeed the plan, we have already been there too long, and lost too many American lives…

I have absolutely no problem with conservative thought and opinion. The older I get, and closer to having a child (due 8/26) the more I see the wisdom of a certain amount of social equilibrium over tumultuous change. But I am not willing to support that equilibrium at the cost of personal individual freedoms. Which brings us to my 10 point manifesto. I believe:

1. You own your body. If you want to put drugs into it (like weed, heroin, alcohol, or tobacco) you should be free to do so. And it should be taxed. If you want to sell your body, you should be free to do so. And it should be taxed. Both should be regulated (like the food supply) to ensure public safety. Both should be available only to adults. Also if you want to kill yourself, be my guest. It’s your body so it’s your decision to leave it.

2. Everyone is free to get married. That goes for a man and a woman, two men, two women, three women and a man, four men and two women, whatever…So go ahead and do whatever the hell you want in your own bedroom, as long as the participants are all consenting adults. Oh, and if being Gay is “against God’s will” why does every species on the planet engage in homosexual behavior?

3. Everyone must be provided with basic healthcare. Universal government sponsored healthcare as a baseline is just as much of a necessity for a thriving society as public schools.

4. Church and State must remain separate. One of the biggest problems in this country right now is the hijacking of the republican party by right-wing fundamentalists who are convinced that 2000 years ago the “Sky Daddy” had a baby with a virgin, and for some reason this entitles them to tell the rest of us how to live and what to think.

5. Which brings us to war and the death penalty…I believe that there are some truly evil motherfuckers on this planet who deserve to die. I do not condone attacking a country that had nothing to do with 911, nor do I condone interventionist foreign policy. If Saddam was so evil, why haven’t we attacked Kim Jong il? That crazy sonofabitch has nukes!!! Unless someone physically attacks us here on American soil (ala pearl harbor) we should not go to war. But if we do go to war, we need to kick as much ass as is humanly possible. Kill, Maim, Torture, take the gloves way the fuck off! That is how you wage War. This of course, should only be used as a last resort. I also have no moral or ethical problem with the death penalty. The only reason I don’t support the death penalty is that I truly believe the judicial system in its current form is too inept to hand down such an such an irreversible punishment.

6. Which is why I believe citizenship should be earned. Either through military service, public works service, or foreign service (peacecorp, drs. without borders etc.). Only then should you have the right to vote, sit on a jury, or hold public office. Perhaps if these privileges were earned, they would finally be respected.

7. Politics is NOT a career. Public service is something you do while on hiatus from your regular vocation. You should get elected, serve a term or two, and get the fuck out. Only by adhering to these strict standards can we hope for altruism in our elected officials. Politics is a dirty business and no matter how clean you were when you started, the longer you stay in the dirtier you get. That collective dirt seeps into the gears and inevitably harms the machine as a whole. In addition to serious term limits, we need at least 3 political parties in this country! Having only two has led to a stagnant and polarized system which caters to lobbyists and does not serve the interests of the majority of Americans (most of whom are somewhere in the middle).

8. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions! If you break it, buy it. If you spill hot coffee in your lap, don’t sue McDonalds. Learn that coffee = hot and move on! Thus “Loser Pays” [court costs] lawsuits should be the rule, as only those with a righteous beef will bring suit…

9. Corporations need to be subject to the same rules as individuals and should be required to maintain “citizenship” in this country in order to do business…

10. Finally, If you don’t like what’s on the TV or the radio, it has 2 buttons. One to change the channel, and one to turn it OFF. The FCC should not be allowed to regulate content. The only thing they should do is issue licenses to TV stations to avoid a monopoly of media control. News needs to be about information not infotainment. The time was for a TV station to maintain its license they had to air a certain amount of commercial free community oriented programming.

Levin has a mouth like Joe Biden.