A high school teacher has been suspended after trying to physically force a 15-year-old student to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The teen had been harassed by staff for his decision to sit, despite being protected under the First Amendment.

After launching an investigation into accusations that a teacher at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in Blue Island, Illinois, had pulled a student out of his seat to stand for the Pledge, an attorney for the district has announced that the teacher will face punishment. The student, Shemar Cooper, first had to defend his decision on August 26, WGN reported.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem in protest over a similar issue later that same day, coincidentally.

A Muslim Marine recruit threw himself off three stories to his death after an alleged assault and hazing by an instructor, the US Marine Corps has ruled. As many as 20 Marines are currently under investigation for "recurrent" physical and verbal abuse.

Recruit Raheel Siddiqui, 20, from Taylor, Michigan, died 11 days after arriving in Parris Island, South Carolina and joining Third Recruit Training Battalion. He succumbed to his injuries after falling out of the window during boot camp training on March 18.

On Thursday, the US Marine Corps revealed that Siddiqui's death was not accidental, but rather a suicide.

His death triggered ousters of a number of commanders and senior enlisted advisers as well as suspension of several instructors, but officially remained a mystery for nearly six months.

A Canadian judge is in hot water because of inappropriate comments he made to a female rape victim in his courtroom.

According to Claire Lampen of News Mic, The Canadian Judicial Council held a hearing Tuesday to determine whether the words of Federal Court Justice Robin Camp during a 2014 sexual assault trial warrant his removal from the bench.

"Sex and pain sometimes go together," Camp told the victim during the trial, according to court transcripts. "That's not necessarily a bad thing."

"Sex is very often a challenge," he added.

Proceedings were initiated by four law professors with a complaint against Camp, in which they alleged that the trial had been "threaded through" with antiquated "myths" and "stereotypes" about sexual violence that caused him to misinterpret Canada's sexual assault laws.

The judge also illegally admitted testimony about the victim's sexual history and said, "a woman cannot be raped against her will," showing his fundamental misunderstanding of the crime. Camp disregarded the rape as a misunderstanding, in which "a very unhappy thing happened."

The defendant, Alexander Wagar, was only given a warning for his crime. Camp's outdated, sexist logic left the victim deeply shaken, with thoughts of suicide.

Sheriff's detectives and child welfare authorities have arrested a day care employee at a Manatee County day care center after an 18-month-old boy was repeatedly bitten by another toddler.

Manatee Sheriff's spokesman Dave Bristow said Wednesday that an employee at J's Bright Learners day care center in Bradenton is facing charges of child neglect.

The mother of the child, Amanda Beebe, said she was told her little boy had been bitten once before on August 26th by another child. She figured it must have been a common occurrence. Then, three days later, they called her saying had been bitten again, many times, and that "it was bad."

As the Dakota Access pipeline faces high-profile opposition in North Dakota, including in federal court from Native tribes, another state's residents are suing over the crude oil transportation project. Landowners in Iowa want its eminent domain status voided.

The $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline is being built across 1,172 miles, from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois. That is, unless a court order prevents the project from moving forward, and that is a possibility in multiple court cases.

Bill Hanigan represents 15 Iowan farmers in their suit against Dakota Access LLC. What's different about this case, compared to the one in North Dakota, is its focus on eminent domain law, which codifies the government's power to seize private property for the public good.

"In North Dakota, they're arguing about Native American artifacts. In Iowa, we're arguing about the application of the Constitution," Hanigan explained on Democracy Now! in an interview Tuesday.

The pipeline's defenders "can't prove" they are serving a public purpose, Hanigan plans to show in an Iowa district court. He hopes Judge Jeffrey Farrell will override the Iowa Utilities Board's decision to grant eminent domain status for the project.

Bold Iowa Director Ed Fallon told RT America's Ashlee Banks that the costs of the pipeline to the environment and private property owners outweigh any promised benefit.

Someone had to know it was coming.

The issue of cars being hacked should be in full view by now. Newer cars are hooked up to the Internet, and like every other connected device, they can be hacked. A couple of white hats demonstrated that they can take over a car, and the results are dangerous and terrifying.

Maybe no one would bother hacking some average shmo, but it is certainly plausible that someone would go to such lengths in an attempt on a VIP, head of state or top oil executive. Quite possibly journalists as well.

With that in mind, take a look at this footage of the deadly accident that reportedly killed Vladimir Putin's "favorite" chauffeur during a horrible crash in Moscow. As the London Independent reports:

Vladimir Putin's personal chauffeur has been killed in Moscow after the presidential BMW collided head-on with a Mercedes.

The Russian President was not in the car at the time.

The driver, named only as MK, was said to be Mr Putin's favourite chauffeur and had 40 years of experience as an official driver.

The tall, lanky American dressed in all black looked familiar. But Ajith, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan refugee seeking asylum in Hong Kong figured the nervous-looking man with the red-rimmed eyes fidgeting in the darkness outside the United Nations building in the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon was a U.S. army dodger.

Summoned by his immigration lawyer in the late evening of June 10, 2013, Ajith (last names of the refugees in this story have been withheld), a former soldier in the Sri Lankan military, was told the unidentified man was "famous" and needed "protection." Little else was revealed except that he would be responsible for covertly moving the American around at a moment's notice.

"I was very happy to help him," Ajith recalled during a recent interview with the National Post in his small windowless room in Kennedy Town, on the western tip of Hong Kong Island. "This famous person was a refugee too, same as me."

Earlier that day, that "famous" 29-year-old walked out of the five-star luxury Hotel Mira in Kowloon and sparked an intensive global manhunt not seen since the search for al-Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, bombings.

Edward Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, became the most wanted fugitive in the world after leaking a cache of classified documents to the media detailing extensive cyber spying networks by the U.S. government on its own citizens and governments around the world.

To escape the long arm of American justice, the man responsible for the largest national security breach in U.S. history retained a Canadian lawyer in Hong Kong who hatched a plan that included a visit to the UN sub-office where the North Carolina native applied for refugee status to avoid extradition to the U.S.

Fearing the media would surround and follow Snowden — making it easier for the Hong Kong authorities to arrest the one-time Central Intelligence Agency analyst on behalf of the U.S. — his lawyers made him virtually disappear for two weeks from June 10 to June 23, 2013, before he emerged on an Aeroflot airplane bound for Moscow, where he remains stranded today in self-imposed exile.

Presidential debates should be an opportunity for the American people to decide the direction of our nation. But since 1987, everything about the debates has been predetermined by the party bosses who run Washington.

Consider that 76% of Americans want the presidential debates to include Gary Johnson and me. Yet the phony Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is trying to rob voters of the open debates they want.

The CPD is actually a private corporation that refuses to disclose its current funders or sponsors. The Democratic and Republican National Committees both select its leaders. The CPD literally excludes the 50% of voters who reject their parties.

This two-party cartel posing as a public service "commission" admitted in a 1987 press conference that independent candidates and alternative political parties should be excluded from the debates, and they create artificial barriers to exclude them.

Greensboro Police on Tuesday morning received a call about another clown sighting in the Piedmont Triad.

The sighting occurred at The Park at Oakridge apartments off Old Oak Ridge Road not far from Interstate 73. A man said he saw a clown near the wooded area behind the complex at about 10 a.m.

Chris Bass told FOX8 he lives at the complex with his wife and two children. He was on his balcony when he spotted a man in a white mask, red curly hair, yellow dotted shirt, blue clown pants and clown shoes in the wooded area. Bass tried to chase the clown but could not catch him. He called his actions his "fatherly instinct."

In a news release from the Greensboro Police Department, officials said it is lawful to dress as a clown, but "given the heightened tensions about these entertainers," they are "discouraging copycat behavior by individuals who may find it humorous to mimic the suspicious behavior that has parents on edge." "Copycats" unnecessarily alarm the public, and place an unnecessary drain on police resources, officials said.

It might be time to rethink the millennial voter.

A new paper suggests that Americans are more politically polarized now than they've been in the past 46 years, and millennials are guiding this trend.

The young adults, who were born between 1980 and 1994, are currently more politically polarized than Generation Xers and Baby Boomers, according to the paper, which was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin on Wednesday.

Additionally, millennials are more likely to identify as conservative than either Generation Xers or Baby Boomers were at the same age, said Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and lead author of the paper.

"High school seniors are more likely to identify as political conservatives now compared to 10 years ago. Most surprising, more identify as conservatives now compared to the 1980s, presumably the era of the young conservative, such as the character Alex P. Keaton in the 1980s show 'Family Ties.' That goes against the common view of millennials as very liberal," said Twenge, author of the book about millennials titled "Generation Me."