First in Her Class: The valedictorian sued, and the town turned on her

The Weekly Standard ^ | 07/14/03 | Jonathan V. Last

[friendly]

She probably has some minor "health issues" and she and daddy decided to milk them to the max. Turn them into an advantage.

I actually believe the whole vague "health problem" was completely fabricated once the mechanics were clear to the Hornstine gang on how easy it was to scam the system.

[friendly]

Hornstine is a complete fraud, a manipulative deceitful narcissistic charlatan.... a typical lawyer vermin. ...............and a future candidate for a high federal office ;-)

Think Hillary... or actually any Rat candidate.

[SarahW]

Agreed.

BTW, based on the description of her illness, she probably had pemphigus.

[friendly]

Pemphigus is an autoimmune skin disorder characterized by flaccid bullae that rupture and leave erosions. foliaceus.

Pemphigus is an autoimmune skin disorder characterized by flaccid bullae that rupture and leave erosions.

I doubt this. Fellow students would have seen this.

She suffered Shysterus Vulgaris, a common malady marked by greed, deceit, and manipulation.

[Allan]

Bump

[SarahW]

The description of her illnees is consistent with pemphigus.
I don't feel like being flip about it.

Her classmates would not necessarily have ever seen her lesions. She contracted her illness after traveling in Turkey. Her initial flare of blisters might be the only one she gets if she has proper therapy.

The erosions heal, and the disease has to be suppressed with medicine. Pemphigus used to be nearly universally fatal; now it is controllable with modern immunosuppresive drugs. The medicine would indeed sap her endurance.

I think it's stupid there was any fuss over sharing her valedictorian status with another student.
I could easily have taken the "shame" of being salutatorian, myself.

If there were a dispute about her illness, the school could have challenged her IEP. They chose not to; I presume her condition and treatment were documented, because public schools resist IEP's (blecause of the extra expense) whenever possible.

The condition that most closely resembles the description in the article is pemphigus.

[friendly]

I absolutely don't buy your pemphigus theory. You don't catch it by going to a foreign country. Please review the following pemphigus site, and tell me it would not have been obvious to her peers. Furthermore there is absolutely no indication of use of corticosteriods or the characteristic appearance & side effects of these meds: http://www.usc.edu/hsc/dental/opath/Cards/PemphigusVulgaris.html

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

No set of laws is "scam-proof." That is a left-inspired mentality.

Originally, the idea of a law was to set a general proscription, and whose individual application would be checked by the proper authority (judge or jury) to see if it was appropriate. In this system, the just result was paramount. This is the legal tradition that our own system was built upon.

It is the left which believed governments could, through careful design, craft laws in such detail that every possible permutation could be predicted (As Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded, "Hard cases make bad law."). Under the influence of the left, law became about following the process as opposed to a just resolution.

To a leftist, the Hornstines were perfectly justified in "gaming the game," as that is all the law is seen as. This is the same mentality that has the court throw out a confession because the accused hadn't had his Miranda warning read word-for-word, or which sports twice as much time in evidentiary hearings as is spent on an actual trial, trying to get the evidence thrown out. I'm sorry to see that you have bought in to this fallacy.

I reject your assertion that violating the spirit of the law cannot be punished just as severely as violating the letter of it. To do otherwise is to Clintonize...

[Brandon]

I reject your assertion that violating the spirit of the law cannot be punished just as severely as violating the letter of it. To do otherwise is to Clintonize...

I think you have it backwards. Wasn't it the conservatives, the Republicans, back during the Clinton years, who insisted that perjury was perjury, and wasn't it the Democrats who were insisting that since the lie was "just about sex" it didn't matter that it was under oath and a "technical" violation of the law?

And during the Florida fiasco in 2000, wasn't it the conservative Republicans who insisted that the election law be enforced as written, and the Democrats who wanted to follow the "spirit" of the law by trying to divine "the intent of the voter"?

And in 2002, in New Jersey, was it not again the conservative Republicans who wanted to uphold the state law, with the deadlines it had for replacing candidates, and the Democrats who insisted that the rules didn't really mean anything, that "fairness" was what mattered?

Aren't the Republicans the strict constructionists? Aren't we the ones who say you must play be the rules as written, and not just make them up as you go along so that you get the results you want?

This girl and her father followed the rules as written. As far as I can tell from the article, no one is disputing that, and no one is arguing about interpretation of the rules, or claiming that they are ambiguous. They just don't like the outcome -- and if the facts are as reported in the article, neither do I. But you don't change the rules after the game has started. As far as I can see, that's the conservative, Republican, strict constructionist philosophy. It's the other side who want to stand things on their head everytime they find themselves 537 votes behind.

[SarahW]

You don't "catch" Pemphigus at all.
However, exposure of susceptible individuals to pathogens probably trigger (as in RA or Lupus, etc. )the disease.

A person getting the best care would be taking modern immunosuppressives, not corticosteriods. Corticosteroids are for putting out the fire, not long-term management.

No, her classmates may never have seen a single lesion.

[SarahW]

She's probably taking something like methotrexate or cyclosporin, perhaps with a small dose or corticosteroids or tetracycline (not for infections, but for the anti-inflammatory properties).

She might have one of two forms of pemphigus that has faster healing lesions.

She might also have a herpetiform dermatitis, but that doesn't seem as likely.

PS - having taken methrotrexate (which shuts down rapid cell growth) long term for a spondyloarthropathy, I did need frequent rests and stopping periods, though if I set my mind to it I could accomplish a great deal.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

You are comparing apples and oranges. The results of which you speak violated both the spirit and letter of the law. The attempt to "divine" the intent of ballots is not increasing the franchise; it is an attempt to steal an election. And Clinton wasn't lying under oath to keep his kidnapped daughter from being murdered, he was lying to escape the consequences of an affair, so no reasonable person would consider his lying justified.

I'd be willing to bet that you have no idea how the special ed scam works. I teach, and I see parents warp the system every day to get their child an unfair and unwarranted advantage. I would hazard a guess, based on my experience, that less than 20% of the IEP's written are actually legitimate and needed. You cannot take a process that is flawed at every step and then declare the final product somehow inviolable...

[tracer]

Heaven help the poor slob (if any, ever) who is dumb enough to wake up next to her in a honeymoon suite in Maui. "Bad-News Blair" seems a fitting tag.

Quite apart from the living hell of living under the same roof with this whining Hillary clone -- for the few months before the marriage explodes and the hapless hubby is cleaned out in court by a hostile judge and mob lawyers -- the thought of having Hizz(dis)onor as a father-out-law is beyond scary.....

[Pegita]

As one who endured two years before arriving at a diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, I'd like the name of her Doctor. As FReeper honeygrl has said, there's so much more to Chronic Fatigue than being tired ... inability to concentrate, confusion, loss of equilibrium, poor motor skills, cognitive dysfunction ... probably from a virus from which there wasn't complete recovery.

With this in mind, there is absolutely no way that this diagnosis applies to the activities of Miss Hornstine. If there is recovery from Chronic Fatigue, it is viewed in terms of years, not months. And as one who spent the two years searching for a name for this devastation, I'm outraged that genuine struggle is demeaned in such a way. I'd go after the Doctor who would have to have signed onto what I consider to be fraud.

Chronic Fatigue is now listed as a recognized disability within the Social Security system, and Social Security disabilities are not recognized as partial ... you're disabled or you're not; you can work, or you cannot; you can function, or you cannot; time is a healer for some, or it is not.

Pegita

[tracer]

Heaven help the poor slob (if any, ever) who is dumb enough to wake up next to her in a honeymoon suite in Maui. "Bad-News Blair" seems a fitting tag.

Quite apart from the living hell of living under the same roof with this whining Hillary clone -- for the few months before the marriage explodes and the hapless hubby is cleaned out in court by a hostile judge and mob lawyers -- the thought of having Hizz(dis)onor as a father-out-law is beyond scary.....

[Bluntpoint]

"The fact that her father is a sleazy lawyer doesn't help matters."

"Sleazy lawyer." The redundant of redundancies.

[Xenalyte]

I think it was Homer Simpson actually.

Sure is! Go Homer!

[VRWC_minion]

Moral of the story: No one likes any kid that excels acadamically.

[kegler4]

"She probably has some minor "health issues" and she and daddy decided to milk them to the max. Turn them into an advantage."

It's definitely possible that she's faking to gain an advantage OR, I would propose, it's possible that she has celiac sprue/dermititis herpetiformis (DH). The DH, which is connected to the celiac, would be the cause of the blisters all over her body (which can be controlled by taking a drug called Dapsone). The celiac, which is an autoimmune disease reaction to gluten, would be the cause of the constant exhaustion and other possible symptoms like diarrhea, dizziness and others. I know, I missed three months of work and was pretty sick for nearly a year because of celiac. I couldn't even carry on a conversation.

The thing is, the "cure" for both is simple (well, not all that simple). Stop eating anything with wheat, rye, barley, or oats in it for the rest of your life. I would think, however, that this could have been diagnosed, exepcially because of the blisters. And I don't think she could have gotten a 4.6 while suffering from this. It's hard to even think straight

[OldFriend]

Daddy dearest is going to Harvard too. He's going to be an adjunct professor.

Wonder if Harvard knows or cares about his mob connected attorney.

Nice to see this family exposed. How long before the house is up for sale!