MnIndy file photo

Al Franken asked testifiers at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee how the nation’s public education system can address bullying targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. And the Minnesota senator announced he’ll be introducing a bill to address the issue of bullying that targets LGBT students. It’s the second time in recent weeks that Franken has spoken out in committee hearings about the issue.

“There’s something very specific that has been on my mind… LGBT youth being bullied,” Franken told a panel of education experts. “Right now we have laws that prohibit bullying based on pretty much everything, but not on gender identity and gay and lesbian kids. And the evidence is that gay kids are bullied a lot and that their achievement goes down. There’s a lot of absenteeism and even suicide.”

He asked the panel, “What is the best way to create a positive behavioral environment?”

George Sugai, a professor of special education at the University of Connecticut, said the current system needs to change. “Our basic response in general to bullying has been a reactive management strategy, zero tolerance, punish the kids, create an environment of control,” he said. “And the literature suggests that if that’s your response, it’s going to be ineffective in supporting those kids or any kids inside the school.”

He said that teaching social skills will greatly improve the environment both for kids at risk for bullying and those at risk for becoming bullies.

Clare Struck, a counselor at Price Lab School in Cedar Falls, Iowa, noted that that state has passed anti-bullying measures guiding school districts on the issue of bullying against LGBT students (the Minnesota Legislature has passed a similar law, but Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed it in 2009).

“You are right on, Sen. Franken. That is one of the harshest, worst kind of harassment that happens in schools around the country,” she said.

Here’s the full exchange:

Source: Kline for Congress

Following the deaths of 29 West Virginia miners, Rep. John Kline, the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor committee, asked whether the federal government did enough to enforce laws that could have prevented the disaster and said Congress needs to work in a bipartisan manner to look at what went wrong. What Kline didn’t mention is that the committee did hold a bipartisan meeting to look at mining regulations back in February, but Kline and 17 other Republicans skipped the meeting.

“In the aftermath of the worst mining disaster in nearly four decades, we must ask: Why didn’t federal officials enforce the law to the fullest extent?” wrote Kline in a press release last week.

But, Kline’s own committee asked that question and more. On Feb. 23, the committee held a “hearing to assess whether a backlog of mine safety enforcement actions are adversely impacting the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s ability to protect miners’ safety and prevent future tragedies, and to evaluate options to remedy the problem.”

Only one Republican showed up — Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania — according to transcripts of the hearing obtained by Talking Points Memo.

Some Minnesotans still haven’t put away their grills — and one of them is U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum. She took advantage of her seat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearing Monday to grill Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld on his actions in the days leading up to the firm’s collapse Sept. 15 in the United States’ largest bankruptcy (so far).

Monday’s hearing was the first opportunity for Congress to turn its wrath directly on a Wall Street figure after last week’s convulsive debate over a financial sector bailout bill. Today the committee was set to question three top brass from AIG but one, CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, has … bailed out.

Watch a video clip of McCollum putting Fuld on the hot seat after the jump.  Here’s a video clip of McCollum’s turn grilling Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld. It hits a glitch about halfway through that throws off the synch so if we find one we’ll replace it with a better version. (If you don’t mind wading through lots of other testimony to get to McCollum, there’s always C-SPAN’s video archive.)