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I'm all for political debates in the classroom. It's a great way to encourage discussion and make kids aware of what's going on in their country. But there's a big difference between teachers debating with students and teachers trying to shove their political beliefs down their students' throats.

In North Carolina, a social studies teacher was suspended with pay after yelling at her students and demanding they not insult President Barack Obama. The teacher then went on to say that the students could go to jail just for insulting the president.

The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school. At the time, The Washington Post had recently published a lengthy article alleging that Romney, as a teenager, had cut off another student's hair.

"Didn't Obama bully somebody though?" a student in the North Carolina classroom asked when the report was brought up, referring to an incident Obama described in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." In the book, Obama wrote that, as a child, he once pushed a female classmate after other students taunted them -- the only two black students in their grade -- and called Obama her boyfriend.

The teacher, in the video, said she didn't know whether Obama bullied anyone -- but the argument quickly escalated, as the teacher yelled at the student, telling him "there is no comparison." "He's running for president," she said of Romney. "Obama is the president."

The student argued that both candidates are "just men," but the teacher took issue with the statement. "He's just a man. Obama is no god," the student said.

The teacher responded: "Let me tell you something ... you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom." The teacher went on to say the two candidates are "not equal."

I will say that I'm pretty impressed with these kids who didn't back down and stood up for themselves. And if you listen to the video, the students were making some good, valid arguments. Too bad they were shouted down by a bigoted, narrow-minded, leftist bully of a teacher.

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