Free Republic

A Chinese mother who was threatened with sterilization under China’s “one-child” policy may be allowed to stay in the United States, now that federal prosecutors have decided to drop a passport-fraud charge filed after her arrival on a cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale. The U.S. attorney’s office last week dismissed an indictment against Zuo Mei Ke and another Chinese woman, Feng Zhao, who is claiming religious persecution. Both women are now seeking asylum. They sneaked out of China with four men using false Japanese passports to travel through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and finally to South Florida. However, none...

Today, the Parents Television Council® released the results of its latest study, “Cartoons Are No Laughing Matter,” documenting shocking levels of adult content on networks with the highest-rated primetime animated cable shows among children ages 12-17, according to Nielsen data. The networks included in the study reflect where kids are consuming the most popular animated shows during primetime: Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nick at Nite. “Nielsen data told us where children ages 12-17 are watching animated programming on basic cable. PTC analysts followed the Nielsen data in order to see exactly what type of material kids are...

Florida has allocated money authorized by Obamacare for abstinence education provided by 13 different groups. Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Legislature accepted the $2.5 million grant per year from fiscal year 2010 through 2014, and Florida’s Department of Health has used the money by giving 13 grants of $150,000 each. Florida’s Abstinence Education Program encourages children between ages 9 and 18 to abstain from sex before marriage. In addition, it educates young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increase vulnerability. Planned Parenthood of North Florida CEO Staci Fox criticized Florida’s decision to...

Pacific Justice Institute has filed its opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, located in San Francisco, in a case that challenges the constitutionality of taxpayer-funded charter schools that are based on occult teachings. "This case is truly stranger than fiction," noted Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute. "It is incredible that we as taxpayers are still supporting schools founded on a belief system that incorporates elements of Hinduism, European occultism, and a heretical form of Christianity. We cannot have a constitutional double standard where mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs are excluded from public schools while...

Ruben Alvarez, an imposing presence with a shaved head and the physique of a professional wrestler, was impossible to miss in sex court. Circuit Judge Chet A. Tharpe glared. He knew the sex offender well, had sent him to prison 10 years ago for lewd behavior with teen girls. Tharpe knew what was coming: Alvarez now runs a shelter for other sex offenders and had come to collect one. The would-be boarder was 23. He had served time for having sex with a young girl but was back over a minor probation violation. When the case came up, Tharpe let...

In a bright-pink tank top, a light-haired girl crosses the student parking lot of West Beverly Hills High School. She walks past a Bentley and a blue mini-cooper before she stops suddenly as she spots a friend nervously entering his SUV. "Oh my (goodness), there's Ethan," she says. She checks out her reflection in a nearby car window, and from the way she fusses with her hair, it's clear she wants to impress him. Smiling broadly, she begins walking toward the teenager's car. Ethan, however, is in no position to say hello. His attention is focused on another teenage girl,...

The Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the arrests of more than 50 people as part of an investigation into an international online child-exploitation ring, the largest prosecution of its kind to date. Courts unsealed three indictments and one criminal complaint, charging a total of 72 people for their suspected involvement in "Dreamboard," a private, members-only online bulletin board that was created to promote pedophilia and encourage sex abuse of children. Several of those arrested in the operation, which began in December 2009, have already pleaded guilty. That includes 32-year-old Michael Biggs of Orlando, who was sentenced to 20 years...

Police charged a man with molesting his 9-year-old daughter at the sold-out Selena Gomez concert in St. Augustine Sunday night. Several women sitting behind the 52-year-old father and daughter alerted volunteers at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre about what they considered inappropriate touching. The volunteers told police, who arrested the man after he became aggressive with them and initially wouldn't let them talk to his daughter. The Times-Union is not identifying the father to protect the girl's identity. The man was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation on a victim under 12. He is being held in the St. Johns County...

The number of babies treated at Florida hospitals for drug-withdrawal syndrome continued to skyrocket last year, further evidence of the far-reaching impact of the state's prescription-drug epidemic. In 2010, 1,374 babies were born addicted to drugs because their mothers were users — a 42 percent increase from the year prior, according to new Agency for Health Care Administration records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. "The numbers are staggering," said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. "And especially when you have the opportunity to see one of these babies and know what the baby goes through, all they suffer." "It's unreal," she...

I wish I was kidding: Would Americans increase peace in family life and strengthen family bonds if they adopted more accepting attitudes about sex and what’s allowable under the family roof? I’ve interviewed 130 people, all white, middle class and not particularly religious, as part of a study of teenage sex and family life here and in the Netherlands. My look into cultural differences suggests family life might be much improved, for all, if Americans had more open ideas about teenage sex. Amy Schalet is a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, via an education at Berkeley and...

The most recent move in the broadcast career of former Channel 7 and CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez looks like an open field zig-zag: radio color analyst on Florida International’s 12 college football games this season. It looks that way if you didn’t know that Sanchez lettered three years at Hialeah High and, according to him, received a partial scholarship to play at Moorehead State. Or, if you didn’t know that after his firing from CNN, he spent last fall hopping around to FIU road games from his Atlanta home with his FIU student son, Ricky. “I played college football. I...

Lamb and Lynx Gaede were established teen recording artists 5 years ago. But the adorable, freckle-faced California twins weren't singing songs of love. Raised in a Neo-Nazi household, the Gaede twins' lyrics were those of white supremacist hate. Now 19, the pair formerly known as the pop group Prussian Blue claim to have changed their extremist ways. "I'm grown up now. I was a little kid back then and said a lot of things I don't believe in now," Lynx told ABC News.

A Palm Coast rabbi and an Ormond Beach school principal are front and center in a legal challenge filed Wednesday to a 2012 ballot proposal that would repeal Florida's constitutional ban on using public money to aid churches and other religious organizations. Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who lives in Palm Coast and is the spiritual leader of Temple Shalom in Deltona, and Pine Trail Elementary Principal Susan Persis are among nine plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Tallahassee. Others include leaders of the statewide teachers union and other school-related organizations and clergy from several denominations. They claim the constitutional amendment,...

A civil-rights group is calling on Boca Raton High School to stop its practice of searching confiscated student cellphones and punishing students who don't provide access to their text messages or other content. The National Youth Rights Association of Washington, D.C., on Monday outlined its concerns in a letter to Boca Raton High Principal Geoff McKee. This complaint, which is the organization's first challenge on this issue, contends the school's practices "infringe upon the fundamental freedoms of its students and run counter to the holdings of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the Florida Legislature." The letter acknowledges the...

Pavel Astakhov, Russia's Children Rights Commissioner to President Dmitri Medvedev, has called for urgent measures to protect children from pedophiles, according to a report on Sunday. The comments came amid anger over the brutal rape of a seven-year-old girl in Blagoveshchensk, a city in Amur Oblast. The girl was allegedly raped on Tuesday before her attacker attempted to strangle her. A group of more than 200 people later surrounded the suspect's house, demanding 'fair justice.' In response, Astakhov said it is important to speed up the adoption of a law that increases the punishment for sex crimes against children. "Until...

Flora Jessop never believed that Warren Steed Jeffs, the man she was taught to revere as son and heir of the "prophet, seer and revelator of God," would ever face justice -- let alone Texas justice. She didn't believe it when she was 13 and sexually assaulted beneath a smiling photograph of Jeffs inside the Hildale, Utah compound run by the breakaway Mormon sect where she was born to a polygamist family. And she didn't believe it three years later, when she was forced by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) to marry...

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against a Florida Jewish nursing home for firing a Seventh-day Adventist staffer who did not want to work on her Sabbath. Menorah House in Boca Raton "denied a religious accommodation to Philomene Augustin and fired her because of her religious beliefs," the EEOC said in a statement Tuesday. The firing violated religious protections in the federal Civil Rights Act that require "reasonable accommodation" of religious beliefs, "so long as this does not pose an undue hardship," the EEOC said. According to the EEOC, Augustin worked at Menorah House as a certified...

<p>It’s Christian vs. Atheist in a new thriller released Friday.</p> <p>Except the Christian is the bad guy. And atheists are saying this film could be their “Brokeback Mountain,” which broke down barriers for gays six years ago.</p> <p>The atheist director of “The Ledge” is hoping to start a similar conversation on behalf of non-believers.</p>

The sad truth for ridiculous Web memes is that they have remarkably poor shelf lives. So, farewell planking. Hello, owling. Deciding that striking a "light as a feather, stiff as a board" pose in public, photographing it and posting it on the Web is old news, some Internet denizens have moved on. Now, it's all about squatting, arms pressed toward the ground and eyes locked in a wise, faraway gaze. You know ... like an owl. If it all seems sort of ludicrous, well, that's kind of the point. "Owling is actually more of an indication of how big planking...

The reality TV show "Police Women of Broward County" is under fire again. Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein wants to know if there is any sort of incentive pay or benefits given to deputies who appear on TLC's Thursday night cable program that may taint testimony against his clients. He's demanding that the state attorney and county sheriff reveal the officers' confidential contracts. Spokesmen for the sheriff and state attorney say they don't have the contracts. The state attorney's office and the TV show's lawyer both say a judge should review the legal agreements for any possible conflict. "This is...