Free Republic

A Billion, Six For KC What are the prospects of reclaiming systematic schooling so it serves the general welfare? Surely the possibility of recharging the system when so many seem to desire such a course would be the best refutation of my buried thesis—that no trustworthy change is possible, that the school machine must be shattered into a hundred thousand parts before the pledges made in the founding documents of this country have a chance to be honored again. No one serves better as an emblem of the hopelessness of a gradual course of school reform or one that follows...

I Quit, I Think In the first year of the last decade of the twentieth century during my thirtieth year as a school teacher in Community School District 3, Manhattan, after teaching in all five secondary schools in the district, crossing swords with one professional administration after another as they strove to rid themselves of me, after having my license suspended twice for insubordination and terminated covertly once while I was on medical leave of absence, after the City University of New York borrowed me for a five-year stint as a lecturer in the Education Department (and the faculty rating...

A GOP source close to the Social Security debate tells me, “the battle for personal accounts is over.” “Even though the president will keep pushing it and no one is coming out to say it publicly, most Republicans are already resigned to believe that privatization won’t happen.” “The president is going to take the compromise of add-on accounts, reduced benefits and a payroll tax cap increase and claim victory. Fiscal conservatives and party hard-liners are not going to be happy with this bill at all.” The source believes there is still “some hope” that the House will pass a bill...

HOUSTON -- The pastor once startled his own mother by exhorting the women in his congregation to shop at Victoria's Secret to improve their marriages. Last weekend, his glamorous musical director led four services in a hot pink coat and black spiky boots, stomping around the stage and singing the praises of Jesus in rousing, original rock sounds. No one needed to know the words. The lyrics scrolled high above, across three gigantic screens, as a dynamic 10-piece orchestra and 100-person choir shook the church. The captivated flock of 8,000 stood singing for 30 minutes. And then, not unlike in...

BuzzFlash interview: Michael Scheuer. Ex-CIA bin Laden unit chief explains why insurgents are willing to die fighting us I’m very much frustrated with the inability of our leaders to make more than a superficial effort to understand the enemy, not because we need to sympathize with them or empathize with them, but because he’s so dangerous. We really need to take the measure of the enemy and why the enemy is fighting us.... Islamic militancy is a complex issue, but it’s not impossible for Americans to understand if they’re talked to directly and frankly. So far, we’ve gone through 12...

DALLAS -- Dozens of Texas schools appear to have cheated on the state's redesigned academic achievement test, casting doubt on whether the accountability system can reliably measure how schools are performing, a newspaper found. An analysis uncovered strong evidence of organized, educator-led cheating on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at schools in Houston and Dallas, along with suspicious scores in hundreds of other schools, The Dallas Morning News reported. Texas education policies on student accountability became the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law enacted after President Bush's election in 2000. The newspaper analyzed scores from...

In college days, I was aware of them. They were the fringe, and beyond the fringe, who believed fluoridation of the public water supply was a communist plot to poison us; Dwight Eisenhower was a closet communist; the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations were part of the drive toward "one world government"; Jewish bankers ran the world economy and the United States should get out of the United Nations. Without buying into the paranoia and conspiracy theories, I am now a convert to the last one. The United Nations does not serve the interests of the United States...

Every state with a marriage amendment on the ballot supports the institution as the union of one man and one woman.When all the votes had been counted Tuesday night, there was one big winner: Traditional marriage. Ten of the 11 states amending their constitutions to ban Massachusetts-style gay marriage did so by overwhelming margins—from a high of 86 percent in Mississippi to 59 percent in Michigan. Other returns showed marriage amendments passing by 77 percent in Georgia, 76 percent in Oklahoma, 75 percent in Kentucky and Arkansas, 73 percent in North Dakota, 66 percent in Utah and Montana and 62...

Questions for Brian Wilson : Summer Fun, Anyone? Interview by Deborah Solomon Your album ''Smile'' has been called the greatest rock record that was never released. It's the Beach Boys' lost masterpiece. We started it in 1967, but we never finished it. But it is scheduled for release in September. Why did you decide to finish recording it now? I wanted to get it out before I died. Are you dying? No. And you also have a new solo recording that just came out, ''Gettin' In Over My Head.'' Is it any good? Each song is different. They're not all...

My Dear Wormwood: I have just returned from our weekly meeting of the Infernal Lowerarchy* where before my peers I was utterly humiliated to report that that educator “patient” of yours has registered for a conference on Christian education. For hell’s sake, how could you let that happen? He was supposed to go on a cruise that week. You are on the verge of letting that man slip through your scaly fingers. At that gathering, they plan on addressing things we have been working assiduously to establish in the Western consciousness for centuries, things like privatization, compartmentalization, and various Endarkenment...

The Lessons of History How “Uncle Joe” Bugged FDR Gary Kern In recent years, the statesmanship of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in particular his handling of Soviet affairs, has come under attack in historical studies. The situation has reached such a pass that even a psychiatrist who examined FDR’s medical records has opined that toward the end of World War II the US President ceded the better part of Eastern Europe to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin because he was “gripped by clinical depression.1” Certainly the President’s moves can be questioned, but questionable policy can be founded on factors other than...

FOGELSVILLE, PA. — Pat Toomey's campaign was a model of hard work and honesty, but he ended it with a lie. In his concession speech before a tearful crowd in the Holiday Inn, Toomey began by speaking of the ideas of freedom, limited government, and traditional values. "These ideas," he said, "are at the heart of the Republican party. These ideas are what the Republican party is about." If the Republican party had these ideas at its core, Pat Toomey would be the nominee for U.S. Senate. That the GOP is at essence a conservative institution is a common misperception,...

Intelligence shortcomings, as we see, have a thousand fathers; secret intelligence triumphs are orphans. Here is the unremarked story of "the Farewell dossier": how a C.I.A. campaign of computer sabotage resulting in a huge explosion in Siberia — all engineered by a mild-mannered economist named Gus Weiss — helped us win the cold war. Weiss worked down the hall from me in the Nixon administration. In early 1974, he wrote a report on Soviet advances in technology through purchasing and copying that led the beleaguered president — détente notwithstanding — to place restrictions on the export of computers and software...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Bush administration on Monday put forward a proposal it hopes will move the legal process along faster concerning the pro-abortion lawsuits against the partial-birth abortion. The lawsuits have resulted in temporary injunctions. The proposal would call for the Bush administration to delay enforcement of the ban for 120 days if the courts would speed up the legal process. The request was initially made to U.S. District Judge Richard Casey of New York, who issued an injunction blocking the ban from taking effect almost nationwide. Bush administration attorneys will present the same proposal on Wednesday to...

ARDMORE, Pa. -- Where do you hide a $729,000 Ferrari during rush hour? That's what police in the Philadelphia suburbs want to know, after a con man drove off with a red Ferrari F50 during a test drive. The Ferrari F50 -- which can hit 60 mph in less than 4 seconds and tops out at 203 mph -- hasn't been seen since. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ferrari-heist,0,7243951.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

The mayor of La Crosse, Wisc., said a verse from the Bible partially inspired his decision Wednesday to veto a measure the city council passed in favor of a Ten Commandments display at a local park. Mayor John D. Medinger said he consulted the Bible before he made his decision and was struck by a verse from the Gospel of St. Matthew, which read, "Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." "I felt comfortable that Jesus would say, 'The park belongs to Caesar and the monument belongs to God, and it should be...

In the wake of the apostasy of a majority of the Episcopalian leadership I have been posting small portions of this book here and there. I thought a longer excerpt might be in order. What follows is an excerpt from Gary North's "Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Took Over the Northern Presbyterian Church." This book draws a critical conclusion - that a similar strategy was used in the left's hostile takeover of every major Protestant denomination, and every major American cultural institution. America's worldview made a catastrophic shift from Judeo-Christian to evolutionary by the mid-20th century. He also argues (and...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, agreed with President Bush's decision to cut off funding from the United Nation's Population Fund (UNFPA). Pro-life lawmakers accused the UNFPA of involvement in and tolerance of forced abortions and sterilizations in China. The House voted 216-211 in favor of a pro-life amendment that restores the Kemp-Kasten law prohibiting taxpayer funding of population control programs that involve coercion. The pro-life amendment was necessary because pro-abortion Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) inserted language in the State Department funding bill in committee that gutted the law. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), told members, "Since...

For Democrats, faith, politics can clash Diocese bars Sanchez, Sharp from speaking because of their support for abortion rights By Ken Herman AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, June 25, 2002 The brief, silent pause between the end of the question and the start of the answer spoke volumes about the delicate balance between religious piety and party loyalty. "That's a very difficult question," Democratic governor candidate Tony Sanchez said when asked if Catholicism, his religion, is wrong on abortion. "But I think the only thing that is really important to me is how I think about abortion. I consider myself a devout...

Why should Republicans bother to vote GOP next November 5? Inexplicably, President Bush and congressional Republicans are giving their party base myriad reasons to go fishing on Election Day. Republicans and Democrats have proven to be pigs in a bipartisan pen on pork-barrel spending. While some Republicans still treat taxpayers' dollars with reverence, too many more stand gleefully at the trough, snout-by-snout, with their Democratic colleagues. This Congress is set to hike federal spending by 15 percent over just two years, more than quadruple the inflation rate. Most of this does nothing to fight terrorism. On May 13, Bush signed...