Free Republic

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political. The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, Mike Morath, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S. It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control, and state Republican leaders, who have sought increased authority following election fumbles and COVID-19 restrictions. In a letter to the Houston Independent School District, Morath...

The high court will determine if Obama's DAPA -- Deferred Action for Parents of Americans -- is Constitutional. AUSTIN, TX -- The U.S. Supreme Court this week could rule on a far-reaching immigration-related case that would allow the parents of immigrant children to stay in the country legally. United States v. Texas, the pending U.S. Supreme Court case hinges on the constitutionality of an Obama administration initiative -- Deferred Action for Parents of Americans -- known by its acronym DAPA. The program was unveiled by Obama in November 2014 as an executive action, in a move to grant deferred action...

What does it take to protect a child from a crazy parent? Seriously, when is enough enough? In Tampa, Florida, a deranged father threw his beautiful, loving, precious 5 year old daughter off a bridge, in front of an officer. Tragic? Yes. Preventable? I say yes in this case. The government had lots of warning signs and took no action. i contend it is because citizens and law enforcement officers (LEOs), are too often afraid of legal reprisals, but that is a false fear.Here's all that the government knew, or could have easily known, which happened in the 24 hours...

HARTFORD — For the state's child-protection agency and the cancer doctors at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, there is no debate: 17-year-old Cassandra C. will die of Hodgkin's lymphoma without chemotherapy, and the teen doesn't have the legal standing to reject the treatments on her own. But at a noon hearing Thursday before the state Supreme Court, the justices will consider the constitutional argument from lawyers for Cassandra and her mother, Jackie Fortin, who supports her daughter's decision to reject chemotherapy treatments. The Department of Children and Families won temporary custody of Cassandra at the Superior Court level and Cassandra, of...

The House Judiciary Committee just approved a bill (H.R. 1981) requiring Internet service providers to spy on their users and retain 12 months of data -- data that could be used to identify where you surf and what you post online. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, quoting their Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston: The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to...

Okay, lets face it. America's youngest billionaire is still young... meaning he hasn't had to keep tabs on his kids sharing personal information on Facebook. While law enforcement officials continue to warn parents about the dangers of young people using online social networking, Mark Zuckerberg boldly stated he wants to "fight" the Children's Online Protection Act (COPPA) so that children of any age can use Facebook. Why? Because it's educational. At an education summit in Burlingame, CA earlier last week, Fortune magazine reports the college dropout correctly explained that, "Education is clearly the biggest thing that will drive how the...

A New Jersey couple who gave their children Nazi-inspired names should not regain custody of them, a state appeals court ruled Thursday, citing the parents’ own disabilities and the risk of serious injury to their children. The state removed Heath and Deborah Campbell’s three small children from their home in January 2009. A month earlier, the family drew attention when a supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell. He and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell have been in foster care.

Minneapolis firefighter and paramedic John Ackerman joins Fightin Words to discuss recent cases where parents faced homicide charges for turning to religion as medicine rather than modern science. What are the proper bounds of parental authority? How much religious freedom is too much? Who gets to decide, and where do they derive their authority? Part one of a two part interview, to be continued next week.

Sins of the mother Barbara Kay National Post Wednesday, October 11, 2006 We have heard the story before. The names change, the province changes, the particulars of the custody case change, the age of the dead child changes, but some things stay the same when a mother kills her own children: Any objective observer can see the tragedy coming a mile away, the children are not removed from her toxic embrace before it happens, and the mother is not only insufficiently punished (if at all) for the crime, but receives public sympathy on the assumption she was driven to...

“Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Get Out of Our Family Room and Stop Obstructing a Parent’s Right to Be Involved in the Health Care Decisions of our Children” states Jason Jones, Public Relations Director of Human Life International “Durbin’s Debt to the Abortion Industry seems to Know no Bounds...” states prominent Roman Catholic Priest (Front Royal, Va.) Human Life International issued the following statement regarding Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) procedural motion to halt the progress of the Child Custody Protection ACT (S. 403) that would protect a parent’s right to be involved in their minor daughter’s decision to have or not...

WASHINGTON -- A bill that would make it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge passed the Senate Tuesday, but vast differences with the House version stood between the measure and President Bush's desk. The 65-34 vote gave the Senate's approval to the bill, which would make taking a pregnant girl to another state for the purposes of evading parental notification laws punishable by fines and up to a year in jail. The girl and her parents would be exempt from prosecution, and the bill contains an exception for abortions...

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content inaccessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that...

A 7-week-old child is in intensive care after his foster mother repeatedly slapped, shook and dropped him, the U.S. Attorney's Office said yesterday. Authorities charged Tanya Jenkins, of the unit block of Bass Circle in Southeast, with first-degree cruelty to children after she acknowledged what she had done to try to quiet the child. Miss Jenkins was arrested Tuesday by Metropolitan Police Department officers and is expected to appear this morning before D.C. Superior Court Judge Wendell Gardner Jr. Miss Jenkins said she dropped the child six or seven times while trying to change him or after giving him a...

Father prizes 'stolen days' Girls in middle of international custody struggle Craig Pearson Windsor Star - Front Page Tuesday, March 15, 2005 CHATHAM -- Jonathan England is clinging to the hope that somebody will finally listen to his three daughters -- who have already endured two emotional standoffs, refusing to allow police to take them to their mother -- and let them stay in their native Canada. A decision through the Hague Convention, which decides on international custody cases, sees it differently. On March 7, a court ruled that the three England children -- Leah, 10, Hannah, 7, and Nicola,...

'These are Canada's children' The international tug-of war over the three England girls stretches into today after a handover to their mother is again put off. LONDON FREE PRESS March 14, 2005 - Front Page PATRICK MALONEY, Free Press Reporter CHATHAM -- The trans-Atlantic tug-of-war over three Chatham girls has stretched improbably into today, offering their father a new chance to quash their court-ordered return to Britain. Leah, 10, Hannah, 7, and Nicola England, 5, are Canadian-born and have lived here all their lives, except during 2003-04 when their now-estranged parents were working in the United Kingdom. The girls say...

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- If I am accurately perceiving the national controversy over pederasty in the American Roman Catholic Church, I have to conclude that the Boy Scouts of America are vindicated. The only logical conclusion deducible from the media's outrage over revelations of pederasty in the pulpit is that the Boy Scouts' ban against homosexual scout leaders is OK. The vast majority of irregularities reported in the present scandal have been between errant priests and post-pubescent boys. Apparently, the Boy Scouts' wisdom and prudence goes beyond tying knots and putting out forest fires. Maybe now the Boy Scouts will again...

Chul-Mo Sohn is a single father from Sacramento, CA who was raising his two daughters until the Department of Children and Family services interfered and destroyed his life, as well as the lives of his daughters. Chul-Mo is now on a hunger strike to his death to protest the destruction of his family by this corrupted agency that strip searched and handcuffed his twelve year old daughter for protesting against the removal of her little sister, Yih. When Chul-Mo intervened to protect his children from physical and sexual abuse, and took custody of the children to remove them to safety,...

While attorneys on Thursday argued fingerprints and other details of the U.S. government's deportation case against a pregnant Raymore woman, the judge introduced a new party to the fray. “Isn't that child an American citizen?” asked Senior U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright. The judge rejected the government's request that a stay be lifted and that immigration officials be allowed to deport Myrna Dick to her native Mexico. Wright cited a new federal law — enacted after the Laci Peterson murder in California — that gives legal protection to unborn children. Wright ordered that Dick be allowed to stay in...

Burned girl despite pleas BUT LAWYER WANTS MOM TO GO HOME By TRACY MCLAUGHLIN, SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO SUN A LITTLE girl would have screamed in agony and begged for mercy as her mother burned her flesh with a hot utensil that she heated on the stove, a Crown attorney told a Newmarket court yesterday. "But instead of mercy, this mother re-heats the spoon to burn again and again," said Michael Demczur in his closing arguments in a case where a 42-year-old mother burned her 8-year-old daughter dozens of times between her fingers, on her arms and legs, leaving ugly...

Satan comes to Amish country By MARGARET WENTE Thursday, April 29, 2004 - Page A23 The scene was something from a bygone age. The accused, a soft-spoken, unmarried woman of 34, wore a long, blue dress from neck to ankle. She sat in the "prisoner's box," an elevated pew in the centre of the splendid 19th-century courtroom. The room was filled with people in Amish dress -- men with broad-brimmed hats, women in homemade cotton, little boys with hair cut in the shape of inverted bowls. Except for the closed-circuit camera, it could have been the century before last. Or...