Free Republic

A Florida school admits that it made several mistakes when it allowed a security company to install iris scanners without telling parents -- and without even having a contract with the company. The eyes have it? Or the eyes were had? (Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET) There's a quaint concept that seemingly every technology company dismisses as outdated. It's called opting in. Should you not be familiar with it, it's the notion that you ought to choose before, say, all the people in your address book are contacted by a company they've never heard of. And wouldn't it be lovely...

Father’s Day is this Sunday. A time to celebrate fathers throughout America, it is also a time to bring renewed attention to the consequences of fatherless households.

Parents who read their kids stories about happy, human-like animals like Franklin the Turtle or Arthur at bedtime are exposing their kids to racism, materialism, homophobia and patriarchal norms, according to a paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Most animals portrayed in children’s books, songs and on clothing send a bad message, according to academics Nora Timmerman and Julia Ostertag: That animals only exist for human use, that humans are better than animals, that animals don’t have their own stories to tell, that it’s fine to “demean” them by cooing over their cuteness. Perhaps...

My wife wants to sign up my grandson for the ABC Disney website. Does anyone have any experience with this toddler Learning website? The website says it was developed by “Learning Professionals and Teachers” Such claims do not necessary inspire my confidence.

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt. Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy,...

Michael Bloomberg and his battle against bulging waistlines are targeting new villains: sweet tea, energy drinks and fruit juices. New York City’s health department launched a series of TV and bus ads on Monday that warn people about the high sugar content in drinks that are seemingly healthy. The ads cost about $1.4 million and are part of a “pouring on the pounds” campaign that dates back to 2009, The Daily Mail reports. One of the television ads shows a young boy happily slurping on a juice box. The scene takes a dramatic turn when it flashes to what appears...

An overseas missionary from the Sanford FL-based New Tribes Mission (NTM) has been arrested on child porn and child sex abuse charges.  Now, it’s crucial that NTM uses its vast resources to reach out to others who may have seen, suspected or suffered his crimes. Given NTM’s disturbing track record on children’s safety, church officials must take aggressive steps to help law enforcement convict Warren Scott Kennell. If they do little or nothing, it will be clear that little or nothing in this troubling organization is changing. NTM claims 3,300 “missionaries” across the globe, making it the second largest Christian...

"We know the statistics," said President Barack Obama, "that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves." The Journal of Research on Adolescence found that even after controlling for varying levels of household income, kids in father-absent homes are more likely to end up in jail. And kids that never had a...

A new study shows the relaxation of marijuana laws in Colorado has caused a significant spike in the number of young children treated for accidentally eating marijuana-laced cookies, candies, brownies and beverages.

Children are impressionable, and McDonald’s has managed, in the majority of cases, to make children prefer McDonald’s over all other fast food choices. Some people have decided that McDonald’s marketing is to blame for the fact that kids eat French fries and not fruits and veggies. Or, at least, the claim to believe McDonald’s possesses such awesome powers. And they even pretend that they think children are somehow wise leaders in society. Thus, from MSNBC and Morning Joe:“Nine-year-old Hannah Robertson doesn’t want a Happy Meal. She wants a healthy meal. And she’s not shy about saying it: Hannah took her...

Assemblies of God leadership regrets that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has voted to change its policy regarding inclusion of homosexual youth members. We believe – as do a majority of Boy Scout volunteer leaders and parents – that this is not the best policy for BSA, nor for the young men it serves. As the landmark 2000 Supreme Court decision stated, BSA is a private organization with freedom of association to determine its own membership standards, upholding BSA's policy not to allow homosexual leaders or members. BSA stated at the time that a departure from that longstanding policy...

<p>Helen Mirren has granted a boy’s dying wish to meet the Queen — by dressing as Her Majesty and inviting him round for tea.</p> <p>Oliver Burton, ten, may have just weeks to live after being hit by cancer for a third time.</p>

Sex Beast Muslim Taxi Driver Tried Raping Girl,15 In Oldham May 21 Posted by kafircrusaders Another vile Muslim sexual predator guilty of  sex crimes against children. Pervert taxi driver Tamur Yaqub from Oldham thought because he made eye contact with a 15-year-old girl as he drove past her in his cab. That it somehow entitled him to drag her in his car, drive her to a secluded spot and attempt to rape her.Yaqub is a good Muslim husband and father of 6 children. Yet like we keep on seeing time and time again, Muslims treating infidel females with contempt in a way...

MOORE, Okla. (CBS Houston/AP) — Search and rescue crews worked through the night after a monstrous tornado barreled through the Oklahoma City suburbs, demolishing an elementary school and reducing homes to piles of splintered wood. At least 24 people were killed and and that number is expected to climb, officials said Tuesday.

First Lady Michelle Obama has expanded her anti-obesity campaign to museums, enlisting them to offer “healthy food options,” and change their menus. Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is now calling for museums, zoos, gardens, science and technology centers to “join the call to action,” to decrease obesity among children. The first lady is recruiting these institutions to join the “Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens” project because of their power to “influence real and sustained behavior change” on the eating habits of kids. “With their impressive reach and great potential for impact, museums and gardens can launch community efforts to create...

Should you ask your neighbors if they own a gun before your child plays at their house? And what do you do if they say yes? After the tragic accidental death this month of a two-year-old Kentucky girl who had been shot by her five-year-old brother, the answer may seem obvious: Do not let your child play at a gun owner’s home, at least if you are not sure he is locking up his guns. This shooting came just a couple of days after a prominent opinion piece in the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, in which a...

In a letter to a seven-year-old Wisconsin boy, Vice President Joe Biden considers the possibility of guns with chocolate bullets. Biden's letter reads: Dear Myles, I am sorry it took me so very long to respond to your letter. I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate. You are a good boy, Joe Biden The vice president was responding to Myles's suggestion that guns shoot chocolate bullets. “He said if we have chocolate bullets, nobody would get hurt and nobody would be...

The reality of babies and young toddlers it that they’re gonna go when they’re gonna go, and parents will need to change their diapers. But what if a business like Starbucks doesn’t have a changing table in the restroom — is it okay for a parent to take care of diaper duty in the public seating area? One woman did, and Starbucks employees ended up calling the cops.Here’s how it all went down, according to 9News.com in Denver: A mom had to change her one-year-old son’s diaper while she was on a coffee run at Starbucks Friday night, but realized...

Wrigley temporarily halted production of its new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum in response to concerns expressed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the impact of caffeine on children and adolescents. The company said it had paused the production, sale and marketing of Alert to give the FDA time to develop a new regulatory framework for the addition of caffeine to food and drinks. The recently launched gum has about 40 milligrams of caffeine, as much as a half a cup of coffee, in each piece. …

Public School 244 in Queens, New York has become the first public school to have an all-vegetarian menu. Sounds wonderful, right? A school is offering only healthy choices to students to instill a life-long habit of eating healthy. I am sure there will be other schools that follow. We know the statistics of obesity among our youth in this country and schools are stepping up to educate our kids and help create healthy patterns; except the only part is that they are not educating. Education is the process of giving tools to a student, imparting knowledge and letting students reason...

Parents are reporting more skin and food allergies in their children, a big government survey found. Experts aren’t sure what’s behind the increase. Could it be that children are growing up in households so clean that it leaves them more sensitive to things that can trigger allergies? Or are mom and dad paying closer attention to rashes and reactions, and more likely to call it an allergy? “We don’t really have the answer,” said Dr. Lara Akinbami of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the senior author of the new report released Thursday. …

Trail mix. Potato chips. And now gum. With a growing number of foods boasting added caffeine for an energy boost, the Food and Drug Administration says it's time to investigate their safety. The FDA's new look at added caffeine and its effects on children and adolescents is in response to a caffeinated gum introduced this week by Wrigley.

Dear Dave, My divorce will be final in a month, and I’ll have $100,000 when everything is over. I will also have $8,000 in credit card debt, and I’m currently unemployed. Do you have any suggestions to help me move forward? Meryl      Dear Meryl, The first thing I want you to do is raise your right hand and promise never to use credit cardsagain. Then, if you still have any of those awful things, I want you to cut them up and close out the accounts. The next step is for you to find some kind of income, whether it’s...

Among various unwanted truths that grown-ups of the Western world have to contend with these days, here’s one that doesn’t get nearly the traction it deserves: The days of the modern welfare state look to be numbered. Yet it’s true. Even the most redistributive president in history can’t change the laws of arithmetic. As can be seen most recently in Jonathan V. Last’s book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, the song of demographic unsustainability remains the same on both sides of the Atlantic. From Nicosia to Athens, London to Washington, D.C., the benefits promised to seniors and others...

The Boy Scouts of America called to end a long-standing ban on openly gay members, a spokesman said on Friday, but the organization's board must still vote in May on whether to ratify the resolution. If the vote is approved, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," Deron Smith, the organization's spokesman, told Reuters. Smith noted that the decision drew from three months of research, surveys and discussions and was "among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today." The deliberations over...

* 0.7% of all English spoken language is swearing * Many children learn swear words before the alphabet * Bad language dates to Romans and Anglo-Saxons Most children learn how to swear before they even know the alphabet, according to a new book that examines bad language and its origins. English speakers also use a curse word on average once in every 140 words, roughly the same proportion as the first person plural pronouns such as ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our.’ The surprising preponderance of swearing in everyday language probably explains why the majority of children know at least one obscene...

The victims of the Boston Marathon bombings include a 9-year-old girl who lost a leg and a 10-year-old boy who suffered deep shrapnel wounds to his legs, according to the director of the trauma program at Boston Children’s Hospital. The most seriously injured children had BBs and nails embedded in their bodies, said Dr. David P. Mooney -- objects that were apparently packed into the explosive devices. The 9- and 10-year-olds are in critical condition but are expected to survive. They will need multiple surgeries to recover from their devastating injuries, Mooney said in an interview with the Globe Tuesday...

The Obama budget is finally out and there are, to no surprise, a potpourri of new tax hikes proposed, many of which are aimed at the "wealthy" among us. Deep within the bowels of the colossal budget, however, lies a proposed tax that targets the poor among us and it is perhaps a precursor of other health-related taxes to come. President Obama proposes raising the tax on cigarettes from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack--a whopping 93% increase in taxes. The White House estimates that the tax would raise $78.1 billion, of which around $66 billion would be used to fund...

‘I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights…to Be Safer’ The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child's scrawl. "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure." They're the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution. Florida 4th Grader Brings Home Paper That Says, I Am Willing to Give Up Some of My Constitutional Rights in Order to Be Safer...paper Aaron Harvey's son wrote as...

Heard on his radio program today. My close paraphrase: "I will not send another one of my children to college. I don't care if they're a mechanic, even a really bad mechanic that no one goes to. As long as they're not in the system. I know what's coming. And I don't want my children in the system. They can intern for someone, but I don't want them in the system." His comments were prompted by two things, the new "Core curriculum," and the prevailing Marxist ideology that we're all familiar with.

Family: An MSNBC contributor revisits the statist notion that while you gave birth to your children and feed and clothe them, they are only on loan to you by their true parent — a benevolent and all-knowing government. Melissa Harris-Perry, an African-American professor at Tulane, has endorsed the concept of human ownership by the state, something we thought history would teach her is a bad thing, saying in a promo for MSNBC that "we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong...

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: "We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we've always have kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of 'these are our children.' So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids BELONG to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's, then we start making better investments." BELONG? BELONG???? BELONG...

Via Legal Insurrection, between this and Krystal Ball’s Socratic dialogue with a five-year-old about gay marriage, evidently it was indoctrination weekend at MSNBC. The novelty here isn’t the sentiment, it’s the candor. Hillary made this same point more digestible for the public by ladling on warm-fuzzy sauce about a “village� raising a child together. (Similarly, don’t think of huge government programs as budget-busting liabilities. They’re Christmas presents!) Harris-Perry had 30 seconds to give her version of the same point; when you’re operating within those time constraints, there may be no way to make the pitch in terms less creepy than...

EDMONTON — Alberta mom Allyson McConnell will be deported back to her native Australia on Monday despite pending appeals by Alberta Justice for her to face murder charges in the 2010 drowning deaths of her two young boys. The 34-year-old Millet mom is being returned home after completing a 10-month sentence at the Alberta Hospital Thursday for the manslaughter of her 10-month-old son Jayden and two-year-old son Connor. ...During the hearing, defence lawyer Peter Royal didn’t argue the custody ruling as McConnell is mere days away from leaving Canada. “She’s been fully co-operative and compliant throughout and that remains the...

A 12-year-old girl kidnapped by a group of seven men in the Ethiopian city of Bita Genet was found several days after her abduction, safe under the watchful eyes of three lions. Not only were the lions guarding her, they allegedly chased off her captors. The girl was reportedly abducted by the seven men with the idea that she would be forced into marrying one of the them. According to the United Nations, about 70 percent of the marriages taking place in Ethiopia are the result of similar kidnappings. And nearly 100 percent of those abduction-marriages are not thwarted by...

Cutting edge moonbats turn to MSNBC to justify their morally unjustifiable views. For example, Melissa Harris-Perry assures them that it is okay to kill your own children in the womb because an unborn child is a “thing” that it takes “a lot of money” to “turn into a human.” She has followed this lesson in pediatric ethics by proclaiming that children are collective property — that is, they belong to the State. To quote: “[W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids...

NOOSA, Australia, April 3, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – Another parent has gone public with a story of innocence ripped away from her preteen son after his friend pressured him to view violent pornography on his internet-enabled phone. “Last week my son told me he had watched something horrible online,” wrote Lizi Patch on the Noosa News website. “Something sexual where the young women involved seemed coerced into an act that was brutal and disgusting, not just to an uninitiated 11-year-old, prone to anxiety, but to anyone with a shred of humanity.” Patch said her son, struggling to fit in at his...

BROOKLYN (CN) - NYPD officers pepper-sprayed three little children, including 2-year- and 5-month old babies, because they thought the kids' mom jumped a subway fare, the family claims in court. Marilyn Taylor sued New York City, the NYPD and Officers Maripily Clase, Suranjit Dey and Jermaine Hodge in Federal Court, for herself, her three children and their father. Taylor claims that she and her kids were preparing to board a Manhattan-bound L train on Aug. 9. She was pushing her 2-year-old in a stroller and holding her 4-year-old's hand. The father, Dehaven McClain, carried the 5-month-old close to his chest....

My wife recently chaperoned a dance for junior high schoolers at a Catholic school. She working the door when another of the chaperones, a father of one of the students in attendance, hurried over and asked her what he was supposed to do about an eighth grade girl making out with an 8th grade guy in the middle of the dance floor. “That’s not ok, is it?” he asked her. “Should we be doing something about this?” The man truly didn’t know what his responsibilities were. My wife was stunned by the question. She was about to answer when another...

Sex offences linked to Facebook or Twitter users have rocketed in the last four years, a Mirror investigation reveals. And in an another alarming trend, paedophiles are increasingly logging on to the social networking sites to target children. A total of 1,642 cases since 2009 have been reported to police where the sites played a part in the commission or aftermath of a crime. Statistics obtained under freedom of information laws show the number has more than quadrupled from 139 four years ago to 614 last year. Worryingly, more than half the 1,395 victims of all offences – apart from...

<p>I have learned over 25 years that it takes oftentimes ten different ways to explain something in order for some people to understand it.</p> <p>Now, yesterday I said that gay marriage is inevitable.</p> <p>There are two elements to this.</p> <p>I'll tell you what's coming next.</p>

A toddler who slipped outside through a doggie door was mauled to death by her family's seven dogs in the backyard while the attack went unnoticed by child's mother and other relatives inside their home, a southeast Georgia sheriff said Thursday. Bryan County Sheriff Clyde Smith said the child's grandmother told investigators she was lying in bed when she heard the pit bulls and pit bull mixes barking, and she looked outside her window to see them dragging the girl. Smith said she began yelling, "They're killing Monica!"

I’m going public today with a secret I’ve kept for a year—my husband and I are homeschooling our children. I never dreamed we would become homeschoolers. I wanted my kids integrated and socialized. I wanted their eyes opened to the realities of the world. I wanted the values we taught at home put to the test in the real world. But necessity drove me to consider homeschooling for my 2nd and 4th graders, and so I timidly attended a home school parent meeting last spring. Surprisingly it was full of doctors, lawyers, former public school teachers, and other professionals. These...

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday over the constitutionality of a California law that reserves marriage as a union between one man and one woman, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the effects on children who are raised by same-sex couples is not confirmed by experts or science. “There's considerable disagreement among – among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a – in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not,” Scalia said during the exchange between the justices and Charles Cooper, the attorney representing the petitioner in Hollingsworth...

A US presidential commission has paved the way for testing an anthrax vaccine on children, prompting criticism that participants would be "guinea pigs".But the bioethical issues report said researchers would have to overcome many hurdles before conducting any trial.Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius must decide whether to act on the paper's recommendations.

Honolulu (HawaiiNewsNow) - A new civil lawsuit accuses a former Damien Memorial School chaplain of sexually assaulting two former students in the early 1980's. Father Gerald Funcheon worked at the school from 1982 to 1984. He is accused of molesting the alleged victims, identified as John Roe No. 9 and John Roe No. 10, multiple times. The plaintiffs' lawyers are also representing another former student, Kory Oakland, who filed a sex abuse lawsuit last year. The attorneys released excerpts of Funcheon's testimony filmed under oath in September 2012 for that case. Attorney Jeff Anderson asked him about reports that there may...

We've seen testimonies for Duck Dynasty Stars Phil and Wilie, but now we are hearing from Jase Robertson! The Duck Dynasty family has become an inspiring public figure for Christians around the world, with their outspoken beliefs in Jesus and leading by example. You will LOVE what he has to say about Hollywood and how Christ will always remain their #1 priority!

Last week, I reported on the federal government's massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP "leadership" continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush). The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children's academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats' grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/ccss-parent-opt-out-form/ Parents caught...

In recent years, the illegal alien population in North Carolina has exploded thanks to 'sanctuary policies' in several cities and counties throughout the state. Most recently, the welcome mat was made even larger for those who enter this country illegally by the Tarheel State, when the North Carolina DMV began issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Of course, these decisions and disastrous policies have been made over the very loud objections of many North Carolinians. However, as is so often the case, the desire for cheap labor and commerce has trumped the rule of law and the safety of the...

**SNIP** Principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest had been briefed carefully in advance for this question. All White House briefers are briefed carefully in advance for briefings at a cost of what it probably takes to conduct White House tours. Earnest said that it was a “shame” that the “people who come to the White House on a yearly basis to tour” would get stiffed, but that “the people that the president is most concerned about, though, are the 750,000 Americans who stand to lose their job … as a result of the sequester.” But this is like your mother...