Free Republic

14-year-old "Clock Boy" Ahmed Mohamed has nothing on 5-year-old "Dandelion Boy" Drew Johnson. Hands down, Johnson is the real victim of our politically correct culture. Clock Boy has achieved global notoriety on par with Cecil the lion whereas few Americans have heard the story of Dandelion Boy: Indiana kindergartner Drew Johnson of Cumberland Elementary School. Today I'll utilize Dandelion Boy's story to explain a trend in American public schools and playgrounds that threatens your child's long-term psychological development. Johnson is now a freshman in high school, but several years ago he was on the front lines of what is today...

The Thanksgiving season is upon us, and as most Americans look forward to spending this special time of year with family and friends, many other Americans, including 2.7 million children, are forced to spend the holidays without their mother and/or father, through no fault of their own. In all too many homes, there will be an empty seat at the Thanksgiving table. The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerates more citizens than any other country in the world including, incredibly, those with authoritarian (or worse) governments. That makes it impossible to ignore the high cost we pay as a society for...

Make way for Generation Z. Thirteen-year-old Hallie Turner of Raleigh, North Carolina, is filing a lawsuit against her home state, Al Jazeera reported Friday. The suit demands the state adhere to 4% annual deductions in carbon dioxide emissions. "I was [in] about third or fourth grade when the issue of climate change just came up at a dinner table conversation, and I had never really heard about it and I wanted to find out more about it," Turner told a local news reporter in a video posted Friday to Twitter. "I read Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, and that...

The National Institutes of Health is spending nearly a half a million dollars for researchers to observe how much time preschoolers in daycare spend outdoors.The project will also use GPS and light sensors to track kids’ physical activity levels in a “robust” effort to fight childhood obesity.“Physical activity lowers the risk of obesity in children, is independently associated with numerous benefits related to health and well-being, and tracks from preschool-age to adolescence,” according to a grant awarded to Seattle Children’s Hospital. “The amount of time preschoolers spend outdoors is thought to correlate with their physical activity levels.”“Yet, most US children...

Legal Kidnapping: Government’s Assault on Parents How Did We Get Here? The Slippery Slope of Government “Protection”by Monica MearsHealth Impact NewsWhen most people today hear of a terrible child abuse case, their immediate reaction is to call on the government to protect the child and bring justice to bear on the situation. This reliance upon government to enforce child protection, rather than families, churches or non-profit groups, is a relatively new concept in history.As American government has grown ever larger in response to society’s expectations that it should be all children’s protector, Americans have discovered these good intentions have created...

Good news, for male, female, child and adult.

Bernie Sanders often claims that America has the highest child-poverty rate of any advanced democracy in the world. He uses this fact to justify his call for a European-style social-welfare state. But what if it’s simply not true? In a new article for the journal Education Next, we demonstrate that when cross-national poverty rates are calculated appropriately, it becomes clear that America is rather unexceptional, at least on this score. We have a significantly lower proportion of children living in poverty than Ireland and the United Kingdom, and about the same as Germany and even Finland. How can that...

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved Sunday for legislation a bill submitted by MK Yoav Kisch (Likud) called "Parents and their Children." The law would make Israel the first country in the world to take away parents' rights as legal guardians of their own children. It would hand over vast power to social workers, who will be able to initiate proceedings against parents who, in their opinion, fail to respect a list of ten "children's rights" enumerated in the bill. These rights include the right "to physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and to develop their talents and personal...

<p>A worker at a Canadian pharmacy accidentally gave out out bipolar medication to trick-or-treaters instead of candy, according to a report.</p> <p>The mix-up unfolded after a woman unknowingly dropped her 17-year-old son’s prescription drugs while on her way out of a Beauport pharmacy.</p>

Our sister site Twitchy posted about this pro-gun control tidbit from CNN's Sally Kohn, where she wrote that guns kill or injure 10,000 kids a year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. In all, she was trying to say that given these figures, shouldn’t we regulate firearms in the same fashion as we do cars and children's toys? Recently, my CNN colleague Mel Robbins made a startling point. Robbins was on "Legal View" to discuss the case of an 11-year-old who shot and killed an 8-year-old neighbor when host Ashleigh Banfield noted that 10,000 children are killed or injured by guns every year. […]...

Pope Francis gives a thumbs up (CNS photo/Paul Haring) See POPE-AUDIENCE-SCANDAL Oct. 14, 2015. Francis encourages young people to read the Bible, sharing his own reading habits in his prologue for the new YoutCat German Bible The Bible is a “dangerous book” that young people should read daily rather than letting it gather dust on their shelves. “The Bible is not meant to be placed on a shelf, but to be in your hands, to read often – every day, both on your own and together with others,” the Pope wrote in the prologue for a youth bible published...

An Oregon couple who prayed and rubbed olive on their dying son following a home birth rather than call 911 and seek help will continue to serve six years in prison each after a judge upheld their manslaughter conviction. Dale and Shannon Hickman, both 30, were both convicted in 2011 of second-degree manslaughter for the death of their son, David, who died nine hours after his home birth in 2009. David was born two months early at his grandmother's home with undeveloped lungs, and died after having trouble breathing and turning blue. The Hickman's - members of a controversial faith-healing...

SNIP This year, some SJWs (or, for the uninitiated, "internet feminist harpies") are taking it upon themselves to suggest more "empowered" costumes for young girls than those you might find in your average Spirit Halloween store. Now, I have nothing against going as, say, Marie Curie or Frieda Kahlo (especially since both have the added possibility of some truly gruesome makeup effects - radiation is bad for you, kids!), or even as a tiny Supreme Court justice. But I have to draw the line as Makers Women's suggested "female empowerment" Halloween costume. That's right, parents of America: nothing says "heroic...

The United States is home to the most obese population in the Americas, Asia and Europe, has the fattest kids by a wide margin and is tops in poor health for teenagers, according to the latest measure of well-being from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In its "How's Life 2015?" report released Tuesday, the United States is also among the nations with underperforming students and second in murders and assaults. But the U.S. shines when it comes to personal wealth and even the number of rooms in our homes, said the organization that charts the personal and economic...

October 5, 2015 (BreakPoint) -- The way to win over a culture is to capture the minds and hearts of its young people. The gay-rights movement has certainly learned that lesson, which helps explain a current trend in youth literature. Anyone who reads books for teens these days will tell you that portrayals of gay relationships and characters are rapidly increasing.

The Mercer Island School District in the State of Washington has barred students from playing the game of “tag” on school grounds or within eyesight of school personnel. Communications director Macy Grade described the ban as “an essential step to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all students.” In the game of “tag,” one child is designated as “it” until he or she can tag/touch another child and pass along the “it” status. Grade characterized the game as “potentially devastating to children’s self-esteem. First of all, the person who is ‘it’ is isolated and stigmatized. Second, all the other...

Children as young as 10 years old are receiving taxpayer-funded birth control in Washington State, according to public records obtained by Judicial Watch from the agency that provides medical coverage for the poor. JW filed a public records request with the Washington Health Care Authority after reading a disturbing article in a pro-life news site over the summer about a Seattle high school that offers different forms of birth control without parental knowledge or consent. This includes implanting an intrauterine device (IUD) in a girl’s uterus free of cost. It’s part of an initiative offered by Medicaid, the joint federal...

Quinn said that they brought the police commander to their camp, where he confessed to the assault. When the man shrugged his shoulders and laughed in their faces, they threw him to the ground. Quinn explained that it wasn't meant to be revenge, but to send the message to the man and to the other local policemen that sexual assaults would not be tolerated.

UNITED NATIONS – The Obama administration’s immigration policy should come into clearer focus when world leaders gather at the United Nations later this month for the General Assembly. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will convene a special meeting on the refugee crisis, and the outcome will provide a roadmap for U.S. policy. The Obama administration has been adopting U.N. guidance on immigration, such as the U.N.’s recommendation to “move away from the detention of all migrants… particularly unaccompanied minors, and families with children. Aim to eradicate the detention of children completely … Age verification is not a justification for...

The U.S. Secret Service ordered hundreds of parents and their cancer-stricken children out of Lafayette Square on Saturday night, barricading the park for at least two hours and disrupting the group’s plans for a candlelight vigil to raise awareness and research funding for childhood cancer, participants said. Some of the parents and children expressed hurt and disappointment that Secret Service and National Park Police, citing security precautions, virtually shut down part of a two-day event called CureFest for Childhood Cancer. “We ended up waiting at the gates for two hours, and they never let us in,” said Natasha Gould, an...