Free Republic

<p>A judge in Texas has ruled against a teen who claimed that suspension over his dreadlocks was a violation of his rights.</p><p>Darryl George, 18, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu has been suspended twice after the the school district declared that his hairstyle violated its length policy.</p>

The conflict was sparked when troops from Dagestan - a poor, mountainous region of southern Russia disproportionately affected by the Russian army's conscription drive late last year - took umbrage with the arrival of the 'Kadyrovites', who are particularly vocal on social media and were allegedly in town to film propaganda clips. Around 8pm local time, a fight broke out between the two groups. The NRC said: 'During the quarrel, one of the occupants opened fire in the air from a small automatic weapon. 'In the course of the fight, one of the occupiers was inflicted with numerous stab wounds...

To the editor: A letter to the editor written by an educator of more than 30 years suggested three strategies to attract young people to the teaching profession. As a fellow educator of more than 30 years, I was horrified. The writer's first suggestion was to remove the one year of graduate education required to obtain a teaching credential by folding it into a bachelor’s degree. Finland, Germany and other European countries require a master's to teach. Educators need more, not less, training. The second suggestion was to restore authority and order to classrooms. Studies show that authority and order...

Middle schools in Portland are facing a student behavior crisis and need more dedicated staff to help navigate the issues, according to a letter sent this month to Portland Public Schools’ district leadership that was co-signed by all 15 middle school principals. Sixth through eighth graders had more disciplinary incidents through the end of March than for the entire 2021-2022 school year, wrote Robert Gray Middle School Principal Lisa Newlyn, who penned the letter. Disruptive conduct, harassment toward fellow students because of race, disability and religion and physical altercations are on the rise among middle schoolers, she said, and school...

Is God a man, a woman, or a genderless force that cannot be identified by masculine or feminine traits? Society offers a range of ideas, but what do religious texts have to say about this immutable characteristic of God? Dennis Prager offers some insightful answers.

A Washington school board butted heads over a new student discipline policy that considers a student’s race before deciding on a punishment. The Clover Park School District debated its new “culturally responsive” student discipline policy. It means student discipline would not be consistent based on conduct. Instead, a school considers a student’s race and background. It would likely offer harsher punishments to white students, even if the conduct is identical to that of a black or Hispanic student. The disparate treatment is championed in the name of inclusion. But it’s not just a Clover Park School District controversy. The culturally...

Beginning in the fall, the Austin Independent School District will be significantly scaling back the way it disciplines children who act up. The goal is to reduce racial disparities, which show Black and brown students are being disproportionately punished compared to their white classmates. According to data compiled by the district, Black children at AISD were nearly five times more likely than their white peers to receive disciplinary action, include suspensions, being placed at a disciplinary campus or being expelled.

Democrats want to use stimulus money to make you into the people populating Disney's cartoon 'Wall-E.' Instead, turn it into a weapon for antifragility.Democrats’ fifth round of “coronavirus” “stimulus” will soon hand another $1,400 in government debt, plus interest, to every American man, woman, and child in 90 percent of U.S. households. It’s clear this is yet another round of hush money meant to keep Americans quiet and distracted while Democrats restructure the United States into a larger version of their failed uniparty state, California.While COVID times have been obviously worse than the four years of prosperity and freedom under...

The Trump administration has revoked an Obama-era policy that urged public schools to employ more lenient forms of discipline for students of color and of other minority groups. On Friday, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice rescinded the Obama administration’s 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” that a federal school safety commission said “may have paradoxically contributed to making schools less safe.” The Obama-era Departments of Education and Justice, under Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder, issued school guidelines that claimed students of color are “disproportionately impacted” by suspensions and expulsions, a situation they said led to a...

Cursive has been controversial for years. The striking thing is that the Education Establishment feels really, really strongly about cursive. They hate it! But why are they so emotional? One professor of education stated emphatically: "Teaching cursive handwriting is an outdated waste of time." A second professor of education, quoted in the New York Times, was equally dogmatic: "Districts and states should not mandate the teaching of cursive. Cursive should be allowed to die." You are hearing the imperious voice of an impatient Education Establishment. They do not want to discuss pros and cons. They want to have a funeral...

Fair play in the Olympics or in politics means balancing freedom and discipline: https://freedom-demokrasi-and-civilised-humanity.com/2020/04/06/please-stay-free/ What do Freeepers have to say about evaluating presidents through their use (or overuse/underuse?) of the veto. We want leaders to protect freedom while being disciplined (i.e. not too free ) themselves. The first thing I noticed was POTUS 45’s low rate of use of the veto compared with other eras. How do Freeepers evaluate Trump’s use of the veto? Here are some facts: 298 years ago, on April 5, 1792, President Washington exercised the first presidential veto. He blocked legislation that would have given Northern...

The following is a recent note that I wrote to our former high school football coach, Art Davis, who is now 85 years old. Dear Art, Thanks for the greetings. I hope you were able to make contact with my brother Tom. I got to thinking about the similarities of what we both do. You were the football coach at Barstow High School. The BHS varsity Football team, under your direction, won for the first time, the California State Championship (CIF), division AA, 50 years ago in 1969. You are a football coach. In a certain sense, I might call...

President Trump on Tuesday suggested the military should consider additional disciplinary action against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who provided damaging testimony against Trump in the impeachment inquiry and was reassigned from his White House job last week. "We sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "Gen. Milley has him now. I congratulate Gen. Milley. He can have him." Gen. Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Asked specifically if the Pentagon should pursue further action against...

A pair of Great Danes killed an Ohio woman who kept the rescued animals over her husband’s objections, authorities said. Mary Matthews, 49, was found dead Friday in her Waynesville home by her husband, Dale Mark Matthews, some two years after she rescued the aggressive dogs ... I never wanted Great Danes but she wanted to rescue them,” Matthews told the newspaper. “She loved animals so I let her get them. I probably should have put my foot down and said no, obviously.” Matthews said he was bitten by one of the massive dogs last month, leading him to worry...

The top US Navy SEAL recently sent a blistering letter to the force, writing in boldface type, "We have a problem," following several high profile incidents of alleged misbehavior by the US Navy's elite service members, CNN has learned. Rear Adm. Collin Green has given commanders until August 7 to detail the problems they see and provide recommendations on how they will ensure troops are engaging in ethical and professional behavior. The letter -- dated July 25 and exclusively obtained by CNN -- comes in the wake of several high profile incidents of alleged misbehavior by SEALs. "I don't know...

Bradley Manning is going to Leavenworth. He deserves it. But he doesn’t deserve to go alone. The largest American intelligence breach since Benedict Arnold is being placed on the back of a private first class. That proves that crap rolls downhill, and that the brass knows how to cover its ass. You know the story. A she-male recruit ends up with a top-secret clearance and downloads every secret we’ve got onto a thumb drive which he gives to the piece of crap who heads that America-hating group Wikileaks. Wham, bam, we’re screwed. People died because of it, terrorists were empowered...

Most media outlets reported on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on disparities in school discipline without much follow up, but Manhattan Institute fellow Heather McDonald took a closer look at federal school and crime data and found the GAO study misleading, to say the least. "The GAO found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses," MacDonald wrote in the City Journal on April 6, 2018. "The Obama Education and Justice Departments viewed that disproportion as proof of teacher and principal bias." "Administration officials used litigation...

During briefings as a patrol officer, I scanned the crime reports from the prior week, looking for patterns, trends and changes. If, for example, I discovered an increase in car burglaries on the west side of town, I would ask the simple question: What shifted in the past few weeks to account for the additional crimes? More robberies on the east side? What’s changed? Did someone new move into the area? Did some group of offenders decide to target our city? Now, as a cold-case detective and author, I apply the same approach to a new crime phenomenon: the increase...

In 2014, the Obama administration promulgated a “guidance” to America’s public schools that threatened federal investigations and litigation against schools where black students are disciplined (e.g., by suspension) more often, on a pro rata basis, than white students, on the ground that such numerical discrepancy is evidence of discrimination. Many schools responded by adopting discipline quotas, which meant in practice that after a certain number of students of a particular race had been suspended, teachers and administrators were helpless to enforce any kind of discipline in classrooms. The Obama administration is gone, thankfully, but its “guidance” has not been revoked....

On CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night, Lesley Stahl asked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about the "institutional racism" in school discipline. It was like neither of them had ever heard of Nikolas Cruz. The Parkland, Florida, school shooter is our most recent case study of what happens when liberals start babbling about "institutional racism." There's never been such an incredible paper trail as there is with Cruz, leading straight from idiotic liberal ideas directly to mass murder. We know that Broward County Public Schools knew about Cruz's felonies. We know that his behavior wasn't reported because it would negatively impact the...