Free Republic

Santa Fe school board President Steven Carrillo made an unsuccessful final attempt to win approval for the idea of hiring armed officers for the district’s two high schools this school year. During Tuesday’s board meeting, he couldn’t even sway the other four members to support the idea of holding a special study session to discuss the issue, let alone get them to agree to commit to hiring such guards, commonly known as school resource officers or SROs, with the goal of better protecting students against shooters on campus. “I’m not ready to entertain SROs,” board member Maureen Cashmon told Carrillo....

In 2015, Greg Lukianoff (president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and Jonathan Haidt (professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business) wrote an article for The Atlantic entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In that article, the authors argued that students (college but also pre-college) increasingly react to words, books, images, and speakers with fear and anger because they’ve been taught to exaggerate danger, to let their emotions rule, and to engage in binary thinking. It proved to be one of the most read and discussed articles ever published by the magazine....

I would be in trouble if I was still of school age as I overslept this morning. No particular reason, wasn’t up particularly late, didn’t sleep any worse than usual, just protesting the end of summer I guess. Apparently I’m still at step one of grieving the end of summer: denial.I will eventually move on through the other 4 stages, sometime around Thanksgiving, but for now I will remain in denial. That should be easy as it’s supposed to hit the mid-90’s today with the heat index topping 100. Unfortunately it’s also the first day of school around here which...

Remember when teachers were the adults in the room? Apparently that’s not always the case these days. Take the case of 10-year old Tamarion for example; his teacher punished him for addressing her (zir?) as “ma’am” – a term of respect towards the female gender until such time SJWs began creating new genders and gender neutrality rules. This was his punishment: writing “ma’am” over 200 times – 4 columns, both sides of the page.Now I don’t pretend to know what grievance the teacher was attempting to redress by instructing her young student to cease and desist. It could be ageism,...

Allison Jones Rushing has a sterling academic record, high-profile clerkship experience, and doubtless a solid vote for protecting the rights of fetuses as, based on her résumé, she still is one. Rushing graduated from Wake Forest in 2004 and Duke Law School in 2007. After three clerkships — with then-Judge Gorsuch, Judge Sentelle, and Justice Thomas — she joined the ranks of Williams & Connolly where she’s practiced actual law for a mere seven years. Doesn’t anyone think we’re, forgive me, “rushing” this? She could go to her 10-year Gorsuch clerkship anniversary already a federal appellate judge herself. Before this...

The Trump economy has delivered strong growth and low unemployment — now the challenge is to keep it all going. Cutting taxes and clearing out burdensome regulations offer businesses better incentives to invest but as in Tinkerbell’s admonitions to Wendy, Americans have to believe for it to happen. Despite relentless criticism from Democrats on the Hill, the liberal-dominated media and barnstorming socialists like Bernie Sanders, the president has persuaded businesses and ordinary folks that good old fashioned capitalism and enlightened self-interest still works. It’s in the numbers. The pace of hiring is up, and Mr. Trump’s economy coming off a...

I brought my daughter from 10,000 miles away to be educated in the USA. My prime goal is to have her speak like an American. Today was her first day of Kindergarten, the school assembled all the students in the courtyard. They recited the Lord's Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance. I am starting to believe I made the correct decision. Of course, it is not a public school.

An evidence based argument with real life situational videos for carrying a concealed pistol with a round in the chamber.

... Competing in the storied Southeastern Conference, Auburn University (located in Auburn, Alabama) has many great wins to its credit on the gridiron and, to a lesser extent, the basketball court. The rivalry with the University of Alabama is as intense as any in college sports. Winning is an obsession and a Chronicle of Higher Education article from February by Jack Stripling shows how it dominates the administration. (The article appears in the February 23 edition and is subscribers-only content, so I will quote from it at length.) Here’s how the story unfolded. In 2013, the university’s student data showed...

Have you ever wondered what 12-16 years of public propaganda education looks like these days?  This:Warning: graphic image ahead. DON’T DO PROPAGANDA!

Silent Sam, the statue of a weary, stoic Confederate Army foot soldier, came crashing down Monday night, pulled down from his post at the edge of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus by a howling mob of protesters. But a lot more fell than a Progressive-era statue of a Confederate soldier. Another brick in the wall that separates civilization and barbarism was dislodged. Another small part of the social contract that calls on us to settle our differences through dialogue and consensus disappeared. Another thin thread in the rule of law was severed. Even those who feel that Silent Sam was a...

Like many shooters, I started off plinking cans and punching paper targets with a rimfire .22 Long Rifle when I was a kid. That first rifle—an aged single-shot with rough iron sights and a short stock—became the gun that served to teach me the fundamentals of accurate shooting and safe firearm handling. And although I no longer have that little rifle I still keep several rimfire handguns and rifles on-hand. In fact, I have more rimfires than centerfires and shotguns combined. Why? Because they’re fun and affordable to shoot, and they help me become more proficient with larger firearms. A...

Image by Kate at Victorygirlsblog.com A longshot appeal to the Fifth Circuit, to stop Texas Campus carry, has been rejected by a unanimous three judge panel of the Court.  Three professors at the University of Texas had filed the case on novel grounds. From uscourts.gov:  Three professors from the University of Texas at Austin challenged a Texas law permitting the concealed carry of handguns on campus and a corresponding University policy prohibiting professors from banning such weapons in their classrooms. The professors argued that the law and policy violate the First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Equal Protection Clause of...

The Department of Education is poised to replace Obama-era regulations on for-profit colleges and universities with more broad-based transparency measures. On August 10, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos revealed her plan to fully repeal the “gainful employment” regulations that required for-profit colleges to publish information on their graduates’ student debt levels and post-graduation earnings. Under the regulation, schools who failed to meet government standards for their average debt-to-earnings ratio lost federal funding. In place of the gainful employment rule, DeVos proposed a new rule that would require all schools to publish data on student outcomes. The data—such as debt levels, expected...

I’m honestly not sure why most people go to college these days. It doesn’t seem to be for occupational readiness, because many of these majors aren’t in the least bit employable (outside of academia). It’s not to grow children into adults, because they’re being treated as though they’re in kindergarten. Students might want a degree in confirmation bias, but is that what their parents are expecting when they write the checks? Case in point: University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has a course on rhetoric that is requiring students to read anti-Trump materials, Campus Reform reported. The best part? The...

Since shortly after last Thanksgiving, my wife and I been pulling our hair out over this phone issue. The batter drains like crazy, and at about 15%, the battery dies. Then it takes like 10 minutes to restart the phone while watching the screen say: "Optimizing App 1 of 1". You can image in an emergency, the phone suddenly becomes useless. This morning, for the 2nd time, it decided to lock up at about 63% power, then restart. It takes about 8% of power to start up in these conditions. But if your battery's dead, I need to charge it...

With the memory of last August’s violent alt-right protest and counter-protest still raw, the University of Virginia is again under siege. The new invasion actually began a few weeks ahead of schedule. “As grim anniversary nears,” the Chronicle of Higher Education began its coverage in late July, and Inside Higher Ed also emphasized “the approaching one-year anniversary of the white supremacist march on Charlottesville.” Nor has attention been limited to academic circles, with both Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, for example, reporting objections to the “unconscionable” new invasion. Unlike last August, however, when hundreds of white supremacists, many of...

Yes, there is something worse than socialists winning elections in America: socialists so uneducated/stupid they don’t even know they’re socialists. Christine Hallquist, after winning Vermont governor primary: “I’m Not Sure I Even Know What Socialism Is.” “So I just don't have the background to answer that question.” I don’t blame Christine – who’s running on a socialist platform of universal health care and free public college – for not knowing he’s a socialist, heck, he doesn’t even know what gender he is.But come on, people of Vermont, you can still tell the difference, right?Christine: poster boy/girl for universal public education....

The latest racket in higher education, evident at my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, is the disturbing proliferation of “social justice” as a degree program, a course topic, an academic emphasis, and even as a prerequisite in campus job descriptions. “Social justice” is a seemingly innocuous term with no established definition. Many members of the general public construe it as a harmless synonym for “fairness.” But to progressives—who dominate the academy these days—“social justice” is a colloquial expression with a specific meaning: economic equity (the redistribution of wealth), “sustainability” (a pre-industrial environmental ethos), and the elimination of...

After a successful run earlier this year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will offer another session of its online Additive Manufacturing course, led by Professor A. John Hart.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Learn how to design for additive manufacturing Additive manufacturing (AM) has applications across manufacturing, and Additive Manufacturing for Innovative Design aims to help learners understand how AM will transform the way products are designed and delivered. The syllabus is designed to prepare professionals for implementing 3D printing processes in their own organizations, bridging the gap between the opportunities enabled by AM and the skills necessary to implement it across multiple industries. The...