Free Republic

Rep. Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth Township, posted on his Facebook account that he voted against the state’s K-12 education budget on June 3. The post cited his concern with Plymouth-Canton Community Schools' “serious financial situation.” In the last two years the district's expenses exceeded its general fund revenue by a combined $1.8 million. The gap was covered by drawing from $7.9 million in reserves. However, Plymouth-Canton’s problem is not that it is collecting less money from state and local taxpayers. It is instead the growing burden of funding employee retirement benefits. In 2010, Plymouth-Canton schools had 18,989 students and received $113.8...

Calling for the removal of the Confederate Flag from South Carolina’s Capitol in the wake of a national tragedy, the assigned symbol of one man’s hate and paranoia, is ironically both defensible and predictably shortsighted. What rabid activists conveniently forget is that the Confederate Flag – which still wavers at the behest of state law - was never derived as a proud beacon of slavery; after all, even at the height of the Antebellum period less than 2% of all Americans owned slaves. Slavery was a means to an end, an economic mechanism utilized to compete with foreign competitors and...

Two hours before Jeb Bush was scheduled to address hundreds of people at the Hillsborough County Republican Lincoln Day dinner in Tampa, fifteen opponents of Common Core education standards stood outside the Pepin Hospitality protesting the former Florida Governor’s appearance. “I’m against anything that nationalizes education,” said Emma Jane Miller, a former private school teacher from Valrico who helped organize the rally. She’s also a member of the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee, and said she was unhappy that she didn’t have a say so on who the party chose to headline their annual fundraising event. “When Jeb Bush left...

Saida Grundy, who was recently hired by Boston University to teach sociology and African-American studies, used her Twitter account to call white males a “problem population” on campuses around the nation. This was just one of many anti-White tweets, according to Fox News. In her controversial tweet she wrote, “White masculinity isn’t a problem for America’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.” She also said via Twitter, “Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. And every year I find it nearly impossible.” Grundy also targeted actor Ben Affleck for his...

HOUSTON – About 130 Houston student will attend a new Arabic immersion school next year, where they will learn to speak Arabic as they learn “to be truly global citizens.” “With kids who learn Arabic, as a parent you’re going to set them up for success, as a teacher you’re going to challenge them to do the best they can, but that skill of learning Arabic and being fluent in it really can be life-changing for a Houston kid,” Kate Adams, the principal of Houston Independent School District’s Arabic Immersion Magnet School, told Houston Public Media. “In addition to the...

He was a young gunman bent on shooting as many worshippers as possible, but Matthew J. Murray never got as far as Dylann Roof, the suspect in Wednesday’s South Carolina church massacre. Murray had already shot and killed two people in the parking lot when he burst into the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Before he could pull the trigger again, however, the 24-year-old shooter was gunned down by Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard with a concealed-carry permit. That was eight years ago, but even though Ms. Assam was credited for saving as many as 100 lives that...

Last week’s cover story in The Times Magazine, “Scott Walker and the Fate of the Union,” drew hundreds of reader comments – and some mail to the Public Editor’s office. Two of the emails presented questions that I decided to pose to the magazine’s editor, Jake Silverstein. [SNIP] Mr. Silverstein’s response: Thanks for your question. It’s a perfectly reasonable one. To me, the answer lies in the distinction between a magazine story and a story produced by the newsroom for the daily paper. As you note, “an article in the magazine is a feature and doesn’t have exactly the same...

When I used to work at a gun store I was frequently asked what caliber was best for any given situation. It would have been nice if there had been some sort of magic death ray that I could have suggested, but there isn’t, and most people have a pretty flawed understanding of what actually happens when a bullet interacts with a human target. Here’s my take on it and personal reasoning behind selecting a 9mm round. For starters let’s examine a couple of concepts that don’t actually exist in the scientific world but everyone talks about anyway. I’m going...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leads a tight field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling. Walker is alone in first place in the poll with 17 percent, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 15 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 13 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 12 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 11 percent. That’s a big jump for Bush, who was at 11 percent support in the same poll last month. However, Bush will begin his quest for the GOP nomination with a negative...

The open carry activists did not win the open carry victory in Texas because of public opinion, at least not on the superficial and transitory image of public opinion that is usually measured.   It was won because the activists developed means and methods to communicate around the elite establishment, grew their own organizations and vision, and exerted raw political power to bend the government to their will. They had several advantages.   The facts were on their side;  the Constitution is on their side; and the culture is on their side.  Against them were the big government elites, big media,...

About 50 teachers and administrators of the Lebanon School District in Pennsylvania got paid time off to attend Islamic religious training. Teacher Lara Book called the day “amazing. Even though the rituals are different what came through loud and clear is that all religions want the same thing.” While the ACLU is normally “johnny-on-the-spot” to protest any show of religion in a public space, especially one where taxpayer resources may be unconstitutionally used to promulgate a faith, spokesman Betram Petty found no problem with this event. “The whole separation of church and state thing is a western way of thinking,”...

Hillary! drops "Clinton" Jeb! drops "Bush." So, why in the world are they running if they have to run away from their names?

Michigan spends $1.5 billion per year on public universities, with most of the money coming out of the general fund. These funds are appropriated to the state’s 15 public universities in an arbitrary way, with huge disparities in the amount handed out per pupil. Evidence suggests that state taxpayers are getting little bang for their buck for these subsidies. Higher education spending does not necessarily lead to a better educated public. For example, federal funding for higher education increased 10 fold from 1970 to 2010, but a smaller portion of low-income people have college degrees today than they did in...

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing liberal Kirsten Powers for C-SPAN about her new book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, which takes on what she calls the “illiberal left” for using bullying, intimidation and political correctness to silence opinions that differ with their own. Really, she is criticizing the unAmerican and unconstitutional trend–whether by liberals or conservatives–to censor all opinions with which they disagree. She has amazing stories of the happenings on college campuses with kids being given “trigger” warnings on books and articles that might offend their sensitivities or give them PTSD by evoking...

Tossing free speech on the ash heap of history The progressive storm troopers at the University of California are ramping up their PC agenda. A faculty seminar discussing “diversity in the classroom” held at nine of the 10 UC campuses during the 2014-2015 school year came with a worksheet entitled “Tool: Recognizing Microagressions and the Messages They Send.” “Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership,” states the opening sentence. The ultimate cure for such...

Last year one-half of one percent of Michigan's public schoolteachers were considered to be “ineffective” according to performance evaluations conducted by the nearly 900 charter and conventional school districts in the state. Those assessments appear at odds with the actual academic performance of students, and teacher evaluations have become problematic in other ways since a state law was passed in 2011 mandating more teacher accountability. Of the 95,885 teachers evaluated, just 519 earned the lowest rating of “ineffective.” Under that 2011 law, a teacher rated “ineffective” three years in a row can be fired. The law also requires teachers' performance...

Ansel12 has reported that the book "The Pros and Cons of the Gun Control Debate - How Do Obama's Laws Impact Gun Ownership" is anti-second amendment propaganda tied to the Obama administration. The original title of the book was "Why Gun Control Will Solve Our Problems." Most of the reviews claim that the book is "fair". I believe that is completely false. A reviewer says this: 4. Succinctly describes what the gun control debate is all about. “Overall, the gun control debate taking place in the U.S. is not about a reduction in gun ownership, but about a reduction in...

Some schools in St. Paul, Minnesota have recently become madhouses. Students attack teachers. Students attack each other. Teachers are threatened. One teacher has a secret signal for her “good” students to use, for fear of letting in these out-of-control monsters. And sadly, this chaos is self-induced—and totally avoidable. What happened in St. Paul? The Federal Justice Department says the schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul are racist. This is because black students are disciplined and suspended at higher rates than Caucasians and Asians. The Justice Department has accused the 2,300 majority white teachers in Minneapolis of systemic racism and has...

Reuters recently published the results of a study about children involving "weapons violence", though the term was used just short of the broadest possible context.   What was telling was the quote from the author of the study.  From whbl.com: “Millions of children are being exposed to violence involving weapons, and many of them are victimized by guns and knives, with an elevated risk of trauma and serious injury,” said lead study author Kimberly Mitchell, a scientist at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The author is a highly educated woman.  It is hard...

“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.” This rhyming lore has been around for at least a couple millennia, serving seafarers in port and on the open ocean when they needed something that passed for a forecast. And while we may discount it in today’s modern world – what with all of our high-tech satellite imagery, anchored weather buoys, Doppler radar and suites of computer forecasting ensembles – there still is some truth to the saying. I’m no meteorologist, but the nut is that it has to do with areas of high pressure being...