Free Republic

Real Witches Practice Samhain: Wicca on the Rise in U.S. More Americans Are Wiccan, and Will Celebrate Samhain, Not Halloween, Saturday By RUSSELL GOLDMAN Oct. 30, 2009— Patti Wigington is a soccer mom. She is the vice president of her local PTA. And she's a witch. This Saturday while her neighborhood outside Columbus, Ohio, is crawling with costumed witches in search of candy, Wigington and a group of other local witches will not be celebrating Halloween, but the new year festival Samhain, which also occurs Oct. 31. In her backyard, Wigington and six other local women who make up...

Schools Are Where Stimulus Saved Jobs, New Data Show By MICHAEL COOPER October 30, 2009 The best symbol of the $787 billion federal stimulus program turns out not to be of a construction worker in a hard hat, but rather of a classroom teacher saved from a layoff. On Friday, the Obama administration released the most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus. Preliminary data showed that of the 640,239 jobs created or saved, 325,000, or more than half, were jobs in education that school districts claimed were saved when stimulus money averted the need for layoffs....

Another Lefty feel-good idea gone horribly awry. Wow, it turns out that the best way to make non-English speaking students stop feeling isolated and make them part of American society is to make them speak English. Waiting for La Raza to condemn this as racist in 3...2... Yes, I'm about to go off on another "politics of emotion" diatribe. Like most modern education ideas designed to make the kids' lives easier while they're in school, long-term ESL programs have the predictable effect of hurting the kids outside of school. This is what happens when the showered-up hippies are allowed to...

Educating For Failure Malcolm A. Kline, October 30, 2009 Every chief executive in the past 20 years has vowed to be, as one of them put it, “the education president.” All have failed for the same reason: as with most aspects of life, top-down government solutions to education just don’t work. “Between 1960 and 1990, spending on elementary and secondary education jumped from $50 billion to nearly $190 billion in inflation adjusted dollars,” Leslie Carbone writes in Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case For Tax Reform. “During the same period, per student spending more than tripled—from $1,454 to $4,622.” “Between 1973...

Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves… — Charles Darwin, age 29, in his notebook This is an incredible comment. It is difficult to understand how anyone with a brain could not observe that thought produces such things as symphonies, literature and mathematics, while gravity just makes things fall down and holds planets in their orbits. Furthermore, thought does not secrete like insulin from a pancreas, it is willed (at least that’s what I do, and I assume others do...

Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out...

Attorney General Eric Holder tries to kill a TV ad supporting D.C. school vouchers. President Obama isn't taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled. Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad. The 30-second ad, which has been airing on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and News Channel 8 to viewers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, urges the president to reauthorize the...

More states lowered their standards for academic proficiency in recent years than raised them, and nearly all used exams that fell short of federal testing benchmarks, according to a new study. The research, issued by the U.S. Department of Education, called into question the rigor of tests that states select to comply with student-improvement mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind law. It also cast doubt on claims of educational progress made by many states. Education Department analysts found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standard on at least one fourth- or eighth-grade test of reading or math between...

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. —Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Through a combination of ineptitude, greed, and design, our “representatives” in Washington...

Whole industries and banks are biting the dust; unemployment lingers close to double-digits; government deficits rise like a mountain of nuclear waste; the communist Chinese are buying up our debt in anticipation of God knows what kind of future demands upon us; and more soldiers die needlessly while the President dithers with his golf game. Purely mad social engineers -- Obama, Pelosi & Reid -- are on a determined march toward nationalizing one-sixth of the entire American economy. Their scheme will have far-reaching effects on 100 percent of the men, women and children in this Country. The whole idea is...

It's Alive! End-of-Life Counseling In Health Bill By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR WASHINGTON – It's alive. The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to "death panels" for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday. The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death. For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions, and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and...

Washington: Facing a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, the Obama administration seems to believe in a "buyout" formula which involves paying the militants to leave the outfit and reintegrate to the society. Hours before attending a solemn event to receive the flag-draped cases of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, President Barack Obama signed a USD 680 billion defence appropriations bill, which will pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal. The bill includes a Taliban reintegration provision under the Commander's Emergency Response Programme, which is now receiving USD 1.3 billion. CERP funding also...

Tucked inside Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s 1,990-page health care reform bill that was unveiled Thursday is a requirement for chain restaurants to post caloric information on their menus.Pages 1511-1519 of the bill outline the new laws for restaurants, mandating any restaurants operating in 20 or more locations post caloric information “prominently” on menus in a way that's “designed to enable the public to understand, in the context of a total daily diet, the significance of the caloric information that is provided on the menu.”That means all the big-name chains, like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s will need to...

2011 Obama's Coup Fails is an action packed, satire-filled war game that takes place in the not-so-distant future. Right after the November 2010 election, to be precise. It has been said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign power. It does seem our biggest enemies are not from outside our borders. Could the scenario described above ever really happen? If current events keep transpiring as they are, then 2011 Obama's Coup may in fact become a dark chapter in American History. Stay informed and visit the United States of Earth Blog daily for the real facts taking place...

Speaker Pelosi denies public access to Health Care Public Plan announcement. He is told he is not "authorized" by the Speaker's staff.

This morning, Nancy Pelosi, the self described "most powerful woman in the world' stood on the Capitol steps and unveiled HR 3962, a bill described by Steny Hoyer as created by via a process that was "deliberative, transparent and open." The Public was not allowed anywhere near the outdoor "open" announcement, and the bill was put together behind non-transparent closed doors. Ironically the bill (found here online) is called the "Affordable Health Care for America Act." The irony comes from the fact that it is loaded with new taxes, there is nothing affordable about this legislation which increase the burden...

A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the...

The Obama administration is trying to strong-arm America’s colleges and universities into complying with a bill that hasn’t been signed into law yet. The bill, which would replace current subsidized-student-loan programs with a government-run system, passed the House last month, but its fate in the Senate is far from clear. Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Education Committee, plans to use the budget-reconciliation process to pass the contentious bill with a simple majority, but The Hill newspaper reports that it might not even have 51 votes. The bill is far from a fait accompli, making the administration’s pressure campaign all...

Tuesday night the citizens of Indiana's Senate District 17 got to hear from the candidates. Huntington County Commissioner Tom Wall, Coffee D'Vine owner Ron Fusselman, and Whitley County Councilman Jim Banks faced off in a debate at Huntington University. The event was sponsored by.....

The Democrats have beaten the Republicans to court in NY-23, obtaining an order to show cause that requires the impounding of voting machines for what is expected to be another tight congressional special election. "Most of the time, you don't bring this until the day after the election, and then only if you think the race will be close," said attorney Frank Hoare, whom I reached on his cell phone as he was driving back to Albany after filing the order in Elizabethtown. "The Republicans usually play games and start the action the day of the election; in an effort...

The More They Know Darwin, The Less They Want Darwin-Only Indoctrination According to an international poll released by the British Council, the majority of Americans — 60% — support teaching alternatives to evolution in the science classroom. The percentage is the same for Britons, despite the fact that both countries have been inundated with pro-Darwin media coverage in this super-mega Darwin Year. Of course, the British media reporting this are chagrined. Britain is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and the official-sounding British Council, the UK group behind the “Darwin Now” campaign that commissioned the Ipsos...

Students begin research project at Big Springs - By: Nancy Stidham, Special to The Independent PINETOP-LAKESIDE - Hiking the trails from Big Springs along Walnut Creek to Woodland Lake was the assignment in Connie Mayo's language arts class on Friday, Oct. 2. There were about 60 seventh and eighth grade Blue Ridge Junior High students who participated in the field trip. Before the hike students were asked to record their opinions about the possible sale of the park acreage. The students spent the morning hiking from Big Springs to Woodland Park where they ate sack lunches. After lunch, the students...

You tube video of Christians trying to ask Muslims questions at Arab Festival in Dearborn, MI. Police side with the Muslims.

A Florida man says he was fired from his job at The Home Depot for wearing an American flag pin that said "One nation under God, indivisible." Trevor Keezer, 20, said he had worn the button ever since he started working at the home improvement retailer 19 months ago. He said it was his way of supporting U.S. troops, the Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Keezer, whose brother Army Spc. Steven Keezer Jr. is set to return to Iraq in December, said none of his supervisors had anything negative to say about the pin until last month when he began bringing his...

Those of us laboring for academic reform often feel like Sisyphus, rolling a rock up the hill only to have it come crashing down again. The gods of academe seem to have condemned higher education to inevitable decay. That thought came to me as I read about the demise of an institute (at Hamilton College) that did everything right, yet the overlords of Political Correctness purged themselves of enemies and “deviationists.” I use these terms because the notion that all-is-political, enemies-must-be-destroyed is linked so strongly to communism and its close cousin national socialism. In the above unhappy story, Mark Bauerlein...

Based on this detailed, comprehensive Mayo Clinic definition, one that I believe perfectly describes Obama, it's obvious he needs prescription medicine and extended psychotherapy. Our country is in tremendous danger with a person suffering from this complex mental illness in our White House.

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Advocated ‘Queering Elementary Education’ Wednesday, October 28, 2009 By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama’s safe schools czar wrote a foreword to a book in 1999 that called for elementary school children to explore their sexual identities, for teachers to incorporate homosexual themes in grades K-5, for discarding a “hetero-normative” approach to education and for “acknowledging children as sexual beings.” Kevin Jennings, now the assistant deputy secretary for education who heads the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, began the foreword to Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Rowan...

Why is it that a country that has produced some of the most beloved authors, prolific inventors, and has advanced the fields of science, medicine, and technology, recently found itself at the epicenter of moral and financial decline? Our current president has become the butt of Marxism jokes in the same week that he is appeasing Islam– how sad for America and its people. Yet, I fear it is our people that have become complicit in this deterioration, for more often than naught, we take for granted our freedoms and the responsibilities tied in to those freedoms. One of our...

The children of Hispanic immigrants tend to be born healthy and start life on an intellectual par with other American children, but by the age of 2 they begin to lag in linguistic and cognitive skills, a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows. The study highlights a paradox that has bedeviled educators and Hispanic families for some time. By and large, mothers from Latin American countries take care of their health during their pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach...

MUMBAI: Students in a CBSE school need no longer worry about failing in classes IX or X. Besides altering several evaluation methods, the CBSE board will now allow students who do not clear classes IX and X three more attempts to make the grade. And if they fail to do so, the board is considering taking into account their performance in extracurricular activities and sports. So if you're an ace footballer with a poor math score, there's a chance you'll still pass the year. Assessment, too will be revamped. A child who fares poorly in written exams can be tested...

October is 'Gay History Month' - being pushed in schools. Radical "history" includes founders of modern porn movement. It's another one of those things that most parents don't even know is happening. And school officials like it that way. Barack Obama declared June to be "Gay Pride Month." April is reserved for the homosexual "Day of Silence" in public schools. But for the last dozen years the homosexual movement has pushed October as "Gay History Month" as an "educational" experience for schoolchildren across America, including encouraging kids to "come out". And this year is as strong as ever. It's yet...

The work of the Medill Innocence Project has already led to the exoneration of 11 inmates in Illinois. In 2000 Governor George Ryan cited the Medill Innocence Project of Northwestern University as one of the reasons he suspended the death penalty in the Land of Lincoln. It has yet to be fully reinstated. The Medill Innocence Project has recently set its sites on the case of Anthony McKinney, convicted of murdering a security officer in 1978. The students of the Project feel that they have successfully proved that McKinney was wrongly convicted and have also succeeded in getting a judge...

Medical Research Assistance by Mrs. Bulldog Dedicated to: Our Little Princess—May she live a long and fertile life “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” – Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff. Well, you probably are all wondering why I have been silent about Obama declaring a “National Emergency” Friday evening (he always releases critical news on Friday night in an attempt to bury the story by Monday when most of the editors come back from their weekend break—by then it is...

California's educrats have put out new rules for teaching Islamic studies to seventh-graders in public schools, and they are as biased as ever. They'll also likely spread eastward. The lesson guidelines adopted by the bellwether state whitewash the violence and oppression of women codified in Islamic law, or Shariah. And they're loaded with revisionist history about the faith. In fact, "wife beating is allowed under Shariah" today, she added. "It allows a woman seen without a headdress to be flogged, punishes rape victims, and calls for beheading for adultery." California's course on world religions also omits Islam's long history of...

Catholic Families for America PAC, a Key Catholic Activism Group, Endorses Doug Hoffman in NY-23 Special ElectionCFA Executive Director: "Doug Hoffman embodies what our group promotes: pro-family stances on every important issue--from taxes to healthcare to abortion--facing Americans. Given the radicalism of his opponents, the choice is clear in NY-23."Contact: Dr. Kevin Roberts, Catholic Families for America, 512-686-3125, kroberts@catholicfamiliesusa.org WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today the Catholic Families for America PAC, a national pro-family political action committee, announced their endorsement of Doug Hoffman, Conservative Party candidate for Congress in next week's special election for New York's 23rd Congressional District....

Blasts the entitlement mentality of today's children.... VIDEO AT LINK"We must stop teaching them that losers get a trophy just like winners do"

Freepers: I occasionally work as an adjunct (I'm retired) for a local college. This college has just initiated a policy where they require their students to work for 75 hours for a third-party for free. That is, they require that a student give 75 hours of work to a non-profit, a charity, and so forth. The college will provide the list of organizations from which a student can choose. This strikes me as being pretty shaky legally and ethically. We seem to be providing a pool of unpaid labor for groups in our community--regardless of whether they want to work...

Poor immigrant Latinas have healthy babies, but by age 2 or 3, their toddlers begin to lag behind white middle-class children in vocabulary, listening and problem-solving skills, according to two studies released Tuesday. Researchers call it the "immigrant paradox": Pregnant Latino women smoke and drink less than pregnant white and African American women, Latino newborns have lower infant mortality rates, and the cognitive skill of infants 9 to 15 months are about equal for white and Latino children. But by the time they are toddlers, Latino children trail their white counterparts by up to six months in understanding words, speaking...

http://conservativehq.com/petitions Here is our chance to sign a petition to request the RNC to " Dump Dede"!

Their solution: Fight explicit teen dancing with an equal dose of explicitness. Downey and Aliso Niguel are among the first schools to draft "dance contracts," binding agreements that parents and students must sign before a teenager can step onto the dance floor. Administrators say the graphic descriptions in the contracts leave little room for arguments over interpretation and put everyone on notice about appropriate behavior. The Downey contract, for example, specifies "no touching breasts, buttocks or genitals. No straddling each others' legs. Both feet on the floor." Students get two warnings about sexually suggestive behavior before being booted without a...

Obama’s “Safe Schools” czar, Kevin Jennings, founded and led GLSEN for 18 years. A current GLSEN lesson plan for “LGBT History” -- intended for schoolchildren – celebrates gay and lesbian activists from the 1950s and ’60s. It recommends the film “Gay Pioneers” which profiles several practitioners and promoters of pornography. GLSEN recommends “Gay Pioneers” for classroom use, for showing at a Gay-Straight Alliance club meeting (invite other clubs!), for a school assembly, or for donation to the school library. (In the past, GLSEN’s website has recommended readings for children describing -- and implicitly endorsing -- adult-child sex and sexual experimentation...

Muslims say jump and our public school officials ask how high? Don't be surprised if their next demand is to ban all pork products. Besides, respect is supposed to be a two-way street. From From the "Non-Muslim Subjects of the Islamic State" chapter of Reliance of the Traveller A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law o11.4 (6) are forbidden to openly display wine or pork,

(Got this email today lets get rolling Patriots) Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman Liberty Counsel As I've been warning, the secret White House-Senate meetings are now underway to socialize health care. We MUST keep on flooding the Senate with demands from citizens to "Show Us The Bill!" See below. -- Mat Thomas, Yesterday, the secret meetings began in earnest. Sen. Harry Reid met with Sen. Max Baucus, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and other officials BEHIND CLOSED DOORS to re-draft ObamaCare. The entire Senate Democratic Caucus also met BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. Reid had already indicated he will "liberalize"...

This campaign is a golden opportunity. Tea Partiers, conservatives, and the righty blogs are pushing back hard against the Republican establishment and if you can spare any money or time for Doug Hoffman in western New York, saddle up and get over there. Stacy McCain is all over it.

The crucial Nov. 3 special election in upstate New York features two candidaties -- liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens -- connected to the Working Families Party (WFP) which is the New York political arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). <snip> With both Big Labor and ACORN working to defeat the Conservative -- who is also being attacked by the national GOP Establishment -- Hoffman's campaign is sending out a nationwide call for volunteers to help match the "community organizers" being brought into the 23rd District by his major-party opponents. "We need boots...

SALT LAKE CITY - A little early for Halloween, but a gathering of people at Utah's Capitol Building, donning Sarah Palin masks, want Governor Gary Herbert to increase tax on oil and gas exports before education and healthcare budgets are cut. The "Flock of Palins" as the group is called, gathered outside the Governor's office to challenge the governor to increase the severance tax, a tax that is imposed on natural resources such as coal, oil and gas that is taken out of the state. In 2007, then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, signed a bill to allow a severance tax...

Bill Cosby has a great way of distilling things. Looks like he's done it again! I HAVE DECIDED TO BECOME A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE. HERE IS MY PLATFORM: (1) 'Press 1 for English' is immediately banned. English is the official language. Speak it or wait at the border until you can. (2) We will immediately go into a two year isolationist posture to straighten out the country's attitude. NO imports, no exports. We will use the Wal-Mart policy, 'If we ain't got it, you don't need it.' (3) When imports are allowed, there will be a 100% import tax on it....

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? He's now 82 years old and has a new book, Lee Iacocca Says: 'Where Have All The Leaders Gone?' 'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder! We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting...

    Feinberg interviews turn networks against Obama administrationAP Photo/Kevin Wolf The Obama administration now claims it did not try to exclude Fox News from Thursday's round of network interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg.   A treasury department spokesperson claimed, "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing".  Unfortunately for the Obama administration, four other networks are fully aware of the situation and have proof that the treasury department is lying.  Fox did have the same interview as their competitors, only because the other networks came...