Free Republic

Vandals doused the statue of Christopher Columbus in Central Park with red paint and scrawled “Murderer” across its stone pedestal, police said Monday. Detectives have a video of two people — possibly a man and a woman — defacing the statue at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday with spray paint, an NYPD spokesperson said The pair wrote “land back” on three sides of the bronze-and-granite statue and “Murderer” on another, police said. There’ve been no arrests, but the NYPD is investigating the incident. If caught, the spray-paint artists will likely be charged with vandalism and making graffiti, the spokesperson said. Metal...

When we come to study the influence of Calvinism as a political force in the history of the United States we come to one of the brightest pages of all Calvinistic history. Calvinism came to America in the Mayflower, and Bancroft, the greatest of American historians, pronounces the Pilgrim Fathers "Calvinists in their faith according to the straightest system."1 John Endicott, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; John Winthrop, the second governor of that Colony; Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut; John Davenport, the founder of the New Haven Colony; and Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode...

AUSTIN — The Texas State Board of Education was expected to return this afternoon to the topic of who and what the state’s more than 4 million school children should study in social studies class, with a tentative vote on draft curriculum expected by the end of the week. The 10-year update of social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills will influence what textbooks include. It started this spring, when committees made up of board-nominated educators and community members began work on changes. Along the way, board-appointed expert reviewers and the public have spoken out on issues like the inclusion...

<p>The latest editions of the most widely used social studies textbooks across the country are full of errors and politically correct bias, reviews show.</p> <p>Publisher McDougal Littell's high school "World History: Patterns of Interaction" blames explorer Christopher Columbus for "the beginnings of an era of widespread cruelty and bloodshed" in the Americas, but fails to mention Aztec, Mayan and Toltec Indian practices of forced labor and cutting out hearts of opponents while they were still alive.</p>