Free Republic

Computer games may have cut youth crime in Norway by as much as a quarter over the last decade, social research outfit Nova has argued on the release of Norway's latest crime statistics. Norway has seen a dramatic drop in youth crime over the last decade, according to figures from Statistics Norway released this week, with just 7.8 percent of 15-20 year olds charged with an offence in 2011, compared to 10.3 percent in 2002. "What we see is that young people spend more time in front of their screens, and this changes the conditions for youth crime," Nova's lead...

Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity. I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends. Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why...

A (New) Lost Generation: As the media focus on a slight drop in unemployment, an ugly trend gets ignored: the declining participation of young Americans in the job market. We'll pay for this for decades to come. We keep hearing the job market is "improving" or even "solid," with 162,000 new positions created in July and unemployment falling to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008. But one group is sitting it out. And it's the one that most enthusiastically embraced Barack Obama in both of his presidential elections: America's young. Their unemployment rate is a shocking 16.1%. Increasingly, those ages 18...

As high schools and universities turn out more and more students (like George Mason University), I felt it was time to review the economic environment facing the young people in the US, aka “Millennials.” My conclusion? This is no country for young people. At least in the current state of affairs. Let’s start with healthcare premiums under the “affordable” healthcare act. According to a study by the American Action Forum, 45% of respondents who are currently covered report they would no longer purchase health insurance and would instead pay the penalty each year if their premium costs increase 30% in...

If you’re a young person who happens to be reading this and you somehow have yet to figure out that our esteemed president’s crowning legislative achievement relies directly on you volunteering to pay what in many cases will amount to at least a couple thousand more dollars a year for a health insurance plan that you in all likelihood will not need to use very much… then you really haven’t been paying attention.That’s a couple thousand dollars you should’ve/would’ve/could’ve used as part of a down payment for a house or a car, for payments on your student loans, or just...

Officials in Long Beach, California are warning residents about a potential “bash mob” possibly planned for Friday afternoon. Bash mobs are unruly crowds that group together to race through streets committing petty crimes such as assault and property damage, reports CBS LA. One of these mobs happened in downtown Long Beach on July 9, and investigators discovered another one planned for 2 p.m. today, July 19. “The Long Beach Police Department takes this issue very seriously and will be prepared to arrest anyone whose intent is to commit criminal acts,” Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said. “We will continue...

Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the homicide rate for those 10 to 24 years of age has hit a 30-year low. Let’s credit USA TODAY for running an article on this news while acknowledging that this report was lost in the tireless news coverage of the George Zimmerman trial verdict. One of the cable news networks may have put an expert on air about the positive results of this study, but I doubt it. There’s not much drama in statistics, after all, especially those showing that things are safer.The CDC study echoed...

This Is For Trayvon !! Baltimore police say they are investigating a witness account that a group of black youths beat a Hispanic man near Patterson Park Sunday while saying, "This is for Trayvon."

When the last reports came out showing that youth unemployment had reached 16.2 % in the United States, alarm bells began to be heard in some quarters. This is more than double the rate of unemployment of the adult population. The rate is fast approaching the average youth unemployment rate in Europe which stands at approximately 24%. Can we learn from the European experience? Using data compiled by the economic freedom indices of the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Heritage Foundation, in the United States, we recently looked at how economic freedom, labor regulations, social spending, and regulatory climate,...

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will attempt to get almost every American to obtain health insurance. The system desperately needs healthy young people, millions of whom don’t have health insurance, to sign up because their money is needed to subsidize treatment for older, sicker Americans. But will they? Young people will be asked to buy policies that don’t reflect the low risk they have of getting sick. Obamacare allows health insurers to vary premiums based on age, but they can charge older customers only up to three times as much as healthy young customers, while most insurers have as much as...

The Obama administration has been doing a pretty poor job hiding their desperation when it comes to convincing the young people that they need to subsidize the entire system that they should sign up for insurance through ObamaCare — because without getting them to pay more money into the system than they’ll actually need to use, that whole “affordable” thing is going to fall apart pretty quickly.The White House and ObamaCare’s supporters are mounting a full-scale campaign to tout the law’s supposed benefits and convince Americans to sign up en masse, and according to a new poll from the Kaiser...

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare. Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require...

A repudiation of my “tea partiers aren’t that libertarian” thesis or an illustration of it?We won’t know until there’s a Republican in the White House again.All of the numbers are extraordinary there, but the most eye-popping is the fact that the only other partisan segment that agrees with TPers that Snowden’s FISA/PRISM leak was in the public interest are … liberals. In a separate question, Pew asked people if they would feel “violated” if they knew that the government had collected their data; then they divided the results up by various demographics — sex, race, age, education, partisanship, you name...

Youths surround Pope Francis as he meets with students from Jesuit schools June 7 in Paul VI hall at the Vatican. (CNS/Reuters) By Carol GlatzCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis ditched a 1,250-word prepared speech to students saying it would be "a tad boring" to read out loud and opted instead to just quickly hit the high points and spend the rest of the time answering people's questions. "Would you like that?" he asked as some 9,000 students, alumni and teachers from Jesuit-run schools and associations in Italy and Albania yelled "Yes" with cheers and applause....

Tulsa’s largest United Methodist church is considering dropping its scouting program after the Boy Scouts of America decided to allow homosexual boys to participate. “We’re leaning in that direction. I don’t know exactly what we’ll do,” said the Rev. Tom Harrison, senior pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, 6767 S. Mingo Road. The Boy Scouts’ decision can be troubling for troop-sponsoring churches whose denominations oppose the practice of homosexuality. The United Methodist Church, a major supporter of Boy Scouts, has maintained that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. “We find this to be a very troubling decision,”...

A new postmortem on the November elections from the nation’s leading voice for college Republicans offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters, according to a copy given exclusively to POLITICO on Sunday. The College Republican National Committee on Monday made public a detailed report — the result of extensive polling and focus groups — dissecting what went wrong for Republicans with young voters in the 2012 elections and how the party can improve its showing with that key demographic in the future. It’s not a pretty picture. In...

Tonight! Inaugural Friday Night National Muster of the Young Minutemen of America 9 pm Eastern - 712-432-3566 - 340794# All of good will are welcome!

It was a wreck so devastating that at first investigators thought two cars had been involved. The gray Infiniti G35 hit a tree in the center median at a speed that split the car in half. It landed in separate pieces on the road. The driver, Abdulrahman Alyahyan, did not have a California license, according to DMV spokesman Artemio Armenta. … Alyahyan visited the DMV twice – most recently in February – and both times was rejected for a learner's permit, the spokesman said…. Alyahyan came from Saudi Arabia four years ago, and was not able to prove he was...

In addition to the horrendous beheading of a British soldier in Woolwich by Muslim terrorists, Stockholm's suburbs have seen riots for the last four nights, with car burnings and crowds throwing rocks at the police, reminiscent of the recurring riots in France. Who are these rioters? The story on the Huffington Post has the following descriptions: "Gangs of youth... Around 50 youths...The youths set light to a parking garage... masked youths hurling rocks.... One policeman was attacked by youths." On the Bloomberg article with a link on Drudge, the rioters are described as "stone-throwing youths." The Washington Post: "Some 200...

Tales of newborn babies struggling for life before Dr. Kermit Gosnell allegedly snipped their spinal cords at his Philadelphia clinic haven't dramatically altered public opinion on abortion, a poll released Friday by Gallup finds. Forty-eight percent of respondents told Gallup they were "pro-life" and 45 percent said they were "pro-choice." This indicates a closer divide than in 2012, when a Gallup poll found the "pro-choice" position sinking to an all-time low of 41 percent support. The results indicate shades of gray for people who identify with the "pro-life" or "pro-choice" labels. Twenty-six percent of respondents said all abortions should be...