[VIDADDICT]

Call to action. Senate to vote on funding for this hair brained sceme this week. See other links below as well. http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/alert/?alertid=6664601&type=CO

http://www.drlaura.com/action/index.html?mode=view&tile=1&id=8317

This is the first time I've posted a new thread, I hope I din't screw something up.. Thanks Freepers

[c-b 1]

Looks good to me, thanks for the info.

[kingu]

Gee, my senators will be voting against this, or so the office hacks claimed. Then again, I live in California, which means I've got big D's... The local schools have already tried these programs; they don't work for most schools. Might work in the inner cities, until some court decides it's racist. More fodder to push up the national debt.

Mr. President: JUST SAY NO!

[DoughtyOne]

You know, I'm about to the place where I think our elected offials are the ones who need to be screened. If they show any inclination to support bills like this, medicate the f'n hell out of them. Do it for four years if that's what it takes. Good Lord, the lunatics are running the asylum.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Dr. Laura's been talking about (AGAINST!) this for a couple of days now.

Thanks for the thread!

[ETERNAL WARMING]

"It doesn't have the Orwellian goal of drugging the populace for a political purpose; it's the Orwellian goal of drugging the populace for an economic purpose." --

Yes..more of Bush's payoffs to the Drug Cartel in American politics curtesy of taxpayer pockets, just like that supposed "benefit" to Senior citizens that costs them more than the expensive drugs they were paying for.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

I just emailed my senator. I can't believe they thought this was a good idea ... amongst other issues, the kid gets a label of "mentally unfit" which will follow him/her for the rest of his/her life -- making it hard to get insurance, get into some lines of work, etc. Good grief. Just a stupid idea all around.

[HiTech RedNeck]

"New FREEDOM Initiative"? Someone please tell me this was from the Onion.

[freepatriot32]

one more for your homeschool list

[montag813]

the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health

This Ministry of Health.

[Condor51]

This nonsense is getting tiresome. In the last regular session of the IL General Assembly there was a similar bill proposed. When I found out about it I started writing, phoning and faxing like crazy. The Bill was subsequently defeated, and naturally there was more to it than met the eye. The Bill was originally written and sponsored by my Sate Rep and when I talked to her she was 100% embarrassed and as she explained 'her bill' was hijacked by 'do-gooders' and turned it into an abomination.

• Her intent was to weed out "troubled children" from the public school system who had "obvious mental problems" and presented a potential for possible danger. (like Columbine)
  
• The Teacher would ID these kids and send a note home to the parent/guardian suggesting the child needed help.
  
• It was then up to the patent/guardian to have the kid 'tested' - and if need be, medicated.

  BUT - The 'do-gooders' took over from there and rewrote her bill..

  
  
  1. ALL children and PARENTS would be tested for mental 'illness'. ALL mothers would be tested shortly after giving birth.
     
  2. Teachers would have the power to order ANY child medicated, not withstanding any previous 'test'. Right then and there the school nurse would medicate the child.
     
  3. If parent/guardian refused or was deemed uncooperative, the IL DCFS could take custody of the child and force medication.
     
  4. If the parent 'failed' the mental test, THEY could be forced to take medication too.
     
  5. Naturally a mentally "ill" parent/guardian could not have custody of children so again the IL DCFS could/would take custody of the children.

Well upon seeing 'her final bill' my State Rep NOW worked like crazy to DEFEAT the Bill she wrote, which she did.

And when I talked to her, I asked if she didn't foresee the potential for danger and abuse of having 'the state' being able to classify almost anyone 'mentally ill'. And that by being classified 'mentally ill' didn't she understand that said mom and or child could then never legally own a firearm as one is never 'cured' of a mental illness. Not to mention that 'the state' could also then order removal of ALL firearms from the household, even if the father/husband wasn't 'mentally ill'.

She said, "Oh, I never thought of that. But you're right, that would affect these peoples 2nd Amendment rights."

So this is more than a mental health issue, this is a Gun Rights issue. It's an attempted end run around the 2nd Amendment - period. Mentally 'ill' people cannot legally own guns (Not in IL anyway). So if 'they' can't outlaw guns, they'll just 'outlaw' the people!

[truthkeeper]

Scary stuff. Dr. Laura's on a mission with this one, she's been on it all week. BTTT

[RockinRight]

What is this crap? Do we have a tally of what Senators support this and which ones don't?

[Cinnamon Girl]

This is the first I've heard of this. What is this about? A group of nuts will screen public school children to see it they need to be medicated and then, if the parents don't comply, what happens? My personal experience with meeting some boys who have been medicated (because they are BOYS) is that they are virtually lobotomized. It's horrible.

[momf]

Thanks for posting this. I just heard on our small local radio station the vote in the House is today. We little towns tend to call and tell our Representatives what we think. Local talk regarding what this Bill could/would lead to is scary. Why do Legislators fell they Have to go create legislation? Any legislation. It doesn't matter what legislation. This entire country is drowning in legislation.

[Ancesthntr]

Hey gunnies, take a look at Post #28. We need to get on the stick (or, more accurately, the telephone) about this one. There's no better way to take away someone's guns than to have them adjudicated as mentally incompetent or labeled as "dangerous to society."

Aside from the fact that this is a backdoor means of instituting gun control/confiscation, taking this bill down is critical if we are ever going to preserve our parental rights. Insidiously, this bill also sets the stage for the mental testing (and potential drugging) of every single person in the nation.

[DBrow]

Geez, this is such a GREAT idea! Why not test and medicate everyone? Or just dump it in the water?

[TKDietz]

This is wrong on a couple of counts. It is a bad idea for government to do this sort of thing, but moreover it's especially bad that the federal government is doing this sort of thing.

It is not a bad idea though for government to try to do something about addiction and mental health problems. I represent juveniles and adults on criminal charges. Alcohol and drugs and mental health problems are behind a lot of the crime we see in this country. Our response for too long has been to just lock people up and ignore the underlying problems. That approach doesn't really work and what it has done is give us the highest incarceration rate in the world, costing us billions and billions and billions every year, yet our crime rate is still high compared to other industrialized nations who in most cases have far lower per capita incarceration rates.

I deal with a lot of crazy people who end up being frequent flyers through the criminal justice system. A lot are just crazy or just drug addicts, but there is a significant overlap between the two problems. So often, there isn't anything built into our system to effectively deal with the underlying problems that cause these people to be back over and over again. For instance, there is no way us to get these people to mental health specialists and get them on medication that in many cases could keep people leading fairly law abiding lives. We'll get these nut-jobs in and the prosecutor and judge and I will sit back in chambers talking about the case pulling our hair out trying to figure out what to do with them. We can get them evaluated to see if they were too insane to be guilty of a crime or to assist in their own defense, but that doesn't get them any help for the long run. We can do mental incompetency hearings and get these people sent off for up to 45 days for evaluation, but most are let go in 3 or 4 days and there is no follow up care. In many cases the court just ends up letting them go, because jail isn't appropriate for them and for that matter the jail is always full. But these people will be back, over and over again, and someday someone may very well get hurt or killed during one of their psychotic episodes.

We don't need to go testing and drugging every kid. What we need to do is do a better job and taking care of these underlying issues when juveniles and adults get in trouble with the law. I'm not asking for some sort of liberal love fest with criminals, I'm saying that if we could get better at taking care of underlying drug and mental health issues we could cut down on crime and save a whole lot of money we now spend locking up more people than any other country in the world. Think about it, we lock up something like 715 per 100,000 people compared under a 100 per 100,000 in the European Union and less than 200 per 100,000 in almost every other industrialized country in the world. We have something like 2.1 million locked up right now. If we cut that in half we'd still have a higher incarceration rate than most industrialized nations but we could save billions on building new prisons and warehousing prisoners and the states could use some of that money they save to pay for programs that might, unlike prison, actually keep a lot of these people from re-offending. Ninety-five percent of these people are released in a few months or a few years and 70% of those released from prison are rearrested on new felony charges within three years. Our system is broken.

[firebrand]

Paging R. D. Laing . . .

[WhiteGuy]

The most disturbing aspect of this initiative is that president bush supports it.

Truly frightening.

[malia]

Sounds like Seattle's McDermott wrote this one.