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CHICAGO, Illinois, March 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a link between vasectomy surgery and a form of dementia that usually strikes men in their 40’s and 50’s. Known as Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), the disease targets the language center of the brain, causing victims to have difficulty remembering and understanding words. People afflicted with PPA lose the ability to talk and understand speech, and gradually deteriorate in other areas of function until they are fully incapacitated. Lead researcher Dr. Sandra Weintraub, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and or neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of...

Michael Gerson helped create “compassionate” conservatism. Now he’s attacking the small-government ideal—and inadvertently highlighting America’s need to learn from Europe. In what may be the most aggressive attack on small-government conservatism in years, highly influential former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson writes: “What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.” Gerson’s arguments, though flawed to the core, present a...

Methamphetamine and marijuana aren't the only drugs parents worry about. The problems caused by prescription combinations called "drug cocktails" have finally broken into the national news stream. A recent Page 1 of the New York Times described Stephen, age 15, who takes antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel, plus anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods, plus the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. His brother Jacob, age 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, plus the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, plus the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger, plus Catapres to induce sleep. Over the last three years, each boy has been...

Some parents cried, some screamed, and one man had to be wrestled out of the room by security guards. It sounds like a school hostage crisis, but that's actually a description of a Seattle School Board meeting last month. The Board was considering whether or not to close nine city schools, and the parents and students who would have been affected weren't especially keen on the idea. In the end, the closure plan was suspended, but it is almost certain to resurface given the district's ongoing budget woes. When it does, the tensions will resurface along with it. These sorts...

<p>In today’s America, ask a growing number of high school and college students; their teachers and professors; the self-anointed media elite and/or hard working men and women of all ethnicities, the question, “What is a Republican?”, and you’ll be told “… a rich, greedy, egotistical individual, motivated only by money and the desire to accumulate more and more of it, at the expense of the environment … the working poor ….and all whom they exploit…”</p>

Will the saga of the world's most famous fellatrice return to haunt Hillary in 2008? There's this fascinating whisper making the Washington rounds that says yes. While convoluted and circumstantial, a number of plugged-in Washingtonians believe it. The story starts with Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was President of Russia from its emergence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to 1999. In October of 2000, part three of his autobiography was published, Midnight Diaries .. In it, there was an astounding revelation: That in "late 1996," after Bill Clinton's re-election in November, he (Yeltsin) received a highly classified report...

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in a hotel lobby sipping a Coke and visiting with my friend Michael Reagan who had just given a speech before several hundred people. Mike, as you may know, is a best-selling author, radio talk-show host, Fox News contributor, and eldest son of President Ronald Reagan. A few minutes into our conversation, Mike remembered something he wanted to tell me. “Brannon,” he said, cocking his head in my direction, “I thought of you this morning when I read the newspaper.” I wondered if he were about to crack a joke at my expense but...

John Taylor Gatto Speech to the Vermont Homeschooling Conference (Note: John Gatto is the former New York State Teacher of the Year who renounced the government school system in his landmark book DUMBING US DOWN. He is constantly in demand as a public speaker. As a bit of background, the industrial titans of the 1890's began to think that not only could the production line be engineered, but people's lives could be engineered as well, in order to work like homogeneous robots with the machines. People like Rockefeller and Carnegie gave huge sums to prominent academics to see if this...

PHILADELPHIA -- After the NBC 10 Investigators first exposed violence in Philadelphia elementary schools last Thursday, teachers asked them to keep digging. So, the NBC 10 Investigators took their hidden cameras to another school that teachers describe as a battle zone. Last week the NBC 10 Investigators' LuAnn Cahn was told by a spokeswoman for the CEO of the Philadelphia School District, Paul Vallas, that he would not be part of a "cheap media interview," that Cahn would have to name names. That's exactly what Cahn is doing. She is naming the elementary schools where teachers said they fear their...

This is the story of a piece of paper no bigger than a credit card, thrown away in a dustbin on the Heathrow Express to Paddington station. It was nestling among chewing gum wrappers and baggage tags, cast off by some weary traveller, when I first laid eyes on it just over a month ago.snipthe paper - actually a flimsy piece of card - was a discarded British Airways boarding-pass stub, the small section of the pass displaying your name and seat number. The stub you probably throw away as soon as you leave your flight.snipIf the expert was right,...

Each time the college instructor opens a new edition of an anthology of world literature or American literature, she discovers more pages from those like Milton and Dante cut. To take their place are such “texts” as Native American rain dances and scalp dances. To teach such material from the now fashionable “oral tradition” presents a challenge to the professor, though. For as the instructor manuals state, such chants are performance-dependent. She faces the task of doing justice to a chant that celebrates ripping the scalp off an enemy. Now, indeed, the enemy, Even one who thought himself a man,...

As a preface, the Iranian Oil Exchange will not set up shop in March 2006. The exchange for Central Asian energy product sale, will not go into operation, will not come to pass, at least not anytime soon, and certainly not this month. My reliable sources traceable to London tell me that Iranian mullahs and clergy entrenched in high office have decided they do not wish to relinquish their corrupt siphon from vast energy sales into their personal accounts. Some old leaders have stolen and wish to continue to steal from their people, from their national energy deposit treasure. The...

Remember in the classic, biblical epic films of the 1950s, how Sodom and Gomorrah were portrayed? Drunken men with multiple piercings and bright red robes, with one loose woman under each arm, cavorting in orgiastic revelry against a background of annoying, mosquito-like music? Maybe a bone through the nose as well? Hollywood took pains to depict these lost souls in the most debauched and irredeemable manner – to justify their subsequent destruction with fire and brimstone as punishment for their great sinfulness. Guess what? Those Hollywood depictions don't even begin to capture the shocking reality of what is going on...

With public schools spending more than $100,000 per student on K-12 education, you'd think they could teach students how to read and write. South Carolina is one of many states to have trouble with this. It spends $9,000 per student per year, and its state school superintendent told me South Carolina has been "ranked as having some of the highest standards of learning in the entire country." So let's ask the infamous question, "Is our children learning?" Dorian Cain told me he wants to learn to read. He's 18 years old and in 12th grade, but when I asked him...

An 11-year-old girl who threw a stone at a group of boys pelting her with water balloons is being prosecuted on serious assault charges in California. Maribel Cuevas was arrested in April in a police operation which involved three police cars and a helicopter. She has since spent five days in detention, in which she was granted one 30 minute visit by her parents, and has spent a month under house arrest. Her lawyer accuses the authorities of criminalising childhood behaviour. "They're treating her like a violent parole offender," Richard Beshwate said. "It's not a felony, it's an 11-year-old acting...

American public schools can be described in only one way: an unmitigated failure. The government has created an educational system free of the checks and balances that normally guide success and encourage innovation in the marketplace, namely, profit and loss in a setting of open competition. Instead, government schools shelter teachers through life-long tenure, virtually eliminating all accountability about what and how subjects are taught in the classroom. Furthermore, there are few incentives for cost-efficiency because this could result in budget reductions. Instead, whenever there seems to be a “learning problem,” the cry is for more of the taxpayers’ money....

A professional golf association in America has adopted guidelines that open the door for athletes who were once the opposite sex to compete for championships. The United States Golf Association announced a new policy March 21 under which "transgender athletes will be eligible to compete two years after having gender reassignment surgery." This policy was established along with "proof of gender guidelines" that a medical committee appointed by the Association will ultimately oversee. AgapePress confirmed the USGA policy change this week. According to the USGA, both the International Olympic Committee and the Ladies Golf Union (in England) have also adopted...

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2001 57 percent of high school seniors had a “below basic” reading proficiency level. Those who have analyzed the data put out by the Department of Education suggest that as many as 100 million adults in America do not possess the literary abilities “to function effectively in society.” In 1988 and 2000, U.S. companies surveyed by the American Management Association said that 32 percent of job applicants lacked the reading skills required for the jobs for which they applied. All applicants interviewed nationally for a position by Motorola failed tests on seventh-grade...

"Senator Says F.D.A. Asked Canada Not to Suspend ADHD Drug Spotlight on Adderall" " The controversy . . . promises to engulf the F.D.A. in more questions about its oversight of the pharmaceutical industry. " [By Gardiner Harris And Benedict Carey, NY times.] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11drug.html?pagewanted=print&posi tion= A day after Canadian officials suspended the use of a hyperactivity drug amid reports of deaths associated with its use, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa contended that United States health officials had asked the Canadian regulators not to do so. Senator Grassley, a Republican, said on Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration had...

K-12 Establishment is Putting America’s Industrial Leadership at Risk Robert J. Herbold President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Robert J. Herbold, a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, is managing director of Herbold Group, LLC, and a retired executive vice president and chief operating officer of Microsoft Corporation. He holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Cincinnati and a master’s degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent 26 years at Procter & Gamble, for the last five...