Free Republic

Congratulations to you and your Marine!

My oldest leaves June 26 for recruit training...maybe your grandson can pass along some advice for a nervous new recruit?

The state of Ohio "grades" all of our schools, and those in my city have been labeled in "Academic Emergency" for several years now. My brother-in-law is a teacher in one of these schools, and a real clue was given last year as to part of the problem. He received an e-mail from the superintendent that had the title "We are in ACADEMIC EMERGANCY!!!"

"With high school kids its all about the fashion.It transcends sexual oreintation.
When I heard the names of a couple of girls I heard who went the lesbian route,I was rather shocked.I thought they were the hottest items among the boys at the school!"

They probably were...even men who are adamantly opposed to male/male homosexuality seem to find the female/female version much more palatable! I know high school girls who pretend lesbianism just to get the attention from the boys.

While I am a firm believer in capital punishment, I also know that the families of inmates are victims themselves...not of the state, but of their law-breaking relative. I work with the children of inmates, some as young as four and others as old as seventeen. Most live in poverty...daddy is in prison, not at work. As if the emotional roller coaster of being a teenager is not enough, they have the additional burden of shame, guilt, and embarassment. Many are ostracized at school due to the stigma of having an incarcerated parent. These children suffer daily, and I would never dream of telling them to suck it up and get over it. Regardless of one's feelings on crime and punishment, it needs to be recognized that there are other victims of a criminal's actions aside from the obvious. That their victimization stems from their relation to the inmate does not make it any less real or any less painful.

"A friend of mine was a former Indiana prison guard. He once told me that child killers were treated like dog-meat in prison. Guess he was right. No pity for this piece of garbage."

This is also true of child molestors and, often times, those who prey on the elderly.

It's been quite a while since I've posted on FR...lurking mostly...but I wanted to thank you for posting these pics. I was lucky enough to be there today when the President spoke at the tank plant, and I guess I'm still on a sort of "high" from the experience! He was wonderful, my children were thrilled, and as you could probably tell, he is quite popular in Lima, Ohio! And it did not go unnoticed by the crowd that neither Taft or Voinovich were referenced by the President.