Free Republic

As the United States continues to debate gun control in the wake of the Orlando massacre, The Local speaks with a criminologist about how parenting practices rather than laws have made Germans less violent. […] … (T)he truth behind why Germany sees far less gun violence per capita than the United States goes deeper than the legal structures, argues German criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, who has conducted research on this topic for years. “America is a completely different world,” Pfeiffer told The Local. “The laws are a result of a public that believes in fear. The laws reflect a culture of...

The United Nations wants parents who physically discipline their children with smacks or spankings to be thrown behind bars and have their families torn to shreds by government. Of course, the “Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children,” Marta Santos Pais, did not put it quite that explicitly. But that is an accurate description of the UN bureaucrat's demands, as issued in a series of official statements posted on the UN's website this month. It is also part of the global agenda to destroy parental rights, as envisioned in the UN Convention on the Rights of the...

Chris Hayes has established a new standard. It is henceforth fair game to say on national TV of any parent who has spanked his child that such parent "hits his kids." Hayes employed the inflammatory formulation on his MSNBC show this evening. Hayes played a clip of a child in a Cruz audience telling him "you suck" and Cruz responding "in my household, when a child behaves that way, they get a spanking." Proclaimed Hayes portentously: "I should note it's a matter of public record by Ted Cruz that he hits his kids." Okay then, so Hayes has equated a...

A startling video shows a 5-year-old boy getting paddled by his school principal in front of his mom. Shana Marie Perez, who recorded the footage of her son's punishment, says she's had a long-running dispute with the school principal in Georgia. Her son has had 18 unexcused absences this school year and she was once arrested for his truancy. She says the school threatened to call the police and have her arrested again if she did not give them permission to paddle Thomas. She told IE: "I felt like I had no other option. The principal led me to believe...

Beaumont police say a teacher was arrested Friday after video on Twitter showed her slapping a student on the head. [Snip] Hastings was arrested and charged with assault. She has been released on bail at this time. Ozen High School has placed Hastings on administrative leave, and the school district has released this statement:

'I hereby denounce the effects social media have on my children': Hilarious moment Southern mom SHOOTS her 'disobedient' children's iPhones to smithereens...then pounds them with a sledgehammer to finish the job The mother perches the phone on a tree trunk, and nails it on her first shot It explodes to bits and sends pieces flying into the grass The camera then shows her three children, one of whom flips a double bird Mother gives speech about how she is stopping them from 'contacting people they don't know' and getting into 'drama' and trouble at school Hell hath no fury like...

The growing scandal over cooked ISIS intelligence just got much worse. Now, analysts are saying they’re being forced out for not toeing the Obama administration’s line on the war. Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a...

The teacher posted: “Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt? Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology won’t cut it.” "Phones and iPad devices, used for social media and gaming," wrote Olson. "There have always been rules for ‘devices,’ and defined levels of misconduct. Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t...

I saw a woman leaving the YMCA recently with a baby strapped to her chest. She had a second, slightly larger baby in a stroller. And she had a tantrum-throwing three-year-old holding her hand. She was infested with small children. I couldn't help but stare... The three-year-old was trying to make a scene. I say "trying to make a scene" because he was waging war against his mother, and she was refusing to participate. With a steady gait and an even expression, she ignored him. It was the most spectacular moment in parenting I have ever seen. This woman, who...

Education: As serious crimes in schools soar, teachers unions in New York and other cities are pushing back against new softer student conduct codes inspired by the president's national anti-discipline strategy. New York public schools are dealing with escalating classroom chaos after adopting minority-friendly discipline policies that the Education Department pushed to close so-called "racial disparities" in suspensions and expulsions. Educrats have been threatening school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds disparities. High-school kids are getting "warning cards" for offenses that normally would result in a criminal summons and suspension, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct.

DALLAS (AP) -- The recent arrest of a 14-year-old Muslim boy whose teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb led to widespread ridicule of school officials and accusations that Islamophobia may have played a part. It earned Ahmed Mohamed an invitation to the White House, where the Irving teen will attend astronomy night Monday. But it also got him a three-day suspension, which he says the district insisted he serve even after it was clear it was just a clock.

THIS just in

Discipline starts with the individual When transferable identity reaches the level of media coverage where it eclipses vital issues of government gone awry, it’s time to pull on the galoshes. There’s a sea of manure to slog through and one misguided person after another is being sucked into the mire only to find that it gets deeper and more noisome the further he ventures. (Yes, here will be invoked the proper grammatical use of the male gender term to indicate all persons. Political correctness be hanged.) Behind the problem of individuals believing their identity is other than what they see...

SAN FRANCISCO – Last week we were stunned to learn that chaos has been the norm in the St. Paul, Minnesota school district, due to a student disciplinary policy that replaces suspensions with time-outs, counseling and other less punitive measures. We also learned that the controversial policy was influenced by the Pacific Educational Group (PEG), a radical San Francisco-based consulting firm that claims black students lag behind academically, and tend to have more disciplinary problems, because American K-12 education is designed to benefit white students – aka “white privilege.” Now it’s becoming obvious that several other large school districts around...

The teenage boy publicly shamed when his mom smacked him around at the Baltimore riots this week said he knows she "really cares about me." A video shows Michael Singleton being dragged from the protests and whacked by his mother, Toya Graham, after she saw him on television and recognized a key piece of clothing. "What caught my eye was his sweatpants," she told ABC News. "Even though he had on all black, I knew those sweatpants he had on, they had a stripe on the side of it and then his eye contact met mine. And I knew that...

Teaching children responsibility is a primary task for parents. The question of whether or not an allowance should be paid for completing chores requires parents to consider training in two areas simultaneously: responsibility for work and responsibility for money. I don't think that there's necessarily one right answer to the question of whether completion of chores should be tied to monetary reward or not, but I can tell you how we handled the issue and why. We decided not to tie allowance to chores. We set clear expectations for what the kids were responsible for (unloading the dishwasher, doing their...

New York public-school students caught stealing, doing drugs or even attacking someone can avoid suspension under new “progressive” discipline rules adopted this month. Most likely, they will be sent to a talking circle instead, where they can discuss their feelings. Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City’s Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called “restorative justice,” which isn’t really punishment at all. It’s therapy. “Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through…restorative...

Pope Francis believes it is fine for parents to smack their children as punishment for bad behaviour. He made the remarks, which were condemned by campaigners for child protection, in front of thousands of people at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square during a homily about the responsibilities of fatherhood. The Pope recalled a conversation he had had with a father, who told him that on occasion he hits his children if they have been naughty. The Pope, smiling and miming the action of slapping a child on the bottom, said: “One time, I heard a father say,...

Pondering Punishment as an Act of Love By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn the first reading from today’s Mass (Wednesday of the fourth week of the year) came this admonition:My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.In our times, we have tended to set love and punishment in opposition; we also set mercy and punishment in opposition. But this is wrong. It is possible, at least with human beings, that a certain punishment can be excessive. But of itself, punishment...

“You can’t spank me, that’s abuse!” was the response of a Florida man’s 12-year-old daughter shortly after he grabbed the paddle (I’m taking some creative license with her quote, but I don’t think I’m far off). So this dad did what was, apparently, a relatively common thing in Florida: he called the police to come supervise the paddling, which ultimately passed their inspection. The incident that occurred on December, 29, 2014, has received an unusual amount of media attention. Perhaps it’s the unwelcome notion of government intervention in parental affairs, or the outrage that so many kids think consequences don’t...