Free Republic

Trayvon Martin did not deserve to die. Everyone has heard the story of the 17-year-old black kid who was walking home from a Florida gas station, when he was shot dead by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman. Zimmerman wasn’t arrested until recently, since he was protected by Florida’s "Stand Your Ground" law, which states that it’s all right to kill someone if they confront you. George Zimmerman claims that Martin attacked him. I’m a white kid, so some may argue that the gravity of the situation is somewhat lost on me, but it’s not. I’m a firm believer in the fact...

The fifth-graders at Paul Burbank Elementary School in Hampton are required to work on an exhibition project as part of the International Baccalaureate program. The subject of the inquiry must be a real-life issue or problem that is local or global and is of sufficient scope and significance to warrant an extended investigation. Burbank's fifth-graders came to realize that global warming remains the most complex environmental problem of our time and threatens dangerous consequences if not addressed. They chose global warming as their exit project for this year since they felt the issue merited serious attention. The students wanted to...

E-mail notification today from FactCheck.org announcing their new web presence, FactCheckED.org, purporting to help "high school students learn to think analytically"... To our subscribers: This e-mail feels a bit like a birth announcement. Last Thursday night, we flipped the switch to start up a brand new website, a sibling to FactCheck.org. This one, though, is focused on helping high school students learn to think analytically. The new site, www.FactCheckED.org, recognizes that kids are growing up in a world of ceaseless and instantaneous communication. Accurate and unbiased information can be an elusive commodity in this constant stream of messages – many...

Back in September of last year, Thomas Klocek did what you'd think is perfectly OK for a professor to do — mandatory, even, for one who is intellectually honest and believes it his mission to challenge students to think clearly and know what they are talking about. It may have wrecked his life, however, when he stopped at a table at a student-activities fair to debate for maybe 20 minutes with students maintaining that Israel was murderous in its treatment of Palestinians. He argued back. Israel, he said, tries to avoid civilian casualties in warring against terrorists, but Palestinian suicide-bombers...

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