Free Republic

When second- and third-graders chanted “Assassinate Obama” on a Madison School District bus recently, district spokeswoman Janet Goodliffe explained that most of the children didn’t understand what the words mean. According to The Associated Press, she attributed the chant to the community’s being “highly conservative” and overwhelmingly for John McCain. I admire Janet Goodliffe as a preschool education leader. But as a teacher, she offered tortured excuses instead of capitalizing on a great teaching opportunity. This is not an isolated incident. As a former teacher and Idaho Falls school volunteer, Luella Hendrickson, wrote on this page Thursday, after the election,...

Dot-Commers Working In Suicide ZonePOSTED: 3:37 pm EST January 26, 2007 UPDATED: 3:44 pm EST January 26, 2007 SEATTLE -- A bridge over Seattle is becoming hazardous to the mental health of the dot-com employees and other office workers below, who keep seeing people jump to their deaths from the span. Thirty-nine people over the past decade have committed suicide off the 155-foot-high Aurora Bridge -- eight in 2006 alone -- and counselors are regularly brought in to help office workers deal with the shock of seeing the leap or the bloody aftermath. At least one woman, Sarah Edwards, drives...

Pakistani child imitating Saddam's hanging dies 1 hour, 14 minutes ago MULTAN, Pakistan (AFP) - A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, police said. Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district Sunday, a local police official said. The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution on...