Interview: Best of Eagle Forum Live with Phyllis Schlafly

Happy New Year! We'll celebrate by revisiting some of our favorite shows from 2011.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 12-31-11



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Boys and girls play differently

A NY Times op-ed by Peggy Orenstein asks Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?

Among the “10 characteristics for Lego” described in 1963 by a son of the founder was that it was “for girls and for boys,” as Bloomberg Businessweek reported. But the new Friends collection, Lego says, was based on months of anthropological research revealing that — gasp! — the sexes play differently.

While as toddlers they interact similarly with the company’s Duplo blocks, by preschool girls prefer playthings that are pretty, exude “harmony” and allow them to tell a story. They may enjoy building, but they favor role play. So it’s bye-bye Bionicles, hello princesses. In order to be gender-fair, today’s executives insist, they have to be gender-specific.

As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, one of the largest across the life span. It transcends not only culture but species: in two separate studies of primates, in 2002 and 2008, researchers found that males gravitated toward stereotypically masculine toys (like cars and balls) while females went ape for dolls. Both sexes, incidentally, appreciated stuffed animals and books.

Orenstein doesn't seem very happy about boys and girls playing differently, but she cannot figure out what to do about it.

Get Ready for Armageddon

If you are hungry for some good news, you won't get it in Mark Steyn's new book called After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. But if you are prepared to hear the truth about America’s decline, Mark Steyn delivers it with style and wit, and even a few chuckles.

Fourth marriage lasts 16 days

Pop singer Sinéad O'Connor was a rising star until she tore up a picture of the Pope on live TV. Her life story shows the sorry state of marriage among pop stars today. The UK Daily Mail newspaper reports:

Sinéad O'Connor has announced the end of her fourth marriage, which lasted just 16 days. ...

O'Connor has been married three times before and has four children from various relationships.

Her first marriage in 1987 to musician John Reynolds, who co-produced several of her albums, including Universal Mother, produced a son, Jake but ended in 1991 when Jake, now 23, was just a few years old. She and John remain good friends, however, and he continues to work as her producer and drummer.

Another short-lived marriage, to journalist Nick Sommerlad, followed, which lasted from July 2001 to February 2004.

Sinead's 15-year-old daughter Roisine is from her relationship with newspaper columnist John Waters, while her son Shane, seven, was the product of her romance with another musician, Donal Lunny.

O'Connor also had a lengthy on/off relationship with Dermott Hayes and another that lasted about a year from 2006 and 2007 with Frank Bonadio, who is the father of her son Yeshua, four.

Most recently she married long-time friend and fellow musician Steve Cooney in July 2010, but the marriage lasted less than a year.

In 2000, she was interviewed by US lesbian magazine Curve and outed herself as gay, saying: 'I'm a dyke ... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a big lesbian mule.'

But soon after she spoke to the Independent newspaper and said it was not a publicity stunt and she doesn't consider herself to be in 'a box of any description'.

In 2003, she stated in an interview with Irish channel RTÉ that most of her sexual relationships had been with men but she has had three relationships with women.

And in 2005, in Entertainment Weekly, she said: 'I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes.'

Do Fish Have More Rights Than People?

Is an obscure fish more important than California farmers who need water? The Ninth Circuit sided with the “delta smelt,” a fish lacking in any commercial value which typically grows to only 2 to 3 inches in length. Water is scarce in parts of California, but water distribution has been limited out of concern for this tiny creature.

Cape Cod Wind Farms Blown Away

"Wind farms” consist of many large wind turbines, or windmills, which try to generate electricity. They are an eyesore and stand motionless on a calm day. They are not as efficient as other energy sources, and are often noisy. But the “green energy” crowd pushes wind power at taxpayer expense, and a massive offshore wind farm is planned near Cape Cod in New England. The wind turbines in this project – which would be our nation’s first offshore wind farm – have a planned height of 440 feet apiece. There would be 130 of them, filling an area as large as Manhattan.

How Evil Works: Destructive Forces

Today’s sensational news stories describe an America that is more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. We find people trying to surgically change into the opposite sex, celebrities treating mental-emotional-spiritual problems with powerful psychotropic drugs. In a new book with the awesome title How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, author David Kupelian answers the question, “How did we get into this cultural mess?”

Interview: Bill Federer — Yes Virginia, There Really is a Santa Claus

Ever wonder how to answer your children's questions about Santa? A historian will explain the origins of St. Nick and the meaning of many other Christmas customs.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 12-24-11

Listen every Saturday (11-Noon CST): Bott Radio Network

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The Thomas Sowell Reader

One of our most favorite writers has just published a new book which is a great collection of articles, book excerpts and biographical sketches written by Thomas Sowell over many years. Dr. Sowell taught economics at Cornell and UCLA. His textbook called Basic Economics is widely used and has been translated into six languages. He is currently a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Feminists who hate Christmas songs

A feminist has a video rant about the Top 5 Creepy and Sexist Christmas Songs. She says:

It’s that time of year again when regardless of whether you celebrate, enjoy, participate or even care about Christmas you’re constantly inundated with painfully cheery, sappy and repetitive Holiday music, everything from the Bing Crosby classics to the latest pop star’s rendition of jingle bells.

Every store you go into, every mall you enter, and all over our television screens and radios these songs are stuck on repeat for a solid month, if not more! Those of us who happen to live in the West, probably know all the words by heart and find ourselves unintentionally singing along. But have you ever really paid attention to what’s going on in these lyrics? ...

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go, take a look in the five and ten”

This Christmas favourite was popularized by Perry Como and Bing Crosby back in 1951. And while they sing about candy canes and silver lanes, they also celebrate and reinforce harmful gendered stereotypes in children’s toys. ... Really? Baby Dolls for little girls and guns for little boys? Continuing to segregate and advertise toys based on gender just works to perpetuate those nasty gendered stereotypes, plus it severely limits the development of all young people.

I don't think that this video is a joke, but it is hard to believe that these Christmas songs really bother her so much.

Distrust of the CPS system

I criticized using the Penn State scandal to justify new laws mandating the reporting of suspicions here and here. These comments were initially controversial, as some bloggers asked "who could be against reporting child abuse".

Now that some of the hysteria has cooled off, others are also against this new federal plan to imprison ordinary citizens for failing to report their suspicions about their neighbors to the police or to govt social workers. Even NPR radio, which is usually in favor of expanding govt social program, quoted experts who acknowledged that the law is unlikely to be effective:

Doctors And Child Protection Officials Question Proposals

But the proposals in Congress and across the country are being met with skepticism.

Joette Katz, commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Children and Families, worries that the proposed legislation will only make it harder for her department to fight abuse.

"Whether someone's a mandated reporter or not, you walk in and you see somebody sexually molesting a 10-year-old, you don't need a statute to tell you that that's a crime," says Katz. "You don't need a statute to tell you that you should be reporting it to the police."

Katz says about 30 percent of the calls to the agency's hotline already come from people who aren't mandated reporters. She worries that if everyone feels legally bound to report their suspicions, her case workers would get inundated with junk reports. Also, an investigation can be traumatic for children and their families.

Robert Block, a pediatrician and president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, says it would be almost impossible to train every adult how to spot real child abuse cases. Block says doctors underreport sometimes because they don't know what to do.

"Even among physicians and pediatricians as child specialists, there's a lack of understanding how the report should be made and how it circulates," he says.

In other cases, he says, physicians "don't want to report to law enforcement because of the consequences to the family" and because of their "distrust of the system, which is sometimes well-placed, because the system is overwhelmed."

There's already a record of making every adult a mandated reporter.

"There are some states that already have universal mandatory reporting — 18 states," says Teresa Huizar, executive director of the National Children's Alliance, a group that trains and certifies child advocacy centers that help victims of abuse. "That experience, however, has been somewhat mixed."

Huizar says that in those 18 states, the results are all over the place. In some states, the number of reports increased. And so did the number of unfounded claims of abuse. But in other states, those numbers came down.

And that, she says, makes it hard to figure out how to make effective national policy.

Distrust of the system is not just based on it being overwhelmed. It is based on widespread stories of incompetence, greed, and evil, as you can read everyday on the blog Legally Kidnapped. Many of these pediatricians have made reports, as mandated, and then seen first-hand the harm that the reports cause.

And it is not just distrust of the system. There is distrust of the busybodies who report their suspicions.

As Katz said, "Whether someone's a mandated reporter or not, you walk in and you see somebody sexually molesting a 10-year-old, you don't need a statute to tell you that that's a crime." The whole Penn State scandal is based on the story that Mike McQueary did exactly that in 2002, but was confused about whether he should report it. He walked away, and the child has not been found. Nine years later, he has a different story, now that he has been offered immunity for his testimony against the football program.

Civil libertarians have spent ten years complaining about how the USA PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to access the public library records of suspected terrorists. Now a new proposed federal law turns every American into a spy on his neighbors, so that police investigators can search private homes and tell parents how to rear their kids.

My Favorite Christmas Story

By popular request, I'm going to tell you my favorite Christmas story that I first told five years ago on these broadcasts. I have a good friend who has enjoyed a tremendously successful career in television and radio. I going to tell you a true story about one of these media personalities that he personally told to me. Let's call him Peter.

Sperm donor must cease and desist

The Seattle newspaper reports:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Physicians and the federal government cited the case of a San Francisco Bay area man who has fathered 14 children as an example of the risks posed by the informal market for sperm donations, which doctors consider unsafe but some people call a civil liberties issue.

Trent Arsenault, 36, of Fremont offers his sperm for free to women he meets through his website. In addition to the 14 already born, he says four more are on the way. In the meantime, he is contesting a U.S. Food and Drug Administration order to cease and desist. ...

The FDA sent Arsenault the letter late last year telling him he must stop because he does not follow the agency's requirements for getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases within seven days before giving sperm.

Their only objection is that he get more STD tests?! His 14 kids only matches the 14 test-tube babies of the Octomom, and no one told her to stop. (The fertility physician did eventually lose his medical license.)

While yuppies are postponing childbirth so that they can get bigger mortgages, our population growth is coming from welfare queens and anchor babies. The fertility clinics used to be for 40-year-old yuppie couples looking for a first child, but now they cater to single women and lesbians:

More and more women are finding themselves either unable or uninterested in finding a partner with whom to raise a child. Single mothers by choice obtain a child by adoption or by donor sperm insemination. At Genesis we help women conceive with donor sperm insemination. Most women chose anonymous donor sperm purchased from a sperm bank. If you wish to use a known sperm donor we can also help, however the sperm must be quarantined for 6 months at a Health Canada sperm clinic in Toronto. Speak with your Genesis physician to guide you through this process.

The clinics are not even allowed to discriminate based on marital status anymore. One single-mom-to-be writes:

However, I thought it over, and made the decision to half and half: freeze some eggs, and freeze some embryos. This meant that I would need to choose a donor. While I have a good number of male friends, I didn’t want any of them to be the donor, for various reasons. My doctor recommended a great clinic they often work with, and I went through the process of looking for a donor pretty quickly (all the donor information was online). This was a very interesting process: at times, I would think it was great – I could choose a donor of a certain height, weight, eye color, and, most importantly, I could see their family’s medical history. Dad had a history of alcoholism? No thanks! On to the next. Then, of course, at other times I felt sad, lonely, depressed, desperate, and worried that I was destined to be an old pathetic spinster who couldn’t find a man to love her.

What is lost in all of this is the recognition that the child needs a father as well as a mother. Our govt policies should stop giving incentives for single mothers, and instead give each child a right to a real relationship with his father.

The UK is one of the more anti-father countries in the world, but it is starting to understand the mess that it has created. Now it wants to
put dads on the birth certificates:

Fathers could be forced to sign their child’s birth certificate under legislation currently being considered by the Government. ...

It is thought by signing the birth certificate new fathers will feel an increased responsibility to their child. ...

At the moment only a mothers name has to be registered and if no man signs the certificate the father will be described as unknown.

It is estimated that 50,000 babies are born without the father’s name being placed on the certificate.

In 2005, the UK abolished anonymous sperm donation because a child has a right to know who his father is.

How to Raise an American Patriot

American schoolchildren used to learn history and patriotism in public school. Now they are more likely to be taught that America conquers and steals from other nations and victimizes and oppresses our own people. Author Marijo Tinlin has written a book that gives parents an antidote to make it "okay for our kids to be proud to be an American." The book is called How to Raise an American Patriot.

Court hears alienation of affection suit

A Rapid City newspaper reports:

The South Dakota Supreme Court has agreed to hear a man's claim that the Pennington County state's attorney's actions violated a rarely invoked law leading to the breakup of his marriage.

The case is one of two the court has selected for oral arguments on a calendar of 23 cases. It is scheduled to be heard on Jan. 10.

Douglas Rumpca's lawsuit in May claimed that Pennington County State's Attorney Glenn Brenner's conduct was "willful, wanton or malicious" when he began a relationship with Rumpca's now ex-wife, Kellie.

Rumpca, who works for Lamar Advertising in Rapid City, cited a state law that allows a spouse to sue a third party for "alienation of affection." South Dakota is one of seven states that has such a law on its books.

A marriage was once considered a valuable thing, that was not to be destroyed lightly. Nowadays, hardly anyone thinks that there is anything wrong with a man stealing another man's wife.

A modern marriage is just a couple that has decided to live together and share some financial matters. That is the way the law views it, anyway. A marriage is as ephemeral as the moods of the parties, and means nothing more than their continuing desire to stay together. It is not a long-term commitment, and therefore the law does not recognize any harm in breaking that commitment. The trial judge ruled against the possibility of alienation of affection:

Kellie Rumpca filed for divorce in October 2009, and it was finalized in 2010, ending a 19-year marriage. In dismissing the case in May, the judge ruled Rumpca's marriage was over long before Kellie Rumpca became involved with Brenner.

"I am convinced that there is no genuine issue of fact but that Kellie did not have any affections for plaintiff (Douglas Rumpca) that were capable of being alienated," Miller said in a memo.

Rumpca also failed to demonstrate that the divorce created an emotional hardship for him, the judge said. Although Rumpca said he lost sleep and suffered from stress, he did not seek counseling or medical advice, according courtroom testimony.

Thus the only harm that the court recognizes from the divorce is cost of counseling or anti-depressant drugs. It does not recognize any other value to the marriage.

The South Dakota supreme court is probably looking for some excuse to declare this type of lawsuit unconstitional, and bring the state into conformance with all the other states that deny any lasting value to marriage.

Questions Media Should Ask the Candidates

I don't know about you, but I'm not satisfied with the questions that the media are asking the Presidential candidates in the televised debates. Here are some additional questions I think would be good to ask the candidates.

Mental Health Screening in Public Schools

More and more public schools are screening their students for mental health. A controversial procedure called TeenScreen is now used at 600 schools in 46 states. The screening consists of a 52-item survey asking questions about social phobia, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. TeenScreen reports that nearly 20% of the students participating in the survey are then labeled “at risk” for mental illness or suicide. They are asked questions such as: “Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or smart as other people?” Another question is: "In the last year, has there been any situation when you had less energy than usual?" I think plenty of normal teens would answer "yes" to those and other nosy questions.

Interview: Frank Turek — Intellectual Predators

Intellectual predators are lurking on the internet and in college classrooms, just waiting to destroy your children's faith. Are your kids ready to defend themselves?

Website: www.crossexamined.org

Frank in St. Louis on Jan. 20th: http://www.faithascentministries.com/

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 12-17-11



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Why young couples aren't getting married

It is often claimed that divorce law is irrelevant to young people getting married, because they don't think about divorce. But that is contradicted by a new study on marriage attitudes:

With the share of married adults at an all-time low in the United States, new research by demographers at Cornell University and the University of Central Oklahoma unveils clues why couples don't get married – they fear divorce.

Among cohabitating couples, more than two-thirds of the study's respondents admitted to concerns about dealing with the social, legal, emotional and economic consequences of a possible divorce.

The study, "The Specter of Divorce: Views from Working and Middle-Class Cohabitors," is published in the journal Family Relations (December 2011) and is co-authored by Sharon Sassler, Cornell professor of policy analysis and management, and Dela Kusi-Appouh, a Cornell doctoral student in the field of development sociology. (http://bit.ly/sJqeFa).

Roughly 67 percent of the study's respondents shared their worries about divorce. ...

The study also found working-class cohabitating couples were more apt to view marriage as "just a piece of paper," nearly identical to their existing relationship. ...

The authors hope that their findings could help premarital counselors to better tailor their lessons to assuage widespread fears of divorce and to target the specific needs of various socioeconomic classes.

Counseling will not solve this problem. If the counselor is honest, he will say that American law has been systematically changed over the last 50 years to turn marriage into just a piece of paper that approximates cohabitation. These changes include unilateral (no-fault) divorce and elimination of the links between marriage and parental responsibility. If trends continue, a politician will soon be called a bigot if he says that the purpose of marriage is anything but just a piece of paper that recognizes cohabitation.

If young people really want to see what marriage law has become, they should visit their local family court and see the judges, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, and other parasites who implement marriage law. If so, more young people may decide that they do not want any part of it.

One comment noted:

The article failed to mention the multiple government programs which are available to unwed mothers but not to married mothers. Nor did it mention the tax penalties associated with marriage.

Yes, that is right. There are substantial financial incentives against marriage.

You might think everyone would lament the decline of marriage, but many are cheering it, as shown by these comments:

I think that Americans should just give up and confine themselves to having gay sex in airport bathroom stalls like anti-homosexuality crusading Republicans.

The American experiment is a social, political, and economic failure.

I find it most interesting that America started to go down the toilet when American Christians started their campaign to take their country back to the good oll days of cattle rustling, gun slingers and strict observance to the bible.

You know... The good oll days that never existed anywhere but Hollywood westerns.

Marriage is an ancient ape tradition that has no relevance in modern society.
Vendicar_Decarian

American marriage is being destroyed by those who are ideologically opposed to it.

Candidates Just Don't Get It

Despite the great quantity of press coverage about next year’s presidential election, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50% public support. Why hasn’t any candidate been able to ride citizen dissatisfaction into majority support?

No guilty mind needed

The WSJ reported in September:

For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a "guilty mind."

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

As a result, what once might have been considered simply a mistake is now sometimes punishable by jail time. ...

Under English common law principles, most U.S. criminal statutes traditionally required prosecutors not only to prove that defendants committed a bad act, but also that they also had bad intentions. In a theft, don't merely show that the accused took someone's property, but also show that he or she knew it belonged to someone else.

Over time, lawmakers have devised a sliding scale for different crimes. For instance, a "willful" violation is among the toughest to prove.

Requiring the government to prove a willful violation is "a big protection for all of us," says Andrew Weissmann, a New York attorney who for a time ran the Justice Department's criminal investigation of Enron Corp. Generally speaking in criminal law, he says, willful means "you have the specific intent to violate the law."

A lower threshold, attorneys say, involves proving that someone "knowingly" violated the law. It can be easier to fall afoul of the law under these terms.

The article gave examples of federal proscutors criminalizing a minor mistake.

The latest example is the great baseball player Barry Bonds, who was just sentenced after a 10-year investigation and trial. He was not convicted of using steroids or of perjury, but of giving an incomplete answer to a question before the grand jury. The judge admitted that Bonds did not actually obstruct justice. The prosecutors wanted to make an example out of Bonds because he had supposedly cheated to break the baseball records of some of their favorite players. Bonds may or may not have cheated in baseball, but he was not convicted of that and federal law does not usually enforce baseball rules.

A Call to Reclaim America’s Faith

A professor at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Carol Swain, has written a very useful handbook for people who are concerned about the way America is headed today and need to be reassured that we still live in the greatest country on earth. She believes it is the job of the grassroots to preserve the route to the American dream. Born in the South in a large family that surely would have been considered poor, she nevertheless writes that she could not “think of any time when she [I] was not proud to be an American citizen.” Carol Swain grew up to be a Ph.D. and a tenured professor at Vanderbilt, who is called on frequently for television interviews on a variety of important national issues.

Obama was not decisive

Charles Krauthammer writes:

"Ask Osama bin Laden ... whether I engage in appeasement." -- Barack Obama, Dec. 8, 2011

WASHINGTON -- Fair enough. Barack Obama didn't appease Osama bin Laden. He killed him. And for ordering the raid and taking the risk, Obama deserves credit. Credit for decisiveness and political courage.

No, Obama was neither decisive nor courageous. The Death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 was after seven months of surveillance. Wiretaps led the CIA to bin Laden's compound in Aug. 2010, and it was under intense surveillance from Sept. 2010 on to the attack. The CIA proposed attacking the compound in Jan. 2010. It took Obama months to make a decision to approve the raid. And Obama did not have the courage to show the body or even to tell the true story of what happened. See Bin Laden Killing: How the White House, Pentagon and CIA Botched the Storyline.

I am afraid that Obama will spend much of the next year bragging about killing bin Laden, as he does not have much else to brag. If so, I hope that his Republican opponent will say that he would approved the attack quickly, and would have promptly released the facts and evidence about the mission.

The Reverse Gender Gap

Luisita Lopez Torregrosa writes an essay in the NY Times about the changing status of women:

For starters, young women today — and not just in the United States — are moving quickly to close the pay gap, or in some cases have closed it already.

They are marrying later and later, or not marrying at all. They no longer need husbands to have children, or want no children (40 percent of births in the United States each year are now to single women).

Women are ahead of men in education (last year, 55 percent of U.S. college graduates were female). And a study shows that in most U.S. cities, single, childless women under 30 are making an average of 8 percent more money than their male counterparts, with Atlanta and Miami in the lead at 20 percent. ...

It is being called the reverse gender gap.

So are these women happy that they have met their feminist goals? Of course not. She goes on:

“Some of these women had learned the hard way that when they went to bars, they were better off lying about what they did — saying that they were a cosmetologist or music teacher rather than a software consultant or lawyer,” Ms. Mundy said.

Faced with a shrinking pool of men on their level, some young women are settling and marrying “down,” ...

“As women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind,” she said in an article, “What, Me Marry?,” in the November issue of The Atlantic. “We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of the party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up — and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.”

The Atlantic article on Ladies rejecting marriage was also quoted on this blog.

Will America Survive to 2025?

The NBC poll reports that 74% of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction. A new book by Patrick Buchanan called Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? will help readers to understand why. This book explains in depressing detail why grassroots Americans are convinced that our government is taking us in the wrong direction and over a cliff before our children and grandchildren can ever achieve the American dream.

How Penn State is making bad law

The Penn State sex abuse scandal is still in the news, as the chief witness has apparently been caught telling several contradictory stories and other accusers have suddenly remembered events from years ago when they got an opportunity for a million-dollar lawsuit. The publicity may result in a truly bad federal law.

A homeschooling group (HSLDA) opposes the proposed law:

S. 1877 will amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) to require—for the first time ever—every single state that receives federal funding under CAPTA to force every single adult to be a mandatory reporter of child abuse or neglect. Currently, most states only require certain people (e.g., doctors and teachers) to be mandatory reporters. HSLDA opposes this for the following reasons: ...

Forcing the states to make every single adult a mandatory reporter with no exceptions will lead to a police-state environment, where every adult is forced to act as an informer against friends, family, and neighbors, or face possible charges. There are grave threats to liberty and personal privacy that could result from this.

Forcing every adult to be a mandatory reporter will likely lead to a massive increase in child abuse and neglect accusations and subsequent investigations. ...

S. 1877 will lead to a massive increase in child abuse and neglect investigations upon families. The stated purpose of S. 1877’s mandatory reporting expansion, along with the education campaign and training program is to “improve reporting” of child abuse and neglect. The bill will give states new federal grants to set up “experimental, model, and demonstration programs for testing innovative approaches and techniques that may improve reporting of and response to suspected and known incidents of child abuse or neglect by adults to the State child protective service agencies or to law enforcement agencies.”

Not only will S. 1877 require every single adult to be a mandatory reporter, S. 1877 will incentivize states to create untested, “experimental” programs that will increase the number of child abuse and neglect reports to CPS agencies.

HSLDA has seen firsthand how malicious or ignorant child abuse and neglect allegations have destroyed innocent families.

Two more reasons this proposed law is particularly bad is that it requires reporting suspected abuse, and it permits the report to be anonymous. It is bad enough to require the reporting of an actual crime, but this is much more insidious because it requires everybody to report every suspicion that he or she has. It is a license for troublemakers to make false accusations anonymously.

It is unlikely that this law would have done any good about the Penn State situation anyway. Sandusky was reported to the police in 1998, and McQueary said in an email that he also reported him to the police in 2002. Another report went to the police and the DA in 2008, and nothing was done for 3 years. It may well be that Sandusky acted inappropriately but not criminally, and that all credible allegations were promptly reported.

All 50 states mandated reporter laws already. I guess the homeschoolers are sensitive to this because they routinely face false CPS reports from those who disapprove of homeschooling. But they aren't the only ones threatened. This is an attempt to expand the jurisdiction of the federal govt and the state social service agencies, and to reduce the autonomy of the American family by forcing them to regularly defend themselves against anonymous accusations and explain themselves to govt social workers.

Anniversary of Washington's Death

Today, December 14, is the anniversary of George Washington's death in 1799. He caught a chill riding horseback for several hours in the snow while inspecting his Mount Vernon farm. The next morning it developed into acute laryngitis and the doctors were called in. The common medical practice in those days was to bleed the patient in order to supposedly get rid of the so-called "bad blood." So the doctors' response to Washington's illness was to cut his arm and bleed him heavily four times. Of course, we now know that was the worst thing the doctors could have done. So George Washington died at the age of 67.

Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids

Can parents really raise their kids IQ? Scientists now estimate that the genetic, hard-wired component of IQ is only 50% at most, so parents have a tremendous opportunity to help kids develop their intelligence to its greatest potential. In a new book called Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids, licensed psychologist David Walsh puts the latest brain science into practical advice parents can use to help their kids progress from before birth to teenage years.

Interview: Brenda J. Elliott — Red Army

Left-wing progressives have been infiltrating our schools, media and even Congress for decades. Our guest will expose the radical network that must be defeated to save America.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 12-10-11



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What's Wrong With Plans for Business Taxes?

The people advising Republican presidential candidates don't seem to realize how anti-marriage and anti-jobs are their plans to change our income tax system. One of them, for example, told the Wall Street Journal, "We were very careful to construct this [the plan to revise the income tax] in a way that protects the middle class." That's not true; when they give the same tax deduction to unmarried parents, defined as "individuals and their dependents," they reward irresponsible behavior. Regardless of income, you can't be middle class without respecting middle-class values, the most important of which is marriage.

Mr. Gingrich’s Attack on the Courts

You can tell that something might be a good idea when the NY Times publishes a hysterical attack on the idea as if it could cause the downfall of civilization. Today's idea is so good that the NY Times summons its most desperate boogeymen: racism, McCarthyism, and "reign of ideology".

The idea does not involve any of those things. It is Gingrich against judicial supremacy, as posted here on Sept. 6. It is the way our Constitution was understood by everyone for 150 years.

The NY Times editorial says:

In any campaign season, voters are bound to hear Republican candidates talk about “activist judges” — jurists who rule in ways that the right wing does not like. But Newt Gingrich, who is leading in polls in Iowa, is taking the normal attack on the justice system to a deep new low.

He is using McCarthyist tactics to smear judges. His most outrageous scheme, a plan to challenge “judicial supremacy,” has disturbing racial undertones. If he is serious about his plan, a President Gingrich would break the balance of power that is fundamental to our democracy.

The plan’s centerpiece is an attack on the landmark 1958 ruling in Cooper v. Aaron, in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed that Arkansas had a duty to follow federal law. ... Unless the court acted as the final arbiter about the Constitution’s meaning, as Marbury v. Madison instructed, chaos would prevail. It was one of the court’s most important decisions. In Mr. Gingrich’s twisted view, Congress and the executive branch have for too long cowered before the court.

No, the court's attempt to micro-manage the schools did cause chaos, and the schools were closed.

It sounds crazy, but the NY Times cries racism when it really promotes racial animosity, because that animosity justifies the liberal social programs that they really want.

Cooper v. Aaron was in 1947. Marbury v. Madison was 1803. How is it that an 1803 decision "instructed" something that no one noticed until 1947? There is no such instruction, of course.

Gingrich's position has nothing to do with racism or McCarthyism anyway. His position on the court is the simple consequence of the US Constitution being the supreme law of the land. The President and the Congress take oaths to the Constitution, not to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution.

Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?

Patrick J. Buchanan writes:

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan.

A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.”

But to friends, “the Chief” sent another message: “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bit.”

Today, 70 years after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable secret history, written from 1943 to 1963, has come to light. It is Hoover’s explanation of what happened before, during and after the world war that may prove yet the death knell of the West.

Edited by historian George Nash, “Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath” is a searing indictment of FDR and the men around him as politicians who lied prodigiously about their desire to keep America out of war, even as they took one deliberate step after another to take us into war.

Some historians argue that FDR was right to bait the Japanese into war because Americans would not have intervened in Europe otherwise. Whether that is true or not, our schools should teach the facts about World War II.

Bogus school obesity study

There is a program to convince parents that they are incompetent to rear their own kids. Parents feed their kids junk food, and too much of it, making kids fat. But parents are advised not to tell their kids to avoid getting fat, or else they might cause psychological body image and self-esteem problems.

Here is a SciAm story, taken from myhealthnewsdaily.com:

In the struggle against widespread obesity that begins in early childhood, new research indicates that schools may be the best place to start a solution.

Australian researchers examined 55 interventions in previous studies and concluded that school-based programs were key in getting kids to healthy weights, and there was little evidence that these programs would have a negative effect on young students' self-images.

"Obesity prevention programs in general are not harming children," said lead author Elizabeth Waters, chair of child public health at the Melbourne School of Population Health. However, "programs that don't make a commitment to preventing body image issues might hurt children by stigmatizing overweight children or send unhealthy messages about body image," she said.

The idea is that schools should take over obesity prevention, and parents should just yield to the experts. But the study does not support that view at all. Here is what it actually says:

We found strong evidence to support beneficial effects of child obesity prevention programmes on BMI, particularly for programmes targeted to children aged six to 12 years. However, given the unexplained heterogeneity and the likelihood of small study bias, these findings must be interpreted cautiously.

So this was not really a study of children. It was a survey of the literature on obesity preventions programs that published results. And sure enough, most of those that bragged in print were claiming positive results. The big majority of the studies did not even look at the possibility of adverse effects, so it was concluded that the programs were harmless.

More and more the schools are serving breakfast and lunch, and cutting down on recess and exercise. Elementary schools serve sugary snacks all day long. If boys get restless, they are sent to the school psychologist to get a ritalin prescription. The schools have anti-bullying programs to try to prevent anyone from making fun of the fat kids. Teachers and parents are told not to discourage weight gain, for fear of triggering anorexia nervosa in girls. A Hollywood movie star lost visitation of his 11-year-old daughter when he called her a pig.

The Wash. Post has news of a study by the "Environmental Working Group" that discovered that many breakfast cereals have a lot of sugar in them. Is that really news? The sugar content is printed right on the box. It says that some cereals have more sugar than a Twinkie.

Yes, kids are fatter than they used to be. Schools are making the problem worse, not better. So-called researchers nearly always conclude that we need more govt-funded programs to reduce parental responsibility. But the schools cannot solve this problem, and they cannot do better than parents with common sense.

What's Wrong With Flat Tax Plans?

It was landmark legislation when Congress passed the joint income tax return for husband and wife back in 1948 over President Truman's veto. As originally designed, the joint return recognized a husband and wife as two equal partners, even if the husband earned all the family's income. Each tax bracket, deduction and exemption was equal to twice that of a single person. For more than 60 years, the federal income tax treated the family as an economic unit. Husband and wife could pool their income in a joint return and get larger deductions and lower rates.

Inside the domestic violence industry

Natassia tells why she is leaving the domestic violence industry:

I have been facilitating for a Batterers Intervention and Prevention Program (BIPP) for nearly two years now, but I feel compelled to stop volunteering for this particular community program due to recent discoveries that give credence to the claims of a corrupt justice system. I also am disgusted with the Marxist feminism that has weaved it’s slimy way into everything in the domestic violence “industry.” ...

Notice that nowhere in this scenario is a criminal charge or even a trial mentioned.

And so, a man in my class may very well be forced to attend without any respect for his inherent right to due process. I cannot stomach playing the role of a cog in such a machine. The protection of women is important, but so are basic Constitutionally-protected rights. No man should be forced to give up his basic human rights when he has not actually been found guilty of anything.

The blog then quotes The Flipside of Feminism.

Curtains for the Utah Crosses

There are thousands of crosses on federal property in Arlington Cemetery honoring our fallen soldiers, and rightly so. But a group of atheists sued to remove 13 privately funded crosses from roadsides in Utah, and a federal appellate court held in favor of the atheists. This case, American Atheists v. Utah Highway Patrol Association, is the latest example of censorship of Christian symbols from the public square. What will atheists target next for court-ordered removal?

Interview: Carol Swain — Be The People

Polls reveal that 80% of our citizenry believes America is headed in the wrong direction. Our guest explains how "We the People" can and must fight for the nation we love.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 12-03-11



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Pearl Harbor Anniversary

Today, December 7th, is the anniversary of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that President Roosevelt said "will live in infamy." The lesson we should take away from that event is that we should always be prepared for a surprise attack. After all, we live in a world where a lot of evil countries just don't like America and are jealous of our power.

British experts kill off the traditional family

The UK Mail newspaper reports:

How 'experts' are trying to kill off the traditional family: Trendy thinktank claims most of us live in alternative set-ups

Only one in six people in Britain think they live as part of a traditional family, according to claims by a new think-tank yesterday.

Apparently, only a small minority come from ‘traditional nuclear families’ with married parents and two or more children, the Centre for the Modern Family said.

Its report said the traditional family is out of date and that the Government should consider ways to support alternative family forms that are adopted by the majority. ...

The report said: ‘The majority of people feel their family is unrepresented by politicians, the media and advertising, with 52 per cent claiming the Government does not take their family set-up into account.

‘The findings indicate family structures are becoming increasingly diverse. A quarter of all couples are childless, and one in five lives alone.

As a result of this, half of the population believe society is out of date in its view of the family.

The article goes on to say that the figures are misleading because they are presented by an anti-family think tank that wants the public to accept that the nuclear family has already disintegrated.

The article drew a lot of comments like these:

Destroy Marriage and you destroy the nation. But perhaps that was always the intention of certain elements. Enemies within are far more dangerous than enemies at the gates.

This report seems to be part of the campaign to ruin society, rather than fact.

Destroy the traditional family.....and you destroy the future. That is the aim of the evil ideologues. Remember the failed Soviet Union tried to do the same....and it collapsed. Those nations that don't have the traditional family....don't have a future. They will be overwhelmed. Watch it happen.

The so-called Centre for the Modern Family has a web site with surveys and "expert views", all designed to convince you that the traditional family is obsolete.

Admitting Mexican Trucks Is a Bad Deal

The Obama Administration has now admitted Mexican trucks to drive on all U.S. highways and roads. They were kept out by the administrations the first and second George Bush and Bill Clinton, but Obama sent his Secretary of Transportation to sign an agreement in Mexico to let them in. In a previous commentary, I talked about the unfairness of the deal in requiring U.S. trucks to buy Electronic On-Board Recorders and updated mufflers, but giving that equipment to the Mexican trucks as gifts from the U.S. taxpayers.

Anthropologist book on moms in the village

A famous anthropologist has a new book on mothers, and this review looks at whether it really takes a village to raise a child:

The study of attachment coincided with second-wave feminism, the large-scale reentry of women into the labor force of industrial countries, and the rise of day care as a practical solution for working women with ambition or with no other choice. ... The predicted dire consequences of our recent departures from those traditions have not so far materialized. ... Still, life is long, and there remain reasons for concern about this vast social experiment. ...

Hrdy’s book cannot resolve questions concerning the mental health of children not cared for by their mothers, but it provides a relevant cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective on such care. First, the ethnological record shows that the nuclear family, although not rare, has not been common either, and it has always occurred within a broader social setting. Polygynous families (with two or more wives), polyandrous families (with two or more husbands), extended families under a single roof, mother-child households in a compound comprising several wives of a powerful man, and other arrangements have long shown that isolated nuclear households — mom, dad, kids — are not necessarily the human norm.

Sarah Hrdy is an advocate of
alloparenting, where individuals other than the actual parents act in a parental role. She is a big advocate of govt day care for kids, based on her study of monkeys and others.

It is great that anthropologists are studying African apes and New Guinea tribes, but I am having a hard time seeing how this relates to American society. Western civilization became great in part because it rejected those alternate family models, and adopted a Judeo-Christian nuclear family. The more anthropologists discover that primitive societies have other social structures, that only gives more reason to make sure that our American society does not break down into something resembling those primitive societies.

Mexican Trucks Are Now On Our Roads

After years of negative votes in Congress and the opposition of the American people, on October 21 Barack Obama allowed the first Mexican truck to cross the border at Laredo, Texas and head north to deliver door-to-door service of its load of industrial equipment. This implemented an agreement quietly signed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Mexico City in July with Mexico's secretary of Communications and Transportation. Congressman Duncan Hunter calls this deal a major anti-jobs program, saying: "We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico." Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Independent Drivers Association, a non-union trade association, said 100,000 trucking jobs will be lost.

Spirit of enterprise enlivens

NY Times columnist David Brooks writes:

Why are nations like Germany and the United States rich? It's not primarily because they possess natural resources — many nations have those. It's primarily because of habits, values and social capital.

It's because many people in these countries ... believe in a simple moral formula: Effort should lead to reward as often as possible.

People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded, while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness.

This ethos is not an immutable genetic property that can blithely be taken for granted. It's a precious social construct that can be undermined and degraded.

Right now, this ethos is being undermined from all directions. ... Yet the assault on these values continues, especially in Europe.

He goes on to talk about Europe's problems, as Europe is ahead of us in its economic and cultural problems.

Brooks is right that America is rich because of its values, ethos, and social constructs. If you accept that, then you should also believe that our govt should be taking strong measures to prevent the good social constructs from being undermined and degraded. And yet govt policies on welfare, immigration, debt, families, and trade are undermining those social constructs.

Newt Gingrich is currently getting heat for saying this:

“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.” ...

Children in poor neighborhoods, he said, should be allowed to serve as janitors in their schools to earn money and develop a connection to the school.

At least he recognizes Brooks's point.

Conservatives want restrictions on immigration

Alfonso Aguilar is a lobbying working to promote Latino immigration, and he
writes this op-ed for the neoconservative WSJ:

Restrictionism is part of the protectionist creed and historically has been embraced by big labor and others on the political left.

Newt Gingrich's comments in support of a temporary worker program and the legalization of undocumented immigrants who establish deep roots in the country have angered restrictionists on the right. ...

But are they ideologically correct in their attacks? Is restrictionism — the philosophy that proposes that government severely restrict the entry of immigrant workers our economy clearly needs — really the conservative position?

Mark Krikorian deconstructs his silly opinions, and explains that conservatism really does believe in restricting the use of immigrant workers. To support this, he quotes Phyllis Schlafly and Milton Friedman. Also:

He then waves the bloody shirt of unions, saying that immigration limitation “historically has been embraced by big labor.” Uh, “historically” is the operative word here; the AFL-CIO and the SEIU are firmly in the open-borders camp. ... The short version is that when American unions were animated by American patriotism, they opposed amnesty and unlimited immigration, just as they opposed corporate rope-sellers doing business with the Soviet Union. ...

Alfonso then goes to argue that free immigration is the same as free trade. This is a tired argument, but needs to be repeatedly rebutted.

This is part of the Neoconservative - Paleoconservative Conflict. Most conservatives believe that American policy should advance America. The WSJ supports multi-national corporations that have no national allegiance and that consider borders a big nuisance. The neoconservatives also hate American patriotism and exceptionalism.

Right to confront witnesses

Law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher writes a NY Times op-ed:

ON Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Williams v. Illinois, the latest in a string of cases addressing whether the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause — which gives the accused in a criminal case the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him” — applies to forensic analysts who produce reports for law enforcement. In other words, should an analyst responsible for, say, a fingerprint report have to show up at trial to face questions about the report?

A logical application of the law produces an easy answer: Yes. The court has defined a “witness against” a defendant as a person who provides information to law enforcement to aid a criminal investigation. That is exactly what forensic analysts do.

Subjecting forensic analysts to cross-examination is also good policy. According to a recent National Academy of Sciences study, forensic science is not nearly as reliable as it is perceived to be. DNA specimens, for instance, are sometimes contaminated; fingerprint, ballistics and even run-of-the-mill drug and alcohol analyses depend on human interpretation and thus are subject to error. Worse, investigations over the past decade have revealed outright incompetence and fraud in many crime labs. So it makes sense to subject the authors of lab reports to cross-examination — a procedure the court has called “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”

Fisher is correct. Confronting and cross-examining witnesses is not just good policy, it is essential to our American system of justice and it is clearly required by our Constitution.

He concedes that allowing the defendants to get their 6A rights will cost money:

It unquestionably costs money to deliver the fundamental demands of justice. But the price is not nearly so high as the states usually claim.

I do not believe that there are any significant costs. DNA tests used to be expensive and require uncommon expertise, but not any more. They are cheap and the price is still dropping rapidly. The NY Times reports:

DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper at a pace far outstripping Moore’s law ... In only a year or two, the cost of determining a person’s complete DNA blueprint is expected to fall below $1,000.

And that is for the complete DNA sequence that used to cost a billion dollars. The DNA tests for police work sequence far less than 1% of it. The defense should also be able to send samples to a lab of its own choosing, since it is so cheap and easy.

As more and more cases hinge on evidence like on the CSI TV show, we should be using independent labs following recognized standards. They should be fully accountable, and be able to testify about exactly what they do. The last thing we need is to convict people based on anonymous reports from government bureaucrats.

Interview: Roger Schlafly — How Einstein Ruined Physics

Albert Einstein is considered the greatest genius who ever lived, but our guest says Einstein actually ruined physics. He'll tell us why modern physicists are foolish to follow Einstein's example.

How Einstein Ruined Physics

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 11-26-11



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The High Costs of Marriage Absence

Most Americans are not aware that about $700 Billion a year of federal taxpayers' money is handed out to non-taxpayers below an artificial poverty line created by the government. After Barack Obama became President, he increased welfare spending by a third because, as he promised during his campaign, he wants to "spread the wealth," knowing that promotes dependence on government and votes for the Democrats.

Lesson from Japan's nuclear meltdown

A physics journal reports:

Japan nuclear meltdown 'maybe worse than thought'

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said their latest calculations showed the fuel inside the No. 1 reactor at the tsunami-hit plant could have melted entirely, dropping through its inner casing and eroding a concrete base.

In the worst-case scenario, the molten fuel could have reached as far as 65 centimetres (2 feet) through the concrete, leaving it only 37 centimetres short of the outer steel casing, the report, released Wednesday, said. ...

The world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 has not directly claimed any lives, but has left tens of thousands of people displaced and rendered tracts of land uninhabitable, possibly for decades.

TEPCO and the Japanese government have pledged to bring all the plant's reactors to a state of cold shutdown by the end of 2011.

Let's review. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami had a 9.0 earthquake, one of the five biggest ever recorded anywhere in the world. Waves were 130 feet high, and reached 6 miles inland. 16,000 people were killed.

Some nuclear reactors were hit. They were very old plants and used obsolete designs that the world abandoned as unsafe in 1970. The Japan authorities responded poorly, and there was a nuclear meltdown. They were not prepared for a disaster of this magnitude.

Now the experts say that the Japan nuclear meltdown was maybe worse than thought because a computer simulation shows that molten nuclear fuel at the most damaged plant might have eaten two thirds of the way through a concrete containment base. But no one died and a cold shutdown is imminent.

Nuclear power is clean and safe, and is the only technology for producing large-scale power without emitting greenhouse gases. Some of the global warming alarmists admit this. The others must not be serious about global warming, because they are unwilling to take the steps to produce carbon-free energy.

Welfare Is An Attack on Marriage

The institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has been fundamental to America ever since the founding of our nation. The famous French commentator Alexis de Toqueville wrote in the mid-19th century: "There is no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America." Not only have our laws specifically recognized marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but many laws legislate special benefits. The Government Accountability Office identified more than 1,000 federal laws that are based on the traditional definition of marriage, including the tax laws that permit married couples to file joint income tax returns and Social Security benefits awarded to fulltime homemakers (identified as dependent spouses).

Islamists win a mandate in Egypt

The NY Times reports:

CAIRO — Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

Democracy has been shown to work great where the population is predominantly Judeo-Christian, speaks English, and has respect for civil liberties as we understand them in America. Christians and Jews respect freedom of religion. The 57 Islamic states believe in government by Islamic law, and religious minorities are always complaining about persecution. When the US-back populist Islamist took power in Libya, the first thing they did was to legalize polygamy.

After saying that this election result is bad for Israel, the NY Times goes on to the Christians:

Some members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority — about 10 percent of the population — joked Wednesday that they would prepare to leave the country.

Joked? Is this really a joke? The Coptics with money are probably packing their bags now, and wishing that they still had the Mubarak dictatorship. Majority rule is not always a good thing.

Texas schools send delinquents to court

NPR radio coomplains that the "unintended consequence" of kicking juvenile delinquents out of school is that they may not finish their education:

The sort of offenses that might land a student in the principal's office in other states often send kids in Texas to court with misdemeanor charges. Some schools have started rethinking the way they punish students for bad behavior after watching many of them drop out or land in prison because of tough disciplinary policies. ...

Hudson says, "When you look at the numbers of times students are disciplined in school, suspended, separated from school, placed in disciplinary alternative education placement, the unintended consequence is that their education suffers to the point where it puts them farther and farther away from graduating."

Hudson thinks these unintended consequences prove that the schools' disciplinary policies are not working. This seems to be the growing consensus in Texas, but it's going to take a lot of work to undo the damage the harsh disciplinary policies have caused.

Wonder what sort of offenses these kids committed? It was not just chewing gum in class:

Thomesha Turner, 18, is a senior in the Waco independent school district. She was a good student and had never been in trouble before a verbal altercation with a teacher.

She says the teacher pointed a finger in her face and called her a little girl.

"I told her to get out of my face 'cause I wasn't a little girl, and I cussed [her] out. I said, Miss, 'You get out of my face or I'll beat your bitch ass up.' There's a different way I could've handled it," Turner says, "but I didn't handle it in a more mature way." ...

Turner has similar concerns. "When they see alternative on your background, they look at you different because they're like, alternative? That's for bad kids."

Already a mother of two with another child on the way, Turner is determined to graduate next spring.

She is an 18-year-old girl who is pregnant with her third child, and she is lecturing us on NPR about what is bad for kids?!

The boys also have big problems and big excuses:

Neglect, abuse and family problems are issues that students like Saul Cornejo, 16, bring to school every day.

"Teachers at school, they don't understand it," he says. "They just dismiss you, put you off instead of like, really trying to get to the real problem which, most of the time originates at home and stuff."

Cornejo has been suspended several times for fighting. He lives with his older brother but is pretty much on his own. His principal says he's really bright, but Cornejo is facing felony charges for burglary and won't be allowed to return to his home school.

Schools give up on kids like Cornejo all too often, says John Hudson, the director of attendance, truancy and dropout recovery in the Waco alternative school.

The NPR reporter has a Mexican accent. He does not say, but it is reasonable to assume that these kids are on welfare, illegal aliens, or both.

NPR complains that these kids are suffering the unintended consequences of unusually strict zero-tolerance policies, and that the schools do not have social programs to solve the problems of their broken families.

The problem is not zero tolerance. It is that we have too much tolerance if a Texas high school girl can have three babies, threaten to beat up her teacher, and collect welfare to continue her bad behavior and create another generation of troublemakers. In a couple of more years, her kids will be disrupting a Texas kindergarten class.