Free Republic

A Polk County family says bullying may force them to pull their 14-year-old daughter out of school. Haines City Police said it has launched an investigation into the bullying, and the FBI is also looking into the complaint.Fourteen-year-old Zarah Habibulla says the bullying started last December when she began wearing a headscarf to school as part of her Muslim faith. Zarah said she is now scared to go to school after students have taunted her saying, “terrorist, yo we got some terrorists here we gotta run,” and “…I’m going to shoot you. I’m going to bomb you. You better watch...

Richie Incognito, an NFL Miami Dolphin, is a clubhouse bully who was suspended for traumatizing teammate Jonathan Martin. A new NFL investigative report found that Richie, a white, soon-to-be free agent veteran, abused Martin, a black player then in his rookie season. The report accuses Incognito and two other players of using racially charged abusive language and engaging in abusive conduct directed toward the black rookie. Incognito, according the to investigation, was the ringleader. Richie Incognito, meet former Los Angeles City firefighter Tennie Pierce. Or more precisely, meet Pierce's firefighter "friends" -- who stand accused of bullying the black LAFD...

Drugs and ignorance is not a good combination. That's the conclusion of several law enforcement sources after looking into the case of four teenagers facing kidnapping and assault charges after they allegedly lured another teen to a shed in Southeast Portland and tortured him for several hours. Those under arrest are three boys and a girl. The youngest is 14. Two of them are 15 and one is 17. They were arraigned Tuesday, and the grand jury started hearing the case on Thursday. The 14-year-old is described as the ring-leader. The target of the teens is a 14-year-old that they...

Admittedly I don’t listen to Christian rap or rap of any kind for that matter, but after watching this news report I had to hear Bizzle’s new song which is a well thought out response from a Christian perspective to Macklemore’s song “Same Love.”- (the song the played at the Grammys for the big gay wedding.) And let me say Bizzle’s new song doesn’t pull any punches at all. It treads in love but it doesn’t tread lightly. It’s quite powerful actually. But first, watch this news report by KHOU on how Bizzle’s life is being threatened because of his...

The report by independent investigator Ted Wells on the state of the Miami Dolphins organization was released on Friday morning after months of research, and the results are clear — offensive guard Richie Incognito did lead a systemic campaign of bullying and ridicule of not only offensive tackle Jonathan Martin, but also at least one of Incognito’s and Martin’s teammates, and at least one team employee. Wells, a partner in the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, was hired by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in early November to exhaustively investigate the Dolphins franchise from top to...

I've actually thought about this in a more serious way than this graphic presents. While I understand why anti-bullying campaigns have been springing up I'm noticing that like with all the other "isms" out there people are starting to misuse the term in the same way the left uses "racism" to squelch discussion they don't like.Only yesterday I was part of a Facebook thread about politics where a liberal friend whipped out the "B" word against a conservative friend in reaction to him saying something the liberal friend didn't like.My conservative friend was displaying a different "B" word...backbone. Yet rather...

It's expected to be the most passionately debated piece of education policy for the legislative session that begins Feb. 25. Supporters say that Minnesota's current law, at 37 words, doesn't do enough to prevent bullying and that sweeping change is needed. "Nobody should be OK with the fact that all we have to protect students and make schools safe from bullying is 37 words," Kurzer-Zlotnick said. "To me, that's ridiculous." Opponents argue that the 20-page bill goes too far by taking away local control and imposing costly new layers of bureaucracy on schools. "I think it's a bad bill," said...

An 11-year-old boy is in the hospital after trying to commit suicide—the victim of bullying at school. It’s not a new problem in North Carolina, but this puts a new face on the age-old problem as Michael Morones remains in WakeMed with a tube down his throat and potentially life-long brain damage. Michael tried to kill himself, apparently because he could no longer take the torrent of bullying he was facing at school. “He’s the kid that never walks. He dances everywhere,” said Michael’s mother, Tiffany Morones-Suttle. “He’s so full of energy. He’s always on the move.” …

An 11-year-old autistic Middleboro boy’s claim that he was sexually assaulted by another youth inside his foster home was dismissed as “consensual” sex by child welfare officials charged with protecting him, in a stunning case the boy’s family and school officials charge was plagued by missteps by the embattled Department of Children and Families. According to DCF investigative reports, police reports and letters, the boy — then 11 but with the cognitive ability of a 5- or 6-year-old, his father told police — was allegedly sexually assaulted by another youth in the foster home while the parents slept during the...

Last week, I pointed out how PolitiFact crowned the promoter in chief's sound bite for Obamacare the "Lie of the Year" for 2013: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." I also made a prediction that among his top 10 falsehood contenders for 2014 will be a reversal of what he emphatically stated back on Sept. 9, 2009: "Under our (health care reform) plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions." I showed how President Barack Obama already has repeatedly broken that promise over the past few years. But a coup de grace came...

Every time you turn on the news or open a newspaper anymore you’re treated to updates on America’s latest “crisis”: bullying. From breathless accounts of how someone posted mean stories about someone else on Facebook, or how one kid teased another for being ugly or otherwise different, to national public awareness campaigns complete with websites and taxpayer funding, it’s everywhere. If one didn’t know better it would be easy to think that America’s children have suddenly been infected with some new virus that’s running rampant throughout the population and that doom lies ahead. But like so many other things in...

"The day after that conversation, my 12-year-old daughter took her toddler brother to a playground, only to return very soon and very shaken. This park is Harlem in miniature. There are two playgrounds, less than 300 yards apart, an old basic one and a new shiny one. In the new playground, well-dressed toddlers of different races, most of them minded by dark-skinned nannies, played together. At the old one, a few black kids played while their older siblings kept reluctant watch. A couple of drunken men loitered nearby. Apparently, one of them had lashed out at my daughter, calling her...

On December 4, 2013 Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million member American Federation of Teachers(AFT), spoke on C-Span about bullying, particularly of gay students. Ms. Weingarten said, with surprise in her voice, that she doesn't understand why gay students are still bullied in public schools, because in 2013, "It's cool to be gay." She also said she is gay, and now speaks about it openly.As a psychotherapist, I tell clients that being surprised by another person's behavior often results from erroneous assumptions about the person, usually because you see them as you want them to be rather than as they...

Anyone else see this. Just catching it now. Very unsettling the way this kid acted. Mother gripping her close, her pausing a long tmie to answer questions, constantly looking to her left as if getting cues.

ORLANDO -- Two teenagers accused of cyberbullying a Polk County teen who committed suicide will not face charges. The lawyers of a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl accused of bullying Rebecca Sedwick before her suicide, announced Wednesday that their clients will no longer face aggravated stalking charges. Defense attorney Jose Baez has announced the State of Florida dropped charges against his 12-year-old client during a news conference. “We are very pleased that the State Attorney’s Office through hard work and through extreme professionalism has decided to do the right thing," said Baez, adding that he never believed there was...

As readers may or may not be aware, it’s School Choice Week. However, given the items in the news, you could be forgiven for not knowing. In fact, given those same items, one might get the idea that we’ve instead been going through something like Bullying Month. After years of hand-wringing about the phenomenon of bullying, whether in its generic form oragainst specific groups, it appears to have taken the phenomenon of hazing in the National Football League to get the practice widely condemned to the degree it deserves. In an ideal world, this would lead into a wider discussion...

A New Jersey family is calling for an investigation of a Rutgers University football coach over an alleged bullying incident in which the coach berated a scholarship player during a study hall and threatened to head-butt him. NJ.com reports Mark and Clarice Tyree say Rutgers Defensive Coordinator Dave Cohen established a pattern of verbally abusing their son, Jevon Tyree – a defensive back – during practices and team functions before their relationship escalated into threats of violence during a study hall in the spring. “He was just trying to really make me feel as if I was soft,” Jevon Tyree...

It is common for kids to be teased or bullied for their physical features. Some parents nowadays, instead of teaching their child to love themselves for who they are, are changing their child's physical appearance to prevent bullying. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said plastic surgery has grown 30% in the past decade. In 2008, 160,283 children under 18 had surgery, and 76,000 surgeries were performed on teenagers in 2011. Many children undergo surgery to fix features that cause health problems, such as cleft palates or serious deformities. For example, in 2009, then-eight-year-old Ryan Cunningham of New York state was born with two perfectly...

A facebook group dedicated to criticizing 'ugly' babies proves that bullying is not just an act of teenagers. The private facebook group, which has since been removed, is composed of grown women around the country who grab photos of toddlers from other mothers' facebook pages without approval and post them online for criticizing. The group was originally designed to trade and sell children's clothing but took a nasty turn. One mother, Melissa Anetucci, of Palm Beach, Fla. has made it her mission to fight against the self-proclaimed 'mean girls group' and to expose their wildly inappropriate behavior. She began posting...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo directed state police and the Division of Human Rights on Friday to investigate allegations of anti-Semitic harassment in a New York state school district. “The reports of rampant anti-Semitic harassment and physical assaults at Pine Bush schools, if true, are deeply disturbing,” Cuomo said in a statement to the state education commissioner. … The alleged physical attacks against Jewish students included a swastika drawn on a student’s face against her will, the severe beating of one with a hockey stick, and repeated slapping of another in the head, according to the lawsuit that (lawyer Ilann...