Free Republic

Wikipedia says that the United States has more than 200 million Christians. Why do they seem nearly invisible and powerless? Where are the leaders who can mobilize this huge force? Presumably, Christian groups agree on the importance of education. Predictably, conservative or traditional parents want the schools to be as good as possible. Wouldn't we expect to see a coordinated effort by Christian groups and their leaders to make sure that public education operates at the highest practicable level?What we seem to see instead is fragmentation and passivity. Particularly striking is that there is no leadership. When have you ever...

The three senior who ditched class and ended up saving a 94-year-old woman from a burning home are suffering the consequences of playing hooky earlier this week. Garen Kissoyan, 17, who attends California High School in San Ramon, told NBC Bay Area on Thursday that, since he and his two buddies skipped their sports medicine class to get something to eat at McDonald's on Monday, his teacher wanted to make sure their punishment fit the crime. So, the teens will be volunteering four hours of "sports medicine service" to make up for the fact that they missed his class, Garen...

It’s an article of faith in the school reform community that we should be striving to prepare all students for success in college—if not a four-year degree, then some other recognized and reputable post-secondary credential. The rationale is clear and generally compelling; as a recent Pew study reiterated, people who graduate from college earn significantly more than those who do not. Other research indicates that low-income students in particular benefit from college, becoming nearly three times more likely to make it into the middle class than their peers who earn some (or no) college credits. And it’s not just about...

MIAMI GARDENS (CBSMiami) – Florida Memorial University student Kameron Moore spent a night in the emergency room after she says at least five girls jumped her in a dorm room. “They was cheering on the couch. Saying ‘get her! Get her! Get her!” said Moore. Moore, a freshman, said it started when she returned from spring break. “I came back and all my stuff was missing and my room was messed up,” said Moore. “They took my money and they ate all my snacks and stuff.” She complained and a dorm supervisor worked things out between her and her roommate—at...

Roger Bowley, a physics professor at the University of Nottingham, explains why holding a key fob next to your brain can help extend its signal. He also demonstrates the same effect using a bottle of water, which comes in handy when trying to unlock a car.

The man behind the footage of calling a fraud soldier out for wearing Ranger, E.O.D., and 101st Airborne Tab was arrested immediately after the video by the campus authorities. The reason? He was charged with disturbing the peace and making threats against a phony soldier who was pretending to serve and die for our country. The police reported that Vieira, the man confronting the fake soldier, approached him on several occasions and verbally assaulted the fraud! Well there’s a pretty valid reason behind the so-called unnecessary assault. Vieira, who uploaded video of the confrontation to YouTube, was later arrested by...

A 24-year-old geography major is the first Wikipedian-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley. His announcement can be found - where else? - but on his own Wiki page. Cal hired Gorman, according to a February announcement, to advise students and professors on the complex task of editing articles for Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia that gets 500 million monthly visitors. Until now, Wikipedians-in-residence have been assigned to cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and the U.S. National Archives. In a statement, Cal calls Gorman a "hardcore Wikipedian" since his undergraduate days at Berkeley,...

Imagine you're in a room full of people from different countries, and everyone only speaks his or her native language. In order to communicate, you'd have to come up with a standard set of rules and vocabulary. That's what makes the Internet so remarkable: It's a system that lets different computer networks communicate with each other using a standardized set of rules. Without rules, these computer networks wouldn't be able to communicate with each other. Think for a minute about the scope of the Internet. It's a collection of inter-networked computer systems that spans the entire globe. It depends on...

To glimpse Swedish angst under its picture postcard prosperity, look no further than film director Lisa Ohlin, who has enjoyed years of tax cuts in an economy the envy of Europe. Homes in her Stockholm neighborhood cost around $1 million. But this leafy, well-heeled area is a microcosm of Sweden, where eyes are on a struggling school with strained finances, not enough teachers and poor results. Like many Swedes, Ohlin wants her cherished welfare state back. […] Voters like Ohlin are returning to faith in cradle to grave welfare after eight years of center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who cut...

An assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology wants to send people who disagree with him about global warming to jail. The professor is Lawrence Torcello. Last week, he published a 900-word-plus essay at an academic website called The Conversation. Torcello, who has a Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo, explains that there are times when criminal negligence and “science misinformation” must be linked. The threat of climate change, he says, is one of those times. Throughout the piece, he refers to the bizarre political aftermath of an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, which saw six scientists imprisoned for six...

A few days ago I called Mike Boudreau’s campaign manager and asked him a few questions about Mike. For those that don’t know, Mike Boudreaux is the current Undersheriff in Tulare County and is running for and supported by our current and retiring Sheriff Wittman. I asked what his political party was and I was told Mike is a Republican but the office he’s running for is non-partisan. Next I asked his feelings about a person’s right to keep and bear arms and was told he believes in the Second Amendment. Next, I asked how he felt about California’s concealed...

The 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference drew a fairly international swarm of conservatives possessing a variety of ideas about limiting and specializing the role of civil government. The obfuscations of a (to use Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s term) plus sized, overreaching bureaucracy have made some young people wonder why we need a civil government in the first place and why we can’t have anarchy instead. How do you respond to the statement: ”The system isn’t broken; the system never worked”?...

If you miss the Dr. Bill Watenburg show Sunday nights... IT'S BACK! His show starts at 7 pm Pacific tonight. Pick a station and give him a call! http://tunein.com/options/?ProgramId=10398

Should Florida adopt the Common Core State Standards? Yes No

Child pornography conviction On September 20, 2007,Bernie Ward was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of Attempting to Distribute and one count of Receiving child pornography via the internet from December 2004 to January 2005. The police investigation of Ward originated with a complaint from a Stanislaus County homemaker who was posing online as a dominatrix under the screen name "Sexfairy2005" and who had engaged in online chats with Ward According to the police report, Ward sent pornographic images of children to the chat partner, which caused her to contact police. The police began collecting evidence with...

Kids can text on tiny keyboards, convey their thoughts in 140 characters or less and use numbers for prepositions, but some states fear they soon may not be able to sign their own names. In this digital age of Internet acronyms, like “LOL,” and emoticons, Tennessee is the latest state pressing for legislation that mandates students learn cursive writing in school. Lawmakers in the state are pushing for passage of House Bill 1697, which would require all public school students to learn how to read and write in cursive, preferably by the third grade. The bill, authored by state Republican...

SCHENECTADY – Janeya Nevins, 5, was not in her kindergarten classroom today. Her mother Patricia Rodriguez wanted to to keep her close, after quite a scare on Wednesday. "It's still upsetting to me. I look at her and I could still cry," Rodriguez said. For nearly three hours, Rodriguez said her world was turned up side down. She put her daughter on a school bus in the morning, but she was nowhere to be found that afternoon. "The school just informed us she wasn't in school all day. I'm like, 'What are you talking about?'" she said. It turns out,...

A Florida student, 15, was arrested this week for putting hand sanitizer in a teacher’s Diet Coke can, police report. Nicholas Lucari is facing a felony charge for allegedly squirting “Germ-X” into Dale Dawson Yount’s drink. The South Walton High School teacher, 69, subsequently “became physically ill” and she sought treatment at a local hospital, according to a Walton County Sheriff’s Office report.

BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. (WRIC)—A North Carolina mother whose son has been bullied for bringing a “My Little Pony” bag to class says school officials now won’t let him bring the bag to school. Grayson Bruce is a big fan of “My Little Pony,” a cartoon that emphasizes to children that “friendship is magic.” But his interest has caused the 9-year-old to be bullied at school; his classmates say his favorite toy is for girls. “They’re taking it a little too far, with punching me, pushing me down, calling me horrible names, stuff that really shouldn’t happen,” Bruce told WLOS News13,...

‘Global citizenship” is in fashion. In his July 2008 speech in Berlin, when Barack Obama was at the height of his European popularity, he announced himself “a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” The formulation was meant to one-up President Kennedy’s Cold War “Ich bin ein Berliner” but hit a different note entirely. One was the voice of American statesmanship; the other, of a man turning his back on American exceptionalism. The campus Left has found in the conceit of teaching students to be “citizens of the world” a new way of fostering...