Free Republic

School boards have been vexing about their loss of authority over the schools they ostensibly govern. There is a solution to their problem, but it's not necessarily one they want to hear. "The public must be owners of the educational system and not simply the recipient of its services," Thomas J. Gentzel, the executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) avers in the latest issue of the American School Board Journal (ASBJ). The ASBJ is published by the NSBA. "Without school boards and the leadership role they provide, education would be little more than just another public service,"...

Under President Obama, federal agencies are doling out tens of millions of dollars to one of the Democratic Party’s most essential constituencies: big labor. The grants range from safety training to union membership recruitment to whipping up support for the president’s signature program called Obamacare, a Washington Times review of federal contracting records shows. Last week, for example, the Department of Energy awarded a $900,000-plus grant for the development of a safety regimen for workers facing hazardous duties in energy and waste jobs. It didn’t go to a safety firm or training school but rather to a labor union: Akron...

Arutz Sheva was on hand to cover Kenneth Abramowitz, co-founder of NGN Capital and founder of a blog about the threats facing the West called SaveTheWest.com, as he addressed the Israel Day Concert in Central Park in New York on Sunday. According to Abramowitz, America's success is due to three things: its ability to grow an economy, to protect both a secular and religious culture, and to protect itself physically from external threats. However, he noted that the US has room to improve in all of these categories, remarking, "we could end anti-Semitism in two minutes." "Anti-Semitism should be illegal...

A member of Hawaii’s House of Representatives is criticizing an ambitious, federally funded sex education program currently in use in 12 of the state’s public schools. The pilot curriculum, called “Pono Choices,” targets 11- to 13-year-old students. (“Pono” is a Hawaiian word that basically means “good” or “moral.”) Its creators include the University of Hawaii and, of course, Planned Parenthood. Rep. Bob McDermott, a Hawaii Republican, claims that the curriculum is “not age appropriate and not consistent with state policy” for a slew of reasons, reports EAGnews.org. McDermott’s biggest complaint is that the curriculum is wrong on a pretty major...

The Labor Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs plans to award up to $1 million in taxpayer dollars to increase gender equality at work in Morocco. The purpose of the grant is “to help build the capacity of civil society organizations,including non-governmental organizations and trade unions,in the Kingdom of Morocco to address working women's issues and empower women to more fully exercise their labor rights.” “Projects awarded funding will be expected to work with local organizations to enhance service delivery to women on matters related to their labor rights and interests and to raise public awareness of women's labor rights,”...

Men who use the restrooms in certain Michigan bars could be in for a surprise when they hear a female voice coming from the urinal. The state is distributing urinal cakes with sensors that play a recorded message urging bar-goers to call a cab or friend for a ride home instead of driving drunk. The recording ends with a reminder: “Oh, and don’t forget, wash your hands.” . . . The urinal cakes cost $10,000 and were covered by federal funds. The cost is “significantly less” than paid advertising and other sorts of communication, Kindraka said.

A nonprofit backed by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) spent more than $2 million in federal funds to provide environmental education to Philadelphia high school students - including trips to a resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For three years, the Caribbean-American Mission for Research, Education, and Action ran an exchange program for students at Overbrook High School and two island high schools. The Philadelphia students and their adult chaperones stayed at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef beachfront resort, on what the hotel website calls a "luminous white sand beach framed with the majestic turquoise waters of the Caribbean." Fattah's...

Florida's decision to reject federal grants tied to the Obama administration's health-care overhaul means it might not be able to compete for $100 million to improve the care and education of young children. A new federal Race to the Top program that aims to improve early learning was launched in May, the latest push from Washington to spur reform through competition among states. The first Race to the Top competition, embraced by then-Gov. Charlie Crist, resulted in a $700 million grant for the state last year. But Florida could remain on the sidelines in the newest competition, which has the...

WASHINGTON – The House on Thursday voted to end federal funding to National Public Radio. Republican supporters said it made good fiscal sense, and Democratic opponents called it an ideological attack that would deprive local stations of access to programs such as "Car Talk" and "All Things Considered." The bill, passed 228-192 along mainly partisan lines, would bar federal funding of NPR and prohibit local public stations from using federal money to pay NPR dues and buy its programs. The prospects of support in the Democratic-controlled Senate are slim. Seven Republicans broke ranks to vote against the bill.

"That is what Abercrombie revealed in the "recorded list". Hawaii has a separated list which this dupnik apparently was not aware of, in order to bypass normal American registrations, so doctors were not on the legal hook, and these foreign born infants could just be dumped into the system ---as Hawaii was not going to ask, and no one there was going to tell in this corrupt intrastate system. Barack Hussein Obama is ON THE SEPARATED LIST and not on the American born list."

Incoming governors of Wisconsin and Ohio, Scott Walker and John Kasich, have announced that they’ll be rejecting federal funds for new rail projects in their states. The federal government could leave that money unspent; saving the taxpayers untold millions, but this administration doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility. So they went looking around for someone willing to take the money, and Governor Pat Quinn stuck Illinois’ hand out as far as it could reach, happy to accept such a generous gift this Christmas season on behalf of his panhandling state. But why did Wisconsin and Ohio turn it down? Surely they...

Allie Winegar Duzett, Last week, the United States Department of Education awarded $50,000,000 to the Charter School Grant Program, to “replicate and expand” high-achieving public charter schools. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, over the next five years the grants are expected to serve 76,000 students, in 127 new and 31 expanded charter schools. In the past, grants of this nature were only given to start-up public charter schools—so public charter schools that were already set up and functioning were denied funding. The support for public charter schools is indeed heartening—and not limited only to the federal...

Federal Funds May Be Involved in Abortion Coverage for North Carolina Students Charlotte, NC -- The response to a national controversy -- generated with a pro-life student group uncovering information showing students who attend public universities in North Carolina will be forced to pay for abortions via their required student health care plan -- has been swift. http://LifeNews.com/state5341.html

Sometimes academic health research can look downright unhealthy, particularly if it is funded by the federal government. “The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded $126,000 over the past two years to a University of Washington study that established ‘web-based sex diaries’ for gay males as young as 16,” Matt Cover reported on CNS News today. “By the time the grants end in 2011, taxpayers will have spent more than $250,000 for the study.” Now there’s something in short supply in the private sector—gay porn websites. It’s not...

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known by the acronym ACORN, exists only in shell form, having formally disbanded on April 1. Yet whatever name(s) the radical nonprofit organizing network and its countless affiliates currently go under, the issue of its right to receive federal funds is anything but a dead letter. An appeals court ruling several days ago ensures as much. On Wednesday, April 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit temporarily reinstated a congressional ban on further public funding of the scandal-ridden group. The three-judge panel in Manhattan effectively overturned a lower...

The nation's political scientists are on the warpath, angry at efforts to cut off their federal funding and at taunts that they are getting taxpayer dollars to do what television talking heads do already. The professors of "poli sci" are fighting to save a taxpayer revenue stream amounting to $112 million in federal grants and other programs over the past decade to study topics ranging from how politicians benefit from being vague and how world leaders react to crises. Theyre letting fly on budget hawk Sen. Tom Coburns bid to eliminate the funds with the full force of academia: They...

Let's see just how much Congress isn't going to hurt ACORN. It appears that the Porkulus bill passed in January had a couple of bucks headed ACORN's way.

Some Berkeley business owners say they have received such a negative response from the recent City Council resolutions against the Marine Corps recruiting center in Downtown Berkeley that they may withhold city taxes in protest. Last week the council declared that the center was "unwelcome" in Berkeley and sought to aide Code Pink, a group that organizes regular protests outside the center, by reserving a parking space for the group in front of the center, among other actions. Since then, the resolutions have elicited a nationwide response. Last Thursday, United States Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he would attempt to...

WEST COLUMBIA — When private property gets in the way of a road project, its owners will be moving out of the way, one way or another, in almost every case. With a widening of Highway 36 on the horizon and state and federal officials ready to drive the Trans-Texas Corridor through the Lone Star State, many land-owning Texans are preparing to defend their property from their own government. Brazoria County residents troubled by the looming eminent domain fights came to the Gulf Coast Christian Center on Saturday morning to voice their views to Tom Lizardo, chief of staff for...

Just Breaking!!!! Supreme Court Upholds "Colleges who accept Federal Funds must allow Military Recruiters"