Free Republic

Steven Salaita is one of the leaders of the anti-Israel academic boycott movement in the United States. He even has authored a guide for other faculty as to how to implement boycotts of Israel at their own universities.Salaita currently is an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech and starting in August will join the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s American Indian Studies Dept.Salaita’s Twitter feed is crudely anti-Israel and has been since long before the recent Gaza conflict. Maybe that will be an issue for a later day.But for today it’s worth noting that Salaita is following the path we...

An aquatics instructor at a summer camp for youngsters at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore has been charged with sexual solicitation of a minor, police said. Charles David Beaver, 58, a former teacher at Westminster High School, was arrested Tuesday at a Baltimore County hotel, police said. Police said the Carroll County man had communicated online with a person he believed was a pimp to arrange a meeting at the hotel with two teenage boys for sex. The supposed pimp was actually a Baltimore County detective. When Beaver showed up at the hotel, he was taken into custody....

A Randolph County teacher is behind bars after he allegedly exchanged sexual texts, phone calls, and pictures with a 16-year-old student. According to the criminal complaint, 34-year-old Donald Johnson allegedly sent multiple sexual messages to one of his own students.

A star high school athlete in rural Marshalltown, Iowa has been suspended for three football games this fall because he posted a social media image of himself enthusiastically festooned from head to toe in white clothing during school spirit week. In the photo, he made the letter “W” with his hands — which in this case stands for white. “The actual school chose the colors that each grade would be wearing,” Cathy Van Staalduine explained. “Juniors wore white. So Blair, of course, being active in the school, dressed from head to toe in white.” She noted emphatically that the “W”...

A University of Arizona professor says reader commenters of newspaper articles and letters-to-the-editor writers are using a posture of opposing illegal immigration to promote violence against people of Mexican ancestry, and are thus committing hate crimes. "The vast majority [of undocumented immigrants] are not criminals. They confuse being a migrant with being a criminal," Rodriguez says in the interview. "[T]hese are people not being charged with violence. They're not being charged with drug running. None of that. The crime is simply entry and re-entry."

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. - A decade-old allegation accusing a local teacher is being re-investigated after the teacher was arrested for similar charges. Matthew Graziotti, who works at the Warner Christian Academy in South Daytona, was arrested on Monday for producing and distributing child porn. Graziotti had been accused of misconduct with minor children in 2004, according to Edgewater police, but no evidence was discovered at that time. With this new arrest, the past allegation is being re-investigated, police told Local 6.

Just when you thought there couldn’t be another Planned Parenthood scandal, the pro-life group Live Action finds this: an employee encouraging a 15-year-old girl to engage in sex fantasy games with her boyfriend. In the second episode of a series entitled “SexEd: Planned Parenthood’s Dangerous Sex Advice for Kids,” a Live Action volunteer went undercover at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado, to see how workers would react to her questions about Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission (BDSM). Unfortunately, this particular employee was all too eager to give the young girl advice about how she and...

Two more investigative videos from pro-life organization Live Action show Planned Parenthood facilities in Denver, Colorado offering disturbing and dangerous advice to what staffers think are underage girls. The counselors lay out in graphic detail a spectrum of sadistic sexual behaviors to the investigators, including "whipping," "tying up," and "asphyxiation." As one of the Live Action videos shows, a gruesome crime involving asphyxiation recently captured media interest.  Police discovered 16-year-old Jessica Burlew this past January with the corpse of 43-year-old Jason Ash, whom Burlew had strangled to death and mutilated with razor blades in the midst of "a sex game." "Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains...

Two former administrators at Linwood Monroe Arts Plus School in St. Paul have been charged for failing to report alleged sexual abuse by a former custodian. Beth A. Behnke, 48, of Burnsville was principal in 2011 when Walter Happel allegedly spied on an 11-year-old boy in a bathroom. Craig A. Guidry, 52, of Arden Hills was assistant principal. On Monday, Behnke and Guidry were both charged with one count each of misdemeanor failure to report the maltreatment of minors. According to the criminal complaint, on Dec. 26, 2011, a mother of the boy reported to St. Paul police her son...

[Morgen: Geoffrey is a regular commenter who we invited to post on occasion, based on his depth of analysis and clear writing ability. The ground war over the future of our nation's values is being waged in our school systems, and people like Bill Ayers are generals in this war. As they are wont to do, they mask their philosophies and strategies under the cloak of academic research and arcane terminology. Geoffrey's piece is a great primer on the core of liberal (socialist) strategy to subvert the education of our children.] The motivational and foundational philosophical theorems of the American...

A High School in California has insisted that it has a right to ban the mention of God in a student’s graduation speech paradoxically claiming the Constitution gives them that power. In July 18-year-old Brooks Hamby refused to follow the schools ban order and thanked Jesus in his speech anyway sending the school into fits of apoplexy. A California school district says it will not apologize to a teenager who defied its orders and mentioned God in his graduation speech. Attorneys representing the Brawley Union High School District have written a 10-page letter defending the school’s right not only to...

... Music teacher Flint Dollar has filed a lawsuit claiming Macon, Georgia, Catholic school Mount de Sales Academy discriminated against him based on gender, NPR reports. Dollar can't sue the school for bias against him based on sexual orientation because federal law does not bar such discrimination — and neither does the state of Georgia. Dollar's lawyer, Charles Cox, argues Dollar can use Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — which forbids discrimination based on gender — to sue the school because he was essentially penalized for not conforming to gender stereotypes. ...

ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP) -- There are atheists and liberals, some who are both, who believe there is no need for God in order for morality to be maintained in a society. They argue that people can act morally apart from a supreme authority. I agree that people can act morally apart from God's standard. However, the real question is why should they? If there is no supreme authority -- no God -- then why behave morally? If there is no God, there are no objective standards for moral behavior. The logical progression leads to anarchy. Everyone does what is right...

“…the American revolution was violent and it was illegal.” - Bill Ayers, Co-Founder of Weather Underground. Radicals compare themselves to America’s Founding Fathers. However, it’s hard to envision George Washington cowering behind a bush while pressing a detonator. In battle, Washington rode on horseback, completely exposed, leading his army of citizen soldiers into leaden clouds of heavy musket balls fired from sneering, massed English troops bent on dealing death and mayhem. But, Washington was no stranger to valor. Prior to the War for Independence, Washington displayed the heroism which was to become his hallmark when, during the Battle of Monongahela,...

A former Western Albemarle High School teacher already facing charges is back in jail. Waynesboro police arrested John Daniel Patterson Jr. for child porn and solicitation of a minor. This is round two of charges for Patterson. The Augusta County Sheriff’s Office arrested Patterson in April when he thought he was talking to a 13-year-old boy, but it was actually a police sting. After his first arrest, police say they discovered Patterson did have an online relationship with a real teenager. That's what Waynesboro police arrested him for Wednesday morning.

LAKELAND | A Haines City High School geometry teacher was among three people arrested on child pornography charges in recent weeks as part of an undercover investigation that also resulted in at least 13 arrests of people who traveled to have sex with minors, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said Monday night. Enlarge Matthew Tillesen, 28, of Winter Haven, was charged with 50 counts of possession of child pornography during the first of two phases of a Sheriff's Office undercover investigation called Operation Cyber Child III. The child pornography arrests were the result of three search warrants executed at three...

Durham, N.C. — A former teacher for Durham Public Schools was arrested Wednesday on accusations that she had an inappropriate relationship with a student, authorities said Monday. Michelle Smith White, 37, of Penrith Drive, Durham, faces charges of taking indecent liberties with a student and engaging in a sex offense with a student. Deputy Paul Sherwin, a spokesman for the Durham County Sheriff's Office, said White, who worked at Charles E. Jordan High School, started a friendship with the female student in 2012, when the girl was 15. "Sometime between 2012 and most recently, that evolved into a sexual relationship,"...

WHAG NEWS - A Hedgesville high school teacher is facing sexual assault charges accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student. The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office confirmed Erin Thomas is charged with third degree sexual assault and two charges of computer harassment. Officials say the 31-year-old allegedly had a relationship with a female student that began last year when she was a Freshman.

Teacher isn’t fired after giving teen gifts, sending ‘love’ texts By Susan Edelman A Queens middle-school teacher let a 14-year-old student drive his car, gave him cash and expensive gifts, and exchanged hundreds of texts behind his parent’s back. But, over the objections of the outraged parents and principal, the teacher can keep his job, an arbitrator has ruled. James Rampulla Jr., 44, who taught at Irwin Altman MS 172 in Floral Park, sent some of the 513 texts to the boy after 11 p.m. and included the words “I love you,” according to evidence presented at the teacher’s administrative...

A gay advocacy group is calling for the federal government to loosen internet filters in schools as a way to assist the gay community. In a paper released Thursday, the LGBT Technology Partnership and Institute argues that the gay community has “particular needs” for the internet that call for government action. In particular, the group is urging a reform of the government’s E-Rate policy that they say is blocking low-income individuals and students from accessing important LGBT resources and reaching out to other members of the gay community. E-Rate is the common name for a federal program, administered by the...