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The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory and President Ronald Reagan enjoyed a deep relationship for many years. National Day of Reflection By the President of the United States of America Amid the distractions and concerns of our daily existence, it is appropriate that Americans pause to reflect upon the ancient ethical principles and moral values which are the foundation of our character as a nation. We seek, and steadfastly pursue, the benefits of education. But education must be more than factual enlightenment-it must enrich the character as well as the mind. One shining example for people of...

Governor Gilmore phased out 70 percent of the car tax during his term as Governor. The 4th and final car tax cut of the remaining 30 percent was supposed to happen under Mark Warner but he blocked it, claiming the state could not afford to finish the car tax cut -- just as he claimed the state had a budget mess when he raised taxes by $1.4 billion. After cutting the car tax by 70 percent so working families would have more of their money, Governor Gilmore left Mark Warner a balanced budget as required by law and more than...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Forget about passing notes in study hall; some teens are now using their cell phones to flirt and send nude pictures of themselves. The instant text, picture and video messages have become part of some teens' courtship behavior, police and school officials said. The messages often spread quickly and sometimes find their way to public Web sites. "I've seen everything from your basic striptease to sexual acts being performed," said Reynoldsburg police Detective Brian Marvin, a member of the FBI Cyber Crime Task Force of Central Ohio. "You name it, they will do it at their home...

The bottom line is clear, says Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl: The Catholic Church can no longer afford to run a full complement of inner-city parochial schools serving a population that is, by an overwhelming majority, non-Catholic. So, facing a deficit of about $50 million over the next five years, the church is moving to convert at least seven D.C. elementary schools into secular, taxpayer-funded charter schools. "We simply don't have the resources to keep all those schools open," Wuerl said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors the other day. "We have exhausted the resources available to us."...

America has a growing enemy within. This enemy is referred to by experts as America’s Fifth Column. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the term Fifth Column refers to “A clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity [unity] by any means at their disposal.” As Britannica notes, the term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his “fifth column,” intent on undermining the loyalist government from within....

BY Tyesha Tazwell's count, there were a dozen of them - six girls, six boys - hanging around together. One of the girls tried to get Tazwell's attention by uttering a polite-sounding "Excuse me." Then they pounced. Tazwell, 24, said it took only a few seconds for the teens to knock her to the ground. They pounded her face with a barrage of kicks and punches, stole her purse and chanted "Watch your mouth! Watch your mouth!" when she finally got to her feet and tried to get help. It might sound like Tazwell received this brutal beating in some...

My old Catholic elementary school has been struggling, and that's not good for anybody. St. Germaine School in Pittsburgh, Pa. will merge with another Catholic school because of declining enrollment at both schools. St. Germaine's enrollment dropped from 172 students just six years ago to 86 this year. Sister Dale McDonald, Director of Public Policy and Education Research at the National Catholic Educational Association, told me that declining enrollment is a national trend. Though there is some growth in the South and the West, Catholic schools are shutting down at the rate of more than 100 per year. Why? Catholic...

TAMPA -- Before a Davidsen Middle School teacher started a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student, she told the boy she could help him overcome his shyness, according to a new court filing. When teacher Stephanie Ragusa, 28, left, broke her foot and was confined to a wheel chair, the boy was assigned to escort her around the school, detectives wrote in their request for a search warrant filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court. Ragusa told the boy when they got into the elevator that she noticed he was "shy and she could break him of that," the warrant states. Then,...

Today's Washington Post details a nice example of where feminist sexual harassment hysteria (combined with a litigious society) leads: "In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate. "During recess at his Woodbridge school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate. School officials wrote an...

BAYTOWN, Texas -- A 14-year-old gave birth to a baby in a junior high school bathroom and tried to flush the newborn down the toilet, killing the infant, police told Houston television station KPRC. Grief counselors helped students and staff on Thursday deal with the incident. Baytown police said the eighth-grade student delivered the near full-term baby at Cedar Bayou Junior High School on Wednesday morning while she was alone. The baby was born alive, investigators said. "We understand that the baby was alive when it was born and that the girl attempted to flush the child down the toilet....

Growing up, as I did, in the home of Russian Jewish immigrants, it figures that I’d start out thinking that, by all rights, FDR belonged on Mount Rushmore. But, all these years later, I have concluded that most of America’s woes can be traced back to his presidency, and that the best reason for his being up there along with Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, is that his head was already made of stone. Although FDR is often, mistakenly, credited with bringing the Great Depression to an end, as Amity Shlaes made clear in her book, “The Forgotten Man,�...

When I read that Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern had "outraged gay activists," I knew that she had told an important truth. And, sure 'nuf, she had. She said: "The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation. Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades." She said she thinks the homosexual agenda is "the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat." Kern's office has received more than 23,000 emails, mostly condemning her views, many of the emails said to...

Sheryl Sueppel and her four children suffered blunt-force trauma, and husband and father Steven Sueppel is probably their killer, officials said Tuesday at a press conference. Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine said authorities' investigation "suggests Steven Sueppel was the perpetrator of the homicide." He was identified as the person who called to report the family's deaths around 6:30 a.m. March 24. Officials also said two baseball bats may have been involved. Still, authorities do not have a cause of death for any of the Sueppels, pending autopsies being performed Tuesday. Steven Sueppel tried to kill himself at least twice...

The incident occurred at about 2:35 p.m. before the turnstiles on the Market-Frankford Line concourse at 13th and Market streets, police said. One adult male was taken to Jefferson University Hospital but was later pronounced dead. Police said homicide investigators have been summoned to the scene. A transit police sergeant was on patrol on the eastbound platform at the time of the incident. "While on patrol, he notices across the way, on the westbound concourse, a white male adult, about 30-years-old, and he's being confronted by four, young black males. A disturbance is obvious to him. He goes to investigate,"...

LifeNews.com Note: Laura Echevarria is a LifeNews.com opinion columnist. She is the former Director of Media Relations and a spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee and has been a radio announcer, freelance writer active in local politics. *One in four teens has a sexually transmitted disease.*Pro-abortion members of Congress have requested that funding for abstinence education be cut off. *The National Education Association allowed the Feminist Majority Foundation to host its leadership conference for young women at the NEA facilities. The speaker? Infamous late-term abortionist George Tiller. *The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is developing a...

Why Don't Kids Walk To School Anymore?No sidewalk and no green buffer makes walking feel unsafe. A wide treed buffer between a sidewalk and the street encourages walking. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan) ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine. So why don't most children today walk or bike to school? It's not necessarily because they're spoiled, lazy or over scheduled. According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or...

OXNARD, Calif. - Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them. That may have been what got him killed. On Feb. 12, another student, Brandon McInerney, 14, shot him twice in the head at the back of the computer lab at their junior high school, police say. The slaying of the 15-year-old boy has alarmed gay rights activists and led to demands that middle schools do more to educate youngsters...

(Note: be sure to read Alex K.'s illuminating response to the points I raise below.)Just a passing question. The Wall Street Journal is opposed to statism, yes? Has the Journal raised jeremiads against, warned about, opposed, criticized, or even mildly questioned Europe's steady march toward a quasi-totalitarian superstate subsuming the ancient states of Europe? Offhand, I'm not aware that the Journal or of any mainstream "conservative" publication have stood against this impending horror. In the same way, the "conservatives" are evidently going along with John "Patriot" McCain's newly minted internationalism, including his support for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of...

Schoolmate, 6, and brother, 4, are alleged victims Tuesday, April 1, 2008 3:12 AM BY RANDY LUDLOW THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH A 10-year-old Marion County boy has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial on delinquency counts of rape and gross sexual imposition. Marion County officials declined to provide details about the case, but a Prospect-area woman says the boy molested her 4- and 6-year-old sons last summer. The woman is upset that the 10-year-old continues to attend the same Prospect school, South Elgin Elementary, as her 6-year-old first-grader. "I'm furious, but my hands are tied," the woman said yesterday. She...

SCOTTSBORO - Jackson County Circuit Judge John Graham today ordered the Scottsboro City Board of Education to allow a gay couple to attend Scottsboro High School's senior-junior prom tonight. Chelsea Overstreet, 17, a junior at the high school, and her date Lauren Martin, 16, a sophomore at the school, were initially told by school officials they could not attend because the school board does not allow students of the same sex to attend the prom together, their lawyer Parker Edmiston of Scottsboro said in a press conference this afternoon. Because there is no state law specific to the issue, Graham...

When it comes to teachers and students, there is no such thing as consensual sex, experts said yesterday. The power differential is too exploitative in those sexual encounters, said Charol Shakeshaft, a former Hofstra University professor who now teaches educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and is an expert on sexual abuse in schools. "It's a violation of trust and professional boundaries," Shakeshaft said of the March 20 encounter Nassau police say happened between Heather Kennedy, 25, a math teacher at Wantagh High School, and a 16-year-old boy who is a student at the school. Kennedy was arraigned yesterday on...

The southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, which has been still for more than two centuries, is under immense stress and could produce a massive earthquake at any moment, a scientist said on Wednesday. Yuri Fialko, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, said that given average annual movement rates in other areas of the fault, there could be enough pent-up energy in the southern end to trigger a cataclysmic jolt of up to 10 metres (32 ft). "The observed strain rates confirm that the southern section of the San Andreas fault may...

by Mark Finkelstein June 19, 2006 The Bush administration takes terror threats too darn seriously. That's what Ron Suskind says in his recently-released book, 'The One Percent Doctrine'. Suskind, who was on the Today show this morning to discuss the book with Matt Lauer, is a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Those who might think that would indicate a conservative bent should be aware that, perhaps more than at any other paper in America, there is a remarkable contrast in the political leanings of the news and the editorial operations of the WSJ. Yes, the editorial page is keenly free-market...

June 15, 2006 -- WHO'D have thought it possible even a month ago? President Bush is getting his mojo back. The president just had the best week of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency - and the end of the investigation of Karl Rove, which would have been the headline grabber not long ago, had little to do with it. Instead, the president's brilliantly conceived and executed trip to Baghdad - giving exactly the right boost at the right time to new Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki - capped off seven days that included the forming of a...