Free Republic

FULL TITLE: Hospital Officials Waited 28 Hours Before Finally Feeding Alfie Evans. “Not Even an Animal Would be Treated Like This” Little Alfie Evans is finally getting food. But officials at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital waited 28 hours before finally feeding the 23-month old boy, who is fighting a rare neurological condition. It’s bad enough that Alfie is not being allowed to go home or to be transferred to a hospital in Italy that has promised to provide him appropriate care and treatment and possible experimental treatment. But the little boy also had to face the prospect of only getting...

FULL TITLE: Alfie Evans Survives for 36 Hours After Hospital Yanks His Life Support. Father: “It’s Totally Unexpected” Little Alfie Evans has survived for 36 hours after a children’s hospital yanked his life support without his parents’ consent. That’s despite the prediction doctors made that Alfie wouldn’t live very long after his life support was removed. Yesterday, the judge in the Alfie Evans case has officially prohibited his parents from flying the 23-month old boy to Rome Italy to take him to a pediatric hospital that has offered to provide appropriate medical care and treatment for him. Alfie’s parents had...

American supporters of Alfie Evans who have been wondering what they can do now have an opportunity to show their support publicly. Supporters of Alfie and his family will be gathering in Washington DC on Thursday at the British Embassy to hold a prayer vigil on their behalf. Led by Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition,the prayer vigil for Alfie will take place at the British embassy on Thursday, April 26 at 11:00 a.m. “Alfie Evans has a mysterious, undiagnosed disease and is in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, England. A massive court battle over his care...

Justice Anthony Hayden, the judge at the center of the Alfie Evans case, is a member of The Bar Lesbian and Gay Group (BLAGG) and co-authored a book on homosexual relationships and their pertinence to children’s rights. A post on the website of BLAGG – a British association that supports “lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender persons at all levels” of the legal profession – names Hayden as a member.  The post is titled BLAGG Member appointed to High Court Wednesday, 31 July 2013 and remains on BLAGG’s website as of April 24, 2018 at 10:05 p.m. EST. The article...

Whatever happens with the legal battle over Alfie Evans’ life and death and whether his parents can take him home or take him to Italy for proper care and treatment, the battle in the courts may continue for some time. That’s because Alfie’s parents reportedly considered legal action against the doctors and staff from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital that withdrew his life support without their permission. That Tom Evans considered filing suit against medical personnel came out in today’s hearing before the Appeals Court considering the decision but Justice Hayden: Alfie Evans’ father has threatened to privately prosecute three NHS...

A new report finds that, under the guise of “personalized learning,” school-issued computer devices — now distributed to one-third of K-12 students in schools across the United States — are serving to collect and store an unprecedented amount of personal data on children without their parents’ notice or consent. A newly released investigation by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveals student use of technology in school has grown at a profound rate, especially with free or low-fee devices issued by schools.

A new book that sells the concept of Communism “in the simple terms of a children’s story” has failed to sell on Amazon.com — except in the category for true believers. “Communism for Kids” by MIT Press “unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers,” its Amazon.com page explains. […] Scathing customer reviews give the book a rating of only 1.7 out of 5 stars, with comments noting communism has killed “over 60 million people” and asking, “If Communism is so great why are they selling the book. Isn’t that capitalism?” …

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A Buffalo mother who withdrew her children from public schools to homeschool them now faces child neglect charges, and her children have been removed from her custody. Single mother Kiarre Harris filed all of the required paperwork with Buffalo City Hall to remove her children from Buffalo Public Schools in early December over concerns about the school system. She also filed the individualized educational program to homeschool her elementary school kids, which she did for several weeks, WKBW reports. “I felt like the system was failing my children and that’s when I made the decision to homeschool,”...

America, Hillary Clinton wants control of your children. The Democratic presidential nominee sent a collective chill down the spine of many parents in a disturbing Twitter post on Thursday.

The Left’s Next Battlefront If you thought the transgender bathroom was the hill upon which the progressive movement would die, get ready for the next outrageous little war the left is waging against common sense. Last week the City of San Francisco passed an amendment (9-2) to lower the voting age to 16 years old. It will appear on this November’s ballot in an effort to expand voting “rights”. It may be tempting to laugh it off as “wacky San Francisco”, but advocates intend to replicate this around the country, and worldwide. Their wishes may be soon granted: Council members...

7th Graders Forced To Deny God Is real, Or Take Failing Grade

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday that his agency is looking for “creative ways” to give public school students access to more meals, including a way to provide them breakfast, lunch and dinner year round. “We have focused on efforts to try to figure out ways in which we can expand in those time periods when youngsters may not have access to school meals,” Vilsack said in remarks at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. That includes giving students access to meals “across the school day, across the school year and across the calendar year,” he...

The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round, just like the endless cycles of big, bad government programs to federalize preschool and daycare. On Wednesday, the White House Summit on Early Education will unveil nearly $1 billion in new "investments" to "expand access to high-quality early childhood education to every child in America" from "birth and continuing to age 5." It's a retread of President Obama's 2013 State of the Union school-spending plan, which was a repackaging of his 2011 Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge program. Those Obama initiatives are knockoffs of moldy-old Democratic policy chestnuts, such...

“For millions of families in the United States, childcare is their single largest household expense at nearly $15,000 a year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday in a speech on the Senate floor. “And in an economy where most families have two working parents, childcare isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.” The Senate on Thursday is scheduled to vote on a bill that would amend and reauthorize through fiscal year 2020 the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990. The program provides funding to the states for child-care subsidies for low-income families, as well as money to improve...

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium, one of the very few countries where euthanasia is legal, is expected to take the unprecedented step this week of abolishing age restrictions on who can ask to be put to death — extending the right to children for the first time .The legislation appears to have wide support in the largely liberal country.

The game was called “Cross the Line,” an ironic title because that’s exactly what parents of students at a middle school in Marinette, Wisconsin think the educators did. WLUK Fox 11 News is reporting that Marinette Middle School played the game in which 5th through 8th graders were grouped together and asked to step forward if they had a “yes” answer to questions like, “Do your parents drink?” and “Has anyone in your family been to jail?” It’s unclear who exactly was leading the game. Parent Amanda Fifarek was not happy with the activity, telling WLUK, “It was too personal....

"The children belong to all of us," Paul Reville, an education professor at Harvard and former Massachusetts secretary of Education, said Friday in explaining why states should adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative. "What we're doing at the national level ... is what a lot of our states thought made sense individually. Why should some towns in cities or states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us and would move. And the same logic applies to the nation," he said, making the case for national standards....

In addressing criticism of the Common Core national education standards, a panelist at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, said critics were a “tiny minority” who opposed standards altogether, which was unfair because “the children belong to all of us.” Reville continued, “Again, the argument about where it came from I think privileges certain sort of fringe voices about federalism and states’ rights, and things of that nature, when really what we’re doing at the national level here now, state by state, is what a lot of our states thought made sense individually.” “Why should some...

In New York, a bill has been proposed by Democrat Assemblywoman Margaret Markey that would require all public school students to undergo mental health exams, more than once, in order to attend. Loesch points out how this fits into a larger picture that is forming with Common Core requirements and various state legislatures across the country. Schools are collecting information such as parental political affiliations, firearm ownership, religious affiliations, and other forms of data mining. She also poses the important question of who would pay for this. Is it going to be yet another financial burden for low and middle...

Viewed from Washington, which often is the last to learn about important developments, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky. The Common Core represents the ideas of several national organizations (of governors and school officials) about what and how children should learn. It is the thin end of an enormous wedge. It is designed to advance in primary and secondary education the general progressive agenda...