Free Republic

Was at a local restaurant for breakfast/lunch today and I was looking at the menu, another party, of one white grown male with a very Oak Lawn Dallas accent and a pink shirt, and what looked like with two foster children, was very loud, were seated. The two male foster kids(I surmise) were not amused.

A plan to house migrant children from the surging crisis at the US-Mexico border will leave a Renton foster family with no place to call home. Edmundo Serena Sanchez said he and his wife were notified in February that they would have to vacate the Renton house where they have nurtured and raised Washington state foster children for nearly seven years. “It was just senseless. Everything they did was irresponsible,” Serena Sanchez said of the move-out order that came after a year of lockdown from the coronavirus pandemic. The couple have fostered about 20 children over the years in the...

Not just foster care providers, but religious groups of all kinds are closely following the case of Fulton v. the City of Philadelphia. Indeed, all those who care about our nation’s children should be.While this case before the U.S. Supreme Court to be decided in 2021 directly concerns the provision of foster care, by placing hypothetical arguments about non-discrimination ahead of the religious freedoms ensconced in the First Amendment — and ahead of children’s actual needs — the broader ramifications of the case threaten to force religion further from the public sphere.In his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2012,...

A shocking report out of Germany says that government agencies intentionally placed homeless children with a widespread and influential pedophile ring for decades. Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his “experiment.” Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued.A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance.Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin’s center for educational research. He was...

We tend to think if the road is hard, we are on the wrong road. With adoption, the opposite is usually true: The road is hard because we are doing it right. Myka Stauffer of YouTube fame has “re-homed” her autistic, adopted Chinese child, Huxley. Stauffer became widely known in large part due to the video documentation of her adoption journey. Huxley’s emotional gotcha-day video has more than 5 million views.Over the following two years, Stauffer posted regular updates of Huxley’s progress, including his autism diagnosis and references to his therapy. A few months ago, fans started noticing Huxley’s increasing...

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that city contractors must abide by nondiscrimination policies in the placement of foster children with same-sex couples. A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the city, which had ended a foster-care contract with an agency of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. That agency, Catholic Social Services, had declined to place foster children in LGBTQ households and sought an injunction that would have forced the city to renew its contract. The appeals panel said "the religious views of CSS do not entitle it to an exception" from the city's...

Antipsychotics and Maryland foster children In an attempt to ensure psychotropic medications are being appropriately prescribed to children, the Maryland Medicaid Pharmacy Program has established the Peer Review Program for Mental Health, in collaboration with the Behavioral Health Administration, the University of Maryland Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and School of Pharmacy, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Any prescription for antipsychotic medication to any child under 18 is automatically referred to the program.

Neglect and abandonment landed the girl in foster care. But it’s what happened next, she said, that nearly destroyed her. In a hushed courtroom in Miami’s gleaming new downtown Children’s Courthouse, a teenage foster child inventoried the traumas she had endured at the hands of those who were assigned to protect her: She had been starved and beaten, molested and forced to fight during her two years in foster homes and group care. As a runaway, she was trafficked into prostitution. And, just as her life appeared to be mending, the girl was raped by a driver in whose care...

Breitbart recently reported that the federal government is offering (through a Southern California charity) up to $6,000.00 per month (tax free) to house illegal immigrant children.  This should come as no surprise to those who recognize that the rainbow hovering over President Obama’s Utopia contains nothing but a full spectrum of stupidity and a pot of gold at the end in D.C.  Given this latest revelation in Obama’s growing immigration crisis, any adoption agencies currently struggling with the daunting task of placing American foster kids into good homes may wish to take heed of these developments. Benswann.com offers some additional...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Police found a child restrained in a southeast Memphis home Thursday. Police say a girl inside the home called them and said her brother was chained up. Officers arrived and found an 8-year-old boy restrained inside the home. Neighbors say the girl got a hold of a cellphone when her mother went to the grocery store. Valerie Golden lives nearby and said her son played at the home and returned home to say the children there were hungry and one boy was chained to a fence one day and locked inside a shed another. “My son has...

Salon.com editor-at-large Joan Walsh says a lot is just "not known" about GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann. Walsh must not read her own website because a simple search of their archives and a broader search on Google of Salon.com and Bachmann yields a lot of results. A lot. "She's [Bachmann] trying to make this -- and they're all trying to make this about the economy. So they're thinking that's going to be the club which to batter President Obama [with]," Salon.com editor Joan Walsh said. "You know, the more people dig into her background, her foster kids, there's just a...

A Mother’s Wisdom: Congresswoman introduces nationwide foster care scholarship bill Dan Lips, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, February 13, 2008 As a foster mother to 23 children, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) appreciates the many challenges faced by foster children—and those who care for them. One big hurdle is education. “We quickly learned that our foster children had very different needs than most children,” Bachman has said. Most of the children in her care had special needs, were in therapy, and had other behavioral or learning issues. Judging by all outcome measures, foster children struggle in school compared to their peers. Foster...

AUSTIN - Senate leaders Tuesday predicted support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages in Texas but said senators will oppose a separate effort by the House to prohibit homosexuals from being foster parents. "The Senate's very, very united in our belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman," Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said, one day after the House had approved the gay marriage ban 101-29. If two-thirds of the Senate approves the constitutional amendment, it will be placed on the November ballot for voters to approve or reject. Texas already has a law against same-sex marriages,...

OCHESTER, N.Y. - A lawyer shot himself to death as jurors began deliberating whether he sexually assaulted two foster children he had been assigned to protect, authorities said Wednesday. Andrew Dunn, 40, a law guardian for children appearing in Rochester's family court, didn't arrive at his trial Tuesday, setting off a manhunt that ended later that day when troopers found his body on an embankment next to a creek. Dunn shot himself in the head with a 9-mm rifle he took from his brother's home, where he had been staying, and left a brief note that did not address his...

The parents of a 13-year-old foster child who made her bring food to a dead man who lay rotting in their Clark home pleaded guilty Tuesday to elderly neglect and child cruelty. Kenneth Keaveney and his wife, Donna, pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, admitting that Donna's father was left to rot upstairs for weeks before being found on the floor of a room littered with flies, maggots and dog feces. Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said the plea ends any doubts as to what happened to Nicola Lombardi, whose decomposed corpse was discovered nearly mummified in the August...

Passengers on a gay cruise were greeted by more than 100 protesters as they stepped off their chartered ship Friday in the Bahamas. The protesters, led by Christian pastors, gathered in a square in front of the cruise terminal and chanted, "Gay Ways are Not God's Ways!"

To: National Desk and Political Reporter Contact: Allison Dobson of Kerry-Edwards, 202-464-2800, Web: http://www.johnkerry.com BOSTON, July 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Senator John Kerry released the following statement today: "The floor of the United States Senate should only be used for the common good, not issues designed to divide us for political purposes. Throughout history, amending our Constitution -- the foundation of the nation's values and ideals -- has been serious business. However, even Republicans concede that this amendment is being offered only for political gains. The unfortunate result is that the important work of the American people -- funding our...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage foundered Wednesday afternoon when the proposal failed to garner enough votes in the Senate to stay alive. After final arguments by the leaders of each party, Republicans mustered 48 votes, 12 short of the 60 they needed to overcome a procedural hurdle and move the proposed amendment to the floor.

Judge Orders N.Y. Couple Not to Conceive By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 8, 2004 Filed at 12:14 a.m. ET ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A couple has been ordered not to conceive any more children until the ones they already have are no longer in foster care. A civil liberties advocate said the court ruling unsealed Friday was ``blatantly unconstitutional.'' Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that both parents ``should not have yet another child which must be cared for at public expense.'' ``The facts of this case and the reality of parenthood cry out for...

Loving Hispanic woman is a state agency's ideal Thursday, May 13, 2004 "It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability," says Margaret Quintana, surrounded by four of her five foster children. Margaret Quintana's most prized possessions include the mementos of a typically proud mother: pictures of smiling children, and letters, cards, and poems from them that describe the difference that her love made in their lives.They are not her biological children. They are the dozens of foster children, most of them Hispanic, whom Quintana has taken into her home during the last 16 years.Quintana...