Fat Clothes with Warnings

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15/12/06 - Diet & fitness section

Obese should have health warnings on their clothes

Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain's fat crisis, a leading professor said today.

And new urban roads should only be built if they have cycle lanes, according to Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow.

Also see
• Surgeons to carry out plastic surgery on obese children
• Major obesity surgery for children will be available on the NHS


He is calling for more government intervention with a central agency set up to deal with the problems of obesity.

Britain's fat problem is so acute that it could even bankrupt the health system if nothing is done.

More than half of the UK population is overweight and more than one in five adults is obese. Obese people are at high risk of health problems and treating them takes up an estimated 9 per cent of the health budget.

Prof Sattar is calling for more political intervention.

He and his colleagues say food manufacturers should also display energy content of all meals and snacks at retail and catering outlets.

The saturated fat content of all ready meals and snacks should also be clearly labelled.

New urban roads should only be built if they have safe cycle lanes and new housing complexes should be constructed only if they have sports facilities and green park areas, he says.

He also wants to see adviceline numbers attached to all clothes sold with waists above 102 cm for men, 94 cm for boys, 88 cm or size 16 for women and 80 cm for girls.

Such measures would affect comedian Dawn French who runs her own clothes shop Sixteen 47, catering for women up to a size 47.

Prof Sattar also wants ads for slimming services without independent evaluation banned, TV ads for sweets and snacks stopped before 9 pm, higher tax on high fat and high sugar foods and tax breaks for genuine corporate social responsibility.

In this week's British Medical Journal, Prof Sattar says education should be provided at all levels to change behaviour towards diet and physical activity, and obesity made a core part of all medical training.

"People clearly have some responsibility for their health, but society and government have a responsibility to make the preferred, easy choices healthier ones," he said.


Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/dietfitness.html?in_article_id=422917&in_page_id=1798
©2006 Associated New Media

Hey ACLU-I think he is talking to you!

And all of you fringe who agree that "separation of church and state"* means no religion what-so-ever (or-the religion of no religion) your buddy is speaking to you. As all of you democrats are trying so hard to be friends with Al of Iran, you are the first he would come after when he takes over the world.

*The phrase separation of church and state is a common interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ." The phrase was popularized by Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists. The phrase itself does not appear in any founding American document, but it has been quoted in opinions by the United States Supreme Court. (The first such mention was in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 in 1878. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state_in_the_United_States)

Follow God or vanish, Ahmadinejad tells West
Dec 06 5:14 AM US/Eastern

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Western leaders to follow the path of God or "vanish from the face of the earth".
"These oppressive countries are angry with us ... a nation that on the other side of the globe has risen up and proved the shallowness of their power," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern town of Ramsar, the semi-official news agency Mehr reported Wednesday.

"They are angry with our nation. But we tell them 'so be it and die from this anger'. Rest assured that if you do not respond to the divine call, you will die soon and vanish from the face of the earth," he said.

The outspoken president also maintained Iran's defiance over its controversial nuclear programme, saying it was on course to fully master nuclear technology.

"Thank to God's help, we have gone all the way and are only one step away from the zenith.

"We hope to have the big nuclear celebration by the end of the year (March 2007)," Ahmadinejad said, echoing comments he has made on numerous occasions in recent months.

A defiant Iran has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment work, a process that the West fears could be extended to make nuclear weapons.

Iran however insists its nuclear programme is solely aimed at generating energy.

France's Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Wednesday after a Paris meeting on Tehran's nuclear programme that the UN Security Council is agreed "there will be sanctions" on Iran, though their extent is yet to be decided.

More Terrorist Attacks To Come on Airlines

Does anyone think that this isn't what this is all about? Of course they are setting the stage for more attacks on airlines.



Would you let your child take this flight?
By Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
You are sitting in the concourse of an airport, preparing for your flight, when out of the corner of your eye, you spot six Arab men praying loudly in Arabic.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "that's a bit disquieting. But praying isn't terrorism."

You glance at your watch. It's time to board the plane. Sure enough, there's the boarding announcement. Suddenly, you hear the six Arab men chanting loudly. "Allah! Allah! Allah!"

"Okay," you say to yourself, "maybe they're still praying."

You board the flight and take your seat. You notice that two of the Arab men sit at the back of the airplane, two more sit in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle, and two sit at the front of the airplane.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "perhaps they couldn't get seats together."

A few seconds later, you hear a stewardess explain to another passenger that the six Arab men moved from their assigned seats to the new seating arrangement. And it seems that the two Arab men up front are now asking for seat-belt extensions.

"Okay," you say to yourself, "they don't look overweight. But perhaps they have indigestion."

Except that the two Arab men quickly tuck the seat-belt extensions underneath their seats. Then they begin speaking in both English and Arabic about President Bush, the war in Iraq, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

You spot another passenger signaling a stewardess. Minutes later, the six Arab men are escorted from the airplane.

Secretly, you're breathing easier. You make it to your destination without further incident. But when you turn on the television that evening, you see the six Arab men telling the media that their removal from the flight was a reflection of American xenophobia and ignorance. "I never felt bad in my life like yesterday," says one, apparently the leader of the group. "It was the worst moment in my life when I see six imams, six leaders in this community, humiliated. . . . In America we have no freedom to practice our faith, to do our faith."

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is telling the media that the incident will be investigated. A Democratic congresswoman from Texas is explaining that the terrorist attacks of September 11 "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslims and Arab Americans."

"Okay," you say to yourself, "maybe my perception was skewed by my fears."

Months pass. The ACLU steps into the fray. They sue the airline on behalf of the six Arab men. The airline quickly settles the case for a few million dollars. The head of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation declares victory. "This will send a message to the airline industry," he jubilates.

It's been a year since the incident. You are sitting in a concourse of an airport. You look up from your newspaper and see six Arab men praying loudly. As you board the flight, you hear them shouting: "Allah! Allah! Allah!" After stowing your carry-ons, you notice that the six Arab men have split into three groups of two: two at the front, two in the middle, two at the rear. The two in front are asking for seat-belt extensions. They are not overweight.

"Stewardess?" the man next to you calls. "Stewardess, I'm afraid that there are six Arab-looking men on the plane who are acting suspiciously." He describes their behavior.

"Oh, yes," the stewardess says. "Don't worry about them." The man turns back to his magazine.

The woman across the aisle prods him. "Frankly, sir, I'm a bit surprised at your close-mindedness," she says.

The cabin doors are closed. The plane taxis. Take-off is smooth.

And about half an hour after take-off, the two Muslim men at the front of the plane strangle the stewardesses to death.

The two at the back of the plane pull out knives they have smuggled through security.

And you realize that we no longer live in a safe world where the ACLU and Muslim sensitivities should be a first concern. You realize that your first priority should have been getting off that plane. And you realize that intentionally or unintentionally, the six Arab men who were pulled off the plane a year ago aided and abetted the six Arab terrorists who are taking over your plane today. They preyed on your liberal sensibilities, your fears of being called a "racist."

Then you hear the woman across the aisle. "Okay," she says to herself, "maybe they're just getting up to use the restrooms."


Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth.

Girls talking = herion. This is beautiful!

Here is a story that says when women talk it it gives us a rush that is like herion.

Women talk three times as much as men, says study
By FIONA MACRAE



Women talk almost three times as much as men, according to the research.

It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.

In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.

Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.

The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men.

In The Female Mind, Dr Luan Brizendine says women devote more brain cells to talking than men.

And, if that wasn't enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high.

Dr Brizendine, a self-proclaimed feminist, says the differences can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing male brain.

The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back the unborn baby boy.

The result is that boys - and men - chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent.

"Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," said Dr Brizendine, who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco.

There are, however, advantages to being the strong, silent type. Dr Brizendine explains that testosterone also reduces the size of the section of the brain involved in hearing - allowing men to become "deaf" to the most logical of arguments put forward by their wives and girlfriends.

But what the male brain may lack in converstation and emotion, they more than make up with in their ability to think about sex.

Dr Brizendine says the brain's "sex processor" - the areas responsible for sexual thoughts - is twice as big as in men than in women, perhaps explaining why men are stereotyped as having sex on the mind.

Or, to put it another way, men have an international airport for dealing with thoughts about sex, "where women have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes".

Studies have shown that while a man will think about sex every 52 seconds, the subject tends to cross women's minds just once a day, the University of California psychiatrist says.

Dr Brizendine, whose book is based on her own clinical work and analyses of more than 1,000 scientific studies, added: "There is no unisex brain.

"Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they're born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values and their very reality.

"I know it is not politically correct to say this but I've been torn for years between my politics and what science is telling us.

"I believe women actually perceive the world differently from men.

"If women attend to those differences they can make better decisions about how to manage their lives."

Other scientists, however, are sceptical about the effects of testosterone on the brain and say many of the differences between the male and female personality can be explained by social conditioning, with a child's upbringing greatly influencing their character.

Deborah Cameron, an Oxford University linguistics professor with a special interest in language and gender, said the amount we talk is influenced by who we are with and what we are doing.

She added: "If you aggregate a large number of studies you will find there is little difference between the amount men and women talk."

Already available in the US, The Female Brain will be available in the UK from April.

Bachelor Rome

Ok, I am actually going to 1. admit I watch a reality show, and a cheesy one at that and 2. comment publically about it.

I think the producers of the show wanted to be able to have Sadie do her own show. I think they steered the poor guy towards Jenn so that they could have a virgin as the bachlorette. Jenn would not have been interesting enough to have an entire show around so they wanted Sadie and did it. I think this relationship will end up as the last one did and they will not make it long. The poor guy will kick himself because of Sadie. But I think he will heal his heart by going back for the Italian girl that I can't spell her name. Just my guess.

What do you expect?

When no one in the Muslim world, including these "Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs.", speak up about the suicide bombings, World Trade Center bombings, killings of Americans overseas and so on, perpetrated by some Muslims, it is not our fault that we suspect. Give us a reason to trust you and we will. But as it stands we can't because your peers are saying "death to Americans" and you say nothing. What are we to believe?

Maybe mentioning to a flight attendant what you were doing instead of expecting everyone to know and understand. If I were to stand during a flight, even alone, the flight attendant would ask me to sit or assist me in what I am doing. When six men, any men, stand and do something in a group it seems threatening. When it is a group of Muslims it is a little too reminiscent. You should be the ones who are more understanding of our fears.

This just shows how you think the world should revolve around you and your religion. It is the main problem with the entire Islamic view of the world. Only you exist and we should all be of your like mind. WE are a collective of many people and thoughts YOU are only of your indifference.

6 Imams Removed From Twin Cities Flight
Nov 21 1:42 AM US/Eastern

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
Associated Press Writer
MINNEAPOLIS



Six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis- St. Paul International Airport on Monday and questioned by police for several hours before being released, a leader of the group said.
The six were among passengers who boarded Flight 300, bound for Phoenix, around 6:30 p.m., airport spokesman Pat Hogan said.

A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. She said police were called after the captain and airport security workers asked the men to leave the plane and the men refused.

"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," said Omar Shahin, of Phoenix.

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

"I never felt bad in my life like that," he said. "I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It's terrible."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed anger at the detentions.

"CAIR will be filing a complaint with relevant authorities in the morning over the treatment of the imams to determine whether the incident was caused by anti-Muslim hysteria by the passengers and/or the airline crew," Hooper said. "Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it's one that we've been addressing for some time."

Hooper said the meeting drew about 150 imams from all over the country, and that those attending included U.S. Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minneapolis, who just became the first Muslim elected to Congress. Shahin said they went as far as notifying police and the FBI about their meeting in advance.

Shahin expressed frustration that _ despite extensive efforts by him and other Muslim leaders since even before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks _ so many Americans know so little about Islam.

"If up to now they don't know about prayers, this is a real problem," he said.

Reached by cell phone just after his release, Shahin said he didn't know where they would spend the night or how they would try to get back to Phoenix on Tuesday. Hooper said US Airways refused to put the men on another flight.

Hogan said more information would likely be released Tuesday.

The other passengers on the flight, which was carrying 141 passengers and five crew members, were re-screened for boarding, Rader said. The plane took off about three hours after the men were removed from the flight.

Theodore Roosevelt 1907 on immigration

 Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being
an AMERICAN in 1907.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the
immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an
American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be
treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for
it is an outrage to discriminate against any such
man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But
this is predicated upon the person's becoming in
every facet an American, and nothing but an
American...There can be no divided allegiance here.
Any man who says he is an American, but something
else also, isn't an American at all. We have room
for but one flag, the American flag... We have room
for but one language here, and that is the English
language... and we have room for but one sole
loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American
people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Why NOT to live in CA & Homeschool Reason #140

Not a Live and Let Live Movement Any More

By Jennifer Roback Morse

Monday, September 4, 2006

Many people of libertarian inclinations, of whom I am one, have sympathy for a particular style of gay rights movement. Let and let live, we always say. If it isn’t hurting any one else, it is no business of the government’s.

Those days are over. The gay caucus of the California State Assembly is not interested in live and let live. This is an aggressive, intrusive movement that brooks no disagreement. Consider the following recent developments.

The CA State Assembly passed legislation banning discrimination in state operated or funded programs on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill, SB 1441, makes no provision for religious exceptions. Religious universities and schools will be required to take no notice of same sex conduct, or risk losing any student financial assistance from the state. This legislation was sponsored by Democratic state senator, Sheila Kuehl.

This bill curtails the ability of Christian schools to maintain their religious identity. Even now, a California Lutheran high school is being sued because it suspended two female students who were having a sexual relationship, in violation of the school’s code of conduct. There is no place for religious disapproval of same sex sexual conduct in the topsy-turvy ideological universe of the LBGT caucus. Evidently, we have to tolerate “gender non-conformity,” but we don’t have to tolerate diversity of religious standards of sexual behavior.

If the state of California were a “night watchman state,” that simply enforced contracts and provided police protection, the claim that the state shouldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation might make sense. But no one believes for a moment that gay people can’t get their contracts enforced in California. The state continues to expand its already extensive redistribution of income and regulation of life far beyond any libertarian, mind-your-own-business philosophy.

The State Assembly recently approved a bill (SB 840) granting universal health insurance, and designating the state as the single-payer for health care. If the governor signs this bill into law, the state will have increased leverage for regulating doctors and hospitals. Every religious hospital and clinic will be receiving, not just part of their income, but all their income, from the state.

Even now, a lesbian is suing a Southern California doctor because the doctor refused perform an artificial insemination on unmarried women, citing religious objections to inseminating a woman whose child would have no father. Artificial insemination is an elective procedure if ever there was one. The woman found another doctor. As a matter of fact, the very doctor she is suing made the referral.

There is evidently no room for Christian doctors in the “live and let live” utopia contemplated by the LBGT caucus. The pressures on the health care industry to conform to the LBGT standards of non-discrimination can only increase if the State of California becomes the only payer for health care.

Guess who proposed the universal health care bill? The very same Sheila Kuehl who sponsored the recently passed anti-discrimination bill.

This same Sheila Kuehl also wants the state to micro-manage the content of school textbooks so that gender non-conforming children don’t feel bad. (SB 1437) The terms “husband” and “wife,” “mother” and “father” could well be among the forbidden language that adversely affects homosexual self-esteem.

The LBGT caucus evidently believes that gay people need more than for everybody to mind their own business. Prohibiting discrimination means forbidding people to take any notice of sexual orientation. Sheila Kuehl and her allies are not going to be satisfied until they wipe out every religious group that teaches that being straight is preferable to being gay. Or until they shove religion safely into the closet.

The combination of anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation and expansive provision of state services adds up to increasing state-imposed ideological conformity. The LBGT caucus wants all gay people to be treated a certain way, by everyone, all the time. And they won’t quit until they have used all the state power at their disposal to force people to conform. And they are expanding the set of state power tools.

Whatever the gay rights movement might once have been, whatever it might be in other places, the LBGT caucus of the California State Assembly in not a “live and let live” movement. This is an aggressive, intolerant bunch of bullies. No libertarian, no one who values freedom, can align themselves with such people

Home School Reason #139

Ok, maybe it isn't in the USA but wait a few minutes . . .

Student sex act in class recorded at CAHS

Widely circulated cell phone video is titled 'cahs porn'; school officials silent as parents, political leaders and law enforcement urge appropriate action
By LYNN FREEHILL
Thursday, May 25th 2006 ST. THOMAS - A digital video recording of two Charlotte Amalie High School students performing a sex act in a classroom, with classmates present, is circulating among students and others using cell phones to transmit and receive the video.
The father of a CAHS student contacted The Daily News after his daughter received the 36-second video on her cell phone and told him about it. The father told The Daily News that another student used a cell phone to record the sophomore boy and junior girl openly engaged in sexual activity last week.
The video, which is called "cahs porn" and was shot from several angles, shows the girl straddling the boy and holding her spread legs up in the air. The boy is seated at a desk with his back to the front of the classroom. The video shows the actions of the two students and picks up background sounds - including what sounds like an adult's voice. According to reports to The Daily News, that voice belongs to the teacher of the class.
On Wednesday, CAHS administrators and the V.I. Board of Education sought to suppress information about the tape and about how district officials are handling the matter. CAHS principal Jeanette Smith-Barry refused to say Wednesday whether disciplinary action had been taken against any teacher, against the students who were on the video or against the student who recorded the video and distributed it.
Because the students on the video are minors engaged in a sex act, the video is child pornography. Federal statutes outlawing such material define child pornography as any material that visually depicts sexual conduct by children.
Deputy Chief Elvin Fahie Sr. said the V.I. Police Department is prepared to investigate any such activity on a school campus.
"It may not be deemed to some people as a violation of the law, but little things grow into big things, so we need to be ahead of it from law enforcement standpoint," he said.
Fahie said that he did not know whether school officials had reported the matter as of Wednesday.
On Tuesday, administrators told students that if they possessed the video on their cell phones, they should erase it.
V.I. Education Commissioner Noreen Michael and St. Thomas-St. John Insular Superintendent Emily Carter did not return Daily News calls Tuesday and Wednesday seeking information about the district's handling of the pornography situation and about the district's policy on students' use of cell phones on campus.
V.I. Board of Education Acting Executive Director Laurie Isaac said that as of Wednesday afternoon, the board had not been briefed by CAHS administrators or Education Department officials. The board has no policy on student cell phones, she said.
Sen. Shawn-Michael Malone, chairman of the V.I. Senate Committee on Education, Culture and Youth, said that students had told him about the video but that CAHS administrators had not responded to his request for information about the situation.
Anthony Francis, president of the CAHS Parent Teacher Student Association, also said Wednesday that he was awaiting an explanation from officials about what happened.
He said he planned to visit the school today to meet with an assistant principal so he could learn the details and decide whether to call a special meeting of the PTSA. The group has concluded its regular meetings for the year.
Francis expressed dismay about the situation.
"The thing is, how is the school going to handle it?" he said. "These are things that could be easily posted on the Internet and remain in circulation indefinitely."
V.I. Police Department officials said child pornography filmed on a school campus is a grave issue that requires the involvement of law enforcement, not just the disciplinary discretion of administrators.
"Any video or film depicting any child involved in a sexual act is illegal in the United States of America," police spokesman Sgt. Thomas Hannah said. "For each film that is distributed, that person could be charged accordingly" with territorial and federal crimes.
"It's taken very seriously because it's involving child abuse, whether it's done by a child or not," he said.

Homeschool Reason #138

The survey says what?

Sexual-orientation questions cause stir at Port high school

By TOM KERTSCHER

Posted: May 15, 2006

Port Washington - Parents are angry and school leaders are promising action in response to a "Heterosexual Questionnaire," approved by two teachers, that asked students questions such as: "If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?"

Hundreds of Port Washington High School students were told to submit written answers and discuss the survey.

The questionnaire was distributed by a student organization, which then led a full class-period discussion. Two teachers approved distribution of the survey. The principal did not.

Parent Lisa Krier on Monday called for the two teachers to be disciplined, saying the survey was a form of sexual harassment by teachers against students.

"If somebody doesn't call them on it, it will continue," she said.

Both Principal Duane Woelfel and Patty Ruth, president of the Port Washington-Saukville School Board, said the survey was inappropriate and that proper authorization was not given before it was brought into classrooms.

"The message that really needs to go out at this point is that this administration will ensure that this type of survey will never go out again," Ruth said.

Woelfel said he has received complaints from about two dozen parents and community members regarding the survey. The principal said he was not aware of the survey until a parent gave him a copy a day after it was distributed.

"We were extremely concerned when we found out about it, and we're going to make sure that it doesn't happen again," Woelfel said.

The teachers who Woelfel said are responsible for the survey - social studies teacher Sarah Olson and communications teacher Julie Grudzinski - could not be reached for comment.

Woelfel estimated that the survey was given to about 400 of the school's 930 students on April 25, the day before the national Day of Silence, an annual event co-sponsored by the New York City-based Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

According to the Day of Silence Web site, the event is a "student-led day of action" that attempts to eliminate harassment of non-heterosexual students.

Woelfel said that, in connection with the Day of Silence, the school's Students for Unity spent the day visiting classrooms. They distributed the surveys and led discussions, he said.

Woelfel said that the Students for Unity's goal of trying to prevent harassment of all people with "alternative lifestyles" is good but that the survey was not appropriate. The two teachers "are very remorseful," he said.

Some of the questions apparently were intended to make heterosexuals understand what it's like to be gay or lesbian. Those questions included: "What do you think caused your heterosexuality?" and "When did you decide you were heterosexual?"

Students in the group presenting the survey were trying to convey that "students who have an alternative lifestyle get asked these questions every day, so please be considerate. It was an exercise in compassion and understanding that did not work out real well," Woelfel said.

Woelfel said the survey violated school policy because parents were not notified in advance and given the opportunity to decide whether their children should participate.

Students were mixed in their reactions.

Sophomore Justin Perry said he didn't like being surveyed because he is against homosexuality - although he doesn't think it's something that people should be harassed about.

Perry said he did not understand the point of spending a class period on the survey. "I know it's a survey," he said, "but what is it trying to teach us?"

Freshman Jaime Reuter said the survey caused such a stir that, even though her class didn't take the survey, her social studies teacher made it part of a class discussion a couple of days later.

Reuter said she would have been offended if asked to take the survey. "I shouldn't have to answer that because it's private information," she said.

Reuter said she was sympathetic to supporters of the survey who had hoped it would reduce harassment of homosexuals, but she thought the survey backfired.

"I think it just got people really, really mad," she said.

Woelfel said he is still investigating the incident but would decide soon, along with the superintendent's office, whether the two teachers will be disciplined.

He also said the staff is working on a proposal that would impose tighter rules on circulating surveys in schools.

Ruth, the School Board president, said the board's Policy Committee could begin discussing a new policy as early as next week.

Seriously . . . a hug??

Girl, 5, Forced To Apologize For Hugging Classmate

Parents Looking For New School For Girl

POSTED: April 5, 2006

MAYNARD, Mass. -- A family in Maynard is outraged after their 5-year-old daughter was forced to write a letter denouncing hugging after a classmate embraced her.NewsCenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that Brenda Brier and Michael Marino pulled their daughter, Savannah, out of school early Wednesday. The couple was angry after a meeting with officials at the Greenmeadow Elementary School in Maynard, where Savannah is in kindergarten.At issue is a hug Savannah said she got on the playground from a friend named Sophie. Savannah hugged Sophie back. The hugs resulted in Savannah having to write a letter, complete with teacher corrections, that read, "I touch Sophie because she touch me and I didn't like it because she was hugging me. I didn't like when she hugged me.""She said, 'I'm really sad that I got in trouble for hugging,'" Brier said."I can understand if boys are playing rough or kids are pulling each other around -- that's one thing. But when kids are being affectionate, I mean hugging, hey, they shouldn't be disciplined over it and they shouldn't be lying in letters making the kid say the opposite that they don't like to hug," Marino said.School Superintendent Mark Masterson told NewsCenter 5 there was a "dispute of the facts between a hug and a lifting of a child off the floor." The superintendent said the school reported "one girl bear hugged another girl and lifted her off the ground. The aide who was monitoring told the teacher. The teacher asked several students to write a note to their parents and describe what happened."Savannah said she did not lift her classmate off the ground."They're trying to accuse her now, basically," Brier said.Savannah's parents said it should have never gone this far, and want an apology from the school. The family said they are so upset they'll start looking for a new school for their daughter to attend.

Democrats and the Special Forces?

Let me point out a few things here before reading this article:

1. The Democrats have been calling our guys killers and now they want to be in charge of them?
2. Special Forces men are a well trained, seasoned bunch. You cannot simply "double" them and think they can will do a good job. As we know, and WE know well, training takes a long time and it takes a special kind of person. We are in the process of making this force larger and the bar has been set so low that it is incredible the types I am going to have to trust my husband's life to.

3. To think that Democrats who do not respect our SF guys want to be in charge of traing more to then go out and put them in worse harms way to prove they are the better by trying to catch a guy that has not been caught by our well-trained and tempered guys yet.

4. The reason we need to have more men in the Special Forces is because the same dems making all the noise are the ones responsible for desimating them in the 90's.

But who will listen to us? The dems care more about making sure illegals can vote than they do making sure our deployed military votes count.

Democrats Pledge to 'Eliminate' Osama

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer

Congressional Democrats promise to "eliminate" Osama bin Laden and ensure a "responsible redeployment of U.S. forces" from Iraq in 2006 in an election-year national security policy statement.

In the position paper to be announced Wednesday, Democrats say they will double the number of special forces and add more spies, which they suggest will increase the chances of finding al-Qaida's elusive leader. They do not set a deadline for when all of the 132,000 American troops now in Iraq should be withdrawn.

"We're uniting behind a national security agenda that is tough and smart and will provide the real security George Bush has promised but failed to deliver," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday.

His counterpart in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Democrats are offering a new direction — "one that is strong and smart, which understands the challenges America faces in a post 9/11 world, and one that demonstrates that Democrats are the party of real national security."

The latest in a series of party policy statements for 2006, the Democrats' national security platform comes seven months before voters decide who will control the House and Senate and as Democrats seek to cut into the public perception that the Republicans are stronger on national security.

Bush's job approval ratings are in the mid- to high-30s, and Democrats consistently have about a 10-point lead over Republicans when people are asked who they want to see in control of Congress.

With the public skeptical of the Iraq war and Republicans and Democrats alike questioning Bush's war policies, Democrats aim to force Republicans to distance themselves from Bush on Iraq and national security or rubber-stamp what Democrats contend is a failed policy.

"The Democrats are going to take back the security issue," said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republicans have vowed not to let that happen. They characterized the Democrats' platform as tough election-year talk that isn't backed up by the party's record.

"This is more of the same from the party that opposes this president's effort to keep our country safe," said Tracey Schmitt, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman. "The bottom line is while this president campaigns against the terrorists, Democrats remain focused on campaigning against this president."

Overall, the Democratic position paper attempts to make the case that the Bush administration's "inadequate planning and incompetent policies have failed to make Americas as safe as we should be."

It covers party policy positions on homeland security, the war on terror, the military, Iraq and energy security, but it contains many of the same proposals Democrats have offered over the past year.

The platform also lacks specific details of how Democrats plan to capture bin Laden, the al-Qaida mastermind who has evaded U.S. forces in the more than four years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For months, House and Senate Democrats have tried to craft a comprehensive position on national security, but they have splintered, primarily over Iraq.

Republicans have sought to use that division to their own political advantage, claiming that Democrats simply attack the president and his fellow Republicans without presenting proposals of their own.

Thank you Gov. Owens

Maybe the Dixie Chicks should listen to this guy.

March 14, 2006

Classroom Brainwashing

Thomas Sowell

Governor Bill Owens of Colorado has cut through the cant about "free speech" and come to the defense of a 16-year-old high school student who tape-recorded his geography teacher using class time to rant against President Bush and compare him to Hitler.

The teacher's lawyer talks about First Amendment rights to free speech but free speech has never meant speech free of consequences. Even aside from laws against libel or extortion, you can insult your boss or your spouse only at your own risk.

Unfortunately, there is much confusion about both free speech and academic freedom. At too many schools and colleges across the country, teachers feel free to use a captive audience to vent their politics when they are supposed to be teaching geography or math or other subjects.

While the public occasionally hears about weird rantings by some teacher or professor, what seldom gets any media attention is the far more pervasive classroom brainwashing by people whose views may not be so extreme, but are no less irrelevant to what they are being paid to teach. Some say teachers should give "both sides" -- but they should give neither side if it is off the subject.

Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things -- teach chemistry or accounting the way you think chemistry or accounting should be taught. It is also freedom to engage in the political activities of other citizens -- on their own time, outside the classroom -- without being fired.

Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections or foreign policy.

It doesn't matter whether his political opinions are good, bad, or indifferent if he is being paid to do a different job.

Only among "educators" is there such confusion that merely exposing what they are doing behind the backs of parents and taxpayers is regarded as a violation of their rights. Tenure is apparently supposed to confer carte blanche.

The Colorado geography teacher is not unique. A professor at UCLA wrote an indignant article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, denouncing organized efforts of students to record lectures of professors who impose their politics in class instead of teaching the subject they were hired to teach.

All across the country, from the elementary schools to the universities, students report being propagandized. That the propaganda is almost invariably from the political left is secondary. The fact that it is political propaganda instead of the subject matter of the class is what is crucial.

The lopsided imbalance among college professors in their political parties is a symptom of the problem, rather than the fundamental problem itself.

If physicists taught physics and economists taught economics, what they did on their own time politically would be no more relevant than whether they go swimming or sky diving on their days off. But politics is intruded, not only into the classroom, but into hiring decisions as well.

Even top scholars who are conservatives are unlikely to be hired by many colleges and universities. Similarly with people training to become public school teachers. Some in schools of education have said that, to be qualified, you have to see teaching as a means of social change -- meaning change in a leftward direction.

Such attitudes lead to lopsided politics among professors. At Stanford University, for example, the faculty includes 275 registered Democrats and 36 registered Republicans.

Such ratios are not uncommon at other universities -- despite all the rhetoric about "diversity." Only physical diversity seems to matter.

Inbred ideological narrowness shows up, not only in hiring and teaching, but also in restrictive campus speech codes for students, created by the very academics who complain loudly when their own "free speech" is challenged.

So long as voters, taxpayers, university trustees, and parents tolerate all this, so long it will continue.

Homeschool Reason #137

Mean Girls Gone Really Bad

Violence Is On the Rise Among High School Girls

March 11, 2006 — - Girls have been stereotyped as catty and occasionally mean, but that no longer seems to be all: A growing number of teenage girls seem to be engaging in more extreme not-so-nice behavior, including violence.

Teenage boys used to be the typical troublemakers, but statistics, and legal and school officials suggest young girls are narrowing the gap -- with disturbing consequences.

Girls Gone Nasty

In one suburban Chicago high school, the annual "Powder Puff Derby" between senior and junior high school girls turned into dangerous hazing incident -- producing some disturbing video that made the national news.

Raisa Lane, now a senior, experienced that sort of aggression firsthand at her Seattle high school when she was a sophomore and suffered a broken nose and bruises at the hands of a female schoolmate.

"The girl that I was being harassed by followed me out of the classroom and pushed me down the stairs, and then proceeded to hit me," Lane said.

The girl had been threatening Lane for months, but neither Lane nor her mother took it seriously.

"I never imagined this happening with my daughter in a million years," Lorrie Lane said. "The things that they do used to only be for the guys. Now the girls do it."

Statistics seem to prove her right. Nationwide, arrests for aggravated assault by girls rose by 68 percent from 1987 to 2003.

"The school violence cases that we see here," said Charles Lind, senior deputy prosecutor in King County, Wash., "about one out of every five involves a young woman instead of a young man. And those cases predominantly involve assaults and weapons possession in school."

No Longer Just Sweet

In his book, "See Jane Hit," Dr. James Garbarino said cultural changes in entertainment and sports have stripped away girls' inhibitions.

"You used to be able to say to girls, 'Don't hit,' and have the culture back that up," he said. "Now that is no longer true."

Girls no longer seem to worry if they're being "like the boys."

"Sports can and does increase the risk of aggression, and aggression spilling off the field," he said.

It's not just sports. Entertainment also is laced with violence by women.

"In movies, we're seeing very aggressive and sexy young women take on the world with knives and guns and bombs and karate and fists," Garbarino said, "so a girl gets the message you can be violent and a good guy."

The more aggressive behavior among girls isn't limited to any one community.

"There's no stigma attached to young women involved in violence in schools," Lind said. "It crosses racial lines, seems to cross all kinds of demographics, including economic lines."

For Lane, the consequence of such violence has been long-lasting.

"I think that her spirit was broken," her mother said. "And I think it will take a long time to get that spirit back, in a lot of ways."

a little more on reason #134

Homeschool reason #134 was posted on 2/2. Here are reports as to what has happened since. One thing you have to keep in mind is that he is a GEOGRAPHY teacher. Americans continually embarrass themselves with our lack of education about our own country, never mind the world. Maybe he should work a little more in his own subject.


As reported by 9News.com
High school teacher's comments investigated by district
Marissa Pasquet Web Producer
3/1/2006 4:34 PM MST - Updated: 3/2/2006 7:09 AM MST

AURORA - A 16-year-old boy at Overland High School doesn't want to hear what he calls his teacher's left-wing political rants.

Sean Allen frequently recorded his teachers to back up his notes. Allen recorded Jay Bennish, his 10th grade World Geography teacher, making comments about President Bush's State of the Union Address.

Allen's father claims the comments made in the recording are biased and inappropriate for a geography class.

"I'm not saying Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they're not. OK? But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use," says Bennish in his critique of U.S. economic and foreign policy.

Towards the end of the class, Bennish goes on to say, "I'm not in anyway implying that you should agree with me, I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth and not to just take things from the surface."

The Cherry Creek School District is conducting a thorough investigation of the complaint from the Overland High School parent and student concerning comments.

The school district says at first glance it does appear the teacher acted inappropriately at the very least.

A spokesperson for the Cherry Creek School District said they have placed Bennish on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. This is not a disciplinary action; the school district wants to remove him while they sort through the rest of the investigation.

The Cherry Creek School District expects to finish the investigation by the end of the week.

More from the:

Rocky Mountain News

Teacher on leave after comments

District cites policy requiring balanced views in classroom

By Tillie Fong, Rocky Mountain News
March 2, 2006

An Overland High School geography teacher was put on leave Wednesday while Cherry Creek Schools investigates whether he violated district policy that requires balanced viewpoints in the classroom.

Jay Bennish, who teaches 10th grade world geography, is being investigated for making biased, anti-President Bush comments in class during a discussion of the State of the Union speech last month.

"These are serious allegations and we're very concerned about it," said Tustin Amole, spokeswoman for Cherry Creek Schools. "This does not reflect the type of teaching that we want to see in Cherry Creek school district."

Bennish could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

On Feb. 1, Bennish, who has been at Overland High School since the fall of 2000, had a discussion in his class about the State of the Union address.

Sean Allen, a student in the class, taped the discussion, in which Bennish made a number of unfavorable comments about Bush that upset Allen's father.

"He said that some people may compare (Bush) to Hitler," Amole said.

The school district did not learn about Bennish's lecture until last Wednesday, when it received an e-mail about it from an out-of-state person who had seen an online column on it written by Walter Williams on www.townhall.com, Amole said. That same day, Allen's father also called the principal of Overland High School to complain about the teacher, and the complaint was forwarded to the district, which began its investigation.

"After listening to the tape, it's evident the comments in the class were inappropriate," Amole said. "There were not adequate opportunities for opposing points of view."

Allen's father apparently gave a copy of the taped discussion to KOA radio host Mike Rosen, who did a show on the subject Wednesday.

Since then, a number of parents have called the school about Bennish's remarks, both in support and in opposition.

Amole said that Bennish told school officials he had received threats as a result of the controversy.

Amole said that the ensuing brouhaha over Bennish's lecture has become disruptive to the school, which led to Bennish's being put on leave Wednesday.

"We felt it was better for all concerned if he was out of class," she said. "This is not a punishment at this point."

In the meantime, the district is investigating whether Bennish violated its policy on teaching about controversial and sensitive subjects, and has reminded teachers about the policy. "We do want teachers to express their opinions, but to put that in context and to provide opposing points of view," Amole said. "All discussion must be fair and balanced."

District officials have been talking to Bennish and his students as part of the investigation.

"We want to find out all the facts, what other students have to say about it, whether there have been other incidents," Amole said.

Amole said the district hopes to complete its investigation of Bennish this week.

Apparently, this is not the first time he has been in hot water over comments made in class, according to Amole.

A few years ago, another student complained about remarks Bennish made in class. In that case, Bennish met with the parent and the school principal, and the issue was resolved without district intervention.

Amole could not provide details Wednesday of the earlier incident, but said the district encourages students and parents to voice their concerns.

Homosexuality classes for our gifted students??

**My note below.

Special Report - February 7, 2006
Governor's School Criticized for Pro-Homosexual Seminar

The Governor’s School of North Carolina is being criticized for offering a seminar on teenage homosexuality during its 2005 session, the Carolina Journal reports. In a letter to the State Department of Public Instruction, Jim and Beverly Burrows said that their son became “confused” about the topic of homosexuality after attending the Governor’s School, a state-sponsored six-week summer program tailored to advanced North Carolina high school students. The seminar in question, entitled “The New Gay Teenager,” discussed whether embracing labels based on sexual orientation is beneficial or harmful to homosexual teenagers. The Burrows stated in a letter sent to State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson that they should have been informed of the seminar’s content and been given the chance to decline the seminar on behalf of their son. Among other objections, the parents also maintained that the instructors leading the course, who are admitted homosexuals, encouraged students to open homosexual clubs in their high schools and advised them “to question and not believe what they had been taught by their parents all these years.”

The Burrows subsequently received a letter from Mary Watson, director of the Governor’s School, containing a memo from on-sight director Lucy Milner defending the seminar. Milner stated that the course “responded to a need for additional factual, neutral information about this highly sensitive issue,” and that faculty present at the seminar “were emphatic that no one attending could have thought the seminar was attempting to proselytize or to brainwash students or to promote a gay rights agenda.”

According to the Carolina Journal, “The New Gay Teenager” seminar is based on a book published under the same title written by Ritch Savin-Williams, an openly homosexual professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In the book, Savin-Williams argues that homosexual teenagers are dismissing such labels as “gay” in favor of broader terms that allegedly engender feelings of normalcy. “Regardless of gender of person and partner,” Savin-Williams writes, “if an early sexual contact is not abusive or coercive, then it likely has a positive impact on adolescent and adult sexual arousal, pleasure, satisfaction, and acceptance of various sexual behaviors for self and others.”
____________________________________________________________________________________
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Alliance Defense Fund has issued a letter to North Carolina school officials on behalf of a parent requesting that they immediately halt their offering of a seminar titled “The New Gay Teenager.”

“Schools should be required to follow the law. The seminar in question violated North Carolina statutes,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson. “Teaching sexually-oriented material without parental knowledge is not only morally wrong, it is illegal.”

ADF attorneys believe officials broke the law because the organizers of the 2005 Governor’s School program did not follow state protocol, which dictates that schools must notify parents and obtain their authorization before any student can attend a class focusing on sexual matters. A unilateral decision by school officials to offer the controversial seminar apparently came without legal consultation.

“The seminar’s organizers also erred by including anti-religious advocacy in the seminar’s curriculum and activities,” Johnson said. “Such practices breach the First Amendment and require immediate corrective action."

As I noted here 12/20 from a Phyllis Schlafly article:
"Federal judges have just hit parents with a triple whammy. Two appellate courts held that parents have no right to stop offensive, privacy-invading interrogation of their own children in public schools. In a third case, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that it is not going to do anything to protect parental rights concerning schools."

It doesn't look like the judges are on the side of parents. Never forget the government knows exactly what our children should learn.

WMDs Validated

Have you heard this on the news yet?

Saddam Had WMD

Posted 2/24/2006

WMD: Now that Leno and Letterman have had their way with Vice President Cheney's hunting accident and the port controversy, maybe we can get back to something really important — like Saddam's WMD program.

Yes, the linchpin of opposition to the Iraq War — never really strong to begin with — has taken some real hits in recent weeks. And "Bush lied" — the anti-war mantra about the president, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction — looks the most battered.

Inconveniently for critics of the war, Saddam made tapes in his version of the Oval Office. These tapes landed in the hands of American intelligence and were recently aired publicly.

The first 12 hours of the tapes — there are hundreds more waiting to be translated — are damning, to say the least. They show conclusively that Bush didn't lie when he cited Saddam's WMD plans as one of the big reasons for taking the dictator out.

Nobody disputes the tapes' authenticity. On them, Saddam talks openly of programs involving biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear weapons.

War foes have long asserted that Saddam halted his WMD programs in the wake of his defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam's abandonment of WMD programs was confirmed by subsequent U.N. inspections.

Again, not true. In a tape dating to April 1995, Saddam and several aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had found traces of Iraq's biological weapons program. On the tape, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, is heard gloating about fooling the inspectors.

"We did not reveal all that we have," he says. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.

This is particularly troubling, since it indicates an active, ongoing attempt by Saddam to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

"What was most disturbing," said John Tierney, the ex- FBI agent who translated the tapes, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission (or UNSCOM, the group set up to look into Iraq's WMD programs)."

Perhaps most chillingly, the tapes record Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz talking about how easy it would be to set off a WMD in Washington. The comments come shortly after Saddam muses about using "proxies" in a terror attack.

9-11, anyone?

In short, let us repeat: President Bush was right. We had to invade to disarm Saddam — otherwise, he would have completely reconstituted his chemical, nuclear and bio-weapons programs when inspectors left.

Saddam probably knew better than to use them himself against the U.S. But it's likely he wouldn't have hesitated giving one or more to terror groups with which he had routine contact.

Lest you think we're making the case entirely based on these tapes, let us assure you that other evidence — mounting by the day — points to the same conclusion.

We've been very impressed by the story told by Georges Sada, the former No. 2 in Iraq's air force. He has written a book, "Saddam's Secrets," that details how the Iraqi dictator used trucks, commercial jets and ships to remove his WMD from the country. At the time, the move went largely undetected, because Iraq pretended the massive movement of materiel was to help Syrian flood victims.

Nor is Sada alone. Ali Ibrahim, another of Saddam's former commanders, has largely corroborated Sada's story.

So how was Saddam able to use his "cheat and retreat" tactics without being found out? He had help, according to a former U.S. Defense Department official.

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," said John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense, in comments made at an intelligence summit Feb. 17-20 in Arlington, Va.

"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special ops) units out of uniform that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

These are extraordinary developments. They deserve a full airing in the media, since they essentially validate part of Bush's casus belli for invading Iraq and deposing the murderous Saddam.

But once again, the mainstream media have dropped the ball. They seem more interested in Dick Cheney's marksmanship and American port management than in setting the record straight about one of the most important developments of our time.

Feminists win at Harvard??

Feminist Victory

By Carrie Lukas

Feb 24, 2006

Lawrence H. Summers is stepping down as president of Harvard University. His critics cite a number of missteps - from challenging the eminent African-American professor Cornell West to expressing support for the U.S. military - that contributed to his demise. But those were minor scrapes; he's leaving because he never recovered from a wound inflicted by the Harvard gender police.

At an academic conference last January, Summers made the mistake of speculating that innate differences between men and women may in part explain why more men than women reach the upper echelons of science and math. Radical feminists were aghast and called for his removal. More than a year later, they finally got their man.

It's testament to the bizarre world of academia. Leftist feminists are increasingly misfits in American politics (each election feminist groups promise that women are going to vote in mass for a liberal revolution-it has yet to happen), but they are big men on campus. In academia's ivory tower, they can instill their world view on impressionable youngsters and make or break aspiring academics.

In this bubble, a self-proclaimed feminist like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins can with a straight face describe nearly fainting after hearing Summers suggest there are gender differences: "I felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath shallow. I was extremely upset." Her over-reaction is itself evidence of gender differences (can anyone imagining a male professor reacting like that?), but it would be taboo to say so on a politically correct campus.

Conservatives have spent years trying to raise awareness that true academic inquiry has been sacrificed to political correctness. Summers ousting may mark an important turning point in this effort. After all, Summers was the Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton-hardly a right-wing ideologue. His failure to pass the campus liberal litmus test may convince many that the problem is real.

Summers himself seems not to have understood the power and standard operating procedure of campus leftists. When he spoke at the fateful conference that purported to consider potential explanations for the gender disparate in hard sciences, he thought attendees were actually interested in answering that question. Under this mistaken logic, he listed numerous potential causes and committed the heresy of including innate aptitude among them.

Had he been more familiar with gender studies, he would have known that there is really only one acceptable explanation to the radical left: discrimination. The gender warriors may wish to ponder what kind of discrimination - is it our discriminatory socialization process that begins when we dress our baby girls in pink or garden variety sexism in the hiring process? - but our sexist society is undoubtedly the culprit.

Everyone recognizes that discrimination is bad, which allows gender warriors to think up programs and legislation to root it out. If women's preferences and choices are responsible for the differences in outcomes between men and women, gender warriors' reason for existence begins to disappear.

It's through this lens that the good news that women aren't being discriminated against becomes bad news for feminists. Liberal women's groups seize on the statistic showing that a full-time working woman makes less than a full-time working man as evidence of systematic discrimination against women. Data showing that the wage gap is primarily caused by factors other than discrimination (such as women's preference for jobs offering greater flexibility, physical comfort, and personal fulfillment instead of higher pay) is ignored.

Feminist groups envision a "genderless" society where men and women are equally represented in all facets of life. It frustrates them that women keep thwarting this ideal by making choices that are different then men's. Their only hope is that women are making these choices under a false consciousness. Alternative explanations cannot be considered or their dream vanishes.

Summers' mistake was not recognizing the rules of the gender victimology game. Now he has paid the price, and Harvard is worse for it. Gender warriors celebrating this should be wary that their victory came with a cost: their extremism was exposed to new eyes. For the sake of the next generation of students who are passing through these institutions, let's hope that greater awareness of just how intolerant colleges have become is impetuous for change.

vaccination question

Needled by my critics

By Rich Tucker

Feb 25, 2006

Sometimes the best letters come from doctors.

“Medical science often does not make ‘sense’ to people that don’t know the full picture,” writes a family physician from Kansas. He was responding to a recent column in which I opined that it doesn’t make sense to give children four or five vaccinations all at once. In fact, he wrote, “When the immune system is required to build antibodies to multiple diseases at once, a greater amount and duration of immunity is achieved.”

For the sake of argument, let’s stretch this to its logical conclusion. If five vaccines at a time are good, why not all 20 at once? Why should doctors make parents come back again and again and again? Think of the immunity we’d build then.

This is actually similar to the debate over the minimum wage. It’s self evident that raising the minimum wage will make employers less likely to hire people, but liberals refuse to accept that. They insist it can be raised with no effect. Well, then, let’s make the minimum wage $10,000 an hour. We can all work one day and take the rest of the year off.

Oh, wait. That’s absurd. Of course raising the minimum wage that much will increase unemployment. Well, then the debate isn’t over whether or not raising the minimum wage causes unemployment, it’s over how much it could possibly be raised before we cause harm.

The same theory holds for vaccinations. How many shots at a time are too many? Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccination proponent at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote in 2002, “Our analysis shows that infants have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at once.”

10,000 shots at once? He may be correct, and he does indeed have a study suggesting he is. But let’s remember that, every once in a while, medical science is wrong.

For instance, doctors have long recommend people eat a low-fat diet because doing so would supposedly reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Well, a major study released recently by the National Institutes of Health shows that low-fat diets don’t, in fact, lower a person’s risk of heart disease.

This doesn’t mean doctors were lying when they said a low-fat diet was good. It simply means that medical science can be wrong. If Offit’s report turns out to be wrong (common sense suggests 10,000 shots at a time would be dangerous) parents would learn (too late) they’d been putting their children in danger for no reason.

Parents want to trust their doctors, but we also need doctors to become more involved in the vaccination process -- a process that, unfortunately, is dominated by the government.

Today the Centers for Disease Control issues a vaccination schedule explaining that all children should get the same shots at the same time. That should alarm doctors. They’re supposed to give their patients individual care tailored to their needs. Our children deserve that.

But by taking medical decisions away from doctors, the government has made doctors less responsive to parents. As Michelle Cottle wrote in TIME on Feb. 27, her pediatrician “treated me and my husband with the sort of arrogance and unresponsiveness that, upon consulting with other moms, I’m discovering is not uncommon in parent-ped relationships.”

What is all too common is scare tactics. “Just remember that pertussis, polio, rubella, diphtheria and their friends have caused a lot more disease and suffering than autism,” my correspondent wrote. Maybe, maybe not. At its height in the ’40s and ’50s, one out of every 5,000 people contracted polio. Today the CDC says as many as one in 166 children have an autism spectrum disorder.

Sadly, we’re getting closer to Dr. Offit’s 10,000 shots at once. The government’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices declared on Feb. 21 that every child should be vaccinated against rotavirus, a disease so rare that many people haven’t even heard of it. Rotavirus does kill about 50 children each year, but more than twice that many die while simply walking or riding bikes on roads.

The CDC’s Umesh Parashar says the vaccine seems safe, but “it’s something we’ll continue to look at and hopefully confirm absence of risk.” Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Shouldn’t the vaccine be safe before we give it to newborns?

The government says children should get rotavirus doses at 2 months, 4 months and 6 months (along with the 4 or 5 vaccines they’re already getting at those times), and unfortunately pediatricians are likely to fall into lockstep with that schedule. Oh, and apropos of nothing, Dr. Paul Offit holds a patent for this rotavirus vaccine and stands to make money off its use.

The answer isn’t “let’s not vaccinate,” it’s “let’s not vaccinate against every disease all at once.” We can still give shots, but let’s give only the shots that are really needed, spread them out over time and tailor the vaccination schedule to the patient. That, doctor, is simply common sense.

What I hate about feminists

I would like to consider myself a feminist. I believe in equality betweent the sexes. But that is not what it is all about is it? This woman just makes me mad.

How to Raise Kids: Stay Home or Go to Work?

Debate Rages in the 'Mommy Wars'

Feb. 23, 2006— - Stay at home with the kids or go to work? It's a question every mom struggles with, and a question at the heart of a fierce debate.

"I think it's a mistake for these highly educated and capable women to make that choice [to stay home]," said law professor and working mom Linda Hirshman. "I am saying an educated, competent adult's place is in the office."

Hirshman found herself at the center of the "Mommy Wars" debate after she published an article in American Prospect magazine condemning the trend of college-educated women opting out of the workplace to become stay-at-home moms.

Many college-educated moms adamantly argue Hirshman's claims.

When Debbie Klett became a mother, she quit her job in ad sales and started a magazine called Total 180 so she could work from home and spend more time with her children.

"I completely disagree," said Klett of Hirshman's argument, echoing the sentiment of countless others.

Divorce

Hirshman has some questions for the women who disagree with her: How can women leave the workplace when the divorce rate is 41 percent? And don't women know that after divorce, the man's standard of living goes up 10 percent while the woman's can collapse?

Stay-at-home mom Faith Fuhrman said the key was preparation.

"The women of today are prepared for that," Fuhrman said. "You have a sense in yourself that whatever happens, I'm going to be OK."

Some women say that being financially dependent on a husband is their choice and that they should not be made to feel guilty for that.

"Well, people choose to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, but that does not stop people from saying it's a mistake," Hirshman said. "Listen to the risks you're taking before you take the risk."

Re-entering the Workplace

One of Hirshman's major arguments is that it's difficult to re-enter the workplace after staying at home, and that when a mother comes back, she may make less money.

"Who's to say, though, when you're in the work force, that you're not going to get laid off and you're [not] going to lose your job anyway?" Klett asked.

Working mom Deborah Skolnik countered.

"Except where I am is that I just rekindle -- got laid off from a job and I have all of the current skills and connections and I can use them to the utmost of my abilities to hopefully find another job fast, faster than some of the nonworking mothers I know who passed me their resume and say, 'I'd really like to still get into the business. Can you help me?'" she said.

Not all women have the choice. Those without the means must stay in the work force while raising their children.

"It's still a matter of choice," Fuhrman said. "You choose between having cable TV in your house or the latest iPod."

Skolnik said she didn't work just for money.

"I think it's important to make it clear that it's not about an iPod for me," she said. "It's about the satisfaction of going to work at a job I love."

Is Homemaking Enough?

Hirshman says working is also a matter of feeling fulfilled. She doesn't buy into the arguments of many homemakers who say taking care of the family is the most fulfilling thing they could imagine.

"I would like to see a description of their daily lives that substantiates that position," Hirshman said. "One of the things I've done working on my book is to read a lot of the diaries online, and their description of their lives does not sound particularly interesting or fulfilling for a complicated person, for a complicated, educated person."

"Walk in our shoes and then you'll understand what we do all day," Klett said. "You're in at Mach 3 with your hair on fire, and you get up in the morning and suddenly you're pulled in four different directions, and suddenly it's lunchtime and dinnertime and you're just constantly moving, constantly challenging yourself, constantly learning and growing as a person."

But Skolnik admitted that work could also be filled with frustrations, especially when trying to balance it with motherhood.

One Is Enough

Hirshman says that's why women should only have one child. If you have one, you can keep up in the workplace, but two makes it difficult.

Skolnik could relate, somewhat.

"It almost broke me going back to work after I had my second child," Skolnik said. "Kids have the tendency of getting sick like over two days, one gives it to the other. So, 'Oh, I'm sorry, boss, I can't make it today,' [can soon become] 'I can't make it two days from now because now the other one has the eye infection.'"

American Girls Need Working Moms

One of Hirshman's most sobering arguments is that women who leave the workplace are ensuring that the hard-won gains made by women will be undone. She asks why should business schools give advanced degrees to those who don't use them?

"I think it's not just the universities," Hirshman said. "It's the executives in the boardroom."

Hirshman said that women could become a liability to employers, and that the consequences of them leaving the work force could be even more far-reaching.

"I think that one could argue that these women are letting down the team," Hirshman said. "Consider a society in which the entire Supreme Court is male. We may actually experience that in our lifetime. What would it feel like if the entire Congress were male?" The "Mommy Wars" debate continues.

Homeschool reason #134

Indoctrination of our youth

By Walter E. Williams

Feb 22, 2006

Let's start off with a few quotations, then a question. In reference to the president's State of the Union: "Sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say." "Bush is threatening the whole planet." "[The] U.S. wants to keep the world divided." Then the speaker asks, "Who is probably the most violent nation on the planet?" and shouts "The United States!"

What's the source of these statements? Were they made in the heat of a political campaign? Was it a yet-to-be captured leader of al Qaeda? Was it French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin? Any "yes" answer would miss the true source by a mile. All of those statements were made by Mr. Jay Bennish, a teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo.

During this class session, Mr. Bennish peppered his 10th-grade geography class with other statements like: The U.S. has engaged in "7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba." In his discussion of capitalism, he told his students, "Capitalism is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion and at odds with human rights."

Regardless of whether you're pro-Bush or anti-Bush, pro-American or anti-American, I'd like to know whether there's anyone who believes that the teacher's remarks were appropriate for any classroom setting, much less a high school geography class. It's clear the students aren't being taught geography. They're getting socialist lies and propaganda. According to one of the parents, on the first day of class, the teacher said Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" was going to be a part of the curriculum.

This kind of indoctrination is by no means restricted to Overland High School. School teachers, at all grades, often use their classroom for environmental, anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-parent propaganda. Some get their students to write letters to political figures condemning public policy the teacher doesn't like. Dr. Thomas Sowell's "Inside American Education" documents numerous ways teachers attack parental authority. Teachers have asked third-graders, "How many of you ever wanted to beat up your parents?" In a high school health class, students were asked, "How many of you hate your parents?"

Public education propaganda is often a precursor for what youngsters might encounter in college. UCLA's Bruin Standard newspaper documents campus propaganda. Mary Corey, UCLA history professor, instructed her class, "Capitalism isn't a lie on purpose. It's just a lie," she continued, "[Capitalists] are swine. . . . They're bastard people." Professor Andrew Hewitt, chairman of UCLA's Department of Germanic Languages, told his class, "Bush is a moron, a simpleton, and an idiot." His opinion of the rest of us: "American consumerism is a very unique thing; I don't think anyone else lusts after money in such a greedy fashion." Rod Swanson, economics professor, told his class, "The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world." Terri Anderson, a sociology professor, assigned her class to go out cross-dressed in a public setting for four hours. Photos or videotape were required as proof of having completed the assignment.

The Bruin Alumni Association caused quite a stir when it offered to pay students for recordings of classroom proselytizing. The UCLA administration, wishing to conceal professorial misconduct, threatened legal action against the group. Some professors labeled the Bruin Alumni Association's actions as McCarthyism and attacks on academic freedom. These professors simply want a free hand to proselytize students.

Brainwashing and proselytization is by no means unique to UCLA. Taxpayers ought to de-fund, and donors should cut off contributions to colleges where administrators condone or support academic dishonesty. At the K-12 schools, parents should show up at schools, PTAs and board of education meetings demanding that teachers teach reading, writing and arithmetic and leave indoctrination to parents. The most promising tool in the fight against teacher proselytization is the micro-technology available that can expose the academic misconduct.

Teacher Unions - why?

February 22, 2006
Teacher Unions Reward Mediocrity, Fail the Students
By John Stossel

"The teachers united will never be defeated!" chanted thousands of public-school teachers at a union rally. They may be right -- unfortunately. Teachers unions in this country are very influential because they can assemble a crowd. Randi Weingarten, head of New York's teachers union, put out the word, and thousands of teachers filled Madison Square Garden to demand a new contract and more money. That clout brings timid politicians into line.

The unions can pay for expensive rallies at "the world's most famous arena" because every teacher in a unionized district like New York must give up some of his salary to the union. Even teachers who don't like the union, teachers who believe in school choice, and teachers who could make more on the open market must fork over their money to support the unions that fight against school choice and merit pay.

The unions use their clout to fight against the interests of the best teachers. Union leaders make sure the teachers who work hardest don't get raises or bonuses. Everyone with the same seniority and credentials must be paid the same. That guarantees that no teacher will take home a dime for making extra sure that students learn. Joel Klein, who as New York's schools chancellor runs the country's largest public-school system, put it this way: "We tolerate mediocrity, and people get paid the same whether they're outstanding or whether they're average or, indeed, whether they're way below average."

Klein said that out of 80,000 teachers, only two have been fired for incompetence in the past two years. That's because it takes years for a principal to fire an incompetent teacher. I can't explain the rules here, but you may be able to read a flow chart about them in my next book -- "may be" because the flow chart may be too big to fit in a book. The rules are so complex that they ought to begin: First, take a week off from running your school to study these rules. Many of the rules come from the union contract, which has 200 pages plus a mess of addenda. Even Klein, who used to practice antitrust law for the federal government, called the contract a "regulatory nightmare."

But the unions fight to protect the nightmare. Weingarten has a remarkable excuse: "Our union has actually stepped up to the plate and said we'll police our own profession."

I'd like to police my own job, too. And I'll bet some students would just love to police their own homework!

Of course, unions do more than just protect incompetents. Weingarten, on behalf of New York's teachers union, fought for a uniform day of six hours, 40 minutes. "Which is what normally happens in the private sector," she told me.

Funny. I work in the private sector every day, and I haven't seen that. Have you?

The teachers no longer have that either, though. Last year, they made a big concession. Now they have a uniform day of six hours, 50 minutes. That's nearly a whole additional hour every week!

Some teachers care about the students, so they want to do more than the contract requires. But astoundingly, some of them told me they are actually afraid to stay at school when the union says it's time to go home. They worry they'll "get in trouble with the union." It's as if the teachers, united, never to be defeated, made a decision: Instead of letting the administrators crack down on bad teachers, the union will protect the bad teachers by cracking down on the good ones.

Maybe that's what Weingarten calls policing their own profession.

I confronted Weingarten. "Unionized monopolies like yours fail. In this case, it is the children who -- who you are failing."

"We are not a unionized monopoly," she retorted. "And ultimately those folks who want to say this all the time, they don't really care about kids."

Really, Ms. Weingarten? You fight to protect a system that rewards mediocrity, and then you claim your critics don't care about kids?

Give Me a Break

Fake UN Human Rights Commission

Sins of Commission
Human rights lose at the U.N. again.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

So the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission publishes a study denouncing U.S. detention practices at Guantanamo, and world opinion is supposed to be outraged. Well, count us in: Once again, the Commission has amply demonstrated why even Secretary General Kofi Annan wants to replace it with something better. This being the U.N., however, the reform effort is now being bungled.

We won't waste your time on the study itself, which largely rehashes factual and legal allegations we've seen and rebutted before, and whose authors never actually visited Guantanamo. One of the authors, Algerian jurist Leila Zerrougui, was last heard denouncing Israel's security fence, which has helped reduce suicide bombings by 90%.

A more interesting question is why this report was produced in the first place: We are still waiting for the Commission's reports on the human-rights picture in, say, Syria. But there's no mystery here, since the only purpose the Commission actually serves is to deflect criticism of actual human-rights abusers by heaping invective on the U.S. and Israel.

It is for this reason that we were initially prepared to support Mr. Annan's call last year to abolish the Commission in favor of a Human Rights Council. Part of what recommended the proposal was Mr. Annan's call for the size of the Council to be reduced and for Council members to be elected by two-thirds of the General Assembly. That way, it was reasoned, a country such as Sudan (a current member of the Commission, along with fellow paragons Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe) would be less likely to stand for a seat, and more likely to be defeated if it did.

Fast forward a few months, and here's what the sages of the U.N. actually propose. Instead of a Commission composed of 53 member states, the Council would consist of 45. Now there's a bold step. The U.N. also appears ready to drop the two-thirds majority requirement in favor of a simple majority, lowering the bar to membership. And a modest proposal to exclude countries under legally binding "Chapter VII" U.N. sanctions (as Iraq was before its liberation) has been excluded, presumably because it's too tough on the world's worst regimes.

Instead, the U.N. proposes distributing seats according to what it calls "equitable geographic distribution": 12 seats to Africa; 13 to Asia (including the Middle East); eight to Latin America; five to East Europe and seven to the so-called West European and Others Group, which includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

Thus the two groups that contain the greatest proportion of liberal democracies are allotted the smallest number of seats. By contrast, in 2005 only nine countries in the whole of Africa were rated "free," according to Freedom House. In Asia and the Middle East, only about a dozen of 54 countries are free, and that's if you're counting Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru and Kiribati.

Put simply, this structure not only fails to exclude abusive regimes from membership in the Council, it actually guarantees them their seats. And it is rigged against the very countries whose opinions about human rights might be other than blatantly hypocritical. As to the potential merit of those opinions, we'll leave it to posterity to decide whether what the world really needed in this decade was another platform for Scandinavian highmindedness.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has made it clear to his U.N. colleagues that the current proposal is not something the Bush Administration can endorse. That's a stand that will surely burnish his reputation in certain liberal circles as an "obstructionist." But fake reform is worse than no reform at all, and whatever else might be said of the current system, it at least has the virtue of being discredited.

The world can certainly wait a few months more to get the human-rights agency that genuine human-rights victims deserve. The fact that the U.N. is incapable of providing one is yet another reminder of what ails the organization, especially under its current management.