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.

Giving it all away?

I honestly do not understand why we would turn our ports over to UAE. It doesn't make any sense and I haven't had my mind changed by anyone defending this decision.

We have also handed the Democrats a security issue they can run into the ground to show how they are trying to keep us safe. This is one place they do not make the grade and now we have handed them an issue they will pound us with.

GOP Governors Question Port Turnover Feb 20, 2006

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON

Two Republican governors on Monday questioned a Bush administration decision allowing an Arab-owned company to operate six major U. S. ports, saying they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states.

New York Gov. George Pataki and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich voiced doubts about the acquisition of a British company that has been running the U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

The British company, Peninsular and Oriental, runs major commercial operations at ports in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said in a news release.

"I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them in regards to this transaction," said the New York governor, who is still in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy.

Ehrlich, concerned about security at the Port of Baltimore, said Monday he is "very troubled" that Maryland officials got no advance notice before the Bush administration approved an Arab company's takeover of the operations at the six ports.

"We needed to know before this was a done deal, given the state of where we are concerning security," Ehrlich told reporters in the State House rotunda in Annapolis.

The state of Maryland is considering its options, up to and including voiding the contract for the Port of Baltimore, Ehrlich said, adding: "We have a lot of discretion in the contract."

Pataki is also asking the federal government to "share all critical relevant information made available to the Council on Foreign Investment during the course of the review of the purchase," a reference to the federal panel that approved the deal.

New York's legal options could include canceling the lease for operation, effectively shutting out Dubai Ports World from port activities. P&O signed a 30-year lease with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2000 to operate the Port Newark Container Terminal.

The governors are the latest elected officials from both parties to complain about the deal.

House Homeland Security chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., has been one of the most vocal, saying secret assurances obtained by the government don't go far enough to protect the nation's seaports.

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez joined the chorus of complaints on Monday.

"We wouldn't turn over our customs service or our border patrol to a foreign government," Menendez said during a Monday news conference in Newark. "We shouldn't turn over the ports of the United States, either."

Menendez said he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., will introduce legislation prohibiting the sale of port operations to foreign governments.

Bush administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have defended the decision.

During a stop Monday in Birmingham, Ala., Gonzales said the administration had a "very extensive process" for reviewing such transactions that "takes into account matters of national security, takes into account concerns about port security."

Critics have cited the UAE's history as an operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, they contend the UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist.

Frustration about the ports takeover put two Maryland gubernatorial candidates on the same side of an issue.

During a campaign stop in Bladensburg, Md., Monday, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley was adamant that the operations of his city's port not be turned over to the Arab-owned company.

"I believe that President's Bush's decision to turn over the operations of any American port is reckless," said O'Malley, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to oppose Ehrlich in the Maryland governor's race. "We are not going to turn over the Port of Baltimore to a foreign government."

What are our "Rights?"

Bogus rights

By Walter E. Williams

Feb 8, 2006

Do people have a right to medical treatment whether or not they can pay? What about a right to food or decent housing? Would a U.S. Supreme Court justice hold that these are rights just like those enumerated in our Bill of Rights? In order to have any hope of coherently answering these questions, we have to decide what is a right. The way our Constitution's framers used the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people and imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech, or freedom to travel, is something we all simultaneously possess. My right to free speech or freedom to travel imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference. In other words, my exercising my right to speech or travel requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights.

Contrast that vision of a right to so-called rights to medical care, food or decent housing, independent of whether a person can pay. Those are not rights in the sense that free speech and freedom of travel are rights. If it is said that a person has rights to medical care, food and housing, and has no means of paying, how does he enjoy them? There's no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy who provides them. You say, "The Congress provides for those rights." Not quite. Congress does not have any resources of its very own. The only way Congress can give one American something is to first, through the use of intimidation, threats and coercion, take it from another American. So-called rights to medical care, food and decent housing impose an obligation on some other American who, through the tax code, must be denied his right to his earnings. In other words, when Congress gives one American a right to something he didn't earn, it takes away the right of another American to something he did earn.

If this bogus concept of rights were applied to free speech rights and freedom to travel, my free speech rights would impose financial obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium and microphone. My right to travel freely would require that the government take the earnings of others to provide me with airplane tickets and hotel accommodations.

Philosopher John Locke's vision of natural law guided the founders of our nation. Our Declaration of Independence expresses that vision, declaring, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do -- redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God. I'm guessing that when God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," I'm sure he didn't mean "thou shalt not steal unless there was a majority vote in Congress."

The real tragedy for our nation is that any politician who holds the values of liberty that our founders held would be soundly defeated in today's political arena.

Since 1980, Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.

Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com

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A good book to read

Debunking militant feminist orthodoxy

By David Limbaugh

Jan 31, 2006

Kate O’Beirne’s "Women Who Make the World Worse" is one of the boldest books challenging the orthodoxy of political correctness to be released in years. Above all, it documents the real damage inflicted on our culture by radical feminism and the women who lead that destructive movement.

O’Beirne makes a compelling case, substantiated by copious research, that radical feminism has been driven largely by disaffected women, devoted to undermining the traditional institutions that are indispensable for a healthy, vibrant society: motherhood, fatherhood and marriage.

In their relentless assault on gender distinctions and Mother Nature herself, they have tried to eliminate all differences between men and women, labeling them as social constructs engineered by dominant males in furtherance of their conspiracy to oppress women.

This book is not merely a polemical counterpoint to the subjective propaganda with which radical feminists have bombarded society in the last three-plus decades. It marshals impressive evidence shattering the bizarre, counterintuitive psychobabble feminists have promoted to "deconstruct" the pillars of our culture.

Radical feminist torchbearers publicly condemn marriage as the "chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women" and a destructive institution that has harmed women’s mental and emotional health.

But O’Beirne shows that when confronted with the hard evidence that refutes their premises, radical feminists cavalierly dismiss it as just further proof of men’s successful subjugation and indoctrination of women.

For example, when study after study reveals that married women, on average, are happier, healthier and wealthier than their unmarried counterparts, feminists write them off as skewed because they don’t comport with their militant conclusions.

O’Beirne cites a female sociology professor, Jessie Barnard, who says, "To be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, women must be slightly mentally ill." Another, Katharine Bartlett, the dean of Duke University’s law school, attributes women’s support for the traditional, nuclear family to deeply rooted ideology (read: brainwashing).

If anyone is blinded by ideological conditioning, it’s the feminists, who willfully ignore the stubborn data that refuse to conform to their prejudices. For their dogma to thrive, they have to discount such disturbing findings as "boys who grew up outside of intact marriages, were, on average, more than twice as likely to end up in jail as other boys, and twice as likely to use illegal drugs."

While radical feminists hold themselves out as champions of women’s freedom and choice, they have sought to systematically undercut the natural bond between mother and child and put a guilt trip on mothers who would prefer temporarily to sacrifice their professional careers and stay home during their children’s formative years.

No less a figure than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, "Motherly love ain’t everything it has been cracked up to be. To some extent, it’s a myth that men have created to make women think that they do this job to perfection."

And lest you draw the wrong inferences here, O’Beirne’s book is not a condemnation of women who choose to pursue their careers while raising their children. Rather, it is an indictment of the radical feminists who insist on women marching in lock step to the monolithic dictates of the radical movement.

O’Beirne also makes quite clear that she has long opposed discrimination against women in employment and education and is a strong believer in women pursing academic and career excellence. It never occurred to her father, she says, that her chosen profession of law "was unsuitable for a woman."

Though O’Beirne has been a fierce advocate of equal opportunity for women, she abhors the radical feminists’ goal of legally enforcing an equality of outcomes, which would include, for example, absurdly equalizing the percentage of cosmetology, welding and carpentry students between the sexes.

The feminists, O’Beirne correctly notes, are not about empowering women. They have no room in their utopia for accomplished conservative women, such as Margaret Thatcher or Condoleezza Rice.

"Women Who Make the World Worse" is, to be sure, an entertaining, often humorous expose of the modern feminist movement, but at the same time, it’s a sober wake-up call, highlighting its destructive "advancements" and naming its primary culprits, including our would-be president, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I have long admired Kate O’Beirne and her powerful work as a writer for National Review and a commentator on "The Capital Gang." But she has outdone herself with this book, which is a must-read for all who seek to understand radical feminism and the danger it poses to women, men, children, families, marriage, education and other essential societal institutions.

I have barely scratched the surface here. Get it and read it. You will not be disappointed.

David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com. He is also the author of Persecution and Absolute Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.

Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com

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