For The Children

Canadian Group Protests Missing Signs In Speed Camera Zones

"Wise Up Winnipeg members stood at the corner of Stafford Street and Warsaw on Friday warning drivers with bright yellow signs that read, 'Unsigned school zone ahead.' The group wants to bring attention to the city's refusal to act on a list of 203 locations where they say the signs do not comply with legal standards. So far, city officials are not commenting on the matter and have installed only three new warning signs since the group raised the issue last October. On Tuesday, video was posted of Winnipeg city employees pulling down a speed limit sign. The city is looking to further increase citations by reducing school zone speed limits from 50km/h (31 MPH) to 30km/h (19 MPH)." Continue reading →

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Pot And Pregnancy: It’s Harmless, So Why Are Moms Still Prosecuted?

"Weighing decades of research, it’s fairly safe to say that marijuana during pregnancy has very little to no effect on the developing fetus. Unfortunately, child welfare laws in many states do not agree. Some states equate smoking marijuana while pregnant — whether to alleviate nausea, vomiting, stress or depression — with felony child neglect or abuse. Given that marijuana is the most widely used drug by women of child-bearing age, and the potential for women to use marijuana without knowing they’re pregnant, this is a women’s rights issue. Why should a woman surrender autonomy over her body, her children and her approach to motherhood to civil authorities, whether she uses cannabis or not?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPot And Pregnancy: It’s Harmless, So Why Are Moms Still Prosecuted?

Obama: Our ideals and principles, national security at stake in Syria

"Obama repeated his pledge that a prospective U.S. attack on his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad’s forces would not draw American troops into a ground-based conflict. 'The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks,' Obama said. 'Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver.' 'To my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just,' Obama urged. 'To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama: Our ideals and principles, national security at stake in Syria

CDC calls rising E-cigarette among teens ‘deeply troubling’

"Some 1.78 million US middle and high school students — around 11 to 18 years old — smoked so-called e-cigarettes in 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a new study. CDC smoking and health office director Tim McAfee noted that 'about 90 percent of all smokers begin smoking as teenagers.' 'We must keep our youth from experimenting or using any tobacco product.' The US government is due to announce in October its plans for regulating electronic cigarettes. For the moment, the laws are different according to each state, though a number of them have already forbidden their sale to minors." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCDC calls rising E-cigarette among teens ‘deeply troubling’

Court: School Officials Accountable for Strip-Searching 10-Year-Old Over $20

"A federal court has agreed to hold school officials accountable for stripping a 10-year-old boy down to his underwear in an aggressive strip-search that included rimming the edge of his underwear, allegedly in an attempt to find another student’s missing $20 bill (which was later found on the cafeteria floor). The Rutherford Institute had challenged the school’s attempt to have the lawsuit against it dismissed, insisting that there is no justification for the school’s decision to so egregiously violate the fifth-grader’s Fourth Amendment rights or for the alleged failure to train school employees in how to appropriately deal with such matters." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCourt: School Officials Accountable for Strip-Searching 10-Year-Old Over $20

Free Lunches for All Students in Boston

"The federal government has taken a chunk of taxpayers’ money and handed it over to Boston’s tax-funded schools. The money will be used to supply free lunches for all students. There will be no means-testing. Rich kids will get free meals. Why? So as to avoid the sense of shame in the hearts of poor kids, who might see their families as charity cases, which of course they are. Reality is painful. Self-awareness is painful. Politicians spend their careers trying to find ways to shield voters from reality." Continue reading →

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Russian legislators introduce bill to take children away from LGBT parents

"A Russian lawmaker has introduced a bill that would allow the state to remove children from homes headed by LGBT parents. The draft bill was published on the Russian parliament’s website Thursday morning and proposed to make the 'fact of nontraditional sexual orientation' grounds for removing or denying parental custody rights. The bill, if passed, would add sexual orientation to a list of disqualifying factors that includes alcoholism, drug addiction and a history of child abuse. Bill author Alexei Zhuravlev said that the law would be a natural extension of a law passed earlier this year that bans so-called 'homosexual propaganda.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRussian legislators introduce bill to take children away from LGBT parents

Families upset with how deputies handled boys’ arrests

"'I frantically ran across the police officers where threatening to put us under custody for wanting to know what was going on with our children,' she said. Her child, Josmir, along with two of his friends, was being arrested by Charlotte County deputies. 'I saw some of the police officers laughing at me,' said Josmir. 'Like I deserved this, like I was a horrible person, a criminal. They were just laughing, laughing at all of us.' The charge was trespassing on Port Charlotte Middle School grounds. 'I think this was an innocent mistake that went too far because they have power and they though they were going to get away with it,' Mirna said." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFamilies upset with how deputies handled boys’ arrests

Great is the Guilt of an Unnecessary War – Vietnam Edition

"The Vietnam War ended forty years ago, but its toxic legacy lives on in children born decades after the conflict came to a close. One of them is 12-year-old Thi Ly, whose head is unnaturally large and visibly misshapen and her eyes are separated by an unusual distance and out of alignment. From the time she was an infant, Ly has been repeatedly hospitalized for numerous ailments. Her 43-year-old mother, Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities. Both of them are second- and third-generation victims of exposure to dioxin as a result of the U.S. military’s use of a defoliant called Agent Orange that was used extensively over parts of southern Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGreat is the Guilt of an Unnecessary War – Vietnam Edition

Pelosi: Willing to “Protect” Syrian Children To Death

"No recorded examples exist of Pelosi expressing anguish over the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who perished in anguish from starvation and disease as a result of the US-inflicted embargo that lasted from 1991 to 2003. Pelosi’s silence about that atrocity tacitly ratifies the assessment of her fellow humanitarian warmonger, Madeleine Albright, who blithely told 60 Minutes that the extermination of a half-million or more Iraqi children was a suitable price to pay in order to 'punish' Saddam Hussein. Pelosi has likewise been silent about the ongoing horrors experienced by the children of Fallujah, an Iraqi city that was pulverized by the US military in 2004." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPelosi: Willing to “Protect” Syrian Children To Death