McCann Murderers?

Did the McCann's kill their daughter?
	Yes
	No
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I know that all the evidence isn't out yet, even with stories like this. I'm just curious about the prevailing opinion.

9/11--UPDATED

I remember. That's why I believe we must continue to fight Islamofascism wherever it stands. Send them to Allah early and often, I say.

On the way to my son's first day of preschool, I heard the news, but I almost couldn't believe it. Wondering what to do, I left my son and went and watched as the second tower fell. I felt like I was going to throw up. Then, I went back and got my son and brought him home. I watched in horror.

Everything changed that day.

Today, I took my other son to his first day of preschool. The same line of parents, the same nervous energy, the same sunny humidity occurs six years later. It's surreal.

Time has marched on, and yet the loss seems like it happened yesterday. The continued terrorist attempts keep the memories alive.

The continued terrorist attacks keep my resolve alive. I don't for a minute believe that if America steps back these psychopaths will stop. Quite the contrary, in fact. If America stops, the war will really rev up and we delay a fight that will be taken to our children, who will grow up as quickly as time has passed since 9/11, and face the same enemy while they take their children to preschool.

UPDATE: Why the Left must deny 9/11. H/T Dr. Sanity

Never again. H/T Instapundit

Video here. Jonah Goldberg and James Lileks also noting the back to school, ignore the terrorist in the room element.

The Anchoress wraps everything up. She remembers...... everything.

Gina Cobb explodes myths.

Some people wonder why I persecute myself every year on the anniversary of this dread day. It's the least I can do. As a soft-around-the-edges mom, responsibilities here keep me from fighting there, so I remember. As a supremely blessed American, who daily receives the joy of living in freedom, the least I can do is a cry a tear for them and remember.

Would it kill the Left to cry just a little?

NEA Resolution on Home Schooling

Well, I'm back from our first home schooling field trip. We toured the capital, watched Senators debate legislation, met with our Senator, spent time with our Representative's staff, toured the library of Congress, toured the Supreme Court, visited the war memorials, saw Panda's at the National Zoo, learned geology at the Smithsonian, ate lunch at Union Station and the Reagan Commerce Building, toured the White House, and watched the sun set across the Lincoln and Washington Memorials. In three days, the students learned about architecture, civics, history, art, science, politics, biology and economy.

At home, we prepared for the trip by reading about Washington D.C., learning about the three branches of government, how America came to be, and what a Democracy is. The kids had the time of their life.

The National Education Association was busy, too. Here is their resolution on home schooling:

"B-75. Home Schooling. The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state curricular requirements, including the taking of assessments to ensure adequate academic progress. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being born by the parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

"The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools...."

Just to clarify the NEA position:

1. Home schoolers receive less than comprehensive education.
2. Home schooling parents should pay their school taxes and pay their child's education costs at home.
3. Home schooling teachers, even those with more education than teachers, should be state licensed.
4. Home schoolers must use state mandated curriculum.
5. Home schooling children should NOT be able to enjoy any extra-curricular activities that their parent's taxes pay for.

In short, teachers will be happy to have the home schooler parent's tax money, teachers would like no responsibility to deliver services such as athletics to home schooled children, and teachers would like to shackle parents with the same curriculum they, themselves resent being forced to use. In fact, No Child Left Behind is reviled by the same NEA, yet they would enforce these strictures on others:

Reform is coming to No Child Left Behind, but the question is what kind. Teachers unions, which bitterly oppose the law, are pushing to relax its rigid testing rules and penalties.

"It narrows the curriculum," said Joel Packer, a policy manager for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. "Particularly in reading, there is this increasingly strict curriculum being imposed that teachers feel doesn't treat them as professionals and is taking creativity out of the classroom."

Part of the reason parents choose home schooling is to creatively meet the child's needs. The NEA would like to restrict this flexibility, of course, while demanding relaxed requirements of them, so their success as teachers isn't tied to their students.

Special Education has especially enjoyed this laxity. Children are given ridiculously easy requirements to meet and then the education is deemed a success when the child meets them. Everyone looks like a champ. The child falls hopelessly behind.

Not all teachers stink. In fact, many are very good. We are not talking individual teachers here. The overall educational experience is being compared. And teachers are scorning home schooling even though home schoolers have stellar outcomes when compared to public schools.

Maybe when the NEA gets it's house in order, they can share their wisdom with home schoolers.

Coming Home

I'll be traveling back to Houston today from my whirl-wind Philly, Jersey, DC trip. You'll hear more tomorrow.

The plane, alas, will be full.

The Nazi Cause of Islamism

Jew-hatred permeates Islamism as anyone paying attention knows. Paying attention is the problem. It seems everyone from the 9/11 commission to the United Nations doesn't want to know. The Weekly Standard's Matthias Küntzel has the most complete etiology of radical Islam.

The problem is not that the Islamists hide their goals. The problem is that the West does not listen. Osama bin Laden's chief reproach of the Americans in his "Letter to the American People" is that they act as free citizens who make their own laws instead of accepting sharia. The same hatred of freedom can be found in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to the American president: "Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

Please, read the whole thing.

Kathleen Willey Robbed

World Net Daily reports:

Kathleen Willey, the woman who says Bill Clinton groped her in the Oval Office, claims she was the target of an unusual house burglary over the weekend that nabbed a manuscript for her upcoming book, which promises explosive revelations that could damage Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Read the whole article. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

The Worst Parents Who Suffer The Little Children A Little Too Much

Parenting must be on everyone's minds with school starting up again. I just finished reading the article The Worst Parents Ever by Tom McGrath in the most recent Philadelphia Magazine. Basically, it's covering some of the same turf that's been tilled recently about "hyper parenting". Parents are raising narcissistic, entitled little pigs (do I sound too much like Alec Baldwin?) who end up crushed under the weight of ridiculous expectations at college time. Kids these days are long on indulgence and extreme achievement expectations and short on character:

No less important, though, is that a generation of kids who’ve been overindulged, overprotected and generally over-parented seems to be overwhelmingly underprepared to live in the real world. “They’ve been exposed to so much more, and on one level, they’re so much more sophisticated than we were,” says Janet Walkow, a business consultant in Wayne and the mother of three college-age girls. “But they’re less sophisticated when it comes to street smarts. They’re not as mature.”

Not that you can tell them. A study released earlier this year found that the current generation of college students is the most narcissistic ever. In the study, psychologists asked students to respond to statements like, “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.” Two-thirds of the kids showed elevated levels of narcissism — 30 percent more than when the study was first done in 1982.

And it's all the parents fault. The parents raising this generation, says McGrath, are the "worst parents ever."

Father of four boys, Tony Woodlief explains in a Wall Street Journal editorial Don't Suffer the Little Children that there has long been tension between two parenting styles: the Rousseauians and Hobbesians. That is between Utopians and Realists. In one camp, those who believe children are sweet, perfect tableaus written on by a black, diseased society. In the other camp, people like Thomas Sowell realistically believe this:

"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

As a mother presiding over a house filled with pint-sized barbarians who have lots of barbarian friends, the tension between the two camps is all but lost. The Rousseauians have won, hands down. Between aggressive parents who defend their cretins misbehavior and the over-indulgent teachers working on self-esteem and imparting all the moral relativism that can be mashed into one lesson possible, the war is over.

The losers in the war, rather than surrendering have retreated. They've gone home. My kids are home, for the first time this year. And many friends kids are at home being taught by determined parents. I recently met a family with eight children ages 19 to 3 who were lucid, well-spoken, disciplined, helpful, obedient to their parents, dressed smartly and home schooled. Their father is an electrician, self-employed. Their mother is their teacher. They have done an impressive job. These kids will be successes not because they go to Harvard, though some might, but because they have character. Whether installing electrical systems, doing computer programming, becoming a nurse, or whatever their goals, they'll have the character to stick with it.

But what of the barbarians bred for superstar status? A friend is VP of human resources for a Fortune 500 company. I asked how the inter-generational workplace is fairing. How are those Gen Y 20-somethings working with their parent's generation the Boomers? She said that it's interesting how the younger people need excessive hand-holding, they embrace technology, but are almost incapable of seeing a project through on their own. The only model of work is team work. Individual contribution is too much pressure. The Boomers, who raised this generation, dislike the traits they imparted in their own children and complain bitterly to HR. Ironic, isn't it. She said, "They don't see it in their own kids, but they hate it in a co-worker."

I'm wondering, too, if the consequences won't come home to roost. Mr. Woodlief notes the eventual outcome:

Perhaps the fundamental purpose of schooling should be to liberate parents from the necessity of supporting our kids well past our retirement years. But regardless, this notion that humans are inherently angelic, and that it is society that corrupts them, is at the heart of much bad parenting, as well as inept schooling.

The parents who over-indulge may end up paying, and paying, and paying. Our society is so wealthy, a whole generation of rich children (and even the poor are rich) will live deluded and disappointed lives. Everyone will be like a trust-fund baby: soft, entitled, ignorant, arrogant, overindulged and hopeless. Imagine, a whole generation of Paris Hiltons and Lindsey Lohans.

And the proportion of disciplined, hard-working, patient, cooperative, intelligent children who grow up to be adults of good character will further diminish. At least, that's the pessimistic view.

No matter what, it seems to me that the parents who over-indulge ultimately end up ensuring that their child learns in the school of hard knocks and that's a tougher school than a tough, but loving parent.

Clintons: Money & Crime

The more things change, the more they stay the same--at least when it comes to dirty fund raising and the Clintons. As if the Hsu snafu isn't enough, another dubious fundraiser is at it. And where there's money, there's Hillary. Her new money guy is only convicted of racketeering and extortion and lost an election because of voter fraud his sister participated in engineering. No big whup! Just another day in Clintonville.

Glenn Reynolds wonders if there's a Hsuicide watch. I hope so. Maybe they could lock Hsu in the same room as Sandy Berger and get to the bottom of the Clinton's nefarious schemes for once.

I Love Gitmo!

Gitmo prisoners want back in and human rights organizations say America isn't doing enough to look after prisoners after they're release. Gina Cobb's amusing response:

The "solution" pushed by Human Rights Watch is not to admit that perhaps Gitmo isn't so bad after all -- at least compared to Tunisia and many other nations -- but instead to again raise the bar by demanding that the U.S. guarantee the safety of the enemy combatants even after their release.

But wouldn't that be rather . . . imperialist? Just how far should the U.S. go in sticking its nose into the internal affairs of Tunisia or Saudi Arabia -- hmmmm?

And why on earth should enemy combatants be given immunity from crimes committed in their home countries, anyway? This is not Wheel of Fortune. The prizes upon release from Guantanamo do not include lifetime immunity from prosecution anywhere on planet Earth.

If Tunisia has a human rights problem, then maybe it's time to stop the endless whining about Gitmo and instead to acknowledge the excellent job the United States has done in its detention of enemy combatants. When jihadists are begging to be let back into Guantanamo, that tells you all you really need to know.

Recession Reality: The Debt Epidemic

Well, we're in one. The job figures just made it worse. And now, as MOM notes, people will ask Why? She says that wealth creation was an illusion. People were just amassing debt. And now, people are looking to blame someone, anyone.

One thing I found very interesting:

The failure to admit what happened and how is very likely to create a toxic social and political environment. As we speak, the financing for smaller businesses is starting to dry up. How bad it will be depends on just how bad the previous lending has been, so the effect isn't fully quantifiable yet. This will be a shocking event to those affected, and a broad range of individuals will be affected. The aftermaths of bubbles always leave the survivors dazed, confused and harboring a sense of injustice. Those who bought into the bubble claim it is everyone else's fault, and those who acted responsibly and suddenly get caught in the undertow created by all the irresponsibility know it is not their fault. Everyone will be looking for the culprit.

Historically speaking, such events are associated with social and political instability and nasty turns in mass psychology. Pogroms, for example. Persecutions. Ejections of minorities.

Democracies have the ability to deal with these events differently, but only if accurate information is disseminated through the society.

This phenomenon closely mirrors the progression of infectious disease. For example, my family is extremely circumspect about using antibiotics. We use them rarely and only when we've given our immune systems months to fight the bug. Hospitals are notoriously irresponsible about hygiene (there is no government enforcement agency about this, if you can believe it), farmers pump their livestock full to the gills with prophylactic antibiotics (that is, the animals don't need them, but they give them in case they are exposed and because they are in such tight quarters that disease spreads so quickly), many people pop antibiotics like candy trying to knock out viri with them and make the bugs stronger because they operate unopposed. In short, most people have bought into the antibiotic bubble. The bubble is popping. The problem is that now the bugs are so strong, that even the people acting responsibly get infected now with the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria or drug resistant viruses and suffer and die. The fault lies with doctors, hospital hygiene (or lack thereof), ignorant people, promiscuous people, mobility, and farmers. It doesn't matter. Everyone suffers when the bubble bursts.

The only thing that will bring people back to sobriety is a lot of death and destruction. Sensible measures like good hygiene, quarantine, prevention and restraint with medicine will come back into vogue, until the next bout of expedience and ignorance.

Debt has been the antibiotic, the drug of choice, of the money world. People incur it like it's no big deal to finance their colds and coughs and ear aches, when they should have prevented the debt-illness to begin with. So the market is crashing, and will ultimately have a salubrious affect on personal finances, but a lot of people are going to get sick and die in the process. Bankruptcies, fleeing the market and everything else will affect everyone--not just the promiscuous, unclean, and lazy. Let's hope this financial crisis doesn't become an epidemic, although I'm nervous that it already is one but we're just in the silent spread right now.

Now look at this and decide if you think investment homes are a good idea right now. The question: are we at the bottom? Is the epidemic burned out or just started?

Madeleine McCann the New Jon Benet?

The Kate McCann mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann was named a suspect. McCann's husband Gerry vigorously denies this, as do their friends. Is this another example of a highly intelligent mother who made a mistake and now covers it up, ala Patsy Ramsey? Time will tell. Or maybe it won't.

Gay Outers: Hypocrisy or Human?

I know a cardiologist who smokes like a chimney. In a consultation with him, should you be unfortunate enough to have heart disease and need surgery, he will recommend, strongly, that you give up smoking. It's bad for your health. Is he a hypocrite?

There needs to be a better understanding of the word "hypocrite". Todays definition is "saying one thing and doing another", but that's not correct. That's a sinner. A sinner knows the ideal, believes the ideal and falls short. A hypocrite, knows the ideal, does NOT believe the ideal yet says he believes the ideal, and habitually ignores the ideal for some ulterior reason. This is a hypocrite:

a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives

Larry Craig would be a hypocrite (as opposed to human and fallible) if he believed that being actively gay was Jim-dandy fine, but got married, had kids, became a Republican, and spoke out against it so he could have power. That would be hypocrisy. Calling out a man of ambiguous sexuality while believing that there is nothing wrong with said sexuality and believing that imposing morality on someone is wrong and then doing just that to achieve political ends rather than benefit gays (Craig fails to display the progressive gay "morality", i.e. being pro-gay marriage) would be hypocritical.

In the comment section over at Gay Patriot, Will from American Elephant says:

I still think Craig should just switch parties–hed go from being a hypocrite to being a victim faster than you can tap your toe.

Gay Patriot notes the Outers hypocrisy; they use the same strident religious zeal that they claim to hate about the religious right:

In yesterday’s Washington Post Marc Fisher wrote that such “work requires” the “outers” to “play God” (Via Michael Silence via Instapundit). As if they know better than the rest of us. An attitude not too different from that of religious zealots. Indeed, the very title of the column, focusing on the actions of blogger Michael Rogers, Who Among Us Would Cast the First Stone? This Guy suggests that Rogers has the same certainty of belief as do those judgmental voices on the religious right whom his allies on the left are ever eager to criticize.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The outers on the left do themselves no favors by outing people who prefer to remain closeted. It strikes honest people as unfair and ruthless. It is off-putting. It is especially off-putting when screwing in public bathroom stalls is defended when it's clearly illegal, while wrecking someone's personal life is fair game. Hello? Maybe gay activists need to be more diverse in their friendships. Would they like a niece or nephew walk in while a couple of men mate in a public bathroom? This base and degrading behavior angers people. There is no logical defense for the activity and yet, it gets defended.

There are gay people who believe that living the lifestyle violates their moral code. They are not hypocrites. They are human. If they believed being gay was fine, good even, professed it sinful and lived the lifestyle, they'd be hypocrites. Just like my cardiologist friend or Peta people who sneak leather shoes, or the devout vegetarian succumbing to a tempting hamburger, these people aren't hypocrites, they're human.

The label "hypocrite" is used to silence opposition. Unfortunately, it works.

Matt Sanchez has more thoughts.

King of My Castle Doctrine

Texas' Castle Doctrine law came on the books three day before a shooting inside a musicians home resulted in another dead musician and many anguished fans:

Dallas police Sgt. Larry Lewis says his department isn't pursuing charges against the neighbor who shot Albrecht due in large part to the new "castle doctrine" law that allows a person to protect their property with deadly force.

Coincidentally, the neighbor involved in the shooting is also a musician. Logg, 54, is a blues guitarist who goes by the nickname "Smokey" and has recorded multiple albums.

Albrecht had been a keyboard player for Edie Brickell & New Bohemians since 1999 and had played several times with Brickell's husband, Paul Simon.

Imagine being the person on the inside of the house, shouting unheeded warnings, as a huge, raving man is trying to kick your door in. The people call 911. They screamed warnings. A warning shot was sent high through the door. Should he be tried for murder?

Under the Castle Doctrine, a person doesn't have to attempt to retreat, he can defend himself. So a grand jury will look at it. It seems they can only find the obvious: he defended himself.

There is a difference between defense and vigilantism. Jodi Foster's movie deals with this subject, but she believes guns are bad, bad, bad. I just don't believe her. If a huge, drug-crazed man was coming through her door, would she defend herself and her children? She'd be immoral if she didn't.

An important aside about the medication the dead man was on:

The story that emerged later was much more complicated. This was no raging lunatic — his girlfriend said he had never came close to such behavior. Indeed, he is invariably described as “even-tempered and sometimes shy,” and that never changed with alcohol in the mix, friends said.

Earlier that night, he had about five drinks, according to his best friend. That would’ve rated as a normal night, except that he was also taking an anti-smoking drug called Chantix for about a week. Mr. Albrecht and his girlfriend, who was also on the drug, previously mentioned “crazy, insane, almost horrific dreams” while on the drug. More from Danny Balis, the friend:

Was it a combination of sleep deprivation, booze, and the stop-smoking pills that sent him off? It’s the only explanation i can even think of. What was described to me sounded like a walking black out. In my years of knowing him, and all the girls he dated, I have never once heard of him getting abusive or physical with them. It was not his character. Especially with the woman that I know for a fact he loved dearly.

“I really believe it was the drug,” Ryann Rathbone, his girlfriend, told The Dallas Morning News.

If this is the case, it is doubly a tragedy.

Thanks to KAL for the tip.

I'm OK, You're A Moron

John Edwards, like most socialists, knows what's good for you. Everyone in your life has an opinion about what you should do. We all experience that. But what if those everyones, became a Someone with power to actually bend your life to their will? Imagine a bureaucrat deciding your fate for you own good, and, it goes without saying, but I'll say it, the greater good.

Well, it's happening in England. Pregnant women threatened with having their babies taken away based on what they might do. A potentially emotionally abusive mother will have her baby taken at birth. The mother is in a bind, of course. If she tells the social workers to take a leap, she may never see her baby. Shrinkwrapped says this process is inevitable:

There is a certain inevitability to such stories. After all, once the government decides what is best for its subjects, all in the name of benevolence and caring, it follows rather predictably that they will begin to intervene in order to ensure the outcomes of which they approve. Further, when the government pays for health care, they will naturally want to enforce adherence to those behaviors they imagine will minimize their financial exposure.

All of this emerges from the Mental Health Morass that has developed since Freud's initial principles have been misunderstood and misapplied in the name of Mental Health.

The troubling thing about this story is that the field of psychology is hardly a hard science. I know some will take issue with that statement. Parts and pieces of the profession are substantiated, but it's difficult to imagine, that a superficial visit from the social worker would net an understanding of the patient's mind. Shrinkwrapped says:

The primary misunderstanding of Freud and Psychoanalysis, a misunderstanding that continues to be propagated by the forces of Therapism, concerns the locus of responsibility for our behavior. Freud's greatest insight was that to a large extent our manifest behavior is the outcome of compromises among many impulses and inhibitions, most of them unconscious, which sum and move us to action. As such, the goal of Psychoanalysis has always been to make us more aware of our hitherto unconscious motivations so that we can take more responsibility for our behavior. Therapism does the exact opposite; it attempts to relieve us of responsibility by assigning motivation and blame to all sorts of agencies (parents, society, brain chemistry) which are by definition outside the realm of our moral agency.

It is a small step from such thinking to enabling and encouraging the government to tell people how to live, how to raise their children, and how to think. As Neuroscience enlarges our understanding of the biochemical and physiological underpinnings of behavior, those who have done so much to diminish moral responsibility will be in a powerful position to mandate proper thought. The dangers are real and growing.

And here is the dirty little secret at the heart of Therapism: Too many of those who press the Therapism agenda are unknowingly pursuing their own unconscious desires, for power, control, and a host of other hidden wishes. They imagine their motives are pure but the unconscious exists even within those who wish to help you "for your own good"

Be ware, the helpy helper, especially when he wants to be your next president.

Food Additives and Hyperactivity

A new study proves a link between food additives and hyperactivity. Some kids are especially sensitive to dyes. The children studied were given all sorts of additives.

Parents who have kids diagnosed with ADD, ADHD or are on the Autism spectrum, would do well to remove the following from their kids diet and reintroduce the foods after three weeks to see what thing bothers the kid:
Wheat (and for Autistic kids, anything with gluten)
Dairy (except cheese)
Additives
Preservatives
Processed foods
Sugary anything (no juice, either)

I know, it's a pain. A happy, calm, unmedicated kid is worth the trouble.