Calling All Homeschoolers and Supporters of Homeschooling

It has come to my attention that Representative Dan Moul, 91st district, sent a memo to every PA state representative concerning the introduction of a bill on February 5th. The memo was titled Co-sponsorship of Legislation Homeschool Evaluations. He is looking for co-sponsorship. This bill would essentially remove the requirement that home education programs be evaluated by public school superintendents in order to determine whether students were receiving an appropriate education.

Current law not only requires parents to obtain an evaluation of their program by persons with qualifications prescribed by statute at their own personal expense, it also requires local superintendents to conduct virtually the same evaluation to also determine whether an appropriate education is occurring. The proposed bill would require parents to submit to the local superintendent only the written evaluation and certification from the qualified evaluator that an appropriate education was occurring. The superintendent would be free to focus on their duties related to the public school rather than wasting countless hours re-doing what a qualified evaluator has already done. This bill will be beneficial for taxpayers, our public schools, and homeschoolers. It is costly, unnecessary, and time consuming to review the portfolios twice. Re-reviewing thousands of portfolios every year is not only burdensome for school districts, but also wastes resources that could have been used for our public school students.

I urge you to take a strong stand in support of homeschooling parents in your district and in Pennsylvania by asking your local Representative to co-sponsor this bill and work to enact it. Pennsylvania's laws pertaining to homeschooling are among the strictest in the nation. Easing this one portion of the regulations would show that the Pennsylvania state motto of Virtue, Liberty and Independence is more than just a saying from our forefathers, but also stands as a true testament to the desire of the people to live free of control by others.

To know more, visit:
http://pahomeschool.embarqspace.com

Be an Efficient Grassroots Patriot

Do you have a directory of your legislators?

 

If you are a grassroots patriot, I highly recommend that you have a printed copy handy for times when you need to contact your officials, state and federal.

 

1 - If you're from Pennsyvania, go to:

http://www.pafamily.org/citizenactioncenter.php

 

2 - Click LEGIS-LOOKUP!

 

3 - Enter your information and it will show you a list of all the legislators in your district based on your zip code.

 

4 - Click their profile

 

5 - Right click print

 

6 - Do this for each of them in the list, from your local Representative to the President.

 

7 - Staple them together and you have your handy grassroots patriot's directory.

 

Place them where you can easily find them and you'll be surprised how much you can accomplish in such a short time; especially when urgent concerns that require immediate actions come on a short notice.

 

*** For all States, you may find your information at:

http://capwiz.com/fof/home/

 

NoRINOs Petition

NoRINOs Petition

January 22, 1973 - One of the Worst Days in American History

January 22, 1973, is one of the worst days in American history. Why?

Check out these numbers:

Deaths: American soldiers killed in the Iraq war 4,189
Documented civilian deaths from suicide bombings and violence in Iraq: 88,780 - 96,900 (2003-2008)

(http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/)

Abortions in 2008 alone 38,639,842 (as of 11/2/2008 a.m.)
***When I wrote this, just 16 days since the turn of the new calendar year - 1,945,375

(http://www.WorldOMeters.info/)


It is possible to recover from economic recessions but how do you recover these innocent lives?

49,551,703 abortions since Roe v. Wade became legal on January 22, 1973.
(http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.html).


Wait! It got worse! Does infanticide count as abortion?
(http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/LawmakersProposeFOCA.html)


We're killing our children - our future.


Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a gift from God..."

Palin, for Posterity

I have never known anybody in politics who has received the same level of attack and degradation as Sarah Palin -- in such a short time. I take comfort that she has the right kind of stuff and a strong faith to boot. Win or lose, she's a hero, and I thought our own, Paul Kengor, is so right on in his article posted on National Catholic Registry.

"There’s no question that Sarah Palin’s hope for those unwanted children, expressed in that speech, was a line in the sand — not just politically, but spiritually, against darker forces in an ancient battle between good and evil."

Dems Get Set to Muzzle the Right?

by Brian C. Anderson
New York Post
Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Should Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - and to diminish conservatives' influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It's doubtful.

The Fairness Doctrine was an astonishingly bad idea. It's a too-tempting power for government to abuse. When the doctrine was in effect, both Democratic and Republican administrations regularly used it to harass critics on radio and TV.

Second, a new Fairness Doctrine would drive political talk radio off the dial. If a station ran a big-audience conservative program like, say, Laura Ingraham's, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative. But liberals don't do well on talk radio, as the failure of Air America and indeed all other liberal efforts in the medium to date show. Stations would likely trim back conservative shows so as to avoid airing unsuccessful liberal ones.

Then there's all the lawyers you'd have to hire to respond to the regulators measuring how much time you devoted to this topic or that. Too much risk and hassle, many radio executives would conclude. Why not switch formats to something less charged - like entertainment or sports coverage?

For those who dismiss this threat to freedom of the airwaves as unlikely, consider how the politics of "fairness" might play out with the public. A Rasmussen poll last summer found that fully 47 percent of respondents backed the idea of requiring radio and television stations to offer "equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary," with 39 percent opposed.

Liberals, Rasmussen found, support a Fairness Doctrine by 54 percent to 26 percent, while Republicans and unaffiliated voters were more evenly divided. The language of "fairness" is seductive.

Even with control of Washington and public support, Dems would have a big fight in passing a Fairness Doctrine. Rush Limbaugh & Co. wouldn't sit by idly and let themselves be regulated into silence, making the outcome of any battle uncertain. But Obama and the Democrats also plan other, more subtle regulations that would achieve much the same outcome.

He and most Democrats want to expand broadcasters' public-interest duties. One such measure would be to impose greater "local accountability" on them - requiring stations to carry more local programming whether the public wants it or not. The reform would entail setting up community boards to make their demands known when station licenses come up for renewal. The measure is clearly aimed at national syndicators like Clear Channel that offer conservative shows. It's a Fairness Doctrine by subterfuge.

Obama also wants to relicense stations every two years (not eight, as is the case now), so these monitors would be a constant worry for stations. Finally, the Democrats also want more minority-owned stations and plan to intervene in the radio marketplace to ensure that outcome.

It's worth noting, as Jesse Walker does in the latest Reason magazine, that Trinity Church, the controversial church Obama attended for many years, is heavily involved in the media-reform movement, having sought to restore the Fairness Doctrine, prevent media consolidation and deny licenses to stations that refuse to carry enough children's programming.

Regrettably, media freedom hasn't been made an issue by the McCain campaign, perhaps because the maverick senator is himself no fan of unbridled political speech, as his long support of aggressive campaign-finance regulation underscores. But the threat to free speech is real - and profoundly disturbing.

---

Brian C. Anderson is editor of City Journal and co-author, with Adam Thierer, of A Manifesto for Media Freedom, just out from Encounter Books.

 

Source: http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E9E183F1-E726-4BD5-B273-8BCD590E8916

Who's Responsible For the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Scam?