Like? Florida teacher charged with soliciting students for sex on Facebook

Since at least the early 1960s, the state of Florida has quite obviously been home to the worst elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States. The Daily Caller has amply documented this indisputable fact again and again.

The latest teacher in the parade of awfulness is Stevie Glasspool, a now-fired charter school teacher in the Sunshine State who allegedly used Facebook to ask at least four students to have sex with her, reports CBS Miami.

Like so many other teachers charged with getting busy — or trying to get busy — with students, Glasspool was an English teacher. She had taught at Mavericks Charter High School in Pompano Beach before she was sacked in May.

Glasspool, 31, allegedly propositioned students ranging in age from 15 to 17, notes USA Today.

Reports suggest that the lovelorn English teacher appears to have been unsuccessful in efforts at seduction.  (more...)

Like? Florida teacher charged with soliciting students for sex on Facebook

L’Affaire Bottum

Among the vicissitudes of life, Belloc asserted that the loss of affection among friends is the worst thing in the world.  I thought of this when reading Joseph Bottum’s recent coming out as a supporter of same-sex marriage.   It struck me that this coming out should not go without comment in that Dr. Bottum was formerly the editor of First Things and a public intellectual engaged in some significant conversations about religion in public life and the Catholic Church in the modern world.  In that he has offered for public consumption his reasons for his radical change of mind, I intend to offer not a point-by-point rebuttal, but rather several animadversions.

Dr. Bottum begins his article lamenting the estrangement of a dear homosexual friend of his over the years in the cultural battles that have ensued over public morality and sexual mores.  Because of the incompatibility of their respective philosophical positions, the friendship cooled—something Bottum greatly regrets and laments.  (more...)

L’Affaire Bottum

The Christian Vestiges of Post-Christianity

It would be a mistake to think that Post-Christianity is a return to paganism, purely and simply. Certainly its environs include numerous strains of paganism—New Ageism, eco-feminism, “new cosmology” mysticism, etc.; and one’s post-Christianity may be amalgamated with such strains.

But the post-Christian denizen is marching to a different drummer. He may be unaware of the great distinctive teachings of Christianity, which have become embedded over the centuries in Western cultures. But, as a late product of Christian culture, he applies these teachings in ways neither envisioned by earlier generations of Christians nor Christ Himself. Thus the post-Christian has embraced a false yet fashionable version of Christianity compatible with the enlightened opinion of our cultural elites.

“Love your enemies,” says Jesus. “Do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you”  (more...)

The Christian Vestiges of Post-Christianity

Fighting the Homogenous Regime of Dull Diversity

Clearly it is not science but rather scientism which is central to the society depicted in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 science fiction classic, Brave New World.  Toward the end of this dystopian novel about a hedonistic global order comprised of shallow, self-absorbed clones, one member of the ruling elite admits that he and his fellow rulers are deeply suspicious of any sort of intellectual exploration.  “Science is dangerous,” explains the World Controller, “we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.” True, the elite constantly bombards its biomanufactured subjects with propaganda about scientific achievements, yet what slogans like “Science Is Everything” actually refer to is not science as traditionally understood but a kind of god, an absolute authority figure which demands unquestioning obedience to the status quo in exchange for the creature comforts of advanced technology.  Science as the pursuit of truth has long since been banished by the soft-totalitarian global government, since such truth might provoke reflection about the ultimate nature of the cosmos and thereby destabilize society.

I found myself recalling all this as I read James Kalb’s new book, Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Angelico Press, 2013).  (more...)

Fighting the Homogenous Regime of Dull Diversity

Native Canadian women sold on U.S. ships, researcher says

An American researcher says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., have been sold on ships in the harbour at Duluth, Minn.

Christine Stark said the port at Duluth is notorious among First Nations people as a site for trafficking women.

The masters student at the University of Minnesota Duluth said she has anecdotal reports of women, teenage girls and boys, as well as babies being sold on ships for sex.

"The women and children — and I've even had women talk about a couple of babies brought onto the ships and sold to the men on ships — are being sold or are exchanging sex for alcohol, a place to stay, drugs, money and so forth.," Stark said. "It's quite shocking."  (more...)

Native Canadian women sold on U.S. ships, researcher says

Storyville: The Genius and the Boys

Dr Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions - the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease - while working with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. He was a star of the scientific world. Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids, bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. His adoptions were hailed as wonderful fatherly beneficence. But, at the height of his career, rumours began to spread he was a paedophile.

Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, he wasn't wrong to join in. How could a great mind like Gajdusek's lose insight so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations?

This striking and powerful documentary explores the limits of insight and the power of self-delusion, through one of the century's true geniuses - a man prepared to defy convention and challenge people's most cherished beliefs, a man whose scientific brilliance seemed to blind many to his extraordinary personal failings.  (more...)

Storyville: The Genius and the Boys

Child Protective Services: Your Worst Nightmare

Most people would agree that there are unfortunately times when children must be protected from neglectful or dangerous parents. As a former law enforcement official, I know this better than most.

Even more unfortunately, there are times when parents need to be protected from overzealous autocratic bureaucrats who use children as pawns to further their own ends and feather their own nests.

This video tells the story of Alex and Anna Nikolayev, Russian immigrants living in Sacramento, California who were subjected to thuggish behavior we might have expected to see in the old Soviet Union, but never in America.  The sad truth is, this has been happening in America for decades, and is happening more and more.

Even when I was a cop, I knew that getting child protective services involved could be a family’s worst nightmare. (more...)

Child Protective Services: Your Worst Nightmare