Parents jailed for homeschooling
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200806190.asp
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/washingtontimes/200806170.asp
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200806190.asp
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/washingtontimes/200806170.asp
The Patrick Henry Supper Club presents:
Roy Scherer
on "marijuana decriminalization"
The PHSC will meet at its usual location, Eastern Buffet, 7586 W. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23294
(in Merchants Walk Shopping Center). Dinner is at 6pm and the main event is 7pm.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/26/scotus.guns/index.html
The Libertarian Party of Henrico will be holding its annual convention at 6:30 PM Wednesday evening, at North Park Branch Library, 8508 Franconia Road, Richmond VA 23227 (1/2 mile from I-95 exit 83). The attendance of all interested libertarians is requested for the election of officers and any proposed amendments.
The February ruling by a California court that broke with that state's long tradition of homeschooling will appear before a court of appeals on June 23, effectively determining whether all homeschooling families in the state will be allowed to continue or forced to enroll their children. Since HSLDA is the organization that provides legal defense for homeschooling families all over the country, it's fitting that HSLDA chairman Mike Farris will be keynote speaker for the defense. He will probably have to explain the basic tenets of home education to the usual primitive questions while fighting off complex justification for standardized education catered to judges who are products of formal education themselves. Although the governor and most other authorities have declared outrage over the threat to homeschooling, this case is a particularly hard sell because the defendants are an atypical homeschooling family of fundamentalist isolationists whose neglect of their children's education might be real, and the ruling against them was in accordance with the law according to Farris himself (the entire practice of homeschooling in California is an unwritten legal leniency).
As if this weren't enough, Farris doubles as an employee of our own state's Patrick Henry College (much like our party's Jim Lark is a professor at UVA) and is required to do fundraising at the same time he must prepare for what might be the biggest case of his career on the other side of the country. To keep his job stable, HSLDA is making an unusual request that people show their support by making donations to Patrick Henry College. The irony of this is palpable. These contributions can be sent to https://secure.phc.edu/phc/DonationForm.asp, or by mail to Patrick Henry College, One Patrick Henry Circle, Purcellville VA 20132. For more info on the legal battle go to www.hslda.org/courtreport/V24N2/V24N201.asp.
by Robert Russo
Anyone who takes up the fight for liberty discovers our enemy has no name, face or brand. It is not any one institution that is empowered to stifle civil liberties but their collaboration in which corruption exists. When we target government, power is switched over to private industry and vice versa, a relationship in which morals, laws and accountability slip namelessly and facelessly through the cracks. Examples of this union are Halliburton and other government contracting overseas, charter schools, and private companies used in enforcing the law. The threat to liberty is an enigma that passes from private ambition to board room to public policy, and these relationships require monitoring with far more scrutiny than the backing of any one party or practice. Our simple process of choosing leadership and laws is not equipped to call these shady deals into question.
Now apply this imbalance to a larger scale. The other day a young person asked me to explain socialism, to which he replied "So stores can't choose what price to sell their merchandise, it's all just one big company. Those bastards!" Similarly an adult commented to me how the Baby Boomers, and Pres. Bush among them, view the world through a Cold War attitude that we are a righteous nation and should enlighten the world to our standard. That may be true for countries that do not yet have civil rights and consentual government, but many bright ideas come from socialism such as government responsibility to the citizen. No one who loves capitalism thinks every single entity should be a competitor and markets completely unregulated. The key to making it work is knowing its faults.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say these ideas don't "come" from capitalism, socialism etc., but such general terms are a brand name placed upon a set of life choices which are infinite (and infinitely ambiguous). This branding has a purpose, for example I often hear people speak inconsistently about institutions like academics and the health industry, mixing their compliments and complaints, and it's clear to me why no one is able to stop this corruption because they cancel out their own views, refusing to make a choice. It's easy to get lost in the ambiguity of leaving no stone unturned, which anyone can see in the endless legislative runaround of the General Assembly, and the UN which never seems to make up its mind when there is a crisis.
So it is difficult to admit this business of choosing sides, slating a practice as right or wrong, is how we got into the current war and numerous other predicaments. Sen. Obama seems equipped to break these preconceptions by his willingness to meet with leaders that have long been slated as dead ends.* On our home turf however, the relationship between public and private entities is almost always decided without consent from the citizen, but at the expense of the citizen. Police using private enterprise to enforce the law (such as the private towing company and body shop that doubles as Richmond's police impound yard) allows officers to make summary judgments at the expense of both the taxpayer and their private partner, leaving it a civil matter between those two, when this role should be reversed. It should be law enforcement's responsibility to ensure the ways and means of their decisions or not to make them, decisions which are rightly up to the citizen and private businesses with the law moderating only.
As a writer of speculative fiction I've often thought if there were two Earths, the ruling class of both would meet in secret until there was a world of privilege and a slave world. This union and displacement has happened in every power struggle in history, leading H.G. Wells to write of a future in which the human race is split in two, finally resulting in a race of giant crabs hunting tiny butterflies on a preternatural beach.** Both the desire to hold fast to our principles and the flexibility to hunt down corruption in any arena, even our own and within ourselves, must be put to use to advance the cause of liberty.
*http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign24-2008may24,0,6735347.story
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
Question of the Week: In your personal life what collaboration have you noticed between public and private entities that disadvantage the citizen and how would you change it? Send your thoughts to russo@richmondliberty.org.
If you have topics of interest to libertarians please let us know. We welcome your input!
The Prince George Journal reported on Thursday that plans to build the Outlying Landing Field across a large swath of western Prince George County near the Tri-Cities have overlooked the existence of several local churches within that tract. (This is a local paper with no online presence.) The Navy's "scoping period" to report any issues with this project ends today. Tomorrow a televised interview with representatives from three VA counties and a Navy spokesman will air at 11:30 AM on WVEC channel 13, without questions from the public. The amount of consideration the Navy has for the homes and lives they plan to displace to accomplish their airborn mission in Iraq can't be more clear than this manner of "scoping" out the risks with a brief window for citizens of their own volition to bring issues to the attention of military authority, and the maps of our rural counties they looked over in the first place marking non-municipal areas full of prive properties for their own purposes, confirmed by helicopter flyovers which sometimes see homes and churches and sometimes miss them. For further developments go to www.novaolf.com.
"The Navy would buy all houses or homes in the area. Graveyards and churches would have to be relocated.”*
*http://www.vancnews.com/articles/2008/01/25/emporia/news/news9822.txt
Two opportunities to spread the petition to get senate candidate Bill Redpath on the ballot are coming up this week. The LP will have a booth at the Ashland Strawberry Faire on Saturday, 10AM-5PM. Several shifts are open or show up anytime and be welcome. The Home Educators Association is having its 25th annual convention and fair as well from Thursday through Saturday at the Convention Center. Although the LP has a less official presence there it is an excellent location. There is a registration fee. To RSVP for this Saturday or get forms to petition elsewhere contact Jon Walker at jlw61@yahoo.com.
The Patrick Henry Supper Club presents:
Alan Pell Crawford
author of "Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson"
www.amazon.com/Twilight-Monticello-Final-Thomas-Jefferson/dp/1400060796
The PHSC will meet at its usual location, Eastern Buffet, 7586 W. Broad St. Richmond, VA 23294
(in Merchants Walk Shopping Center). Dinner is at 6pm and the main event is 7pm.
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-06-02-0159.html
This story is worth posting only as an example of the utter ridiculousness and depravity of academic mudslinging, which mostly occurs between school principals and superintendents discovered to be lacking in certification. Outgoing Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe has been hit with the allegation that the bachelor's degree he received last year was not fully credited, a challenge emailed in by an "anonymous tip".*
My question is, if an institution that wrote its own merits hands you a diploma with its seal and signatures, and it turns out you had 49 brownie points instead of 50, why would that seal become meaningless unless it had none in the first place? (Albeit its value may be no more than a piece of paper, the person who receives it at least attributes personal value to it and takes pride in getting it.) He won an important office which unless I am mistaken is a binding decision and accomplishment, having completed what was presumably a prerequisite by transferring from a previous academic institution to Richmond. These institutions don't always honor the pride and faith people put in them, because the purpose of these paper merits is to reduce the citizen and set him on a controlled path. "I continue to treasure my degree and take great honor in achieving a personal and professional goal in my life." says Monroe.* What if those who awarded him this degree suddenly decided it, and him, are bupkus and cost him his new job? (Monroe is 51 years old and Chief of Police may be his final goal.)
This trend of doubting the credibility of things like state primaries, superdelegates and even job appointments that have already been made, takes on new irony when competitors are pulling up each others academic records, a fight that can only reveal these have no credibility at all.
*http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-06-02-0159.html