Chicago Lunacy and More
From Mike Huckabee

"Chicago Lunacy"

Some of us are old enough to remember the outrage over sex ed classes coming to high schools. Parents protested that schools were trying to make kids grow up too fast. Well, what would those parents think about this? This year, Chicago public schools are introducing mandatory sexual and health education for all kindergarten classes. Yes, you heard right: kindergarten. The administrators insist that it uses language appropriate for five-year-olds, and that in this day and age, kids need to know things like the names of body parts, the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching, and to learn about how great diversity is, like if a classmate has two mommies at home.

As you might imagine, some parents don’t think it’s the language that’s inappropriate, it’s the whole darned idea. They say if their kids have questions about sensitive subjects, they can answer them, but they don’t want them being indoctrinated in kindergarten. Chicago school officials say if parents are uncomfortable with a particular lesson, their child can opt out of that class. So maybe instead of taking sex lessons, they can go color, or play number games or learn about the alphabet. Or as we old-fogies used to call that: kindergarten.

Not Too Interesting

Remember when the government claimed that no low-level NSA employee could access your private information? Yeah, about that……This week, the NSA released documents outlining its surveillance programs. They claim that while they may gather up all our phone logs, they can only be accessed when an executive branch official determines there’s a reasonable suspicion that the number is associated with terrorism. Whew! Good! But wait: the very same day, the fountain of leaks, the Guardian newspaper, exposed yet another secret program called XKeyscore. It allegedly allows analysts with no prior authorization to snoop through the emails, online chats and browser histories of millions of Americans. The good news: that’s so much data that it can be stored for only a few days. But specific data can be saved, if it’s “interesting.” So apparently, if you want your private communications to be safe from the prying eyes of Washington, there’s only one way: try not to be too interesting.

Don't Tread On Me?

Maybe we need to put “Don’t Tread On Me” on America’s flag again…A high school art teach in Paducah, Kentucky, for putting an American flag on the classroom floor and making students stand on it. There was a music stand with paper on it in the middle of the flag, and students were assigned to think about the flag they were standing on and write their feelings about it on the paper. A lot of parents were furious, especially those with children in the military. They demanded the teacher be fired. She apologized, and said she felt sick that it was taken as disrespecting veterans. She said it was meant to recreate a 1989 “artwork” called “The Proper Way to Display an American Flag.” I don’t know that alleged artwork, but I have a feeling it probably ticked a lot of people off back then, too. By the way, school officials say since the flag touched the ground, it will be burned, which is the proper, respectful way to dispose of a flag. So I guess the kids actually did learn something worthwhile after all.

Egypt News

The media haven’t noticed yet, but some interesting things are happening in Egypt……While Syria was hogging the world spotlight, just to the west, sanity was reestablishing its hold on Egypt. The interim president has appointed 50 delegates to take another crack at writing a new constitution, after the last attempt was hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood. This time, there’s only one Islamist to 49 secular delegates. And the only delegate with any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood is a man who left the group in the ‘90s to become one of its loudest critics. So, sounds like they’re off to a better start this time. Meanwhile, deposed President Mohammed Morsi, along with 14 other top Muslim Brotherhood officials, have been formally charged with incitement to murder protesters. That doesn’t mean they’ll be convicted. Ask the last Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarek. But at least it will keep them out of the way for a while. That’s more the Egyptian people could’ve hoped for, not that long ago.

With a government like that, you can’t blame Egyptians for being paranoid. So when a fisherman by the Nile saw a stork with an electronic device on its wing, he thought it might be a surveillance camera or even a bomb. He captured the bird and took it in to the police, who called in veterinary experts. It was just a French monitoring device to track its migration patterns. The stork was not a spy. At last word, it was still being held in a jail cell until prosecutors give the okay to release it. But if they hope to make it talk, good luck. It’s a stork, not a parrot.