Nordwave Florida

MARTINSVILLE, OHIO — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

While the numbers have soared during the recession, the path was cleared in better times when the Bush administration led a campaign to erase the program’s stigma, calling food stamps “nutritional aid” instead of welfare, and made it easier to apply.     ARTICLE

The headline and article obviously omit most black and Latino males

Some 95 percent of male mammals have little to no interaction with their children.

Homo sapiens are one of the most notable exceptions, leading some scientists to think fatherhood is an important part of what makes us human.

Most theories for the family involvement of fathers invoke the familiar “Man the Hunter” characterization, in which dad protects and provides for his young.

While fathers do play key roles in securing the physical health of their children, they also can be important for the optimum development of psychological and emotional traits considered to be primary human, such as empathy, emotional control and the ability to navigate complex social relationships.

Unlike many other animals, humans need their fathers well beyond the act that leads to conception, researchers are coming to realize.

ARTICLE

Fifty-three House Republicans on Thursday urged President Obama to fire his “safe schools czar,” citing their concerns that Kevin Jennings wants to promote a “homosexual agenda” and that as a schoolteacher years ago he did not report that a young student told him he was romantically involved with an older man.

The members of Congress, in a letter to the president, called Jennings “unfit to serve” and said he should be immediately removed from his post. The letter was authored by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who first called for Jennings’ firing a week ago, and 52 other Republican colleagues.

“Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free. You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment,” they wrote.

Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has described in writings and speeches how a high-school student confided to him in 1988 that he was having a relationship with an older man.

The student has since spoken out in defense of Jennings, claiming he was 16 at the time, which was the legal age in Massachusetts, and that he was not sexually active.

But Jennings has described the relationship as sexual, and in 2000 he said the boy was 15 years old.

“I said, ‘What were you doing in Boston on a school night, Brewster?’” Jennings said to a rally in Iowa in 2000.

“He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, ‘Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him,’” Jennings recounted. “High school sophomore, 15 years old … I looked at Brewster and said, ‘You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.’”

After the controversy surfaced, Jennings — the director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools — admitted late last month that he “should have handled [the] situation differently” when the boy confided in him. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has stood by Jennings as “uniquely qualified” for the position.

But the House Republicans, operating under the assumption that the student was 15 years old when Jennings spoke with him, accused the safety czar of “ignoring the sexual abuse of a child.”

They added that Jennings has “played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools,” and they criticized Jennings for “his own history of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse.”

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Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was a huge Obama supporter, FOX News reported:

President Obama’s “safe schools czar” (pictured right) is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men.

Conservatives are up in arms about the appointment of Kevin Jennings, Obama’s director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, saying he is too radical for the job.

Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.

The OSDFS was created by the Bush administration in 2002. According to its Web site, one of its primary functions is to “provide financial assistance for drug and violence prevention activities and activities that promote the health and well being of students in elementary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education.”

Jennings’ critics say he fits only half the bill, if that.

“Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect… defining ’safe schools’ narrowly in terms of ’safe for homosexuality’,” Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told FOXNews.com.

“But at least half of the job involves creating drug-free schools, and we’ve not been offered any evidence about what qualifications Jennings has for promoting drug-free schools.”

Source

IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”

Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.

“Being a good neighbor means helping your neighbors who are in need,” Ahmed said in a written statement. “This could be as simple as providing a cup of sugar, monitoring their house while they’re on vacation or making sure their children are safe while they wait for the school bus.”

Snyder learned that the agency was responding to a neighbor’s complaint.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. “But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense,” Boyd said.

“We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable,” she said. “When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene.”

State Rep. Brian Calley, R-Portland, said he was working to draft legislation that would exempt situations like Snyder’s from coverage under Michigan’s current day care regulations.

The bill will make it clear that people who aren’t in business as day care providers don’t need to be licensed, Calley said.

“These are just kids that wait for the bus every morning,” he said. “This is not a day care.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090929/ap_on_re_us/us_baby_sitter_backlash_mich