What should you do if your cell phone falls into the kitchen sink full of suds? (Or worse, the toilet?)
When you’re at the front of a long line at the store, and your credit card won’t scan, is there something you can do to help the clerk get it to work?
If your hard drive should crash (perish the thought!), what’s one way to hopefully bring it back to life that requires the use of a common kitchen appliance?
You’ll find the low-cost answers to these and other tech dilemmas here.
Back in the days of the Clinton administration, an ugly idea was born, and it grew. It was called the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The stated purpose of this, as posted at the U.N.’s website, is “to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.”
Sounds good, right? No sane person wants to see children hurt. But, in this case, there’s a catch. Again in the words of the U.N.:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights-civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights….By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.
Here’s where things get sticky. By ratifying this, the U.S. would be handing over its authority to the U.N. Their rules would supersede our laws.
To make matters worse, those who are the driving force behind this often view children’s rights differently than we do. Parents who spank could be found in violation of it. So could parents who homeschool.
Bottom line: this stinks. It first reared its ugly head during the Clinton administration (new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a big proponent of this). Fortunately it was not ratified by our Congress at that time. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration did nothing to promote it.
But now the Obama administration is in charge, and many of its members are on the U.N.’s side on this issue. In fact, the Senate is scheduled to vote very soon on the confirmation of Deputy Attorney General nominee David W. Ogden, who actually believes we should already be following the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Learn more about him here.
As parents, we need to stay on top of this, and to call our legislators as the need arises.
HT: Kim D.
Recently, I added an article to my site in which I posed the question you see above. My thought was that there are really just two kinds of homeschoolers, “proactive” and “reactive.”
Ann Zeise had another idea. She wrote:
It strikes a chord, as I was one of the reactive ones. Then I went to an elderly friend’s memorial service Saturday, and they said his favorite saying was:
There are three kinds of people:
Those who make things happen.
Those who watch things happen.
And those who wonder “What happened?”You forgot that third type: the ones who want to start homeschooling in the spring of their teen’s senior year, because they are then suddenly aware of “What happened!”
Awesome, Ann!
(BTW, Ann is the creator of the homeschooling site, A to Z Home’s Cool, which has an amazing amount of information for homeschooling parents.)
Hope you’re spending today with the ones you love! You’ll find one of our family’s Valentine’s Day traditions (along with my recipe for a Giant Heart Cookie…well, actually two) right here.
BTW, another tradition we started a few years ago is our annual viewing of “Some Like It Hot,” a very funny movie which includes Chicago’s infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in its plot. No, I wouldn’t recommend it for kids, but older teens and adults will find it amusing.
This is wrong on so many levels. The stimulus bill (or “Porkulus,” as it’s been more appropriately declared) was rushed through the House today because Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in a hurry to leave on a trip. At least that’s the excuse they’re giving. But the bottom line is that they’re handing out pork left and right and claiming it will help the economy. But how can they know this when they haven’t read the bill?
I’m proud to say that our former congressman, Illinois representative Don Manzullo, voted against this bill and the bailout bill that was passed in the fall. Rep. Manzullo was a homeschooling dad, btw (his kids are grown now). Wish we had a lot more like him in the House and Senate.
This bill, btw, hands out money that the U.S. does not have. But we’re printing it as fast as we can. Meanwhile, our founding fathers spin in their graves.