Why Punish the Kids?

This from the RGJ Opinion Section…

Keep school open at least until May

I think it is a crime that the state is threatening to close Halima Academy before the students there can complete the school year. The school district apparently can’t or won’t take them, so the state is essentially robbing 120 kids of their education. Many of them are months away from graduation and have no place else they can go.

I believe Halima shouldn’t close at all, but I urge state decision makers to at least keep it open until May for the kids’ sake. We already have so few social services, taking away one that did so much good for individuals and their families, when there are no alternatives offered, only hurts the community in the end.

I hope the great injustice the state is committing gets the public outcry it deserves. I myself do not intend to let Halima quietly disappear.

Jennifer Panhorst, Reno

Now for full disclosure purposes I will say, the director of the charter school mentioned here, Halima Academy, is a close personal friend of mine. I was there helping her set up the library, and watching her struggle to make this worthwhile endeavor a reality. This school is the model of what needs to happen more often in this community. Instead of throwing away our youth we need to give them every opportunity to succeed. We should be embracing and enabling anyone willing to take on the challenges that the public schools have already given up on.

These kids have made mistakes, but they are taking the opportunity being presented to them to correct what would otherwise be too late to correct. The think the school board needs to be allot more helpful and allot less judgmental in this case. There seems to be an air of empire building here, and it’s disgraceful.

Allow Halima Academy to stay OPEN, if only for the kids.

The Definition of Irony (illustrated)…

Being rescued by the very people you protest…

Peace Activists Freed in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Coalition troops freed three aid workers early Thursday in a military raid carried out two weeks after kidnappers tortured and killed the American in the group and dumped his body on a Baghdad street.

Major General Rick Lynch said the hostages were freed from a house in western Baghdad in an operation that began at 8 a.m. local time and was initiated by intelligence provided by a person taken into custody several hours earlier.

No kidnappers were present when Coalition forces arrived at the house and found the hostages in relatively good condition, Gen. Lynch said in a military briefing.

British officials in Baghdad said those freed were Canadians Jim Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, and 74-year-old Briton Norman Kember. The men, all members of a Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, were kidnapped on Nov. 26 along with their American colleague, Tom Fox, 54, whose body was found earlier this month.

Gen. Lynch said the raid was “intelligence led,” explaining that planning for the operation began when two men who were captured Wednesday night provided information on the location of the hostages.

“It was eight hours since we received the intelligence to the time we carried out the operation,” Gen. Lynch said, adding that no shots were fired and no Coalition casualties occurred. The hostages were found bound and together he said.

And supposedly, they are Ungrateful about the whole thing.

A View Away From the Hotel Balcony

Ralph Peters has been doing some great reporting from Iraq, and not from the hotel in the Green Zone. What is one of his greatest fears?:

If reporters really care, it’s easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment – and other great military units – will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there’s the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .)

I’m just afraid that some of our journalists don’t want to know the truth anymore.

As Mulder said, The Truth is Out There. But reporters won’t find it in the echo chamber of the White House press room, and they won’t find it from their relatively safe hotels in the Green Zone.