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Take Your Children Offline NOW: Twenty-One Years Later

In July of 2005, I published Take Your Children Offline NOW on this blog, and the comments arrived in two distinct waves. The first wave came from parents who said the article forced them to think, and several of them removed every photograph of their children from their websites within hours of reading it. The second wave came from parents and bloggers who told me, with varying degrees of contempt, that I was hysterical, paranoid, anti-celebration, and ill-positioned to speak on parenting because I was married without children. One commenter wrote that if he lived in fear of someone furtively masturbating to pictures of his kids, he would never get anything done. The post was held up by a few critics as a case study in childless people moralizing at parents.

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The Canon for Sale: How Congress Handed Literature to a Homeschool Company

On March 17, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 7661, a bill that would strip federal education funding from any public school whose libraries contain “sexually oriented material.” The bill’s formal title is the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” and it was introduced by Representative Mary Miller of Illinois on February 24, 2026, days after the State of the Union address. Eighteen Republican cosponsors signed on. No Democratic members supported the bill. The legislation now awaits a vote on the full House floor.

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Real ID: Federal Mandate, National Card, or Something Worse?

The Real ID is now the law of the land, but it is not the law most Americans think it is, and the story of how it arrived at your local DMV is a twenty-year saga of congressional sleight-of-hand, serial postponement, and a quiet transformation of the American driver’s license into something it was never designed to be. The question everyone should be asking is not whether they need one. The question is what the Real ID actually represents in the architecture of American civic life, and whether the reassurances offered by the Department of Homeland Security hold up under any meaningful scrutiny.

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Defrauding the Federal Video Relay Service

UPDATE:  February 18, 2010:

Irma Azrelyant and Joshua Finkle, the former co-owners of New York and New Jersey-based Deaf and Hard of Hearing Interpreting Services Inc. (DHIS), pleaded guilty today to engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Video Relay Service (VRS) program of more than $7 million, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

Today, Azrelyant, 47, and Finkle, 41, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Joel A. Pisano in Trenton, N.J., to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Azrelyant and Finkle were indicted on Oct. 29, 2009, along with DHIS assistant bookkeeper and video interpreter coordinator Oksana Strusa, as well as video interpreters Natan Zfati, Alfia Iskandarova and Hennadii Holovkin.

In pleading guilty, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that beginning in approximately October 2007 and continuing through approximately July 2009, they conspired with others to pay individuals to make fraudulent VRS phone calls that were processed through DHIS, and that were billed to the FCC through VRS provider Viable Communications Inc. According to the guilty pleas, Azrelyant and Finkle made VRS calls to prerecorded messages and other numbers for the sole purpose of generating VRS minutes and also coordinated with others to generate illegitimate VRS minutes that would be invoiced to the FCC. Azrelyant and Finkle also admitted to processing illegitimate VRS calls that were routed to DHIS by Viable….

According to information contained in the plea documents, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that their role in defrauding the FCC’s VRS program led to a total of between $7 million and $20 million in fraudulent billing to the program. At sentencing, Azrelyant and Finkle each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, as well as mandatory restitution and forfeiture. Sentencing is set for June 29, 2010 at 10 a.m.

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Gardasil for Anal Cancer

I am not a Gay Man, but I as a child of the theatre and a man of the moment, I certainly appreciate and understand the human struggle for Gay equality and equity in America — and while my support has not always been perfect, I appreciate the dedication and vision of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the work they do to serve and educate all the people of the world.

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Jail Terrorist Mamdouh Mahmud Salim

Is it possible to commit terrorist acts while in jail?  Federal prosecutors argue it is not only possible, but actual:

A reputed former leader of Al Qaeda who is serving 32 years in prison for stabbing a jail guard in 2000 must be resentenced, a federal appeals panel in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday, because a judge wrongly concluded that the man’s crime did not meet the legal standard for terrorism.

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Vick Back on the Street and in the Field

It looks like Michael Vick might just be back on a football field sooner than we thought and slower than we hoped:

Michael Vick said he was remorseful for his past actions involving his dogfighting activities as he entered a guilty plea to state charges Tuesday at the Sussex County Courthouse. In a plea deal that was agreed upon before he travelled from Leavenworth, Kansas to the Hopewell Regional Jail in Virginia, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback pleaded guilty to charges of attending, sponsoring and promoting dogfighting.

Vick, who didn’t plead guilty to animal cruelty, received a three-year suspended jail term and four years of probation. The prison term is suspended provided Vick can display good behavior for four years.

“Remorse” is not enough.  Vick should serve our his full prison punishment and rightfully confess to animal cruelty — even if he didn’t plead to it — and then completely reveal his moral and financial role in the killing of dogs for betting profit.