Germany: Government Persecution Against the “Socially Maladjusted”

Quotes from LifeSiteNews:

Persecuted German Homeschool Family Facing September Custody Hearing Have had lien placed on their home by government

Human rights advocates are calling the case of a German homeschooling family "a critical human rights battle." On September 22nd, the Schmidt family of southern Bavaria in Germany will face a hearing in which government officials will decide if they may keep custody of one of their sons.

Hans and Petra Schmidt have been teaching their children, Josua, 16, and Aaron, 14, for more than nine years in an attempt to shield them from what they hold to be a hostile moral and heavily secularised environment in German public schools. To date the Schmidts have been forced to pay nearly 13,000 Euros (US $18,300) in home schooling fines and have had a lien placed on their home by the government.

But worse than fines is the threat by the Jugendamt, or Youth Office, to remove one of their children from the home entirely. […] It is commonly held by the German authorities that homeschooled children are socially maladjusted.

[…] Germany is undertaking a crackdown on homeschooling families who face crippling fines, the seizure of their children and even prison for continuing to teach their children at home. In 1938, Hitler's Germany outlawed homeschooling which ban is one of the few bills introduced by the Nazi regime that is still on the books today. […] Last year the parents of a homeschooling family in the state of Hesse, Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek, were each sentenced to three months in prison. In 2007 the case of the Busekros family became internationally notorious when 15 year-old Melissa Busekros was abducted by government officials, aided by 15 police officers, and locked up in a child psychiatric unit because she had been homeschooled.

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Whack-A-Mole

The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End
By Sarah Palin

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage. - (More...)

Obama heading West to plug healthcare reform
A poll reports that 49% of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the issue and 43% approve.
By Christi Parsons and Mark Silva

Reporting from Washington - As debate over his healthcare overhaul heats up, President Obama is taking off for a family vacation this week that combines classic American sightseeing with the challenge of trying to sell his ideas to audiences out West.

He will be visiting Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon with his wife and daughters starting Friday, but the president also plans to hold town halls in Montana and Colorado to address problems facing the healthcare system and pitch Democratic plans to fix them.

His congressional allies have seen eruptions of anger during healthcare meetings around the country in recent days. But Obama's interactions with voters have been civil as he tries to provide a counterpoint to critics' complaints.

With polls showing Americans are split on the question of how the president is handling the healthcare issue, the White House strategy is to put its chief salesman on the road throughout the August congressional recess. - (More...)

Obama's Tone-Deaf Health Campaign

Dorothy Rabinowitz is not surprised that ObamaCare is meeting resistance.


"Neither has she (Linda Douglass) seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president's health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness."


"There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama."


"The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country's heart and character." He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don't take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don't know they want to go and being told it's good for them."

Read the full article HERE