So, we get to relive the events of 9/11/01 all over again. I watched a 9/11 special (“Inside the Twin Towers”) on Discovery Channel last night, and I was surprised at how emotional I got about it. I thought the feelings I had that day would have faded and dulled by now, especially after all the seemingly never-ending coverage that went on five years ago. I fully expected to be pretty calloused after all this time had passed. And yet the sadness and, yes, fear that I had felt that Tuesday morning came rushing back as survivors related their stories — wondering what was going to happen next, how many more planes were hijacked, where the next one was going to hit; and the shock and horror of seeing the buildings collapse, knowing they were filled with people and we were watching them all die on national television.

For some reason, I get the most emotional when I think of my daughter, who was only one year old and our only child at that point in 2001. I remember distinctly saying to my wife how glad I was that she was too young to know what was going on; to her, in her innocence and unawareness, that day was like any other, and someday this attack will be to her just another historical event she learns about in school — important, but not carrying the emotional gravity of having watched it unfold. I’m glad she was spared those feelings.

September 11 is, among other things, a time to remember how much we love our families and how much our friends mean to us. Every person who died that day had parents, spouses, children, friends, other loved ones, that they fully expected to see again. It’s easy to take these relationships for granted when we’re busy — and we are all busy people. But when the planes hit, all of those people picked up their phones and tried to contact the people they loved the most to tell them how much they loved them, and in many cases, to say goodbye. It reminds me that, terrorists or no terrorists, we never really know when our last day on earth is going to be, and that sobering thought should give us pause to reflect on what’s really most important.

For me, what’s really most important is the faith I have in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the love I have for my family. And that’s what I’ll be thinking about tomorrow as we all reflect on the events of September 11, 2001.

The Galesburg Register-Mail reports this morning on accusations of nepotism in Secretary of State Jesse White’s office by Republican challenger Dan Rutherford. He makes a good point:

Rutherford gave a number of examples, most notably that of White’s daughter, who was hired by Republican George Ryan when Ryan was secretary of state. Rutherford says she was hired at an annual salary of $39,000 and her salary was tripled when her father took office, bringing her pay to $112,000 a year.

Wow! I’ll be he got a really nice Father’s Day present that year. Rutherford also pointed out that, “according to published reports, four of White’s high-level staff have relatives now working for White.” It’s like they always say, it ain’t what you know….

Chicago public schools are taking a page from parochial schools’ playbook to try to improve student performance. The Urban Prep Charter Academy on Chicago’s south side has gone to a boys-only school.

According to WLS-TV (ABC7Chicago.com), “[Urban Prep President] Tim King came up with the idea for the first all-boys public school. After leading a boys Catholic school, he wanted to see all young men be given the same academic opportunity.”

“The school represents a new strategy to raise achievement levels among African-American boys,” reports cbs2chicago.com.

Operating inside the stately Lindbloom High School building, the first Urban Prep students will have a longer school day and wear blazers, shirts and ties under strict discipline — all part of an effort to reverse depressing statistics.

“We should end the steady increase of young African-American [and] Latino males going into the prison system,” Mayor Richard Daley said of the changes.

By employing teaching methods tailored for boys, Urban Prep Principal Tim King believes those trends can be changed.

“We know for example that boys learn better under conditions of stress,” he said. “So what we can do in our delivery of instruction is create an environment in which students are constantly being challenged and have to respond to those challenges.”

Enrollment in the charter school is 150 students chosen randomly from all applicants, and each of them was greeted by their last name and with a firm handshake the first day of school. The idea is that by treating them with respect, expecting them to dress professionally, and holding them to higher standards, they will learn to respect themselves and others and take pride in their school and work.

Time will tell how well this bold initiative will work. It’s worth keeping an eye on — if it’s successful, it may be something that District 150 could emulate in the future.

Picture credit: Chicago Defender/Worsom Robinson

The “Ending Earmarks Express” RV visits Peoria? Does Ray LaHood know about this? Ray is one of the biggest apologists for earmarks in Congress today. You gotta give the guy credit for putting his money where his mouth is. Or is that your money?

As stated in the Journal Star article, the Ending Earmarks Express recently stopped by the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” and here, courtesy of YouTube, is their report (hat tip: InstaPundit):

Of course, as the article states, not all earmarks are for frivolous things like a bridge to nowhere. Some of the projects are worthy of federal funding. But when there’s no process for weeding out the pork from among the worthy projects, that system is broken. Click on the link below to see a list of Ray LaHood’s earmarks, courtesy of the State Journal-Register:

Continue reading Ending Earmarks Express →

Just weeks after Karen McCarron suffocated her 3-year-old autistic daughter, a Pekin mother is accused of trying to kill her 4-year-old daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy.

It’s almost impossible to understand what could drive a mother to kill her own child, but there’s an interesting article from a 2002 issue of Slate magazine that tackles the topic. It’s called “When Parents Kill,” by Dahlia Lithwick.

In addition to giving the most common explanations for why parents kill their children (mothers: “because the child is unwanted; out of mercy; as a result of some mental illness in the mother; in retaliation against a spouse; as a result of abuse,” fathers: “because they feel they have lost control over their finances, or their families, or the relationship, or out of revenge for a perceived slight or infidelity”), the article points out an intriguing inequity in punishment for these crimes:

A 1969 study by Dr. Phillip Resnick, the “father” of maternal filicide (the murder of a child by a parent), found that while mothers convicted of murdering their children were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time, fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time. More recent British studies by P.T. D’Orban support these findings.

The reason for this, the article explains, is that our society still views children as the mother’s property. Since one is considered criminal for destroying someone else’s property but crazy for destroying their own property, mothers who kill their own children are considered mentally ill while fathers who commit the same crime are considered common murderers.

At first, I was taken aback by the use of the word “property” in reference to children. It just kind of makes you bristle, doesn’t it? But use whatever word you want — the fact is that our society recognizes a stronger bond between mother and child than father and child. And thus, we incarcerate/execute fathers for filicide, but hospitalize mothers who commit the same crime.

This bias is reflected in print and television news coverage of these cases. Indeed, we can readily think of McCarron, Susan Smith, and Andrea Yates as high-profile cases. Can you name any cases of fathers killing their children? They don’t get as much attention in the press. When they are covered, they’re treated as any other murder case.

In the cases of McCarron and the Pekin woman, once we find out that the children had/have autism and cerebral palsy, respectively, we immediately assume that the mother must have contemplated this a mercy killing. We want to believe that it wasn’t a wanton act of violence or done for selfish motives, but that it was an attempt — however grievously misguided — to do something altruistic.

Would we feel the same way if the father killed or attempted to kill his child? Maybe. But I think we would be less inhibited to impute nefarious motives to the father.

Despite these inequities and attempts to explain parents’ actions, it will forever remain a mystery to me how a parent could kill his or her own child.