by Diane on October 11, 2010
Words Matter - Words Hurt
Has the internet made us more vicious? I ask because it sure seems to me that we are quickly becoming a people who have forgotten how to empathize with others. With our computer anonymity many of us have decided we can “say” things over the World Wide Web that we would never ever say to someone’s face. Cruel comments can be lobbed without personal risk so we send them out like invisible hand grenades, set to explode when opened.
Read some of the remarks others leave behind at your favorite news web site. [click to continue…]
by Diane on July 19, 2010
Did We Fail the 'Barefoot Bandit' Too?
Across the country these days – in every village, town, city and state – there is a collective effort to slash operating budgets. That’s probably a wise thing given the state of the economy. But as we make choices about what gets cut back and what doesn’t, I hope we remember the children.
19 year old Colton Harris-Moore underscores my point precisely. You may know him as the so-called Barefoot Bandit, the catchy little name the media applied to what is obviously a very troubled kid. If Colton’s home state of Washington had had enough money and determination to protect him from a sub-standard upbringing way back when, scores of people might never have been victimized by this kid.
His childhood reads like something out of Dickens. [click to continue…]
John Mark Karr in Custody - 2006
Today I want to ignite a nationwide manhunt. This guy has got to be located and stopped!
I’m sure you remember him: John Mark Karr, the slight, feminine looking man with the receding hairline who was extradited from Thailand to Colorado after he very publicly confessed to killing Jon Benet Ramsey.
Back in the fall of 2006, police in Boulder, Colorado declared Karr’s confession was phony when his DNA did not match what was recovered from the murdered beauty queen’s underwear. His handwriting didn’t match the ransom note. They realized he hadn’t even been in Boulder at the time of the murder. They sent Karr packing, despite the fact that his laptop was full of child pornography, and wrote him off as a delusional loon who’d confessed for the attention.
Well, John Mark Karr hasn’t stopped his weirdness and he’s now back on law enforcement’s radar. [click to continue…]
by Diane on March 8, 2010
Gina Gentile (L), Vanessa Dorwart (R)
Two beautiful teenagers died recently and I was there. I’ll never forget what happened.
I needed to get from New York to Washington, D.C. for a business meeting but a massive snow storm was set to slam into the Northeast. I thought the meeting would be canceled. It wasn’t, so a trip aboard Amtrak’s high speed Acela train seemed the best bet.
As two colleagues and I were strategizing we felt a bump and heard a cracking sound. There were murmurs of, “We must have hit a patch of ice,” and “I think it was a big tree branch on the track.” Then the train stopped dead.
There we sat for two hours in Norwood, Pennsylvania watching the snow fall outside our windows. [click to continue…]
by Diane on November 9, 2009
Our Kids Need Guidance
What the hell is going on with our children?
In one high school in Palo Alto, California four teenagers, acting separately, killed themselves recently by stepping in front of a train.
And who wasn’t stunned by the recent reports, also from California, about a group of 20 high school kids either participating in or standing around watching the brutal 2 hour long gang rape of one of their female classmates? The attack took place outside Richmond High School during the homecoming dance. Not one person bothered to call 911. Police are still struggling to identify those involved.
Who is responsible for that ghastly crime? [click to continue…]
by Diane on April 4, 2009
I was into bubble gum and Nancy Drew mysteries
Ive never been a joiner. As a child I didn’t join the Girl Scouts or go out for cheerleader. I would never have considered joining the Math Club or commemorating Save the Earthworm Day. But as I’ve matured I’ve come to realize that only when people band together around a specific cause or purpose do others become educated and aware. It’s only when passionate people form a movement that things truly change.
For example, it was the nationwide campaign highlighting the startling number of traffic deaths that got us to change our habits and wear seat belts. When a concerted campaign showed us the insides of our bodies and the harm done by cigarettes our national smoking rate began to plummet. And when drinking and driving, once tolerated and hardly punished, became the cause celeb of a group of women called Mothers Against Drunk Driving the rest of us began to 
change our thinking about this now taboo practice.
So, it’s with great fascination that I watch another group of women and their current campaign … [click to continue…]
by Diane on November 22, 2008
Sasha and Malia - Good Luck!
It won’t be just a change of houses for the Obama family come inauguration day. It will most certainly be an entirely new way of life – especially for the kids.
They’ve already had a taste of Secret Service protection during the 21 months of the long campaign. But as the old seventies song says, “Ba-bah- Baby, You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
I dialed up a pal of mine the other day, Scott Alswang, a retired Special Agent with the Secret Service. From 1984 to 2004 he guarded all the Presidents, from Regan to “W” and almost all of the foreign heads of state who visited them in between. Alswang walked me through what the two Obama girls can expect.
[click to continue…]
by Diane on September 27, 2008
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Preacher Tony Alamo in cuffs
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merica has a doctrine that very clearly separates our government from our various religions, a definite separation of Church and State. Our founding fathers wrote about the need to keep the two institutions detached way back in 1791 when adopting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Being a career journalist I especially like the First Amendment. You know, the one that guarantees free speech and makes it illegal to infringe on freedom of the press? It’s also the amendment that includes language guaranteeing the “free exercise of religion” and prohibits the government from taking steps to prohibit it.
The amendment does not guarantee a citizen’s right to abuse children in the name of God, marry multiple wives, withhold taxes from the government or use deadly snakes in services. But all of that – and more – has occurred in the name of religion.
Consider characters like 74 year old Tony Alamo who runs a Christian ministry headquartered in tiny, isolated Fouke, Arkansas. Federal agents moved into the compound last week to rescue several young girls. The FBI arrested Alamo a few days later at a motel in Arizona on suspicion of transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes. [click to continue…]
by Diane on August 23, 2008
A Criminal in the Making?
Have you ever been the victim of a bully? Ever stand silent and let a bully pick on someone?
Most people wouldn’t consider bullying a crime – but it could be creating criminals right before our very eyes.
A study from a group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids concluded that nearly 60 percent of boys whom researchers classified as bullies in grades 6-9 were convicted of at least one crime by the age of 24. And get this, 40 percent of those same boys grew up to have three or more criminal convictions.
In other words, today’s bully could be tomorrow’s criminal.
So, what can we do about it?
I’m a big believer in families taking responsibility for the actions of their children. But boys and girls reserve their bullying for when they are away from Mom and Dad. That means other adults have to step up at schools, camps, sporting events and youth activity centers.
[click to continue…]
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