LDS Freedom Forum

(CNN) -- Every so often a boy shows up to school at Garden Oaks Montessori in Houston wearing nail polish or a headband. When that happens, children -- and, sometimes parents -- ask questions.
But Principal Lindsey Pollock is confident her staff knows what to do. They have been trained to support children who deviate from gender norms, whether it's a boy in girls' clothes or a child who was born a girl and wants to be called a boy. And, they know it's school policy.
"Diversity is a good thing. We all benefit from the unique characteristics that we all have," Pollock said. "Our goal is to build a culture of inclusivity and understanding and a mindset of being welcoming to everyone."
Across the country, schools are adopting similar mantras for transgender and gender nonconforming children in their mission statements and policies. Advocates say the efforts reflect growing support for research showing the negative effects of enforcing fixed ideas of what it means to be a boy or a girl on children, especially in learning environments.

Ebooks have many advantages, but as Techdirt has reported in the past, there are dangers too, particularly in a world of devices routinely connected to the Net. Back in 2010, we wrote about how Amazon was remotely uploading information about the user notes and highlights you took on your Kindle. More recently, we reported on how a school was using electronic versions of textbooks to spy on students as they read them. Against that background, you would have thought by now that companies would be sensitive to these kinds of issues. But if Nate Hoffelder is right, there's a big privacy problem with Adobe's Digital Editions 4, its free ebook reading app. Here's what Hoffelder writes on his blog, The Digital Reader:

Adobe is tracking users in the app and uploading the data to their servers. (Adobe was contacted in advance of publication, but declined to respond.)

A DEA agent commandeered a woman’s identity, created a phony Facebook account in her name, and posted racy photos he found on her seized cell phone. The government said he had the right to do that. Update: Facebook has removed the page and the Justice Department said it is reviewing the incident.

The Justice Department is claiming, in a little-noticed court filing, that a federal agent had the right to impersonate a young woman online by creating a Facebook page in her name without her knowledge. Government lawyers also are defending the agent’s right to scour the woman’s seized cell phone and to post photographs — including racy pictures of her and even one of her young son and niece — to the phony social media account, which the agent was using to communicate with suspected criminals.

The woman, Sondra Arquiett, who then went by the name Sondra Prince, first learned her identity had been commandeered in 2010 when a friend asked about the pictures she was posting on her Facebook page. There she was, for anyone with an account to see — posing on the hood of a BMW, legs spread, or, in another, wearing only skimpy attire. She was surprised; she hadn’t even set up a Facebook page.

BROOKLYN — Two NYPD officers are under criminal investigation after punching and using a gun to bash a 16-year-old suspect in the face despite the teen raising his hands to surrender, according to a video obtained by DNAinfo New York.

The surveillance footage obtained exclusively by “On The Inside" shows the two officers catch up to marijuana suspect Kahreem Tribble after a brief chase in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

As the teen stops running, one officer throws a punch at his face. Then, as the suspect raises his hands, the other officer hits him with his gun.

A Wisconsin reporter says he was blocked Tuesday from covering a Democratic rally in Madison headlined by first lady Michelle Obama -- a week after another reporter claimed she was told at a similar event in Milwaukee not to speak with people in the crowd.

A team based in the UK has spent the last four years seeking out cardiac arrest patients to analyse their experiences, and found that almost 40 per cent of survivors described having some form of “awareness” at a time when they were declared clinically dead.

Experts currently believe that the brain shuts down within 20 to 30 seconds of the heart stopping beating – and that it is not possible to be aware of anything at all once that has happened.

But scientists in the new study heard said they heard compelling evidence that patients experienced real events for up to three minutes after this had happened – and could recall them accurately once they had been resuscitated.

Ever since a Jim Crow-era firearm registry in Durham County was repealed by the North Carolina legislature in June, a battle has waged over what to do with cabinets of leftover records that have finally seen their conclusion.

The law, enacted in 1935, required gun owners to register their firearms with the county clerk. Repealed by unanimous vote of the state house in Raleigh, attention soon turned to the files themselves, gathered over eight decades. Durham County’s Superior Court clerk, who is responsible for the files, said they had historical value and called them a time capsule of sorts for gun registration that spanned almost a century. The clerk proposed to donate them to the state archives to endure in perpetuity.

A local gun rights group did not agree, however, and promised legal action if they were not destroyed. This led to the documents being shredded wholesale Monday after the county cleared their destruction with the state.

As Wisconsin’s Hispanic community becomes a major portion of the voting population, the Mexican Consulate is looking to make their Chicago-based office mobile.

In an effort to increase access to adequate voting documentation, the Consulate’s mobile office coming to Wisconsin, will provide passport renewal services for potential voters, mainly the Latino population. The increasing need has led to Walker’s proposed permanent consulate to replace the monthly mobile consulate visit.

The company said Tuesday that its Google Search mobile app can now remind users when bills are due by spotting emailed bills in their Gmail accounts and automatically reading the important details.

Users can tap the microphone icon in the app and ask “Show me my bills” or “My bills due this week,” and it will show upcoming bills, how much is owed, as well as a summary of past bills.

Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, so it can release more information about national security requests. The company wants to publish its full transparency report. It alleges that its First Amendment rights to free speech are being violated by rules that prevent it from disclosing the quantity of national security requests it receives.

Twitter can publish the number of national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders it receives between "0 and 999," and calls the inability to speak about the government surveillance "unconstitutional" under the First Amendment. "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is already considering the constitutionality of the non-disclosure provisions of the NSL law later this week," Twitter Lawyer Ben Lee writes an a blog post Tuesday.

The Washington Post had a story Tuesday entitled, “Scientists explain why record-high Antarctic sea ice doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening.” With a title like that, you’d think it would contain, you know, an “explanation.” But it doesn’t.

Flash forward approximately 5 months. The Wyoming Attorney General issued his opinion to the Wyoming Department of Education. In this opinion dated August 27, 2014, the AG gives the following short answer regarding the parental right to opt out question:

“The rules of the State Board of Education require districts to assess all eligible students. This requirement is within the Board’s statutory authority. Accordingly, districts must assess all eligible students, and students may not opt out of assessment” See the entire letter HERE.

The reasoning given? He believes parental rights have been trumped by the Wyoming Education Accountability Act that was passed in 2011. The Attorney General emphasizes that this accountability system gathers information on students, teachers and schools. Schools are then categorized into one of four performance levels: exceeding expectations, meeting expectations, partially meeting expectations or not meeting expectations. In his interpretation of Wyoming statute, the AG has determined that the State Board of Education by rule, requires as part of district accreditation that ALL students in Wyoming public schools participate in state testing.

LINCOLN, Neb. – A Lincoln middle school staffer gave teachers training documents advising them not to use “gendered expressions” by calling students “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen,” but to instead use more generic expressions like campers, readers, athletes or even purple penguins to be more “gender inclusive.”

A handout called “12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” advised teachers to avoid separating students by gender, but instead by birth dates or preferences. For example, they could ask students whether they prefer skateboards or bikes, milk or juice, dogs or cats, summer or winter.

An administrative law judge has ruled that a Kentucky printer’s refusal to print gay pride T-shirts “constitutes unlawful discrimination,” and, by extension, that printers cannot refuse to print materials promoting ideas they disagree with.

Hands On Originals is a business that prints custom designs on clothes, accessories and other items like mugs and bottles. According to the ruling, Blaine Adamson, its managing owner, “instructed his sales representatives to decline to design, print, or produce orders whenever the requested material was perceived to promote an event or organization that conveys messages that are considered by the sales representative or Mr. Adamson to be inappropriate or inconsistent with Christian beliefs.”

Don Lowe, board member of the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization, contacted three different printing companies in February 2012 about t-shirts for an upcoming gay pride festival, including Hands On Originals. A HOO sales representative approved the design without consulting Adamson, and Adamson didn’t see the design until weeks later, when Lowe called Adamson asking how to pay the deposit and attempting to negotiate a lower price.

Recently, the New York Times published an article, “FBI Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000.” If this were actually the case, it may have been newsworthy. Unfortunately for Times readers, even the headline was wrong.

The FBI did publish a study. That much is true. But it was not related to “mass shootings,” but rather to “active shootings.” In fact the study itself cautions that, “This is not a study of mass killings or mass shootings, but rather a study of a specific type of shooting situation law enforcement and the public may face.” The authors also note that only a minority of the shootings studied would have qualified as “mass killings.”

In four of the incidents studied no individuals were shot, even non-fatally, while others involved a single person non-fatally injured. The news coverage also ignored the fact that the study included shootings which resulted in zero individuals being shot.

While the New York Times should be held responsible for publishing outright errors, part of the confusion was due to flaws in the study as well. The vague definition of what an active shooter situation looks like is the primary problem as it could include or exclude just about any shooting that occurred in any year. The closest to an actual definition presented in the study is:

Still, with no answers about how the death happened, the family hired an attorney and paid for a private autopsy. The autopsy, their lawyer said Monday, showed that Ellington suffered blunt-force trauma to her abdomen consistent with being punched and kicked in the stomach.

On Monday, civil rights attorney Daryl Parks, whose firm represented the Trayvon Martin family and has now been hired by Ellington’s relatives, urged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate.

A mentally impaired Vermont prison inmate serving a 21-day sentence on a parole violation ended up spending more than seven months in near-solitary confinement as his mental condition grew dire, a newly filed federal lawsuit alleges.

The man remained in segregation, alone in a cell for 22 hours a day, for weeks after state corrections and mental health officials determined he was a candidate for an emergency bed at an inpatient psychiatric hospital, according to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S District Court in Burlington.

“Plaintiff suffered significant physical and psychological harm ... including psychotic breaks, malnutrition and weight loss, bruises and trauma from uses of force,” the lawsuit stated in part.

The lawsuit identified the inmate only as “Patient A.” He was described as being from St. Johnsbury. The case was filed on his behalf by Arthur J. Ruben, an attorney for Disability Rights Vermont.

EAST DUBLIN, GA — A drug task force gunned down a grandfather in his home during a botched late-night raid that was based on the word of a self-confessed meth addict and burglar who had robbed the property two nights prior. His grieving widow is disputing the official story regarding the no-knock raid that led to her husband’s untimely death.

It costs a family of five about $1,500 for a four-day pass to the theme parks at Disney World near Orlando, Florida. It takes Weston Vlier, who drives a bus there, four weeks to earn that much.

“If nobody is able to help us out with food, we just don’t eat,” said the 42-year-old father of three who makes less than $25,000 per year. “I can’t even pay my rent this week.”

Vlier belongs to a growing class of working poor in Orlando, which has the lowest median pay among the 50 most-populous American metropolitan areas, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Three of the city’s largest employers, including Walt Disney Co. (DIS), increased starting pay this year. Even after Disney raised its minimum wage to $10 per hour, Vlier still lives below the federal poverty line.