Nine students were charged Monday for bullying a 15-year-old student that led to her suicide last January.  The tragic case of Phoebe Prince has started a national debate about how not only students but also the school staff should be punished for the bullying.

Prince had recently moved to South Hadley, Mass. from a small town in Ireland and became the victim of bullying after she briefly dated two of the male students indicted. Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel said the bullies started a “nearly-three-month campaign” of verbal assaults and physical threats that included cyber-taunting, where she was sent mean text messages and taunted on Facebook even after her death. On the day of her death, the students harassed her in the library, in the hallways and even threw a soda at her while calling her obscenities as she walked home.  Later that day, she hanged herself in her home.

The bullies have been charged with offenses ranging from criminal harassment and civil rights violations to stalking and statutory rape (in Mass. 16 is the age of consent for having sex and because Prince was 15, the two boys she briefly dated were charged). These are the toughest punishments ever given for teenage bullying.

Staff at South Hadley High previously said that they had no idea about the bullying until after Prince’s death, but on Monday Scheibel asserted that students and some teachers and administrators knew about the harassment while it was going on and Prince’s mother had talked to at least two school staff about her daughter’s complaints.

Parents are angry that the school had lied about not knowing about the bullying and that the school had done nothing about it, but the school most likely will not be punished because it had not broken any law.  The school administrators say that since the incident, they are taking student harassment more seriously now and have suspended two of the indicted students that were still attending the school.  They have also set up a volunteer-run anti-bullying task force.

Do you think the punishment for the bullies was fair? How should the school staff be punished?

Source: Boston Globe, Slate

In 1994, Republicans overcame their minority status in Congress when Newt Gingrich introduced “The Contract With America.” With the GOP finding itself in a similar state this year, columnist Cal Thomas wondered if Gingrich would do things differently this time around. The former speaker of the House responded:

“We’re in a different setting [today]. First, people are sick of the process. People actually want an open, bipartisan, transparent process. So you can’t say, ‘OK, I’ll pass these 10 things.’ You’ve got to come in and say, ‘We will work together in the open in a way that is transparent before the whole country to achieve these 10 things.’ That’s a big difference. People are now much madder and sicker at the system than they were in 1994.

“Second, it’s really important not to get sucked down in detail. What the Obama people would like to do is pick out of 2,700 pages [of the healthcare law] nine pages that are good and run around the country asking, ‘Why do you want to repeal these nine pages?’ What we need to do is move above healthcare to the totality of America’s future.

“Robert Samuelson wrote about this in The Washington Post. He said that Obama passing healthcare is like a family facing bankruptcy going on an around-the-world vacation. He said it is an act of total irresponsibility. It’s the totality of the threat from the secular-socialist machine; the threat it has for the fiscal collapse of the country, the threat it has to burden young people with a lifetime of paying taxes to pay off Chinese and Saudi bondholders. We’re working on numbers now to figure out how much a 20-year-old will have to pay in just interest on the debt versus how much they will pay for national security in their lifetime.

“Obama represents the greatest transfer of wealth from the young to the old in American history. It’s grotesque. We used to pay off the mortgage and give the kids the farm; now we’re selling the farm and giving kids the mortgage. It’s exactly the opposite of sound and healthy policy. So you want to have this larger question: “Which kind of America do you want?” I think when you recognize that virtually no American, except the hard left, believes that a centralized, bureaucratic, high tax, politician-defined system can work. You have a chance to win a cataclysmic election on the scale of 1932, not 1980, but 1932.

“To do that takes a multi-cycle election. You have to win as big as you can this year, which means you run candidates everywhere from school board, to city councils, county commissions, state legislators, Congress, governor. Second, you have to govern responsibly when you are in the majority next year and then you have to set the stage for one of the largest choice elections in American history in 2012 where the country has a clear and vivid choice between a low-tax, high entrepreneurship, job creating, science- and technology-based future as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world and a trial lawyer-bureaucracy-politician, high tax, low job, decaying future. And you say the country must choose. And you have the guts to go into every neighborhood and say, ‘Your life will be better if we do the right things.’”

Read Cal’s interview with Gingrich in its entirety here.

In response to a Kentucky lawsuit filed against the Vatican for negligence in informing authorities of sexually abusive priests, the Vatican is preparing legal defenses as to why the pope cannot be prosecuted.

According to court documents obtained Tuesday by the AP, Vatican lawyers will argue that the American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican, that a 1962 document instructing priests to not report sexual abuse was not a cover up and that as the head of state, the pope has immunity.

The case was filed in 2004 by three men who claim to be abused by priests, and their attorney is seeking class-action for the case because of the widespread abuse.

“This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country,” said attorney William McMurry to AP. “There is no other defendant. There’s no bishop, no priest.”

Experts say that because the U.S. views the Vatican as a sovereign state, it will be difficult to retrieve documents from the Vatican and to prosecute its leader. Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena believes that trying to prosecute the pope would be a dangerous precedent for the U.S.

“If Pope Benedict XVI is ordered to testify by a U.S. court, foreign courts could feel empowered to order discovery against the president of the United States regarding, for example, such issues as CIA renditions,” Lena wrote in a 2008 brief.

New Christian initiatives to reconcile whites and blacks are 50 years too late and outdated. Pioneers like John Perkins and J. Deotis Roberts should be applauded for their work during the 1970s in the area of racial reconciliation among whites and blacks in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. However, in light of today’s differentiated multi-ethnic America, reconciliation initiatives focused primarily on past tensions between whites and blacks are as useful as new initiatives attempting to reconcile colonial tensions between Roman Catholics in Maryland and Anglicans in Virginia. Having conferences where the goal is to get whites and blacks to share stories and hug each other remain impotent to address new tensions in America along the axis of race and class.

Perhaps for those born prior to 1960, the same racial tensions they witnessed in childhood may still need space to work out those problems of the past. However, for most of us born after 1970, we simply do not have the same experiential racial history and need to be challenged in ways beyond black and white.

America’s current demographic reality—14.4 percent Hispanic/Latino, 12.8 percent black, 4.3 percent Asian—calls for ethnic initiatives that move the culture forward. For example, for a church to have a racial mix of whites and blacks in 2010 is as impressive as having whites and blacks play football together at the University of Alabama. Big deal. In 1960, when white and black Christians should have been seen as leaders on race relations, a congregation of blacks and whites together would have been radical, but today it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow except for those operating in a demographic past.

New tensions that the church has an opportunity to challenge in our culture require creativity and innovation. After moving into a mostly Dominican neighborhood in New York, I have learned about the massive tensions between Dominicans and blacks, Dominicans and Haitians, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and so on. Growing up in Atlanta in 1970s and ’80s, the nasty and persistent tensions between blacks and immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and the West Indies are still not addressed. A church mixed with Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, or a church mix of Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans mixed with Vietnamese, and the like, would be impressive. A neighborhood and church with all of above cultures mixed together in various manifestations would be amazing. The only other place in our culture one would see this type of voluntary mixing is the audience at a popular hip-hop concert.

Black and white racial reconciliation efforts also distract us from tensions among classes within ethnic groups. A white middle-class church will “ reach out” to blacks in the “inner city” or Mexican immigrants but will ignore white welfare recipients in trailer park communities. Will white middle-class Christians ever have huggy reconciliation conferences with the “white trash” people they often despise and ignore? The black middle-class’ disdain for “ghetto” blacks is unconscionable and remains unaddressed. The animus that upper-class Dominicans have for “hick” Dominicans is simply inhumane.

In the end, if American Christians really want show our culture what it means for the nations to come together (Galatians 3:28; Revelation 5:9) we must put the 1970s racial playbook on the shelf and speak to problems within and among races, ethnic groups, and classes however they manifest themselves in our communities, because group isolationism and conflict are not simply black and white.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

I have long felt guilty before that exhortation. I do not weep easily. I remember visiting an older woman in the first year of my marriage, when things were going badly. I started to cry in her kitchen and she cried with me. It was so touching, and I have always wanted to be like Marge.

But today I noticed something wonderful. As I was taking my walk, I was thinking about a friend of mine who has entered a season of suffering. She is a well-to-do woman, a Christian, is healthy, has a good husband, doesn’t need to work for a living, gets to travel a lot to interesting places, and has good kids. And I was feeling sad for her. No “schadenfreude,” just pure sorrow.

This never would have happened in the old me. Like the Velveteen Rabbit who noticed he had become real, I felt happy today to see that my heart could be broken.

In True Spirituality, Francis Schaeffer saw this homely little emotional issue as the very litmus test of all spiritual life:

“. . . [W]e should love men enough not to envy, and this is not only envy for money, it is for everything. It can for instance be envy of his spiritual gifts. There is a simple test for this. Natural desires have become coveting against a fellow creature, one of our kind, a fellow man, when we have a mentality that would give us secret satisfaction at his misfortune. If a man has something, and he loses it, do we have an inward pleasure? A secret satisfaction at his loss? Do not speak too quickly and say it is never so, because you will make yourself a liar. We must all admit that even when we get on in our Christian life, even in these areas where we say we are longing for the Church of Jesus Christ to be more alive in our generation, often we have this awful secret satisfaction at the loss of other men. . . .

“When we say we live in a personal universe and God the Father is our Father, to the extent that we have less than a trusting attitude we are denying what we say we believe . . . we are exhibiting that at that moment, in practice, we have not really so chosen [to believe]. . . . As the Holy Spirit makes us increasingly honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that often we have a dislike of a person because we have had wrong desire toward something of his. . . .

“These are the areas of true spirituality. These are the areas of true Christian living. They are not basically external; they are internal, they are deep; they go down into the areas of our lives we like to hide from ourselves. The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality. . . .”

Some people are easy criers and some are not; that’s just how it is. God only desires that we have pleasurable inner reactions when good things happen to other people, and unpleasurable inner reactions when bad things happen to them. This is doable only as we believe God loves us, and that having His love, we have everything. A love like that is powerful enough to change our natures.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

It’s already the last day of March!

Random question of the day: What activity makes you lose track of time?

Answer to yesterday’s question: mmm maybe 15?

Remember: This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.

Last month, an article in WORLD talked about the Christian themes and references in one of today’s most talked about shows, Lost.  Today, an article in USA Today entitled “It’s Sunday school on Tuesday night for ‘Lost’ devotees” interviews Chris Seay, the author of The Gospel According to Lost, about the Biblical references in the show that have been making fans reach for their Bibles to find clues to the show.

The article looks at scenes from the final season of Lost and tries to answer some questions using the Bible.

(SPOILER ALERT! Do not read if you aren’t caught up on the show!)

Q: Are Jacob and the Man in Black Jacob and Esau, or God and the Devil?
Biblical reference: Genesis, Chapters 25-27. Esau was the firstborn son of Abraham’s son, Isaac, and his wife, Rebecca. Esau sold his birthright to his twin brother, Jacob, for a bowl of lentil soup. Later, Rebecca helped Jacob, her favorite, pose as Esau to win his dying father’s blessing.
Seay: I’m leaning toward Jacob and Esau, especially after ‘UnLocke’ alluded to his crazy mother. That would be Rebecca, and she showed favoritism toward Jacob. … And when the Man in Black tells Richard that Jacob stole his body and humanity, he’s equating to what (Esau) was naturally entitled to in that culture with his very nature. It’s clear that Jacob has an authority over the island that the Man in Black doesn’t have. It’s a similar kind of tension.

Q: Are the castaways in purgatory or hell?
Biblical reference: Matthew 16:13-20. Jesus has a private conversation with Simon Peter and tells the apostle, “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” He also warns Peter not to tell anyone else that he is the Christ.
Seay: I’m in the not-purgatory camp. Protestants don’t believe in purgatory. You’re either forgiven or you’re not. Jacob seems to be saying, ‘I’m not the Christ figure, but someone is coming to cover it for you.’ I think there is a Messiah coming, and it’s not Jacob. I connect him more with Peter, to whom Jesus essentially said, ‘I’ll build my Church on you and my kingdom will prevail all the way to the gates of hell.’ I think the cork (in last week’s wine bottle) is the gates of hell, quite literally holding hell back.

Q: What passage was Richard Alpert reading in jail, and why is it important?
Biblical reference: Luke 4:1-37. Jesus is tempted by the devil during 40 days of prayer and fasting in the desert and returns to Galilee, where he casts a demon out of a man
Seay: 4:37 is prominent in the Sayid possession story line — can he be liberated? But I think Richard was reading the first part of that passage, where Jesus goes into the desert and spends 40 days fasting and Satan comes to him and tempts him. It also goes back to the garden of good and evil. And the Man in Black and Richard spoke in a garden-like setting.

Although the show is not a complete parallel of the Christian faith, it does make viewers struggle with issues of faith, guilt, doubt, redemption, and the struggle between good and evil. And as viewers are searching the Word of God for answers to the show, they just might find some Answers they weren’t looking for.

The Washington Post has a piece today on the FDA’s lackluster record preventing “food fraud.”

The expensive “sheep’s milk” cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow’s milk. And a jar of “Sturgeon caviar” was, in fact, Mississippi paddlefish.

The cases mentioned are more about consumers getting ripped off than actual threats to public health – but the threat to public health is there.

“If it’s not going to hurt or kill someone, FDA’s resources are limited enough that they can’t take time to address it,” said Bob Bauer, a spokesman for the National Honey Packers & Dealers Association and the North American Olive Oil Association.

About a year ago, before Rep. Bart Stupak became a household name with his efforts to block abortion funding in the healthcare bill, I wrote a piece on his other cause: Food safety. At the time that we talked, his central concern was public health in food regulation, what he considered a “pro-life” issue, protecting the unborn as well as the born.

Stupak insists that food manufacturers have more clever ways of covering up unsafe food—like spraying old meat with carbon monoxide to make it look pink and fresh—and parts of the regulatory process haven’t been updated since Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906. Sinclair described the use of “downer” livestock who came to meatpacking plants with injuries or sicknesses and were then killed for food. At the beginning of this year, the government finally issued a ban on using downers for meat—after the Agriculture Department issued its largest ever beef recall last year. For Stupak, the number of recalls amounts to a crisis, one that threatens national security because it could expose Americans to a bioterrorist attack.

Some food for thought.

Finally, some good news for those chocolate lovers out there! A new study proves that small doses of chocolate everyday can lower your chances of having heart problems by nearly 40 percent, AP reports.

German researchers followed around 20,000 people over eight years and found that those who had an average of six grams of chocolate a day, about the size of one square of chocolate, had a 39 percent lower chance of getting heart attack or stroke.

Experts believe this is because the flavonols contained in chocolate help the muscles in blood vessels widen, which leads to a drop in blood pressure. Also, dark chocolate has been proven to improve vascular and platelet functions. Still, more research must be done to see how chocolate directly impacts the human body.

Doctors also warn that eating too much chocolate may lead to weight gain which would increase the likelihood of heart attack and stroke.  The key is to replace other snacks and sweets with a small amount of chocolate daily.

The first quarter of 2010 saw CNN lose the largest portion of its viewers and MSNBC also drop in ratings as Fox News started with its best quarter ever, New York Times reports.

In February, CNN had its worst month in recent history, finishing behind Fox News, MSNC, HLN and CNBC.

CNN’s long-running host Larry King, who used to draw the biggest audience on his 9 p.m. show, lost 43 percent of his viewers from 1.34 million in 2009 to 771,000 viewers this quarter. Anderson Cooper, the strongest host on CNN, also dropped 42 percent in viewers.

Meanwhile, Fox News continues to increase in its ratings.  Greta Van Susteren’s show was up 25 percent from last year, Bill O’Reilly, who has the biggest audience during primetime with 3.65 million viewers, was up 28 percent and Glenn Beck was up 50 percent.