"Nawlins" is a great place to visit if you're interested in culture. It's quite unlike anywhere else in the U.S. because of its French roots. And while Alaska may be cold according to a thermometer, for most areas it's a very dry cold and quite tolerable. And the state is beautiful if you have an interest in nature…

I admit I do see it as unlikely that kids bother to do work while on vacation at all. And I do get that, as no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, so too does no lesson plan survive first contact with the classroom. I would think, of course, that you need wiggle room, even as little as a week away, to…

I know it's intended to cover the worst of crimes, but look at anything else - terrorism laws, for instance, are intended to prevent the worst of crimes, but those kind of powers expanded and ordinary citizens had their rights to privacy violated under anti-terrorism laws like the Patriot Act. SWAT teams, for…

I'm sorry, but I can't agree that it's difficult to pull a kid from the home, not having spent a childhood watching my overworked father fight tooth and nail to keep me safe from my mother, not when I read almost daily news of parents harassed by CPS for horrendous crimes like letting their kids play outside, not when…

Agreed. People make the mistake of erroneously thinking school is easy. School is not easy.

If a teacher can't tell you what the lesson plans are next week, that teacher is plain lazy, or at the very least, hazardously overworked to the point of inflexibility. The correct response is, "I don't have the papers with me right this moment, but tell your parents to drive by the school's office during our open…

Really, there seems to be an implicit belief that children will spontaneously combust if parents do not keep their children within view at all times 24/7. Consider that at CES this year, they debuted a children's bed that calls the parent's phone if the child gets up. I don't begrudge the company for making that, I…

You see zero difference between an employer implicitly wanting proof that an employee isn't making up a reason to leave, and a school implicitly wanting parents to prove they're not lying about their own children's health?

Yes, it is. Have you seen the insane math they make kids use nowadays? </cheap shot>

Every bad law starts with good intent. It may be intended to thwart abusive and neglectful parents, but what the rest of us are concerned with is how it ends up being used. Every exercise of government power is subject to scope creep. It's a real force.

Nah, Republicans are exactly as happy to curtail personal freedoms, they merely disagree over which personal freedoms they want to curtail.

Yeah, I definitely see problems with empowering schools to bargain with parents over the rights to their children's time. Frankly, at this rate I'm never going to be a parent until I have enough money to either go to a private school, or hire tutors for homeschooling, because public schools are just untrustworthy both…

That's an $800 fine to take two kids on a two-week vacation. Yeah, I think that's unreasonable. If you're rather thrifty, that's the cost of the freaking vacation.

Laws should not ever, ever be judged on their intent! So, SO many bad laws have been passed because they had good intent - and that intent is almost always "for the children," too.

I actually had the house to myself all the time in middle and high school (not for vacation, but travel for work and a single parent). I know I'm an outlier here, but really, most kids are not going to die or burn the house down if they're left alone, at least not if they're old enough to know how a microwave and an…

Teachers pay for their substitutes? Seriously?! I thought that was something the school paid for!

While I'm sympathetic to teachers being held to results that are not really their doing, does that really justify parents being threatened with jail time, heavy fines, or loss of control of their own parenting?

While I'm sympathetic to teachers being held to results that are not really their doing, does that really justify parents being threatened with jail time, heavy fines, or loss of control of their own parenting?

What constitutes "strange behavior"? Who decides this? Is whoever decides this a qualified and licensed professional of child psychology?

In a world where parents have literally been threatened to be shot in front of their children for letting their children play outside in a safe neighborhood down the street from their own house, I think it's absolutely critical to remind schools and any other agent of the state who actually makes the parenting…