Fifty nine sixth grade girls were instructed to strip to their underwear and wait for a genital examination that was part of a state mandated physical. Sixteen of the girls started to cry and some asked to call their parents. The school nurse called them ``babies'' and refused to let them call home.

One 11 year old, Susie Tucker, wouldn't take no for an answer. ``I want to call my mother. My mother wouldn't want you to do this to me,'' she said. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. One nurse was reported to have blocked the door so that none of the girls could escape.

The physician reportedly put the girls in a room and had them lie down on a table, spread-eagled, with nothing covering them. Susie Tucker's mother, Katie, said, ``The girls had no idea what they were doing. The doctor didn't talk to them. She just did the genital exam and didn't say one word. All my daughter could do was stare up at the ceiling. And it hurt. It still hurts.''

In a fax I received from the East Stroudsburg Area School District they claim that all parents were notified. Some of the parents admit that they were notified of the physical but there was absolutely no mention of any type of genital exam. According to The Rutherford Institute in a press release dated May 10th, ``One girl's parents even sent the permission slip back to the school denying it permission to examine their child -- but the school examined her anyway.''

The problem here is that the ``default setting'' allows for this type of procedure to be done if a parent does not disallow it in writing. (In this case the East Stroudsburg school went ahead and performed the exam on one student whose mother had specifically stated in writing she did not want her daughter subjected to it.) The way it should be done is that unless a note is specifically received back, signed by a parent allowing the procedure it should not be done. It is just backwards. The policy of the NEA under Goals 2000 is: if in doubt, proceed.

The Rutherford Institute filed suit against the East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, school district on May 10th on behalf of one family. They say that additional families are expected to join the suit later this month. ``The school's actions were outrageous,'' said David Melton, a Rutherford Institute staff attorney who is co-counsel in the case. ``The school acted with total disregard for either the students' or the parents' rights.''

(See http://www.rutherford.org/litig.html for information on the lawsuit of Doe v. East Stroudsburg Area School District.)

The Rutherford Institute filed suit against a Pennsylvania school district which forced more than 50 sixth-grade girls to undergo physical examinations, many of which included gynecological exams, without informed parental consent and against the girls' wishes. The Rutherford Institute is arguing that the school's actions violated parents' rights and the students' Fourth Amendment right to privacy and constituted an intentional infliction of emotional distress.

``This case is a classic example of `child abuse' programs run amok,'' said Melton. ``These children were abused by the school in order to determine whether they could have been abused by their parents. This is more akin to child abuse than education.''

According to the March 22nd edition of the Pocono Record newspaper, Dr. Vahanvaty stated, ``Even a parent doesn't have the right to say what's appropriate for a physician to do when they're doing an exam.'' Hold on just a minute here. Whose kids are these anyway? Are they the parents' children or are they the government's children? Does this remind anyone else of Hillary's It Takes a Village?

Katie Tucker asks, ``Maybe it's the school's plan to align itself with Goals 2000?'' and in fact, the records show that the East Stroudsburg school already did receive $25,000 from Goals 2000. Here we go folks. We are in an all out war here. On one side you have parents who say it is and always has been our right and responsibility to raise our kids. On the other side you have Hillary's Village a.k.a. the government via Goals 2000, saying that all kids belong to them to do with as they see fit. The battle lines are drawn.

The reason the media isn't all over this story is clear. Goals 2000 not only supports this type of examination, it actually requires it! Goals 2000 is the darling of the NEA and the liberal media. Hang on tight to your kids ladies and gentlemen. They're coming to take them away ho-ho, he-he. Big Brother isn't just coming any more -- he's already here and he is a ``She'' and ``She'' wants our kids!

In Paul Craig Robert's column, printed in the May 6th, 1996, edition of the Washington Times, he says, ``Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village, paints a picture in the reader's mind that parents are dangerous to children unless they are guided and overseen by experts.''

The reason for these examinations is simple. It is because parents are not to be trusted. Parents are suspect to Hillary and the NEA. One parent said, ``Females can only get genital warts from an infected male. If there's a problem with pre-adolescent girls in East Stroudsburg suddenly presenting an epidemic of genital warts, one would think the pre- and post- adolescent male population would be examined, also.'' Who do they think is going to give 6th grade girls genital warts? Sixth grade boys? No way! Parents -- fathers, that's who!

Genital exams are not scheduled for the boys. Genital warts can afflict both sexes, so why aren't they checking the boys over? Might there not be some kind of civil rights violation if these girls were singled out for this kind of exam? There is one reason girls are singled out. A bunch of man-hating feminists have an agenda of not trusting the male of the species.

I'll tell you this folks, if it had been my little girl they had done one of those exams on without my permission they would have more than a lawsuit on their hands. My blood is boiling. This story has burned me to the very core ever since I heard about it.

The Pennsylvania State Police were called in to investigate whether any laws were broken. They completed their ``investigation'' without ever interviewing one of the 59 girls who were violated. Some investigation. Parents of the girls are outraged as well as thousands of parents around the country.

This story has been in the Washington Times and the Pocono Record but, as usual, the mainstream media has ignored the whole thing. The word has spread mainly via the internet. Even without any media coverage to speak of, the East Stroudsburg Area School District has had to take drastic measures to deal with the volume of calls it has received from all over the country.

Some parents are upset to the point of violence. In the fax I received from the East Stroudsburg Area School District they say that anonymous ``threatening'' phone calls have been placed to district administrators, staff and employees to both their workplaces and homes.

``The district has been flooded with telephone calls and messages, mostly from anonymous individuals...Accordingly, the district has been placed in a position of having telephone calls to the district, and to the homes of certain of its staff and administrators, traced.''

One mother (name withheld) who did receive a notice said, ``I wrote on the form that my daughter was NOT to have a school physical. She refused the exam; but they did it anyway.'' Now that sixth grader is experiencing nightmares and wakes up repeating, ``But I said, `no'. I said, `no.' ''

Mrs. Tucker adds, ``As parents, we teach our children to say, `no' to being exposed and touched at school; her voice went unheeded...I know her regular doctor would not have...done [that]. She knows enough about her private parts. When she says `no' she means `no.' Why not just rape her and deny it?''

One parent said, ``The girls were not brutalized except in the sense that they were not allowed authority over their own bodies. They were not allowed to say `No'...It was a normal physical examination. But...I'd probably hurt the person who did it to my daughter. In many ways it was a violation, a rape. What, after all, is the difference between sex and rape? Control. That's all. And the girls had none.''

``I'm sure there were many girls who were not overly upset by the exams. But what about the ones who really didn't want to let another person, even a doctor, touch their bottoms? We try to teach our children to respect their bodies and to expect others to respect their wishes. We teach them to say `no' and mean it. Being completely and utterly powerless over your very self is the violation.''

Officials claimed parents' ``emotional'' reaction, not the physical, upset the little girls. But Dr. E. W. Throckmorton, president elect of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, disagreed. He stated, ``The fundamental rights of parents to direct health care was apparently violated by this intrusive exam.''

The East Stroudsburg School District issued a review of the matter after parental complaints. The review stated that the tests did not violate state health regulations. One parent responded this way. ``No, and it probably didn't violate parking regulations or business licensing requirements either. But if there is a state health regulation that purports to permit this kind of abuse I would say that Pennsylvania has a very, very serious constitutional problem.'' It is not just Pennsylvania, but every state that adopts Goals 2000.

``Pennsylvania's branch of the NEA rallied around the pediatrician, school nurses, and state's right to permit an in-school genital exam. To demonstrate their approval, teachers began wearing blue ribbons. Three hundred children -- to plead their case -- started wearing homemade pink ribbons.''

If it were my daughter there would be more to it than sending her back to that school wearing a little pink ribbon in protest. At the very least, she would never step foot back in that school again.

As I quoted one parent in the opening paragraph, ``Rapists and molestors sometimes wear white, too, and don't always operate in the shadows.'' Now they are in government-run schools thanks to Goals 2000.

One parent was obviously as outraged as I am by this whole thing and [that parent] said it like this: ``Anyone who has kids of your own, teach your kids that if they're ever in that situation or anything remotely similar, they should kick, scream, throw things, do real damage to persons and property, whatever it took, to escape. No holds barred, no rules. Kick the `doctor'/molester in the onions, kick the nurse in the shins, scream, gouge out eyes, throw breakables, pull over desks and tables, anything, rather than submit. And make sure they know that you'd support them, and weren't just mouthing the words.'' I could not have stated my feelings more clearly than that.

Another outraged parent asked this question, ``Are we (expletive deleted) raising nothing but meek little sheep and cattle, who'd submit to anything and everything, just because someone claims to have `authority' over them, real or not?''

As a Boy Scout leader I can tell you that the Scout manual has had to add a big section in the front that deals with this kind of thing. They have us teach scouts to do exactly what the person suggested above -- no holds barred and let them know you'll stand behind them. I have taught this to my kids and I would back them all the way. I just called all three of my kids in and went over this again and not only told them that I'd back them if they fought, but demanded that they fight with deadly force, if necessary, if anything like this were to ever happen to them. As if you can't tell, I am still steaming over this.

The parents of the 59 girls are asking that other concerned parents and individuals call the school superintendent and demand action which includes the firing of the school nurse, a Mrs. Dougherty. The phone number is 717-424-8500 or 717-424-8430.

To call the Pennsylvania State Police and demand that they open the investigation back up and talk to the 59 little girls who were violated the number is 717-424-3037.

To call the Pennsylvania Attorney General and demand that they investigate, their number is 717-787-3391.

To call the East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, school superintendent and demand action which would include the firing of Mrs. Dougherty the school nurse, their number is 717-424-8500 or 424-8430.

If anyone of the above asks you why someone from out of state, why you are sticking your nose into their business, just tell them that you pay taxes and that's enough. Goals 2000 money is tax money after all.

I wish, as you all do, that this had not taken place, but it did and just as I told it. If anyone needs the copies of the actual faxes I will have my secretary send them to you as time permits.

I have faxes from Congressman Henry Hyde's office, The Rutherford Institute, the East Stroudsburg, PA, School District itself, Focus on the Family, the Illinois Family Institute, and copies of the Pocono Record and Washington Times. articles.

The Washington Times article was in the Monday, May 6th edition.

The Pocono Record articles were in March 22nd and 28th.

Brannon Howse and Michael Reagan have covered the story on the radio and on the net at:

http://www.reagan.com/cgi-bin/main/hottopics/1996/4/ht042319963.html.

A homeschool dad named John Delaney has dealt with it as well:

http://www.best.com/~jdulaney/genital.html.

I also spoke with Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch, head of Concerned Christian Americans on the phone and he verified the event as well.

I got some of the quotes made by uninvolved, but concerned parents from the homeschool listserv I am on.

The Washington Times reportedly ran an article, ``Genital Exams at School Irk Parents,'' on page A1, 4/27/96. I haven't been able to verify it yet, but the others are all verified. I have sent a request for the article to Gelman Library Information Service which is an offspring of The George Washington University Library in Washington, D.C. They guarantee I will have it via fax by 3 P.M. tomorrow.

Q: What's the difference between a pit bull and a social worker?
A: You can get your kid back from a pit bull.

Click here to read a critical analysis of Goals 2000 and "outcome based education" (OBE).

Try your luck at figuring out Government policy!

1. Two adults take a screaming, hysterical 11 year old, pull down her pants, and explore her privates. They then do it 58 more times. The perpetrators get:

a. A prison sentence.
b. Fired from their jobs.
c. A federal grant.

2. People in a "free society" complain about intolerable government actions. Government corrects the problem by:

a. Rethinking its policies.
b. Investigating the government officials responsible.
c. Investigating those who dare to complain.

3. It takes a village to raise your child. "Village" means:

a. Your neighbors.
b. Your closest friends.
c. Government officials who do not know you.

4. Children must have forcible full-body health inspections by government officials, mandated by the federal government, because:

a. Parents cannot be trusted to show compassion for their own children, the way government bureaucrats can.
b. Nobody has the right to privacy when it comes to health.
c. The Federal Government desperately needs the information these exams will uncover, in order to fulfill its constitutional mission to regulate interstate commerce.

5. The onslaught of federally mandated programs in local schools is good because:

a. Since parenthood is now a government program, the Government will now keep a database of everything that goes on in your home.
b. They teach children at an early age of the important principle that citizens must submit to their masters in the government, no matter what, or overwhelming force will be used against them.
c. They teach children that "no doesn't mean no," and that it is right to ignore the screams and protestations of victims.

This law calls for a national database, now being constructed, that will contain every exchange and observation that takes place in your doctor's office. This includes records of your prescriptions, your hemorrhoids and your mental illness. It also includes - by law - any statements you make ("Doc, I'm worried my kid may be on drugs...... Doc, I've been so stressed out lately I feel about ready to go postal.") and any observations your doctor makes about your mental or physical condition, whether accurate or not, whether made with your knowledge or not.

For the time being, there will be zero (count 'em, zero) privacy safeguards on this data. But don't worry, your government will protect you with some undefined "privacy standards" in a few years. This became law by being buried in a larger bill. In many cases, lobbyists commit hidden sneak attacks upon individual liberties that were neither debated on the floor of Congress nor reported in the media. For instance, the health care database was hidden in the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. You didn't hear about them at the time because the media was too busy celebrating this moderate, compromise bill that "simply" ensured that no American would ever lose insurance coverage due to a job change or a Pre-existing condition.

Your legislator may not have heard about them, either. Because he or she didn't care enough to do so. The fact is, most legislators don't even read the laws they inflict upon the public. They read the title of the bill (which may be something like "The Save the Sweet Widdle Babies from Gun Violence by Drooling Drug Fiends Act of 1984"). They read summaries, which are often prepared by the very agencies or groups pushing the bill. And they vote according to various deals or pressures.

It also sometimes happens that the most horrible provisions are sneaked into bills during conference committee negotiations, after both House and Senate have voted on their separate versions of the bills. The conference committee process is supposed simply to reconcile differences between two versions of a bill. But power brokers use it for purposes of their own, adding what they wish. Then members of the House and Senate vote on the final, unified version of the bill, often in a great rush, and often without even having the amended text available for review.

Our comment

More depressing is that members of Congress repeatedly vote for laws they have not read. Members of Congress spend their time in a lot of different ways, including hearings, meetings, dictating letters, constituent contact, etc. Yet, the volume of text of legislation passed in a single year by Congress is immense. The laws introduced and passed are so numerous, so lengthy, so complicated, that reading all of the proposed legislation is close to impossible even for people who do not have busy schedules.

Members of Congress go on the basis of summaries, whose ultimate sources are those with a financial or ideological interest in the legislation. Staffers and lobbyists generally write the fine print in a law. A few words in a document that is 100,000 words long can make or break individuals or businesses, and ruin countless lives, without ever having been written, noticed or considered by an actual member of Congress.

One solution is simple. Begin by repealing all the "mega-laws." Then make a new law, or constitutional amendment, that the sponsor of legislation must come on to the floor of the House or Senate and read out loud the entire bill, before it is voted on. Every member who votes for the bill must sit through the entire reading. Then, we will have shorter, easier to understand laws, and fewer of them.

In the latest in a national trend, a six-year-old boy was suspended from school for half a day for giving a lemon drop candy to a classmate. Officials at Taylor Elementary School in Colorado Springs, CO summoned an ambulance and the fire department to respond when they found the boys in possession of the candies, which were bought by the student's mother in a local health food store, and which school officials could not identify. The suspension came despite the mother's assurances as to the identity of the candies, and despite those assurances, school officials urged the parents of both students to take the children to a local hospital for "tests".

The school district's policy treats any unfamiliar product as "drugs", according to an administrator. The suspended student's mother told the Denver Post that the school's response was one of "complete hysteria" adding "I can't believe these people are educating our kids."

Read more about it at The Denver Post.

* A 13-year-old Georgia boy, an A student, suspended for 2 weeks for bringing his French teacher a present selected by his parents: a bottle of French wine.

* A 13-year-old Oregon boy, suspended for taking a swig of Scope mouthwash after lunch.

* A 13-year-old Texas girl, suspended for carrying a bottle of Advil, detected in her backpack by a drug-sniffing dog.

* A seventh-grader in West Virginia, suspended for giving a zinc cough lozenge to a friend.

* An eighth-grader in Pennsylvania, suspended for trying to get laughs by sucking on an Alka-Seltzer tablet.

* A 17-year-old Georgia girl, suspended for bringing an African tribal knife to her world history class.

* A 5-year-old Virginia boy, suspended for taking his mother's beeper on a kindergarten trip to the pumpkin patch.

* An 11-year-old North Carolina boy, suspended for passing around a home-grown chili pepper.

* And another North Carolina boy, 6-year-old Johnathan Prevette, who made headlines for planting an unwelcome kiss on the cheek of a first-grade classmate.

"If this is how we treat our kids, we might as well be communists," said Gina Coslett, 34, a social worker from Longmont, Colo., a suburb of Denver.

Last month, Coslett's 10-year-old daughter, Shanon, became the latest child to call the righteousness of zero tolerance into question. An A-student at a rigorous charter academy that emphasizes "character education," Shanon was preparing her lunch one morning, only to discover that she had forgotten to bring her lunch box home from school. So the fifth-grader threw her pasta salad and crackers into her mother's lunch box, a soft nylon pack with a mesh pocket under the top flap.

At lunch time, Shanon opened it up and began to eat. Only after she was finished did she notice that the wooden handle of an old steak knife was sticking out of the pouch.

"I eat a green apple every day," explained her mother, who uses the knife to slice the fruit. "Shanon didn't even recognize the knife. She didn't know that I carried one in my lunch box. She didn't have any idea where it came from."

But Shanon, an athletic girl with straight blond hair and oval-framed glasses, did know what to do. She raised her hand, expressed her surprise to the cafeteria attendant and handed over the utensil.

"At a quarter to 3, they called me," Coslett said. "They said that Shanon had brought a deadly weapon to school and was being expelled. I could hear her crying in the background. It was just unimaginable to me. Then I realized it was my knife and I was so relieved. I was thinking, this is ridiculous, I'm going to fix this and it's going to be over tomorrow."

But Twin Peaks Charter Academy--a private school that opened last fall under the domain of the public St. Vrain Valley School District--really did mean to kick out Shanon. Under the Colorado Safe Schools Act of 1993, any student possessing a knife with a blade of 3 inches or longer must be expelled. "You can see why," Principal Dorothy Marlatt wrote in a letter to all parents, describing how "violence in the schools had been hemorrhaging." Before zero tolerance, she added, "school officials often were inconsistent and often capricious on how they dealt with weapons."

Student safety--and the future of Twin Peaks' charter--demanded that the law be strictly upheld. "They're so afraid, they're not even exercising normal, everyday, living skills," said Coslett, sipping hot tea in her kitchen on a recent evening, while Shanon rounded up a dozen jars of polish and focused on painting her nails.

She is back in class now, reinstated by the St. Vrain Valley school board after missing two days. "I'm not even in disagreement with zero tolerance," her mother said. "I mean, I understand that there's a massive breakdown in society, and it breaks my heart and scares me to death that there are 10-year-olds in gangs selling crack. But this is Shanon--a 10-year-old honors student with a kitchen utensil."

The following notices were handed out last year to New Jersey renters:

"PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT BEGINNING JANUARY 28, 1997, A MANDATORY FIVE YEAR STATE INSPECTION WILL BE CONDUCTED AT THE [NAME OF APARTMENT COMPLEX]. A STATE INSPECTOR WILL BE ENTERING EACH AND EVERY APARTMENT WITH A REPRESENTATIVE OF [NAME OF APARTMENT COMPLEX] TO CONDUCT THE MANDATORY INSPECTION WHICH IS REQUIRED BY THE NEW JERSEY STATE MULTIPLE DWELLING REGULATIONS.

WE ARE UNABLE TO GIVE YOU AN EXACT DATE OF WHEN THE INSPECTION WILL BE DONE ON YOUR APARTMENT BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT ACCESS MUST BE GIVEN ON THE DATE THE INSPECTOR SCHEDULES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION."

In Sussex County, Delaware, County Code Supervisors will perform unannounced code inspections of "private" homes according to new "private" home living standards that are a part of Sussex County Code. These in-home searches under the new code can be performed without prior notice any time of night or day. They decide when they will show up to put you under inspection, not you.

Those not allowing county code inspectors into their "private" homes can be imprisoned for 30 days and fined $2500 for the first offense. Subsequent refusal to allow county code compliance inspections, whenever officials show up at your door, will result in home "owners" eviction and sale of home!

These county code "private" living standards include refrigerator temperature being too hot or cold, general cleanliness, bathroom odors and up to 36 pages of new standards that you can only obtain by driving to the Sussex County Delaware County Seat and pay for it. i.e. they will not mail it to you. You do not even have the right to know what you are accused of violating.

Probable cause to search? That is only in the constitution. It has no bearing on the actions of government officials. A government official can walk into your house at any time, day or night, without notice, without regard to your wishes, your convenience, your plans, your desire for privacy. They need not first accuse you of anything, or even suspect you of anything in particular. Everyone is a suspect, so everyone's home gets searched. If you resist, you go to jail.

In George Orwell's book "1984" we read of a horrifying fictional society where people were under constant surveillance by the Government, even in their own homes. For our own safety, Orwell's fiction is now citizens' reality in New Jersey and Delaware.

Four Sayreville, New Jersey kindergarten students were suspended for playing cops-and-robbers during recess. They pointed their fingers at one another -- and only at one another, as if that should matter -- shouting "Bang, I shot you". This was classified as a "terroristic threat", and the principal, ordering the suspension, said "We have to be extra careful in today's world."

April, 2000:

A 9-year-old Plainsboro, New Jersey boy was suspended from school -- and ordered to undergo psychological counseling -- for threatening to shoot a wad of paper at another student with a rubber band. What made this such a serious offense is that he used the word "shoot".