I will never forget that day in June when I heard Judge Banales say, “You are hereby sentenced to 60 years in the Texas Department of Corrections”.  My legs felt like spaghetti, my hands went cold.  I had no moisture in my mouth.  I was numb all over.  I wanted to throw up.  I could hear my mother’s horrific cries in the background.  I turned to see her and I saw my father holding her and my grandmother tightly.  He was so scared, I could tell.  There were other ladies that were also crying.  They felt for my mom, and possibly for me.  The judge told my dad if he didn’t quiet my mother, he would have her arrested.  My mother had a look of fury in her eyes when they met with mine.  I knew right there and then that her love and commitment as a mother would induce a fight for justice.  The bailiff was so nice to me.  He kept asking me if I needed some water.  I couldn’t talk.  All I could hear was my mother’s cry, over and over.  I couldn’t even hug her goodbye.

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The girl suspended from school - and threatened with expulsion - for taking her birth-control pill...

"I realize my daughter broke a rule," the mother told the Washington Post. But "the punishment does not fit the crime."

Many American schools have zero-tolerance drug policies, and they really mean zero tolerance - no cough medicines, no prescription drugs, no over-the-counter medicines. It sounds like the regime top sportspeople are subjected to. Everything in tablet form is suspicious, even if you or I may think it shouldn't be.

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The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday, April 10:

States are facing a July deadline to track sex offenders under a misguided federal law that casts too wide a net and is too harsh toward juveniles.

The Adam Walsh Act - named for a 6-year-old boy abducted and murdered in 1981 - makes it a federal felony for a convicted sex offender to fail to reregister after moving to a new state. It also raises the penalties in many states for offenders who never registered.

The law approved by Congress in 2006 is an effort to monitor more effectively an estimated 100,000 sex offenders who are not living where they registered. Many states, including Pennsylvania, already have sex-offender registries modeled after New Jersey's first-in-the-nation "Megan's Law."

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When Vanessa Hudgens' naked photos hit the Internet, the "High School Musical" star quickly apologized. But sending nude or seminude pictures, a phenomenon known as sexting, is a fast-growing trend among teens.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy, a private nonprofit group whose mission is to protect children, and CosmoGirl.com, surveyed nearly 1,300 teens about sex and technology. The result: 1 in 5 teens say they've sexted even though the majority know it could be a crime.

Phillip Alpert found out the hard way. He had just turned 18 when he sent a naked photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend, a photo she had taken and sent him, to dozens of her friends and family after an argument. The high school sweethearts had been dating for almost 2½ years. "It was a stupid thing I did because I was upset and tired and it was the middle of the night and I was an immature kid," says Alpert.

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