Denise Kanter is suing Charles and Kathy Lowers, the founders of the original "Considering Homeschooling" ministry. 

You can read Denise Kanter's fraudulent claims of Violations of the Lanham Act, Declaratory Relief, Unfair Competition, Infringement of Common Law Trademarks, Violation of California Business & Professions Code Sections 17200, Et Seq., Defamation, Invasion of Privacy, and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress here.

Denise and Gary Kanter filed the first legal action against Charles and Kathy Lowers.  On May 24, 2006 Denise and Gary Kanter, under their corporate name Morningstar Educational Network, filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office before The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board the following suit:

MorningStar Educational Network
v.
Homeschool Family, Inc.

So there Kathy and I were.  It seemed surreal.  Trial date set, discovery, lawyers, and the prospect of tens of thousands of dollars to defend our ministry and name.  What was a poor homeschool family to do?  We had never been involved in anything like this before.  Could someone really block us from using the name of the ministry we founded?

More than five years before, Kathy and I had asked God to show us how He would have us serve Him as a family.  God gave us the vision of homeschool evangelism to parents of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.  God gave us the name Considering Homeschooling.  And, God glorified Himself by bringing children out of public schools and daycares - back into the loving arms of their parents - and privileged Kathy and I by making us a witness to His good works.  We concluded then that it was our duty to protect Considering Homeschooling.

Much has happened since then and we are still praying that Denise Kanter would accept our open offer to enter into Christian mediation/arbitration through Peacemaker Ministries and settle all of our disputes in a way the glorifies God.

This week when one of our six children was sick in bed, the other kids asked if they could make him up a snack plate.  I watched as they happily cut fruit, piled on goldfish crackers and even drew some pictures for their ill sibling.  After a bit of arguing over who would get to deliver the plate to him, they not only brought him the plate and a drink, but they spoon fed him too.  (He didn't quite need that much assistance, but he did not object, either!)  Then they took turns reading stories to their brother. 

Watching our three year old "read" a picture book to her sick older brother, inventing the words as she went along, just made my husband and I feel so blessed. Of course, children are not born knowing how to minister to one another in such a way, but through parental encouragement they can learn to "...through love serve one another". - Galatians 5:13 

Now what preschool or what nanny would have the eternal motivation or the means to teach such a powerful life lesson?

I couldn't help but think of friends and relatives who send their children off to preschool or outsource their parenting to others when they don't have to.  What they are missing is not only bonding between parent and child, but sibling bonding.  When a person lovingly helps another who is in need, there is a gratefulness that cements a friendship.

I mean, will your child really be able to call up their old preschool friends when they are an adult and in trouble?  No, it is their family you hope they will be able to lean on in dark times.  So, if you are considering homeschooling, don't put your child in day care, preschool or with a nanny while you ponder whether you can handle homeschooling – if you are a loving, safe parent, then care for them yourself, and keep them with the sibling team God gave them. Sure, serving the children in this way and teaching them to serve is the more difficult path, but the more fruitful one.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

 
 

Too often Americans become lulled into contentment, wrapped as we are in our wealth and indulgence.  If you look around, it is hard to believe that our brave sons, brothers, nephews, and neighbors are at this very moment in faraway lands defending liberty.  Today is a good day to remember that we are at war -- perhaps not "total war" in the historical industrial-economic sense -- but, war none-the-less.

Radical Islam is the enemy today, like fascism and imperialism before it.  But these are just different names for tyranny.

Tyranny is not just a political or socioeconomic condition of nation-states, but a condition of all men's unregenerate hearts.  A condition juxtaposed to God's desire for our heart and commandments:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these."

So, today, remember those who sacrificed for the causes of liberty and pray for those who stand today to sacrifice for the same.  Remember too that, through Christ's strength, we have the power to defeat the tyranny of the heart and mind that would separate us from God, so that we might be a better witness to the peace that can only come from Him.
 

"In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God."
- 1 Thessalonians 5:18

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth.
By Jennie A. Brownscombe (1850-1936).
Painted in Honesdale, PA, or New York, 1914.
Material: Oil on canvas.

Tyrico Tyler, a former middle-school history teacher and "teacher of the year" winner from San Diego, was sentenced to "two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a charge of possessing child pornography" in this AP story.

Go ahead and delude yourself that your kids' public school is a "good school" or has "good teachers".

Just in case you thought this was isolated, check out these recent headlines: 
 

• Teacher to face 'up-skirting' charge
  Australia - The Age understands the teacher has been sacked but is unlikely to face charges for broadcasting or distributing the footage. It is believed the likely...
   
• Teacher faces sex charges
  Toranto - Four sex-related criminal charges have been laid against a Brampton high-school teacher alleged to have developed an online relationship with a...
   
• Birth certificate shows boy in teacher-sex case is 13
  Cedar Rapids - That would be too old for a statutory rape charge against Peterson. Statutory rape charges have not been filed in the case yet...
   
• Nebraska teacher accused of fleeing to Mexico with teen is silent
  Three days after her capture, a Nebraska middle school teacher appeared in court for the first time to face federal charges that she fled to Mexico to have... 
     
• Document: Boy in Teacher Sex Case Is 13
  The lawyer for Kelsey Peterson, 25, suggested earlier this week that the boy might be 16 or older — too old for a statutory rape charge against Peterson...
   
• Teacher on Thai child porn charge
  UK - A teacher has been charged in Thailand with distributing hundreds of child porn photographs over the internet. Paul Cornelius Jones, 39, originally from...
   
• Former substitute teacher given 7 months on molestation charge
  Fort Pierce - A former substitute teacher at Manatee Elementary School in Port St. Lucie was sentenced this morning to 225 days...

Here is another horrible story highlighting the German Government's fascist attitudes about homeschooling from World Net Daily.  Tillman and Dagmar Neubronner have been fighting for the right to homeschool their children.

Government officials determined to stamp out "parallel societies" are adamantly opposed to homeschooling in Germany.

Please pray for the Neubronner family and others who are risking everything to homeschool their children in Germany.

World Net Daily has a commentary from Migdia Chinea, a former substitute teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country's largest public school district:

In my view, the LAUSD is completely corrupt, inept and broken, with many students having serious behavioral problems and disinterested in learning, whereas the teachers remain underpaid and exhausted – some of them just marking time until their retirement and giving out charity passing grades to high school students who can barely write or do math at a third-grade level.

Perhaps the school district where you live is not as exceedingly bad as Los Angeles, but it is bad.  We lived in Irvine, California a few years ago, which is noted for its "excellent" public schools -- our homeschool is better.

A story from Washington about a public-school "homeschool" program:

The home-school program in the Edmonds School District lost almost a quarter of its students over the past year in the wake of the district's decision to relocate its alternative high school to the same campus as the home-school program.

Now I know that Washington is one of the last few bastions of communism, but why would these parents need a district run "campus" to "homeschool" their children in the first place?

May I suggest to parents considering homeschooling that you Avoid Government Homeschooling Like the Plague.

Sometimes people use the stress of normal life as an excuse not to homeschool, but here is a story of the  McDaniels, a military family who homeschools while dad is deployed during a time of war.  If that is not enough, they see themselves "as missionaries to the Navy community".