Great post the other day from NYRA Board of Advisors member, Robert Epstein:
Juvenile Injustice: The Scandal in Pennsylvania Is the Tip of an Ugly Iceberg

A closeted youth rights supporter, and professor at MIT, Scott Aaronson, has made a bold attempt to come out of the closet by debating the absurd position of youth rights opponents. Specifically pointing out the lack of a credible argument against lowering the voting age. His post is impressive as he is well […]

Shocking how all our moral panics involve youth. Gasp. I never heard of the shit-huffing one though, that’s bizarre. But shows just how desperately people want to believe that kids are all depraved monsters and toss their common sense out the window to try and make that case. As far as […]

A great new commentary from Henry Giroux about the criminalization of youth and the conspicuous absence of concern for youth in our growing economic crisis and recovery efforts.
A good read. Some of the juciest bits:
Increasingly, children seem to have no standing in the public sphere as citizens and as such are denied […]

So I’m doing some research on Redding v. Safford (more on that later) and I see the US Supreme Court granted certiorari to another case on the same day as Redding. It looked to be about special education and who gets the bill for it. Somewhat dry stuff from a youth rights perspective, […]

In a recent discussion about the awesome article by Newt Gingrich suggesting we End Adolescence my support for his plans to put youth in the work force earlier were questioned:
Seems to me Gingrich is advocating imposing the burdens of adulthood on kids while not giving them any of the benefits. Why would anyone who advocated […]

FIRST NATIONAL DEBATE ON LOWERING THE LEGAL DRINKING AGE- College Presidents, Experts, Authors and Associations on the Elite Panel-
WHAT: Manhattanville College hosts the first national debate convened to consider the proposition that it is time to rethink the legal drinking age.
The elite panel will openly discuss the legal drinking age and explore whether or not […]

I knew that any positive feeling I had over Obama’s election would fade, but I didn’t expect it to start to fade into disappointment so soon. His first act as President-elect was to name Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. Ugh. Non-youth rights supporters should be disappointed in this pick as […]

Graham Anderson at Brown University wrote another excellent voting age column. He makes a lot of key arguments and addresses many key misconceptions about the voting age.
A few gems:
Someone told me that a child would vote based on whether a candidate’s name was funny. But have we not already seen adults who […]

John Stossel did an interesting story on Friday’s 20/20 about voting. He asked whether uninformed voters shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Watch a portion of the segment here:

The piece unfortunately focuses on young voters, but certainly the message holds true for voters of any age who are, by and large, uninformed on the […]