Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated Anderson Cooper yesterday on CNN for the arrival of his new baby, which he had through a surrogate and who will be co-parented by his former boyfriend. . . . “Wyatt, how perfectly named,” she told Cooper of his baby. “We all know why that is and congratulations. And as you now are a father, you see how important it is to keep the world safe, for the children, for the children.”

A disturbing Reddit thread claims that in 2008 the ex-business partner of James Alefantis, DC chef and restauranteur Carole Greenwood, caught Alefantis in the act of sexually battering her then 17 year-old son. Subsequent internet postings identified the location of the alleged crime scene as being Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a DC ping pong-themed pizzaria featuring live music acts. Citing a "family emergency", Greenwood abruptly terminated her business dealings with Alefantis and disappeared, finally surfacing as Executive Chef at Bethesda's Food & Wine Co. An anonymous poster to the thread, presumably Alefantis, objects to the dark story: "Why wouldn't I...

AUSTIN, Tex. - A small crowd of gun-rights advocates and those supporting Texas' new, less restrictive campus-carry law gathered near the University of Texas campus here on Saturday for a highly publicized but divisive demonstration and mock shooting in favor of ending gun-free zones. **SNIP** Organizers said they expected at least 20 people - and possibly many more - for the event, which took place as Texas colleges and universities prepared to put into place a new state law permitting adult owners of licensed guns to carry them inside campus buildings. Jason Orsek, a 38-year-old construction manager who planned to...

A Detroit-area district says it's allowing Sikh students to wear a small, religious dagger to school, MyFoxDetroit.com reports. The decision by the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools reverses a ban put in place in December after a fourth-grader at a Canton Township elementary school was found with a dull, 3- to 5-inch kirpan. The kirpan represents a commitment to fight evil in the Sikh tradition.

Now, a high-ranking Saudi, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican, a consultant at Saudi Arabia's royal court, has issued a fatwa asserting that ...women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women. [Because] a man who often entered a house and came in contact with the womenfolk there should be made symbolically related to the women by drinking milk from one of the women. Under the fatwa, the act would preclude any sexual relations between the man and the donor woman and her...

Another blow to fatherhood: IVF mothers can name ANYONE as 'father' on birth certificate Family values were under attack again last night with the news that single women having IVF will be able to name anyone they like as their baby's father on the birth certificate. New regulations mean that a mother could nominate another woman to be her child's 'father'. The 'father' does not need to be genetically related to the baby, nor be in any sort of romantic relationship with the mother. ... The word 'father' may even be replaced with the phrase 'second parent'....who will...will take on...

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases. Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman. "We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved...

British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life. The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own. Gay men could follow suit by using the technique to make eggs from male bone marrow. [snip] But critics warn that it sidelines men and raises the prospect of babies being born through entirely artificial means. The research centres around stem cells - the body's 'mother' cells which can turn into any other type of cell. According to New Scientist magazine, the scientists...