Free Republic

The problem with solutions is that few of them tend to be perfect, even if they act in a mostly benign manner. Actions produce reactions, a principle as true in politics as it is in physics, and those tend to multiply when solutions increase in complexity. The nature of these unintended consequences changes dramatically when complex “solutions” turn out to be poorly designed and incompetently administered. The rollout of the Affordable Care Act has provided many real-world examples of this, but perhaps none so “unintended” as the consequences discovered by the Seattle Times this weekend. Carol Ostrom, The Times’ health...

<p>Covered in bruises, his skin red and smarting, this sobbing eight-year-old has just been stripped to his underwear, tied to a tree and beaten by his father.</p>

DOVER, Del. (AP) - The state of Delaware is working to set up a task force to help residents with a hoarding problem. As many as 45,000 people in the state are estimated to have problems with hoarding. In advance of the hoarding task force, the state is creating an advisory panel to try to determine stakeholders who may be able to offer input into hoarding issues.

From the start of his tenure as the leader of L.A.'s Catholics, Roger Mahony had ambitious plans for the archdiocese. But clergy molestation claims were vying for his attention. A year after arriving in Los Angeles, the youngest archbishop in the U.S. Catholic Church had a schedule and an agenda befitting a presidential candidate. Roger Mahony raced around the city in a chauffeured sedan, exhorting labor leaders to support immigrant rights and rallying hundreds against a proposed prison in Boyle Heights. Where his predecessors had talked up praying the rosary, Mahony touted his positions on nuclear disarmament and Middle East...

The problem with the IRS abuse scandal, in which the government agency was found to be systematically discriminating against conservative non-profits, is that a complex and vague campaign finance law system gives the government powers it shouldn’t have to decide which citizens are worthy of organizing for political speech and which are not. Lois Lerner, whose boss is an ideological president who was constantly saying Tea Party groups were doing shady things with their money, was in a position to make value judgments about what kind of political speech should be allowed the favor of the federal government. That’s a...

Former child and teen movie star Corey Feldman is pulling back the curtain on the horrific sexual abuse he and late friend Corey Haim endured at the hands of Hollywood pedophiles.

A woman is suing a police officer and the town of Skokie, Illinois, after she was seriously injured when a cop threw her into a jail cell face-first following a drunk driving arrest. Cassandra Feuerstein, 47, claims in a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday, that excessive force was used in the incident and that she needed reconstructive surgery to 'replace the bones that had been shattered' after being pushed into the cell on March 10. The video of the incident clearly shows the 47-year-old being roughly shoved into the cell by an officer, who was later identified as Michael Hart....

It’s been 8 days since the WWII veterans were locked out of the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. A plethora of restrictions, blockages and shut downs have blanketed the nation since then. They are for the expressed purpose of, as one Park Ranger put it, “Make life as difficult for people as we can.” What kind of administration orders that? What is their end game? Regardless, the result is a lot of pain and suffering for people directly involved in the shutdowns and restrictions. Is this behavior abusive? It certainly appears to be promulgated to produce the maximum...

Billy Graham’s grandson: evangelicals ‘worse’ than Catholics on sex abuse Sarah Pulliam BaileyAUSTIN, Texas (RNS) The Christian mission field is a “magnet” for sexual abusers, Boz Tchividjian, a Liberty University law professor who investigates abuse said Thursday (Sept. 26) to a room of journalists.While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said at the Religion Newswriters Association conference, saying too many evangelicals had “sacrificed the souls” of young victims.“Protestants can be very arrogant when pointing to Catholics,”  said Tchividjian, a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham and executive director of Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE),...

If you want to live the high life, you don't have to become a rap star, a professional athlete or a Wall Street banker. All it really takes is winning an election. Right now, more than half of all the members of Congress are millionaires, and most of them leave "public service" far wealthier than when they entered it. Since most of them have so much money, you would think that they would be willing to do a little "belt-tightening" for the sake of the American people. After all, things are supposedly "extremely tight" in Washington D.C. right now. In...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A former church custodian was sentenced to 15 to 35 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a young family member. Charles Brainard Hogan, 58, of Cross Lanes gave a lengthy statement to Kanawha Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib, telling a courtroom full of people that they had all sinned. "Romans 3:23 says 'for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,'" Hogan said. "So nobody in this court can say they have not committed any kind of sin, because if they do they are a liar." Hogan said he engaged in sexual acts...

House Republicans on Thursday rekindled a months-old controversy by releasing what they described as new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for political reasons. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, revealed e-mails that he said show “high-level IRS employees in Washington were abusing their power to prevent conservative groups from organizing and carrying out their missions.” In one message, IRS official Lois Lerner told her staff: “Tea Party matter very dangerous. This could be the vehicle to go to court on the issue of whether [a Supreme Court decision] overturning the...

... Patricia and Eduardo have three sons. Patricia: "Very healthy, happy, normal situation." But they started to notice something was different with their youngest, Manuel, before he was a year old.... With nowhere else to turn, they sought out a psychologist. They were told they had a transgender child... Rachel Sottile, YES Institute: "That's really at the source of everything, is fear. 'Does that mean my child is going to be gay? Does that mean my child's a freak?'" Rachel Sottile is with the YES Institute, a non-profit organization aimed at educating people on gender and orientation. She says kids...

FULL TITLE: Adoptive parents of Ethiopian girl who died of hypothermia and starvation in their backyard found GUILTY of manslaughter A Washington state couple were convicted of manslaughter Monday in the gruesome starvation and hypothermia death of a teenage girl they adopted from Ethiopia. A jury found Larry Williams, of Sedro-Woolley, guilty of first-degree manslaughter, while his wife, Carri Williams, was found guilty of homicide by abuse as well as manslaughter. The jury also convicted them both of assault and each faces a possible life sentence. Hana Williams died in May 2011 in the backyard of the couple's home, where...

A couple says their dog sniffed out a baby abuser in their home, the woman who was supposed to be caring for their seven month old son. The babysitter, 22-year-old Alexis Khan pleaded guilty to assault and battery Monday afternoon in Charleston County Circuit Court. Benjamin and Hope Jordan hired Khan to babysit their son Finn last year after they moved to Charleston. They say Khan came up clean in a background check... "About five months into her being our baby sitter, we started to notice that our dog was very protective of our son when she would come in...

A video has surfaced showing Florida police officers slamming a 44-year-old woman onto the hood of a police car and then onto the ground with such force that she suffered a broken orbital bone in her face, a bloody nose and multiple other injuries. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2417076/Chilling-video-shows-mother-screaming-horror-police-officers-break-cheekbone-violent-DUI-arrest.html#ixzz2eYvCZVvP Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

When a Liberian girl proves too much for her parents, they advertise her online and give her to a couple they’ve never met. Days later, she goes missing. KIEL, Wisconsin – Todd and Melissa Puchalla struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager they'd adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad on the Internet. Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They were...

A Tennessee woman says that when her adoptive parents gave her away to new parents at age 14, she and 17 other adoptive kids in her “nightmarish” new home were sometimes forced to dig their own “graves” in the backyard and scrub the floor with toothbrushes. “’Get out and go dig your own grave,” Nora Gateley, now 26, says her new mother told her. “’I don’t care if you die. Nobody will find you. You were not even here in the first place.” Advertise | AdChoices Americans have adopted nearly a quarter million children from overseas since the late 1990s,...

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community....

<p>Parents who yell at their adolescent children for misbehaving can cause some of the same problems as hitting them would, including increased risk of depression and aggressive behavior, according to a new study.</p> <p>A good, warm relationship with Mom and Dad doesn't protect teens from the negative effects of parents' yelling, cursing or lobbing insults, such as calling teens "lazy" or "stupid," the study found. Conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan, the study was published Wednesday on the journal Child Development's website.</p>