Free Republic

Scouting councils in Missouri, Illinois and across the nation are scrambling to find new sponsors for thousands of Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs whose charters are held by taxpayer-funded institutions, including public schools. The Boy Scouts of America notified local councils last month that they would have to find private sponsors for troops that currently have formal relationships with public schools and other governmental entities. The directive followed an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which said that the direct public sponsorship of Boy Scout troops posed a constitutional conflict because Scouts must pledge "to...

On New Year's Day, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a mammoth cheese was delivered to the White House by the itinerant Baptist preacher John Leland. It measured more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, and seventeen inches in height; once cured, it weighed 1,235 pounds.The colossal cheese was made by the staunchly Republican, Baptist citizens of Cheshire, a small farming community in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. The religious dissenters created the cheese to commemorate Jefferson's long-standing devotion to religious liberty and to celebrate his recent electoral victory...