Free Republic

NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew -- Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee -- by dedicating the hills surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's landing site to the astronauts. The crew of Apollo 1 perished in flash fire during a launch pad test of their Apollo spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., 37 years ago today. "Through recorded history explorers have had both the honor and responsibility of naming significant landmarks," said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe. "Gus, Ed and Roger's contributions, as much as their sacrifice, helped make our giant leap for mankind possible. Today, as America strides towards...

Greetings from Carbondale, Illinois, home of Southern Illinois University. I would like to report an excellent experience today. As expected, there was an anti-war, anti-America protest on the main drag of this university town. Perhaps less expected was the large turnout on the opposite side of the street, literally and figuratively. The patchouli and hippie contingent were their usual drum-banging, bug dancing selves shouting their slogans of "No blood for oil" and "War is the problem, not the answer." On the other side of the street where I stood, USA sign in hand, was a growing crowd of surprising diversity....

WASHINGTON – Christian parents' fears that the wildly popular "Harry Potter" books will corrupt their children with their stories of witchcraft and wizardry are misplaced, a Baylor University philosophy professor says. There's no necessary conflict between Christianity and the books by British author J.K. Rowling, Scott Moore told United Press International in a phone interview from Waco, Texas. Moore identified himself as a Christian who is sensitive to those parents who think such books foster an infatuation with the occult. "But I think those kinds of concerns are quite wide of the mark," he said. The movie based on the ...