Free Republic

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY — In California, just six years ago, Nicholas Elizondo was convicted for raping his then six-year-old daughter. He took a deal and served six years in jail. During that time his ex-wife, Lisa Knight, has been raising their daughter Sarah in Norman.</p>

Former vice president Al Gore is calling for an end to the Electoral College — the system that cost him the presidency in 2000. Gore said that many voters who live outside the dozen or so battleground states are cheated by the system that allocates delegates from the state level on a winner-take-all basis. He called for presidential elections to be determined by the popular vote.

Crumbling Castle, is about a girl who is caught in child sex trafficking. Krista is now teaming with the group, Stop Child Trafficking Now. SCTNow exists to stop child trafficking by targeting the source of child trafficking: predators who drive the sex industry everywhere in the world, including in your local community. SCTNow has partnered with specially trained elite operatives familiar with what it takes to infiltrate, investigate and bring to justice the predators victimizing children worldwide. Half of all proceeds will go to Stop Child Trafficking Now. Stats: More than 100,000 American children become sex slaves each year. For...

The exploitation of children is not something that’s happening in the shadows. It’s happening at a place used by some 500 million people. It’s happening on Facebook and it’s a growing problem "Pedophiles have made child pornography, rape, bestiality, incest, mainstream on Facebook,” says Weis. FOX23’s Abbie Alford investigates the plague of child porn on Facebook and what’s being done to stop it. Graphic photos are found on Facebook, "These are underage girls. She can't be more than 10 years old," says Tulsa’s Chapter Director for Stop Child Trafficking Now, Jason Weis. "That looks like a little tiny girl tied...

Jason and Kristin Weis had a comfortable life in Denver. Two kids. House in a neighborhood cul de sac. Good jobs. Financial security. Nearby family and friends. Then a local TV news report "changed everything," Kristin Weis recalled. Now, the Jenks couple in their early 40s work together to raise funds and awareness about the national organization Stop Child Trafficking Now, which "addresses the demand side of child sex trafficking by targeting buyers/predators for prosecution and conviction,"

"SCT Now brings awareness into action by actually having retired Navy Seals, ex-Green Beret, ex-FBI those types of military men that are trained and qualified to do what we're asking them to do, which is basically track down child predators, gather information and then because of the law enforcement and they're ability to arrest, we take that information and gift wrap it to them," said Jason Weis with Stop Child Trafficking Now.

This is the most heart-tugging story I’ve ever written. Atrocious victimization of children is prevalent throughout the world. After meeting Jason and Kristin Weis, National Walk directors of Stop Child Trafficking Now (SCTNow), and looking them squarely in the eyes, I knew it was decision time. I could turn my back and pretend that human trafficking doesn’t affect me. Or, I could assist in fighting the war. Stop Child Trafficking Now is a 501c3 organization with a mission and strategy to stop child trafficking by targeting the source – predators who drive the sex industry. Yes, they are in our...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13

TULSA, OK -- Dr. Oral Roberts died Tuesday in Newport Beach, California due to complications from pneumonia. According to a news release from the family, his son, Richard, and daughter, Roberta, were at his side. The founder of Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University was 91. The release says there will be a private family internment and that arrangements for a public memorial service in Tulsa will be announced soon. Here is the rest of the release: "Oral Roberts was the greatest man of God I've ever known," Richard Roberts said. "A modern-day apostle of the healing ministry,...

They bring a message of “peace on Earth and goodwill to all men” but carol singers are to be warned away from doorsteps this Christmas in case they appear threatening. Police and neighbourhood watch organisers in one area of Lancashire have produced official notices for nervous residents to place in their windows telling the festive singers not to call. The yellow postcard-sized signs, which are also being handed out at libraries and GPs’ surgeries, read: “Sorry no carol singers, I won't open my door to you.”

Although it is cheaper to buy a pint of milk than to buy a quart of milk, nobody considers that to be lowering the price of milk. Although it is cheaper to buy a lower quality of all sorts of goods than to buy a higher quality, nobody thinks of that as lowering the price of either lower or higher quality goods. Yet, when it comes to medical care, there seems to be remarkably little attention paid to questions of both quantity and quality, in the rush to “bring down the cost of medical care.”

The Dems are spinning so hard after Tuesday’s elections that the earth may be in danger of flying off its axis. Some of the intellectual chaos they have generated was on display Wednesday afternoon on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball.” Admittedly, being on the Matthews’ show is a challenge for guests, who have to struggle to get a word in edgewise as the hyperkinetic host asks questions and immediately answers them himself and generally acts less like an interviewer than someone on sodium pentatol.

One year after President Obama swept to power on a promise of “hope” and “change,” American voters got an early chance to pass judgment on his administration. If yesterday’s Republican victories in Democratic strongholds like Virginia and New Jersey are any guide, they don’t like what they see. While results from around the country were still coming in at press time, the outcome of the race in Virginia is proof positive that the sands have shifted beneath the administration’s feet.

The war on conservative speech has moved from the White House to your neighborhood pews. Left-wing church leaders want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on “hate speech” over cable TV and right-leaning talk-radio airwaves. President Obama’s speech-stifling bureaucrats seem all too happy to oblige.

CHICAGO (AP) — Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say. The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

The drama continues in New York’s 23 Congressional District. An 11th-hour poll in a much-watched upstate New York House race shows Conservative Party Candidate Doug Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens 41% to 36%, two days after the Republican candidate pulled out and one day before the election. But the race remains fluid. Since Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew on Saturday, she still retains the support of 6% of the voters, while the number of undecided voters doubled from 9% to 18%, according to the poll released this morning by the Siena Research Institute. The poll has a four percentage point margin...

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, provoked ridicule when he said last week that “Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.” He didn’t mean that Barack Obama is a literary titan who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus while petty men like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. But what he did mean, while no less fatuous, is also disquieting in its implications: for the first time, the United States of America has a president whose supporters talk about...

Is there a problem with misguided, even deceived Christians who have taken prosperity to an extreme and gotten the focus off their first love and onto an imbalanced view of prosperity? Sure. But that doesn’t mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume any discussion of prosperity is superficial and manipulative. Are there prosperity attackers who’s sole purpose is to follow in the footsteps of Judas of Iscariot and make everything that anyone says about money or prosperity, or healing and health for that matter, sound like heresy. Yes. But it doesn’t justify eliminating the investigation to...

Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid Al-Haqq (Mosque of Truth), was killed Wednesday in a shootout with FBI agents. The agents were trying to arrest him on charges of conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, firearms offenses and more. Agents also arrested eight mosque members; then Thursday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police caught Abdullah’s son, Mujahid Carswell. Two other accused jihadists also fled, and have not yet been found.

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers— that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?