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BOISE, Idaho – If you're looking for milepost 420, you won't find it in Idaho. Idaho transportation officials say the mile marker has been replaced with 419.9 signs to curb thieves eager to own a number associated with marijuana enthusiasts. Turns out, Idaho isn't alone in this problem. States like Washington and Colorado have also replaced 420 signs with 419.9 after consistently having to replace them after thefts by supposed sticky-fingered stoners. Adam Rush of the Idaho Transportation Department says officials have replaced the old sign along U.S. Highway 95 with "MILE 419.9," just south of Coeur d'Alene. ~snip~ The...

On June 28, 2015, following a nominal liftoff, Falcon 9 experienced an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank approximately 139 seconds into flight, resulting in loss of mission. This summary represents an initial assessment, but further investigation may reveal more over time. Prior to the mishap, the first stage of the vehicle, including all nine Merlin 1D engines, operated nominally; the first stage actually continued to power through the overpressure event on the second stage for several seconds following the mishap. In addition, the Dragon spacecraft not only survived the second stage event, but also continued to...

Carolyn Woo is the first woman to be president of Catholic Relief Services and the second lay person to do so. CRS has been in existence since 1943. During World War II, “the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States established CRS to help war-torn Europe and its refugees recover from this great conflict.” While the history of CRS goes on to say that “even today, 70 years later, our mission continues to focus on the poor overseas, using the gospel of Jesus Christ as our mandate,” something is not ringing quite true. RottenDuring a recent interview, Woo noted that,...

BALTIMORE, MD, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Breaking a month of silence on the scandal created by one of its high-level executives living in a homosexual “marriage,” the head of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) said the organization has yet to decide whether it should employ someone who violates Church teaching in this manner. The US Bishops’ international relief agency is working on it, CRS President and CEO Carolyn Woo told Aleteia’s John Burger in an interview published May 18. “CRS has a senior person who is in a civil gay marriage,” Woo said, “and the question is, ‘Is that a...

The anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign funded a meeting of dissident Catholics groups to strategize how to fight the Church over the firing of church employees who oppose Church teaching and practice. Representatives from many organizations condemned by the Church attended the meeting in Chicago including pro-abortion group Catholics for Choice, and pro-gay groups New Ways Ministry and Dignity USA. The Democratic pressure group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good also attended, as did the largely-failed grassroots reform group Call to Action. In recent months, as same-sex marriage has been imposed by courts around the country, same-sex attracted Church...

Baltimore is burning because community organizers and various thugs are tearing the city apart in the aftermath of the strange death of a young black man who was in the custody of police — and President Obama is trying to make things worse.In an incredible non-coincidence the rioting follows a weekend rally by the Occupy Wall Street-like Baltimore Peoples Assembly. There also was a first wave of rioting over the weekend. Outside activists have been flooding into Baltimore, according to reports. Police and civilians have been injured. A CVS store was looted and set on fire. Rioters chopped up fire...

Update April 20: In keeping with our regular practice, we contacted Catholic Relief Services on Friday morning for a response prior to publication, and gave them a deadline of 4pm. In this case they did not respond. However, by Monday morning, Estridge's LinkedIn and Facebook profiles were taken down.BALTIMORE, MD, April 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- As Catholic bishops throughout the U.S. face attacks for requiring Catholic teachers not to support same-sex “marriage,” new evidence shows that a vice-president at the bishops’ own foreign relief agency is himself “married” to another man.Critics say the news confirms Catholic Relief Services’ history of...

Catholic Relief Services is back in the news, this time for charges related to a sex ed program it implemented for the federal government in Kenya. Since such headlines are no longer surprising, some background may be helpful before considering this most recent case.In trying to understand the ongoing controversy regarding “the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States,” there are two primary ways one might err. The first would be to deny that Catholic Relief Services does an incredible amount of good in bringing aid to the poor around the world. The second...

As a publisher of a Catholic website, I receive lots of information that may be of interest to readers. Lately, that has included press releases about the activities of USCCB-related organizations like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).The CCHD has been under scrutiny by pro-life Catholics for about as long as I can remember. The reason? For appropriating funds to groups with records incompatible with the Church’s pro-life teachings. In 2011, 1P5 contributor Pat Archbold revealed that CCHD head Ralph McCloud had, during his first year working for the US bishops, simultaneously served as Treasurer for the campaign of Wendy Davis...

Eric Holder is instituting the same process in Ferguson Missouri he used in Sanford Florida. The civil rights wing of the DOJ is dispatched into Ferguson. They are officially called the “Community Relations Service” (CRS), and historically -in previous administrations- have been called upon when racial animus is a concern amid a local municipality. However, under the Eric Holder tenure, and as a specific mandate of the current administration, the CRS has been given a different mandate. The CRS is a statutorily protected secret entity within the DOJ, and is now the official racial advocacy network for the professional black...

The Justice Department’s chief peacekeeper is on his way to embattled Ferguson, Mo. Usually, Grande H. Lum flies under the radar. As head of the department’s Community Relations Service, the Harvard Law School graduate is an experienced mediator, more diplomat than prosecutor. The agency he heads was established under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with the stated mission to aid communities “in resolving disputes, disagreements, or difficulties relating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national origin which impair the rights of persons in such communities.” “These officials will continue to convene stakeholders whose cooperation is critical to keeping...

Attorney General Eric Holder says the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb deserves a full review. Holder's statement Monday comes as the Justice Department dispatched its Community Relations Service to the scene to try and help calm the area's racial tension.

Two founders of the Pink Floyd rock band have called on the Rolling Stones to cancel a concert in Israel in an op-ed for news website Salon.com. In the article, titled “Why the Rolling Stones shouldn’t play in Israel”, Roger Waters and Nick Mason wrote: “Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid.” The aging rockers added that the Rolling Stones’ Israel concert comes at “a critical time in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom and equal rights.” The Stones are due to perform on June 4 at Tel Aviv’s...

I’m posting this report, not because I think anyone actually expected the Obama administration to abide by the requirements it set out for itself when devising this leviathan of a law (LOLz) — I mean, the thing is huge, and it would just be totally unreasonable to expect the administration to be able to churn out regulations and studies on time, every time, right? …Which is exactly my point. I’d just like to take this opportunity to once again highlight the practically unknowable degree to which Obama’s crowning legislative achievement is expanding our bureaucracy and its involvement in one-sixth of...

BALTIMORE, MD, April 17, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-abortion grantee of Catholic Relief Services has been announced as the winner of the 2014 United Nations Population Award. The award is given to organizations that demonstrate outstanding effectiveness in population control efforts, including contraception, sterilization and abortion. The grantee, Jhpiego, is a non-profit health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. According to CRS’ 990s for 2012, the U.S. bishops’ organization gave Jhpiego a grant of $282,356 that year for “health.” As part of their work, the group has spearheaded national campaigns in the developing world to promote the abortifacient morning-after pill....

This is why I love Ted Cruz. He thinks like a fighter. He told Laura Ingraham this morning that for the things Obama said he would shut down like the VA and National Parks, the house should vote on individual CRs to put the funding back in the VA and the National Parks and then send to the Senate. Cruz said we should do it for everything in the ‘parade of horribles’ Obama mentioned yesterday that he would shut down. Listen:

In recent months, President Obama and his subordinates have waived or delayed a number of Obamacare’s notable features, such as the law’s employer mandate, and its procedures for protecting taxpayers from fraud and identity theft. Earlier this month, in that context, I obtained a heretofore-unpublished memorandum from the Congressional Research Service. The CRS, Congress’ non-partisan in-house think tank, compiled 82 deadlines that the Affordable Care Act mandates upon the first three years of its own implementation. Remarkably, it turns out that the White House has missed half of the deadlines legally required by the ACA. And some of those deadlines...

Former CRS head Bishop Lynch says pro-lifers ‘attack’ Catholic agencies as ‘money raising scheme’ BY PATRICK B. CRAINE Thu Aug 08, 2013 14:43 EST ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, August 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A bishop who formerly headed Catholic Relief Services has issued a vigorous defense of the relief agency while at the same time accusing its pro-life critics of “attacking” CRS as a “money raising scheme.” Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, who served as chairman of CRS’ board of trustees from 2001 to 2007, made the charge in a Wednesday post on his personal blog that was co-published...

A former director of a unit within the U.S. Department of Justice — the Community Relations Service — said he regularly issued warnings to employees who favored advocacy over law or used their positions to push personal agendas based on perceived biases. The CRS is supposed to provide conflict resolution and mediation services. “I found that some employees of CRS talked neutrally in public and spoke in the tenor of mediators in public, but behind the scenes, when they talked to the civil rights groups or the perceived aggrieved parties, they’ll say, essentially, ‘Don’t worry. The Department of Justice is...

As the U.S. Bishops’ development agency was taking heat last summer for handing out over $5 million to the abortion-supporting group CARE, they were in the midst of giving a total of $13.8 million in grants to the same pro-abortion group during 2012, according to its recently-published IRS filings. While CARE claims it “does not fund, support or perform abortions,” in 2009 its president and CEO, Helene Gayle, appeared before a Senate committee to urge the funding of abortions abroad by overturning the Mexico City Policy. CARE also heavily distributes contraceptives, including the abortifacient “emergency contraception,” as part of its...