Free Republic

TORONTO, February 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- Canada’s most celebrated homosexual activist minister has been charged for allegedly sexually abusing a boy in the mid-1970s. Rev. Brent Hawkes, 65, of the Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto, has been charged with indecent assault on a male and gross indecency. He was summoned to court in Kentville, Nova Scotia yesterday to face the charges. Local police have refused to provide further details.   Hawkes, who lives with his male "husband," has become a major icon of homosexual activism in Canada. He famously flouted Canadian law by illegally "marrying" a homosexual couple in his Toronto church...

A California woman charged last week for her role in the production of undercover videos at a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic will be offered probation, a Harris County prosecutor said in court. Sandra Susan Merritt, of San Jose, Calif., appeared in court Wednesday morning on charges of tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony which carried a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. A grand jury convened to investigate whether a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic had sold the organs of aborted fetuses last week cleared the clinic and instead indicted the undercover videographers behind the allegations....

Four high school wrestlers in Oklahoma have been charged with raping a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old. The incident is alleged to have taken place on the bus as the Norman North junior varsity team returned from a tournament in Pauls Valley on January 9.

The Chicago Archdiocese is responding to a published report in which a local priest comes out as gay, but it wasn't clear whether there would be ramifications for the clergy member. In a column by Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein, Rev. Michael Shanahan is interviewed at length about his decision to disclose that he is gay. "I'd like to be one of those priests, who, with great respect for the church's teaching, can say: I'm a human being. I'm a son -- one of six -- I'm gay and I'm a priest, period," Shanahan, a more than 20-year veteran...

Dueling Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders were at a dead heat during the Iowa caucus, but their numbers were even closer at a Polk County precinct. Delegates with Des Moines’ Precinct 70 sided with Clinton after breaking a 61-61 split with a coin toss, Univision reported. Caucus rules allow for a coin flip to decide a victor in case of a tie. CLINTON, SANDERS IN TIGHT CONTEST AS IOWA CAUCUSES OPEN The coin landed heads-down in favor of Clinton at the Weeks Middle School gymnasium. “That’s how it works,” one voter sporting Sanders stickers said. “It was very,...

Democrats in chaos: Hillary and Bernie are left in limbo as poor staffing at Iowa polling places means caucus winner won't be declared until later today Iowa's Democratic faithful will have to wait until Tuesday to find out who won their presidential caucuses, as state party officials botched the event and can't determine who won in nine of the 1,681 voting precincts. Poor staffing led to questions at caucus sites scattered all over the state, leaving liberals with egg on their faces - and casting a cloud over the results although Hillary Clinton has already claimed victory. When counting stopped...

Brent Hawkes, a prominent Toronto pastor, has been charged with committing sex crimes in Nova Scotia, lawyer Clayton Ruby confirmed to CBC News. Ruby said his client was charged by the RCMP in December with indecent assault and gross indecency in Kings County, N.S. The offences are alleged to have happened in the 1970s. The 65-year-old, who delivered the eulogy at former New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton's 2011 funeral, has been the senior pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto for nearly 40 years. He is well known in the LGBT community, and has been recognized for his...

It's critical to start by separating foolish and even potentially shady behavior from criminal. It should be clear to any objective observer that it was an enormous error for Clinton to use a homemade server for all of her emails while she was in a position that regularly handles and assesses the most sensitive of government secrets. She had admitted as much (although now she appears to be backtracking from that initial mea culpa). It is also indisputable that it was neither a crime nor even a violation of State Department procedure for Clinton to have used personal email for...

For the past painful year, the Republican presidential contenders have been bombarding Americans with empty propaganda slogans and competing, bizarrely, to present themselves as the least experienced person for the most important elected job in the world. Democratic primary voters, on the other hand, after a substantive debate over real issues, have the chance to nominate one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history. Hillary Clinton would be the first woman nominated by a major party. She served as a senator from a major state (New York) and as secretary of state — not to...

...Mr. Schaffer said shortly after Planned Parenthood hired him last summer, he initiated a "dialog" with prosecutors in Harris County, which encompasses most of Houston, about the details of the case, and maintained communication throughout the investigation, which lasted two months. Schaffer said his clients volunteered documentation and invited prosecutors to question employees and tour its Houston clinic. Also critical to the investigation was the grand jury's focus, which changed course and started looking at the anti-abortion activists, Schaffer said on a conference call with reporters, adding he received that information from a prosecutor...

For years, the Obama Administration has stood behind two excuses (given under oath) for not sending a quick reaction force to assist in rescuing American citizens during the Sept. 11, 2012 al Qaeda-linked attacks on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The first excuse being: There were no forces available that could have responded quickly. The second reason was: Even if they had scrambled more people, they couldn't have gotten there in time to make a difference. Now, an email, hidden for three years, has come to light and...

Late today a Texas grand jury found no case against PP for selling baby parts; they did indite the producers of the video for unlawfully viewing a government form. Megyn Kelly of Fox news was the source for me. Background is that pro life Gov.of Texas appointed the prosecutor, in the case, to find if an indictment of PP could be found AGAINST them for selling baby parts. Instead the Producers were indicted! This cannot happen by accident. Even if a grand jury would not find an intictment against PP, a separate action would have to be prosecuted by the...

America looks different in 2016 than it did the last time Hillary Clinton ran for president: The economy has come out of free fall, the military has left the quagmire of the Iraq war, barriers to equality have toppled, and universal access to health care has become a reality. Tumultuous as they’ve been, the Barack Obama years have proved transformative — and the priority for Democratic voters should be to protect, consolidate, and extend those gains.

on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton's political career. A New York Times editorial called it "a shocking abuse of presidential power." The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it "is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess." Congressman Barney Frank added, "It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous." Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going...

The FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s secret e-mail server has expanded, Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne exclusively report, into a new and more personal direction. While continuing to press on the question of whether Hillary violated the Espionage Act on more than 1300 occasions, they also now have reason to look into whether the former Secretary of State used her office to enrich the family through the Clinton Foundation: The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible "intersection" of Clinton Foundation work and State...

Widespread corruption destroys empires. By way of example, corruption was one of the main causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire: The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder [and see this]. The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership. The Ottoman Empire started its decline when the sale of...

Amid all the scandals related to the Clinton family, Bill Clinton's sex scandals were supposed to be a dead letter. After all, the former president weathered impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s-in fact, Hillary Clinton's popularity soared at the time. As those events receded, Bill Clinton became one of the most popular politicians in America, a smiling, drawling avatar of the happy, carefree 1990s. There were questions about how the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign might use her husband, and whether he'd be an asset or a liability (as he was in 2008), but sex wasn't in the picture. This week,...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton's personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following: 1. Improper disclosure or retention of classified information. 2. Destruction of government records. 3. Lying to federal agents. 4. Lying under oath. 5. Obstruction of justice. All the counts are familiar to those of us who have followed the...

..."Just for the record, if she does not already know, ......... is one of the biggest jerks in the foreign service," the US ambassador to Germany John Kornblum is quoted as saying in a newly-released email from Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal.

The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim worshippers. Eva Brunne, who was made the world's first openly lesbian bishop by the church of Sweden in 2009, and has a young son with her wife and fellow lesbian priest Gunilla Linden, made the suggestion to make those of other faiths more welcome. The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to...