Free Republic

Might as well open a thread on this. This is going to be good.

A Meditation on the Sins of the Intellect By: Msgr. Charles PopeWhen I was in the seminary, my Moral Theology Professor, Fr. Robert Zylla (R.I.P.), encouraged us to meditate on the sins of the intellect during the third sorrowful mystery (The Crowning with Thorns). In his years of teaching he had surely witnessed the intellectual pride that could beset theologians and seminary students who figured they knew a few things. And added to this human tendency to intellectual pride was the rather prideful sense of the 20th century that we had somehow “come of age.” Dissent from church teaching was rampant and...

THE MAN who shot President Ronald Reagan is allowed to spend 17 days on release from a psychiatric hospital each month under a new court ruling, writes Mike Parker in Los Angeles. The freedom given to failed assassin John Hinckley Jr, which includes permission to drive to his mother’s house, has sparked a storm in the US and shocked former First Lady Nancy, 92. Hinckley, now 58, fired a hail of bullets at the late president in March 1981, in Washington, seriously wounding him. Three others were badly hurt including press secretary James Brady, now 73.

HANOI – Gay and lesbian couples in Vietnam may soon be allowed to hold relationship ceremonies, as the country’s lawmakers begin a debate that gay-rights advocates and their allies hope could one day lead the country to permit same-sex marriage. When the amendment was first proposed by the Justice Ministry in May 2012 it was unclear just what form it would take. And while the amendment currently being debated is a long way from hopes that gay marriage would officially be recognized, or would lead to equal rights for gay couples, activists say is a step in the right direction....

... This speech was a close reflection of Power’s views. The overwhelming emphasis was on humanitarian goals, with a brief, secondary, and noticeably weak effort to buttress that case with talk about threats to our interests. Power’s core argument is that American foreign policy has historically “refused to take risks” for humanitarian ends. Power chastises American leaders for declining to “invest the military, financial, diplomatic, or domestic political capital” necessary to prevent massacres. U.S. officials, she complains, consistently “play up the futility, perversity, and jeopardy of any proposed intervention.” Well, drawing a humanitarian red line in conformity with Power’s goals...

The first Obamacare Death Panel, headed by Ezekiel Emanuel, issued death sentences to 3,500 patients. After evaluating their cases, the panel determined that the patients did not meet the minimum economic cost-benefit criteria and would be terminated within a week. Having a semblance of humanity, the ordered slow death would be painless and with dignity. All 3,500 patients will be loaded on a Carnival Cruise ship and set off on a 1 week cruise. Patients will be plied with liquor and drugs until they were in an absolute stupor. No toilet facilities or food will be provided as all the...

Friday evening the largest Global Warming snow ever hit the Northeast. The storm had been predicted by Al Gore and other patients for years. Scientists had first thought the snow was the ordinary H2O type of snow that has fallen for years. However, closer investigation indicated that the snow was not regular snow but solidified carbon dioxide, (aka dry ice). Drs. Mann, Jones and Hansen speculated that the carbon dioxide had built up quickly because the coal fired electric generator plants had been working at full capacity because of the recent Artic cold spell. What triggered the consolidation and solidification...

As America's mania with cell phones as an aspirational status fad hits new records every day, this borderline addiction to "thinner, longer" mobility and a sub-1 year upgrade cycle, is starting to extract its pound of flesh: average cell phone bills that have risen by over 10% in one year (from $1,110 to $1,226), even as total household spending rose by half, or $67. In a word: iNflation. It gets worse. As the WSJ reports, "spending on food away from home fell by $48, apparel spending declined by $141, and entertainment spending dropped by $126." Like a true faux status/gadget...

The night they drove old Hosni down — and all the neo-cons were singing. Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol was the kapellmeister. Prior to the exit of Beast Mubarak, Kristol (in yet another of his Olympian pronouncements), thundered: “The United States must support the Egyptian awakening, and has a paramount moral and strategic interest in real democracy in Egypt and freedom for the Egyptian people. The question is how the U.S. government can do its best to help the awakening turn out well.”How do we know neo-cons aren’t really conservatives? Conservatives are realists. They confront reality without ideological blinders. They...

The United States disclosed for the first time on Monday the current size of its nuclear arsenal, lifting the veil on once top-secret numbers in an effort to bolster non-proliferation efforts. The Pentagon said it had a total of 5,113 warheads in its nuclear stockpile at the end of September, down 84 percent from a peak of 31,225 in 1967. The arsenal stood at 22,217 warheads when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The figure includes warheads that are operationally deployed, kept in active reserve and held in inactive storage. But it does not include "several thousand" warheads that are...

This thread is only for freepers who want Sarah Palin to be President in 2012. Please all (TROLLS)other stay out.

Yesterday afternoon, President Barack Obama told his Economic Recovery Advisory Board: “I realize that we are facing an untenable fiscal situation. What I won’t do is cut back on investments like education.” Meanwhile what our Commander in Chief is very willing to cut is defense. In Bob Woodard’s new book, the President is reported telling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “I am not spending a trillion dollars” on war costs. And he told Vice President Joe Biden exactly why: ”I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” Since 1960, federal spending on education has tripled while test scores have remained flat....

The number of Americans who believe -- wrongly -- that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now account for nearly 20 percent of the nation's population. Those results, from a new Pew Research Center survey, were drawn from interviews done before the president's comments about the construction of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and they suggest that there could be serious political danger for the White House as the debate continues. The president's religion, like his place of birth, has been the subject of Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods since before he began...

Lula’s foolishness is joke in Israel  By Julio Severo  In Brazil, when we look at Lula, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry. If his foolishness, which competes with the vast territorial size of Brazil, didn’t produce such devastating results, we would only laugh at a great and arrogant blunderer.  However, his messes have been producing results. To protect the Iranian nuclear program, Lula made a deal between Brazil, Iran and Turkey. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPxYGiUXb-Q That program is entirely in the man’s hands that says openly that he wants to sweep Israel from the face of the earth.  How...

The recent recall of fresh-cut romaine lettuce processed in an Ohio facility...has given a new rallying cry to activists trying to spur quick Senate passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a self-proclaimed consumer advocacy group, made this statement: "While consumers wait for Congress to pass food safety legislation, the plants that process and bag lettuce and the farms that grow it are operating under an industry honor system which clearly failed in this case. The FDA can’t tell us when it last had inspectors in the plant where this...

Nuclear weapons are not evil. Terrifying, yes. But their horrific capabilities prevented a Third World War. It all depends on whose finger is on the button. Until yesterday's formal announcement of the administration's new Nuclear Posture Review, nukes also kept us safe from a range of threats short of a doomsday scenario: Our enemies risked going only so far. Nukes didn't prevent all wars -- but wars remained local. Yesterday, we threw away a significant part of history's most successful deterrent. This looks like an act of reckless vanity on the part of the administration, but let's allow that this...

A high-level Pentagon inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 people dead has concluded that the military should focus more resources on identifying service members who might pose a threat to their colleagues and outlines a series of steps it should take to prevent such attacks, Pentagon officials said. The study, which will be presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen on Wednesday, is expected to be publicly released Thursday. The report concludes that officer performance evaluations, which often obscure shortcomings to preserve officers' careers, need to be more forthright...

I have heard many folks openly observe that all members of Congress must live in a different world than we live in. I have pondered this oft heard statement and I must concur. I have a direct sense and understanding of these, now particularly odious folks, with a story of life as we knew it around the Beltway of Washington. Back in the late 1980's we were assigned to the D.C. area due to military posting. It was a cultural shock to the entire family. In part, the disparity was due to having lived in Germany for four wonderful years...

A visit to North Korea by U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth ended in failure Thursday to convince the North to return to multilateral nuclear disarmament talks. "We identified some common understandings on the need for and the role of the six-party talks and the importance of the implementation of the 2005 Joint Statement," Bosworth told reporters. "It remains to be seen when and how [North Korea] will return to the six-party talks." He added, "This is something that requires further consultations among all six of us." But Bosworth claimed he had "very useful" meetings with senior North Korean officials. Further bilateral...

Young people are stupid. I do not exclude myself from this judgment; when a lad newly of voting age, my news addiction made me a curious specimen (though in those days CNN and newspapers were the only dealers in town), and as such I was as well informed a teenage boy as can reasonably be expected. And yet, I supported Ross Perot (ah, the follies of youth) - until he flaked out, of course, after which I drifted back to my natural home in the Republican Party. And really, is it any wonder young people are given to so much...