Free Republic

An Illinois judge ruled Thursday that the state can stop working with Catholic Charities on adoptions and foster care placements — something the state decided to do in July after the not-for-profit agency refused to recognize Illinois' new civil unions law. In his ruling, Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Schmidt said that no one, including Catholic Charities, has a legal right to a contract with the state government. He did not address the more sensitive issue of whether a state contractor that refuses to serve gays and lesbians is violating the state's new civil unions law. The state Department of...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed into law a measure ... addressing controversy over an anti-abortion demonstration. Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) said he wrote the measure in response to a March 2003 incident in which graphic images of an aborted fetus were mounted on a vehicle and driven past a middle school in Rancho Palos Verdes. "Because of the disturbing nature of the photographs, some students at the scene became angry, some began to cry...’’ Mendoza said. The bill was signed three years after a federal court found that the 1st Amendment rights of anti-abortion activists were violated when they...

Boing-boing notices that “yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 19-10 for H.R. 1981, a data-retention bill that will require your ISP to spy on everything you do online and save records of it for 12 months. California Rep Zoe Lofgren, one of the Democrats who opposed the bill, called it a ‘data bank of every digital act by every American’ that would ‘let us find out where every single American visited Web sites.’” The databank is “for the children”. HR 1981 is actually titled “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″. Its sponsors say “the Protecting Children from Internet...

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET. A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses,...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday refused to let California regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children, saying governments do not have the power to "restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed" despite complaints about graphic violence. On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento had ruled that the law violated minors' rights under the First Amendment, and the high court agreed....

Ramesh, as an antidote to Maureen Dowd’s take, here’s Weiner’s former girlfriend Kirsten Powers. When the Twit hit the fan, Kirsten received certain assurances from him about his innocence and, based on those, went out on Fox and elsewhere and defended him. Unlike too many my-Democrat-right-or-wrong types, she’s done with him: As I have recovered from the shock of seeing an old friend’s life unravel and have had time to get my mind around the extensive and sociopathic lying in which he engaged, there seems to be no other choice than for him to step aside and stop hurting his family, friends, and...

The other day, Tommy Christopher published an interesting article regarding two underage girls who had claimed to have incriminating DMs from Anthony Weiner. Christopher called the girls “Betty” and “Veronica” and said that they had admitted to him that they had lied. That may be . . . but there are some aspects of their claims (and those of their parents) that I think merit some examination. (...)

TSA strip searches young boy.

‘Why (would) we would be taking steps to open casinos in every home, dorm room, library, iPod, Blackberry, iPad and computer in America?’ Nearly 67 percent of Americans are opposed to decriminalizing Internet gambling. Yet, Rep. Barney Frank, D – Mass., – chairman of the powerful House Financial Services committee – is persistent in his effort to repeal the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). Rep. James McDermott, D-Wash., has a companion bill to tax the proceeds — conveniently creating yet another revenue stream for the growing government. Their bills gained little favor two months ago when considered by...

To add to the list of outrageous earmarks in Obama's fiscal 2011 budget, ACORN, the embezzlement-prone, voter-registration-fraud-plagued, leftist community organizing group, is slated to receive nearly $4 billion from a taxpayer-funded slush fund. The money will come from the Community Development Block Grant, one of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's longest-running programs. The HUD Web site cryptically defines the grant's purpose as providing "communities with resources to address a wide range of unique community development needs," not a reassuring description given the group's recent past history of aiding the community through gratuitous missappropriation of funds. Has Congress already...

Al Franken has become the voice of the progressive left in the Senate. Yup, Stuart Smiley himself. Franken this week led the Democrat charge against the Obama Administration. Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats. Sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room, although he certainly seems to be the leader.

School Lunches = Pet Food? Many of you may be quite picky about what you feed your children. So many parents these days, in a hissy fit of Whole Foods-fueled hippie-ness, boycott the likes of a Happy Meal. State governments, much like our own here in California, rail against ye olde fashioned childhood snack time staples like candy bars and sodas, banning schools from vending all things that aren't dried fruit and Nutri-Grain bars. And parents these days, in their infinite laziness and longing to be "one of the kids," push their children toward video games in lieu of real...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

Vote for Proposition 1D, kill a baby. That's the message of a new campaign backed by the Child Abuse Prevention Center. Prop. 1D asks voters to take more than $1.6 billion in taxes away from programs designed for children ages 5 and younger and use the money to help lower the overall state deficit for the next 5 years. The Child Abuse Prevention Center, a statewide organization, says that because some of the cuts will affect child abuse prevention programs, "Children will be hurt. Some will die." A campaign poster screams "Baby Killer" in large type and a child's feet...

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their...

When Governor Deval Patrick proposed a 5 percent premium on sugary treats this week, his administration presented it as a sin tax with a bonus: Imposing such a levy, a briefing paper pledged, "is a critical first step in discouraging the consumption of these empty calories." But there is little evidence that an extra nickel or two for a bottle of soda or a bar of chocolate would significantly dampen demand for products blamed for fueling the nation's obesity epidemic. -snip- States big and small, from California to Rhode Island, tack a surcharge onto soft drinks and candy. In all,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – In an open letter to his young daughters, US president-elect Barack Obama said Thursday that he entered the race for the White House "because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation." "When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me -- about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world," Obama said in the letter published in Parade magazine, a weekend newspaper color supplement. "I realized that my own...

Two reports suggest that state and federal public assistance programs may be overwhelmed by the growing ranks of families seeking help during the recession. "The safety net is under severe strain," said Jean Ross, director of the California Budget Project, a liberal group in Sacramento. "Because of the severity of the economic downturn, increasing numbers of Californians are losing jobs or having their hours cut back." Margaret Simms, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., looked at how state governments from coast to coast are facing declining revenue at a time of rising need. "We've made some...

Gov. Sarah Palin is calling for more state spending on children's health insurance, preschool and other programs, even as Alaska oil prices and state revenues plunge. Cash flow into the state is shrinking as oil prices drop below $40 a barrel, the lowest level in nearly four years. Most state general fund money comes from taxes and royalties the state makes from oil. But Palin said the state can afford more than $5 million in new spending on areas like Head Start, obesity prevention, a test program of half-day preschool, and expanded Denali KidCare insurance.

question from the 7 year old