Free Republic

"It is absolutely outrageous and reprehensible for anyone to suggest attacks on holy sites, whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish or those of any other religion ... Any suggestion that the defense of the American homeland or the defense of American interests would ever justify attacking holy sites or religious sites is just simply an idea that goes against the length or breadth of US history"State Department spokesman Tom Casey Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies in contemporary United States history has been the gross usurpation of our nation's State Department by those ignorant of history who would relentlessly promote...

Local landowners and politicians say they are being ignored by officials in Washington with regards to the proposed construction of a border fence - again.Tuesday, the White House announced President Bush was threatening to veto a House homeland security bill that mandated considering local input on the construction of the proposed fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the Associated Press, the administration said the mandate for local input would "serve as an impediment to gaining control of the border." Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas considered the proposed veto a disgrace. "Unbelievable," he said. "In other words, we don't have a...

White House opposes mandated local input on border fence Jeremy Roebuck June 13, 2007 - 6:29PMAfter months of debate, federal authorities and Rio Grande Valley leaders may have finally found something about a proposed border fence that they can agree on: The time for talking is over. On Tuesday, President Bush threatened to veto a U.S. House homeland security bill that would tie money for fence construction to community input, describing mandated meetings as an unnecessary roadblock to secure the nation’s border. And while local leaders still disagree with the plan to construct 370 miles of physical fencing along...

Muslims' Request For Space Rejected Athletic officials will allow prayer throughout arena Paul Takahashi Posted: 2/20/07 By Paul Takahashi The Daily Northwestern Athletic officials will not establish a designated prayer space for Muslim students at sporting events held at Ryan Field and Welsh-Ryan Arena, said John Mack, Northwestern's associate athletic director of external affairs. Instead, officials will grant certain concessions, such as allowing prayer rugs into the stadiums and letting students pray in places that do not block traffic flow. The decision came after Muslim students expressed a need for clean prayer areas in January. Associated Student Government passed a...

According to Heather MacDonald, the feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent. The university is about to name as its new president radical feminist Drew Gilpin Faust, following Lawrence Summers’s all-too-brief reign. Summers’s recklessly honest speculations about women in science strengthened the feminist hold on faculty hiring and promotions. The Task Force won a $50 million commitment to increase faculty “diversity efforts” at Harvard. As University President, Lawrence Summers in 2005 gave a speech where he dared to suggest that innate differences between men and women could explain why men hold more seats as top scientists than women. This is a...

"Knowing Bishop Jefferts Schori, I am certain that she continues to listen carefully to the concerns of all her fellow Primates." (Canon Robert Williams, Episcopal Church Communications Director, Dar es Salaam, Feb. 16, 2007) I have no doubt Canon Williams is quite correct. Katharine Jefferts Schori listens carefully to all of the concerns of her fellow Primates, including concerns that the Episcopal Church repent and be brought into compliance, not just with the Windsor Report, but with the canon of Holy Scripture. She listens, and then does what she had planned to do all along. But by the act of...

Yet church members slog on through the gay clergy debate because leaders can't seem to devise a solution that satisfies both sides.Ron Miller is a member of Druid Hills Presbyterian Church in Atlanta who says he would have "no problem at all" accepting a gay pastor. But the genial church elder says he'd rather focus on something else — and so should other churches. "A lot of time and energy is being spent by governing bodies and individual churches over this issue," Miller says. "That time could be devoted to the real mission of the church: helping the poor, the...

"Do your students say the Pledge of Allegiance?" That was the question I posed in several ways to Marcos Aguilar, a founder and now the Tlayecantzi or "school guide" at Academia de Semillas del Pueblo Xinaxcalmecac. You see, it's charter school renewal season in Los Angeles and Semillas del Pueblo ("Seeds of the People"), a 318-student, K-7 charter in El Sereno, is one of 18 schools whose contracts will soon get a thumbs up or thumbs down from the Los Angeles Unified School District. ... But what about the trickier, more philosophical, some would say irrelevant: "To what extent do...

U.S. District Judge James Cohn has forced a Guatemalan dishwasher to surrender nearly all his life savings to the government because he didn't sign a declaration form before trying to board an airplane. Pedro Zapeta of Stuart had $59,000 in his bag when Customs agents searched it and confiscated the money at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Sept. 18, 2005. Mr. Zapeta, a 39-year-old Mayan whose native language is Quiche, has said that he was unaware of the requirement to disclose amounts greater than $10,000. On Monday, Judge Cohn ruled that the $10,000 was all that Mr. Zapeta could...

Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict by Neal McCluskey Neal McCluskey is a policy analyst at the Center for Educational Freedom and author of the forthcoming book Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education (Rowman and Littlefield). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is all too often assumed that public education as we typically think of it today—schooling provided and controlled by government—constitutes the "foundation of American democracy." Such schooling, it is argued, has taken people of immensely varied ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds and molded them into Americans who are both unified and free....

WASHINGTON - Three of the five Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 say they had no choice but to intervene in the Florida recount. Comments from Justice Anthony Kennedy and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor are in a new book that was published this week. Justice Antonin Scalia made his remarks Tuesday at Iona College in New York. Scalia, answering questions after a speech, also said that critics of the 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore need to move on six years after the electoral drama of December 2000, when it seemed the...

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle - the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to "oneness of mind" (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the wholistic society, the wholistic earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing...

October 8th Bush/Kerry Debate