Free Republic

According to new research from Boston University, young children with a religious background are less able to distinguish between fantasy and reality compared with their secular counterparts. In two studies, 66 kindergarten-age children were presented with three types of stories - realistic, religious and fantastical. The researchers then queried the children on whether they thought the main character in the story was real or fictional. While nearly all children found the figures in the realistic narratives to be real, secular and religious children were split on religious stories. Children with a religious upbringing tended to view the protagonists in religious stories as...

The Obamas are reportedly poised to purchase a custom-built high-class home in the Rancho Mirage section of California for $4.25 million. White House officials deny the reports, but realtors say otherwise, claiming that the first family are in escrow for the Thunderbird Heights community house, located on a hilltop near Palm Springs in the same area once called home by Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, the Los Angeles Times reports. …

The State Department issued a dire report Monday on the state of religious freedom around the world, with an alarming warning that the Christian presence in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East is becoming a “shadow of its former self.” The analysis was included as part of a comprehensive report on religious freedom around the world in 2013. The report cited a flood of examples of governments and militant groups cracking down on religious minorities, everywhere from Pakistan to Egypt to China. The victims included Christians, but also Hindus, Muslims and others. The report offered a pointed warning about...

The mayors of Jersey City, Newark and Paterson announced a major initiative to fight crime and strengthen communities by sharing intelligence, police officers and purchasing agreements.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fusion TV´s Jorge Ramos that part of the reason Hamas hides rockets in schools and civilian areas is "Gaza is small." "I´m not a military planner but Hamas puts it´s missiles, it´s rockets in civilian areas, part of it is Gaza is pretty small and its densely populated," she said as neglecting the question of whether or not Hamas should have rockets in area to begin with.

Simon Cowell is used to heaping abuse on strangers, not taking it from them. The former American Idol judge made a fortune by mocking the singing abilities of the Fox show's contestants. Now, Cowell is getting nasty messages from strangers, but the stakes are far higher. Cowell gave $150,000 to the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces last year, but the donation is only now hitting the news cycle, according to YNET News. As a result, Cowell began receiving images of dead Palestinian children on Twitter and has been accused of helping Israel invade Gaza. One of the tweets said...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency...

Think Progress, a website operated by the liberal Center for American Progress, failed to vet a phony story which claimed that Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann proposed “Americanization” labor camps for Central American unaccompanied children. “I’m calling on all of us, Obama and Congress and everyone, to chip in and build special new facilities…‘Americanization facilities,’ if you will,” Bachmann said, according to Think Progress, which has since corrected its embarrassing flub. […] Think Progress published the erroneous story on Sunday but corrected it and issued an apology after another liberal website, the Raw Story, pointed out the massive hoax. […]...

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie launched a radio ad Wednesday featuring President Barack Obama supporting the governor’s bid for re-election. In the ad, Obama uses the Hawaiian word for family, saying Abercrombie is “like ohana to me.” The president says Abercrombie knew his parents “before I was a twinkle in their eye.” Obama says the governor has made gutsy decisions leading Hawaii, tackled a budget crisis, made smart investments in education and fought for middle class and working families. …

The left-leaning tech blog Pando seems to be angry about a lot of aspects of reality.* Witness David Carr flipping out over this billboard that he spotted in San Francisco, “walking home from Pando’s office a few nights ago.” photo: Paull Carr, Pando

Watch your butts, kids—a state appeals court says it’s OK for parents to spank them. In a ruling Wednesday, the state Appellate Division found that a Long Island father’s spanking of an 8-year-old boy “was a reasonable use of force.” A Suffolk County Family Court judge had determined last year that the father of the boy had abused his son “by inflicting excessive corporal punishment.” The father allegedly spanked the child with an open hand as punishment for cursing while they were at a party at friend’s home back in 2012, the appeals court ruling says. …

But GOP candidates can't simply rely on attacking Democrats for having voted for ObamaCare or, in the case of nonincumbents, supporting it. They should draw attention to the law's pernicious effects on ordinary Americans. By humanizing ObamaCare's shortfalls through stories from ordinary people, Republicans will help explode the myth of liberal competence and compassion, keep this issue fresh through the fall and cause voters to hold Democrats accountable at the polls.

Bloodied but unbowed after a largely unsuccessful primary season, the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) isn’t backing down in the final months of the midterms. The group on Thursday launched radio and television ads in Kansas highlighting questions over where Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) lives, making a final play in the group's last remaining incumbent primary. It endorsed Roberts's challenger, radiologist Milton Wolf, but he has thus far failed to pick up much traction against the senator. Both spots hit Roberts on the national debt and ObamaCare, and they feature a clip of Roberts commenting in a recent interview that, "Every...

The ongoing debate over immigration, and over illegal immigration in particular, is one of the most acrimonious – usually needlessly so – in our politics. It divides both parties, though it’s no secret that the divisions within the GOP on this issue are far worse. And all sides in this debate are guilty of peddling myths and rhetoric that do more harm to the debate than good. 1. “One-Time” Amnesty: The 1986 immigration bill – one of Ronald Reagan’s biggest mistakes as President – was sold to the public as a long-term, if not permanent, solution to the immigration problem,...

A North Texas community that sits on a large natural gas reserve could become the first city in the state to partially ban hydraulic fracturing, with city leaders in Denton set to vote early Wednesday on a citizen-led petition to outlaw new permits for the drilling method. The process, also called fracking, has led to significant economic benefits but also to fears that the chemicals could spread to water supplies, worsen air quality and even cause small earthquakes. Scores of other cities and some states have considered similar bans, but the proposal in Denton is a litmus test on whether...

If there’s anything that can unite Democrats and Republicans in the partisan swamp of Capitol Hill, it’s free money. […] Lawmakers revived pension smoothing Tuesday to help find money for a government fund that finances highway construction projects. …

Amid the recent troubles between Israel and the Palestinians, many Americans and media commentators are drawing disturbing lines of parallelism between the two societies, asserting a false moral equivalency to the actions of each. In essence, the claim goes like this: “Both sides are fighting each other with similar degrees of violence; both treat each other equally badly; each side is equally to blame for the violence, and they just can’t come together.” That notion that there is a moral equivalency between the defensive and targeted actions that the rule-of-law-based Israel is compelled to take, and the proactive and indiscriminate...

The U.S. government has created a widely popular song about the "death train" to discourage Central Americans from risking their lives in pursuit of the amnesty that they believe awaits them across the U.S.-Mexico border. The Daily Beast reported that "La Bestia" is a hit song in Central America that is a part of America's propaganda campaign to let Central Americans know about the dangers of the "death train," which is also called "the beast." “Migrants from everywhere, entrenched along the rail ties. Far away from where they come, further away from where they go,” the song informs Central American...

As the nation’s midsection has grown more conservative and Republican, Democrats have sometimes had to rest their hopes on well-positioned GOP contenders imploding with their own politically off-key statements. It worked like a charm for Democrats in 2012 when Republican candidates in Indiana and Missouri blew winnable Senate races after provocative comments on rape and abortion. But with less than four months until the 2014 election, Democrats are still waiting for new bombshells and growing more anxious about the lack of incendiary material as they try to hold enough Senate seats to keep control of the chamber. Party researchers are...

Attorney General Eric Holder has a "lot of sleepless nights," reported ABC News this morning. Chief among his concerns? The threat of "homegrown violent extremists."