Free Republic

The new Congress that starts work this week is the latest reminder of America’s stark political divisions: The parties in Washington are more polarized than they have been in decades, the partisanship gap between rural Republicans and urban Democrats has grown, and the battle for suburban voters keeps intensifying. Much less is said, however, about the equally significant economic division between conservative “red states” and liberal “blue states.” Blue states, like California, New York and Illinois, whose economies turn on finance, trade and knowledge, are generally richer than red states. But red states, like Texas, Georgia and Utah, have done...

I warned this would happen back in my first anti-assisted suicide article–Newsweek, June 28, 1993–in which I wrote: "Of greater concern to me is the moral trickledown effect that could result should society ever come to agree with Frances [to legalize assisted suicide]. "Life is action and reaction, the proverbial pebble thrown into the pond. We don’t get to the Brave New World in one giant leap. Rather, the descent to depravity is reached by small steps. First, suicide is promoted as a virtue. Vulnerable people like Frances become early casualties. Then follows mercy killing of the terminally ill. From...

The UK's highest court has told two Catholic midwives they do not have the right to avoid supervising other nurses involved in abortion procedures. The Supreme Court in London ruled that Mary Doogan and Connie Wood should have to support staff who are caring for patients having terminations. Ms Doogan, from Garrowhill in Glasgow, and Mrs Wood, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, were employed as labour ward co-ordinators at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. Gillian Smith, RCM director for Scotland, said: "This ruling is sensible and both women and midwives will welcome it. "The ruling gives extensive definition to...

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill. "This temporary increase in methane -- sharply up and then back down -- tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a member of the Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."

A New Physics Theory of Life Katherine Taylor for Quanta MagazineJeremy England, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, thinks he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life. By: Natalie WolchoverJanuary 22, 2014 Comments (151) print Why does life exist?Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as...

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” — P.J. O’Rourke “We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society whereno one is responsible for what he himself did,but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.” – Thomas Sowell It’s truly bizarre how often in Obama’s America that we are being presented with “victims” we’re supposed to feel sorry for without anyone even seeming...

Most people misunderstand life. November 17, 2014 What we can all learn from a 75-year-old sailor building a 10 ft boat to circumnavigate the globe. (nonstop) Sven Yrvind, a 75-year-old Swedish boat builder, designer, sailor and writer, has something to say about life.  He’s chosen to communicate this philosophy through taking on tough challenges. Faced with a future of scraping by on a crap pension, surfing channels in a retirement home, Sven had different ideas.“TV is not for me. I must have something to live for, problems to solve. Most people misunderstand life. Money does not make you happy. Comfort...

A meteorite from Mars that landed on Earth in 2011 contains a carbon compound that is biological in origin. (snip) "We cannot and do not want to entirely exclude the possibility that organic carbon within Tissint may be of abiotic origin," Lin wrote, meaning the carbon maybe physical in origin rather than organic -- devoid of life.7 "It could be possible that the organic carbon originated from impacts of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. However, it is not easy to conceive bywhich processes chondritic carbon could have been selectively extracted from the impacting carbonaceous chondrites, selectively removed from the soil and later...

It¡¯s a Wonder-filled Life: A Meditation on the Mystery and Unlikely Chances of Our Very Existence By: Msgr. Charles PopeMost of you have seen the movie, ¡°It¡¯s a Wonderful Life,¡± which airs so frequently at this time of year. More on that in a moment. But for now, the word ¡°wonderful¡± is most commonly understood to mean ¡°really great.¡± But the word ¡°wonderful¡± actually means ¡°filled with wonder.¡±Who among us can understand the incredible mystery of his own life? And not merely considered in itself, but also how it interacts with the lives of others and the events of this...

I vowed to banish from my life the weakness of taking for granted the countless blessings a loving, heavenly Father bestows upon me every day. I vowed to express my love for Him with what matters most: a thankful heart Work had been demanding. I needed the upcoming Thanksgiving break; I needed to sleep late; I needed to enjoy good food; I needed to be with family. But then, what I saw in a hospital parking lot made me realize what I needed most of all: a thankful heart. I watched a family loading a small boy into a van....

Eight women have died in India and dozens more are in hospital, many in a critical condition, after a state-run mass sterilisation. Some 83 women underwent laparoscopic tubectomy operations in a hospital at a family planning camp organised by the state government outside Bilaspur city. "Since Monday eight women have died and 64 are in various hospitals," said Sonmani Borah, a government official in the state of Chhattisgarh, where the sterilisation camp was held. Dr Kamalpreet Singh, director of the state's health services, said: "Certainly there was some lapse somewhere. We are trying to find out its causes." Under the...

In high school biology, we are taught that there are three types of life: eukaryotes (that's us, and most everything else we often think of as life), bacteria, and archaea (extremophiles and other very primitive life forms). But some scientists are pretty sure that there are entirely different, undiscovered lifeforms that could be prevalent on Earth, and they remain undescribed because we're not good at looking for them. In a new paper published in Science, Tanja Woyke and Edward Rubin of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute note that "there are reasons to believe that current approaches [to discovering...

Today there is a demand for sex without love, for a licentiousness in sex which has wrought a heartless society in which individuals do not care for anyone but themselves. The fruit of this demonic theology is the slaughter through abortion and euthanasia of human beings created in the Imago Dei. It is a theology of violence which is rooted in hatred of truth. For at the heart of immorality is falsity, the hatred of truth. Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, in an essay entitled "The Taproot of Violence," explains: "...violence entered creation from the rebellion of Lucifer. This rebellion arose...

A 29-year-old terminal cancer sufferer who had previously spoken of her right to die has ended her own life surrounded by her family. According to friends and family of Brittany Maynard, she passed away in her Portland, Oregon, home after her condition worsened and the tumor took over. However she was able to choose to die before she lost her ability to function. People.com said she wrote on Facebook : 'Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. 'Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness,...

The equation seems fairly simple: The more the world's population rises, the greater the strain on dwindling resources and the greater the impact on the environment. The solution? Well, that's a little trickier to talk about. Public-health discussions will regularly include mentions of voluntary family planning as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and births. But, said Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, those policies can also pay dividends for the environment. "And yet the climate-change benefits of family planning have been largely absent from any climate-change or family-planning policy discussions," he said. A 2010 study published in the...

Medicare is asking for public comment on whether it should pay doctors for counseling patients about their options for end-of-life care. Friday's announcement came in a voluminous regulation on physician payment. Spokesman Aaron Albright says it will "give the public ample opportunity to weigh in on the topic." Five years after a similar proposal triggered a political backlash against President Barack Obama's health care legislation, the administration is dipping its toe in the water.

In the middle of life’s struggle, it is stories like these that come along to prove that, while so many of us wait for heroes to deliver us from the evil of current Western society, we have bypassed the real Hero of all life on Earth Even amid the doom and gloom seeping out from the deliberate destruction of America by its own president; even in the despair that comes along with the increasing perversion of the current Pop Culture, the Hand of God is always at work. Yes, the Marxists, who have thrown in with ISIS, are on a...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095652/posts Accused spy for Iraq worked for California congresswoman (Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose)Sac Bee ^ | 3/11/04 | AP- Washington Lockerbie Trial Document: Susan Lindauer Susan Lindauer Revolving Doors   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095691/posts Saddam Spy Suspect Lindauer: 'I'm an Anti-war Activist'NewsMax ^ | 3/11/04 | Limbacher     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095762/posts American charged in Iraqi conspiracy [Andy Card's distant cousin]CNN ^ | March 11, 2004     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095744/posts How Susan Lindauer Was Caught NRO ^ | 11 March 2004 | Byron York"discussed the need for plans and foreign resources to support [resistance] groups operating within Iraq." Lindauer is a former journalist for U.S. News...

God knows Joan Rivers had much to atone for every Yom Kippur, considering her trenchant wit, off-color jokes and celebrity takedowns — though sidesplitting. Never deferential to fame and status, Rivers claimed, “I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.” Hence, Liz Taylor was “so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin” and “hamburgers on hot dogs,” and HBO-star Lena Dunham’s ever-present breasts “look like Michael J. Fox drew them and Stevie Wonder filled them in.” Alas, the trailblazing performer can’t Think Again and repent this year. Known for resilience and career rebirths springing from fearlessness, a legendary work ethic...

A leading reformist Cardinal close to Pope Francis has hinted at the possibility of a reinterpretation of the Roman Catholic Church’s blanket ban on artificial contraception. Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was “the responsibility of the parents” to decide how many children they should have. He also said that so-called natural family planning, which is promoted by the Church as an alternative to contraception, also has an “artificial” element. His comments in an interview with The Tablet, the Catholic weekly, are likely to reopen debate about one of the most contentious areas of Catholic teaching just weeks before a special...