Free Republic

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

LESBIANS and single women are receiving IVF and other fertility treatments on the NHS in Scotland despite a nationwide shortage of sperm donors. A Scotland on Sunday investigation has revealed that three health boards are paying up to £3,000 per treatment for lesbians and single women who want babies to have artificial insemination. Four other boards have treated or referred women who paid for the fertility procedures themselves. The revelation has been welcomed by gay rights campaigners but has angered infertility support groups, who fear healthy gay couples are harming the chances of parenthood for heterosexual couples with fertility problems....

(Former Vice President Al Gore, who previously supported the Defense of Marriage Act and civil unions, was the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Campaign Gala on March 25, 2006, at the Century Plaza Hotel. This is an excerpt of his speech.) Abraham Lincoln once said, "I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad, and that is my religion." As a Christian, I was taught at an early age that the single most important departure in Christianity from the Judeo-Christian tradition as a whole was embodied in the simple teaching -- God is Love....

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A proposed law to curb prostitution in the U.S. capital has some homosexual activists worried that the profiling would unfairly target transgendered people. A coalition of 22 homosexual rights groups has signed a letter of protest against the proposed Omnibus Public Safety Act of 2005, which would allow police to establish “Prostitution Free Zones” in public areas. The group warns it “will increase harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens.” Program coordinator Darby Hickey, from the homosexual rights group Different Avenues, complained that the program would unfairly target transgendered people. “There’s widespread profiling...

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are at particular risk in our society.They are surrounded by images and references that imply the unacceptability of their own feelings and identity. Heterosexuality is simply taken for granted as “the way to be.” Many sexuality education curricula assume all students are heterosexual. When sexual orientations are considered, homosexuality is often the only one examined. All young people benefit from learning about sexual orientation—their own and others.This education helps young people understand not only sexual development and orientation, but also the effect of stereotyping, homophobia, and prejudice on people’s lives. The activities in this section...

The Conservative Christian organizations that are increasingly targeting teenagers and young people with "ex-gay" conferences and therapy are deceiving parents, teens and the public about the effectiveness of their efforts, according to a report released Thursday by a gay rights organization. The report, "Youth in the Crosshairs: The Third Wave of Ex-Gay Activism," claims that organizations working to help people overcome same-sex attraction could be sued because they cause harm instead of accomplishing what they promise. "There's no evidence that conversion therapy actually works, but there's a growing body of evidence that it can be extremely harmful and unethical," said...

Most paleontologists look into the mouth of an allosaurus and see a prehistoric eating machine with a jaw full of flesh-tearing teeth. Peter DeRosa peers into that mouth and sees the hand of God. Working from a business park about 80 miles north of Tampa, Fla., DeRosa and his family are hammering away at two bedrock principles of modern science: evolution and the notion that Earth is about 4 billion years old. The DeRosas are part of a small but growing band of creationists using dinosaurs - the icons of an ancient Earth - to argue that the world is...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

SEOUL -- North Korea said today that it would not dismantle its nuclear-weapons program until the United States first provides an atomic energy reactor, casting doubt on its commitment to a breakthrough agreement reached at international arms talks. The North's Foreign Ministry made the surprise demand a day after it had agreed at six-nation talks in Beijing to give up its arms efforts. The North insisted during arms talks that began last week in Beijing that it be given a light-water reactor, a type less easily diverted for weapons use, in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons. The agreement reached at...

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea demanded Tuesday that the United States give it a light water nuclear reactor before it rejoins the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ends its weapons program. The North's Foreign Ministry made the demand a day after it agreed at six-nation talks in Beijing to give up its arms efforts, rejoin the treaty, and accept inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We will return to the NPT and sign the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and comply with it immediately upon the U.S. provision of LWRs, a basis of confidence-building to us," the ministry...

Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a vise? Why, it's the GOP, and they're screaming, "No, no it can't be, oh my God, please no, this damnable Katrina thing is just an unstoppable PR disaster for us!" After all (they wail), who woulda thought dissing all those poor black people and letting so many of them die in filth and misery in the Superdome while our pampered CEO president enjoyed yet another vacation would cause such an ugly backlash, such harsh criticism...

<p>'We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now'...</p>

SEMINOLE, Fla. - A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. Mitchell, 50, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, Pasha said. The feeding tube that has kept Schiavo alive...

Hawaiian newspaper misquotes Churchill CU prof did not back away from Indian heritage claim By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News February 24, 2005 A dispute that erupted Wednesday over a published report that CU professor Ward Churchill was backing off his claims to Indian heritage ended when a Honolulu newspaper admitted it had misquoted him. Ed Lynch, the city editor at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, said, "Unfortunately, our reporter made a mistake." He said the newspaper would run a retraction today. Advertisement Click Here! The paper published a report Wednesday that said Churchill addressed the issue of his ethnicity in a...

Starbulletin.com Wednesday, February 23, 2005 "I never wanted to be a poster boy for academic freedom. You can't give an inch. If you let this one down, you've lost it all." Ward Churchill Visiting University of Colorado professor LUCY PEMONI / STAR-BULLETIN Protesters made their opinions known last night outside the entrance of the auditorium where University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill delivered his speech on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. Churchill attacks essay’s critics University of Colorado president calls for calm By Craig Gima cgima@starbulletin.com Ward Churchill, the outspoken Colorado professor who created a national uproar by...

LARGO - Fed up up with watching the Pinellas County Jail become cluttered with the mentally ill, many who spend weeks or months sitting in a cell, Public Defender Bob Dillinger won a $1-million federal grant last year to tackle the problem. Since then, some mentally ill inmates have been pulled from the jail within days after their mug shot is snapped. The program, which Dillinger thinks is a first-of-its-kind in the nation, places these folks in treatment facilities that do a better of job of meeting their needs than a jail ever could. As the program celebrates its one-year...