Free Republic

Brittani and Ian McIntire didn't plan on having any more children, but their six-week sonogram revealed that the Kansas couple was expecting twins: Mason and Madilyn. But each successive appointment just delivered more and more bad news: Mason has a hole in his heart and an abnormal brain, and his growth development is already proceeding much slower than it should. "He's only weighing nine ounces and his sister is over two pounds," Brittani told FOX8. "His only chance of survival would be heart surgery but they wouldn't do heart surgery because of his brain." Tuesday, there was a brief glimmer...

Seattle Parks and Recreation is facing a first-of-a-kind challenge to gender bathroom rules. A man undressed in a women's locker room, citing a new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity. It was a busy time at Evans Pool around 5:30pm Monday February 8. The pool was open for lap swim. According to Seattle Parks and Recreation, a man wearing board shorts entered the women's locker room and took off his shirt. Women alerted staff, who told the man to leave, but he said "the law has changed and I have a right to...

February 17, 2016 (DailySignal) -- When a 9-year-old boy who identifies as Stormi, a transgender girl, started selling Girl Scout cookies, one neighbor was not amused, according to Buzzfeed. The neighbor rebuffed him, reportedly saying, “Nobody wants to buy Girl Scout cookies from a boy in a dress.” The neighbor is being called transphobic—but perhaps the neighbor thought he was being pranked by a boy and reacted accordingly. Not everyone assumes that a boy in a dress selling Girl Scout cookies is transgender. People Can Be Genderphobic Stormi looked like a boy to the neighbor because he really is a boy....

Even in his very first years on the US Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia already was making a profound impression on the Court, on Washington, and on American life. I matriculated at Georgetown Law shortly after Scalia joined the Court, and throughout the course of my legal studies, he often was the talk of both the town and the law school. He quickly became something of a judicial folk hero to students who favored judicial restraint, a method of judicial decision-making marked by a justice’s broad deference to the decisions of the people and their elected representatives, and by...

WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio, February 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Cincinnati just witnessed the power of individual citizens speaking out against the sex industry coming to their town. And then Cincinnati witnessed a judge overruling their concerns. Butler County pleas judge Craig Hedric ruled that West Chester Township officials improperly rescinded a license for a sexually oriented business in their community. Melissa Warren, a Fort Wayne "Swinger's Club" owner, wanted to expand her sex trade into the Cincinnati suburbs. She and her boyfriend Eric Adams invested in land in West Chester Township and set up positive meetings with township officials to...

February 15, 2016 (AlbertMohler) -- “Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.” So advised a man who ought to know, William Howard Taft. After serving as President of the United States, Taft went on to serve — probably more effectively — as Chief Justice of the United States. But, if the Supreme Court goes on forever, justices do not. Americans were reminded of this truth on Saturday when news broke that Justice Antonin Scalia had been found dead in Texas, where he had gone on a hunting trip. The 79-year-old justice had served almost 30 years...

February 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – “I shall tell the Creator of the Universe you were too busy to see him,” Justice Antonin Scalia once emailed a law clerk who didn’t want to attend church with him. But it is perhaps not unfair to suspect that Scalia himself would have felt the same way, had he known his departure was so imminent. The Creator called for him nonetheless, and he is gone. A titan has fallen. The bitter rejoicing of lesser men has already begun, as is to be expected. The godfather of conservative jurisprudence was a foil to the plans...

Margaret Sanger’s dream of controlling the fertility of the poor is coming to fruition, thanks to the federal government.Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and a population control activist. She advocated that the “unfit”—the poor and the disabled—should have their fertility controlled. In her view, “hap-hazard, uncontrolled parentage leads directly and inevitably to poverty, overcrowding, delinquency, defectiveness, child labor, [and] infant mortality.”Sanger emphasized the financial burden that the marginalized classes impose on the broader society, asserting that “if they are not able to support and care for themselves, they should certainly not be allowed to bring offspring...

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota, February 10, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Recent comments from a group of Republican South Dakota legislators on proposed legislation in the state have caused controversy among the transgender movement. In a discussion on a bill that would limit bathroom and shower facility use in South Dakota schools to students sharing the same gender, State Senator David Omdahl referred to individuals suffering from gender dysphoria as "twisted" due to their identity confusion and said they would benefit from psychological treatment. "I'm sorry if you're so twisted you don't even know who you are," said Omdahl, explaining the intent...

POWAY, California, February 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A state law allowing students with gender dysphoria to use the locker room of the opposite sex is causing an uproar at a California high school. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Holly Franz spoke to school district board members on behalf of her son and "so many students" who, the mother says, have contacted her about a female student who has been using a male locker room. "My son came home from school and told me there was a girl using the boys' locker room," said Franz, whose son attends Rancho...

OTTAWA, February 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Canada has a “moral imperative” to fund palliative care because people have a dignity that “comes from God,” Canada’s top ranking Catholic cardinal told the special joint parliamentary committee on “physician-assisted dying” last week. The dignity of the human person is “inherent” and remains regardless of their circumstances, Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Toronto archdiocese told the committee. “That’s why we don’t believe it’s right to kill them.” This belief in the intrinsic dignity of the human person motivates the Catholic Church’s mission of providing health care, including care for the dying, he said....

A volunteer teacher’s assistant at Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary School in Glenarden, police say 22-year-old Deonte Carraway used his position to prey on children. “We believe that Carraway targeted his young victims and videotaped vile sexual acts between minors during the school day on school grounds,” said an official. Carraway faces 10 counts of felony child pornography, among other charges.

ROWAN COUNTY, Kentucky, February 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - A federal judge has turned down the ACLU's attempt to force Kim Davis to violate her conscience while issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Although Governor Matt Bevin granted a religious accommodation for the county clerk to issue altered marriage licenses to homosexuals, the ACLU brought a lawsuit seeking to force Davis to issue the old forms with her full name on them. "There is absolutely no reason that this case went so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis' First Amendment rights," said Mat Staver, the founder and chairman...

A couple of months ago, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed restroom. Worse still the administration has not notified either parents or students. Rumors are circulating that the administration chose secrecy over transparency in order to avoid controversy.

CONCORD, New Hampshire, February 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Does Donald Trump support the gay agenda or oppose it? On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, observers are still scratching their heads about where the GOP frontrunner actually stands. Trump has repeatedly and consistently said he supports the natural definition of marriage, but can a President Trump be relied on to promote it resolutely and cogently? It is this question that has many marriage activists expressing concern about his increasingly likely hold on the GOP nomination. In fact, the National Organization for Marriage has gone so far as to say...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush argued his support for abortions in the cases of rape and incest would help him win the presidential race after he asked about his recent criticism of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's pro-life stance during Saturday's Republican presidential debate on ABC. Former Fla. Gov. Bush, who currently averages fifth place in national GOP nomination polls, told CNN in an interview Friday that Rubio's belief that abortion should not be permitted in the cases of rape and incest would be a "tough sell" to pro-life mothers whose daughters had been raped "So, I am pro-life but I believe...

Another euthanasia scandal in Belgium. Two sisters have complained on a television program, Terzake, about the euthanasia of their sister. Tine Nys was 38 at the time and had broken up with her live-in boyfriend. On Christmas Eve 2009 she announced that she was going to be euthanased.After interviews with doctors, she was given a lethal injection on April 24, 2010, with her mother and father and her two sisters, Lotte and Sophie, at her bedside.Belgium allows people to request euthanasia if they have unbearable psychological suffering, not just a terminal illness. Tine was obviously a troubled woman and 15...

Journalism isn't rocket science. Nor is it law, medicine, or any other field that requires specific credentials to practice it. Many reporters have a journalism degree; some don't. All you really need to get into journalism is a strong sense of curiosity, decent writing skills (a few too many of us don't even have that), and a commitment to finding the truth.... Journalists "take an angle" on stories all the time, because we're human beings who have opinions or hunches about things, and because this profession pays us to have them. But there's a right way and a wrong way...

DERRY, NH, February 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - Hillary Clinton has a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees - several, in fact. At a Democratic event on Wednesday, Clinton unveiled her criteria in selecting a judge for the nation's highest court. “I do have a litmus test, I have a bunch of litmus tests," she said. "We’ve got to make sure to preserve Roe v. Wade, not let it be nibbled away or repealed,” she said. There have been over 58,000,000 abortions since the 1973 court ruling legalizing abortion in all 50 states, according to National Right to Life. That echoes her...

ORLANDO, February 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- “It is no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel,” said Princeton Professor Robert George to a large crowd at the Legatus Summit in Orlando, Florida last weekend. Professor George added that people can still safely identify as “Catholic” as long as they don’t believe, or will at least be completely silent about, “what the Church teaches on issues such as marriage and sexual morality and the sanctity of human life.” He said “the guardians of those norms of cultural orthodoxy that...