Free Republic

You know you’re the mother of a newborn when you can look into the night sky and tell how many more hours it is until daybreak. I’ve been relearning the night sky the past two weeks with our fourth child, with whom the last months of pregnancy were among my most frightful. That’s because they’ve included my life’s only trip to the hospital and the necessity of having to read far too many details about the mass murder of unborn children as I edited stacks of articles discussing the Planned Parenthood video sting. I consider myself a pretty grounded person...

CHICAGO – Catholics must avoid being rigid, embrace change, and show mercy, not harsh judgment, toward nontraditional families. That was the message from Chicago’s Archbishop Blase Cupich Sunday afternoon after receiving his pallium, a wool stole that is a piece of liturgical regalia symbolizing his connection to the pope, from the papal ambassador to the United States. In a 15-minute homily, Cupich said bishops and other Catholics should avoid “absolutizing one particular era” by remembering the richness and diversity of their faith. At the same time, the Church should be “open to new avenues and creativity when it comes to...

Wow! You didn't know that Obama was on the side of the little ones and against Planned Parenthood's organ harvesting atrocities, did you? Oh wait! When he said he's against it, he wasn't talking about his friend Cecile's organ harvesting atrocities, he was addressing a practice in Africa where albinos are murdered and their organs used in ritual sacrifices. Here's what he said to the Young African Leaders' Initiative (YALI): If there’s one thing I want YALI leaders to come out with, it’s the notion of you are strong by taking care of the people who are vulnerable, by looking...

The deficit is estimated to more than double in 10 years, which is projected to push debt held by the public up to 77 percent as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates.Despite an anticipated rise in tax collection, the CBO predicts that the government will continue to spend outside of its means. The CBO warns that later in the coming decade, growth in government spending will “outstrip” growth in the economy.According to the CBO, by the end of this year, federal revenues are expected to climb to $3.3 trillion—or 18.2 percent of...

On Tuesday, Media Research Center founder and president Brent Bozell, along with more than two dozen pro-life leaders, sent letters to the network news chiefs at ABC, CBS, and NBC, protesting their lack of coverage of shocking Planned Parenthood sting videos. ABC News, in particularly, was particularly egregious, as it "has not even aired one second of video footage (with audio) of the Center for Medical Progress's investigative videos," Bozell noted. "This is outrageous and inexcusable," adding: Your network’s censorship of this taxpayer-funded house of horrors is eerily reminiscent of its censorship of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial. Both cases...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump compared the Planned Parenthood abortion business to an automobile dealership today, saying it is an “abortion factory” that sells the body parts of aborted babies like a dealership sells cars. The comments follow an 8th video showing how Planned Parenthood sells aborted babies and their body parts. Trump made the comments on the Laura Ingraham show, according to a Daily Caller report: Laura Ingraham: Yesterday, Planned Parenthood was exposed again in an eighth video released by the Center for Medical Progress. Do you still believe there are two Planned Parenthoods or is it time to...

GOP presidential contender Lindsey Graham told a campaign rally Tuesday that he can’t support a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood, because it would endanger national security. In a speech on foreign policy in South Carolina, Graham said he is opposed to federal funding on Planned Parenthood but warned a government shutdown would impair “our military, our intelligence community, the people we rely upon to protect us.” The South Carolina senator’s stance puts him in line with Senate leadership but at odds with the majority of the 2016 field, who have backed the hard-lined approach advocated by fellow Sens. Ted Cruz...

LOS ANGELES, August 26, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - Hillary Clinton has a big supporter in StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer. Dyer, who is seen in the most recent Center for Medical Progress video laughing that "lab techs freak out and have meltdowns" when looking at aborted babies' severed heads, revealed that she keeps a signed photograph of Hillary Clinton on her desk. “I have a signed picture from Hillary because my sister works in Congress," Dyer said. "I like brought it into work the next day and propped it right on my desk." Dyer's sister, Charlotte Ivancic, was a health policy adviser to...

In 2013, the Michigan Legislature passed a bill expanding Medicaid, a core component of the federal Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Given Republican control of the state House, Senate and governor’s office, the move surprised many. Two years earlier, referring to another ACA provision (the insurance exchange), Chuck Moss, then the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said GOP lawmakers would “rather be caught sacrificing to Satan than voting for Obamacare.” Lost in the hubbub surrounding the expansion bill was a section requiring hospitals that were contracted by the state to provide managed care services under Medicaid to offer “healthy...

On Friday night, while the political media was transfixed watching Donald Trump's in-all-ways-secular stump ramble in Mobile, Ala., Ted Cruz was holding a deliberately religious rally in Des Moines. Evangelical voters were always meant to be a linchpin of Cruz's presidential bid, and as our Katie Zezima and Tom Hamburger write, the Des Moines event was not shy about making that pitch. Blasting Planned Parenthood and lamenting the "persecution" of business owners sued for denying services to same-sex couples, Cruz was clearly trying to do two things: Plant his flag as the Republican crusader -- and prompt religious voters to...

I am a general surgeon with more than three decades in private clinical practice. And I am fed up. Since the late 1970s, I have witnessed remarkable technological revolutions in medicine, from CT scans to robot-assisted surgery. But I have also watched as medicine slowly evolved into the domain of technicians, bookkeepers, and clerks. Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the...

Sen. Ted Cruz will hold a telephone town hall with church leaders Tuesday to discuss his plan for defunding Planned Parenthood. "Recently, all of us have seen the videos of the behind-the-scenes dealings at the Planned Parenthood facilities, activities that all of us find horribly offensive," Cruz said in a video invitation to the national conference call. "But even more appalling is that we as taxpayers are funding these activities." Cruz has been an outspoken critic of Planned Parenthood subsidies since a series of undercover videos shed light on the organization's policy of donating fetal tissue to researchers. "Only our...

Former Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis was undoubtedly the focal point in the battle against the state’s effort to ban abortions five months after conception. But if she wants to talk about “flagrant denial of reality,” let’s start there. Davis really believed she could parlay her 11-hour filibuster into a seat in the governor’s mansion. That delusion was helped along by a fawning profile in Vogue magazine and celebrity endorsements. Davis is back in the news today, penning an opinion piece in the Texas Star-Telegram in defense of Planned Parenthood against all of the recent peaceful protests (i.e., “attacks”) against...

One out of four U.S. employers may soon face a steep new Obamacare tax on the insurance coverage they offer workers, unless they take steps to reduce overall spending on the plans. A new analysis released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 26 percent of employers offer health benefits that could be subject to the Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac" tax on high-cost plans when it starts in 2018. The tax kicks in when the total spending on a health plan — including the employer and employee premium contributions — exceeds $10,022 for an individual or $27,500 for a...

As the Little Sisters of the Poor are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal court decision that forces the order of Catholic nuns to abide by the "Obamacare" contraception mandate, over 20 states, a group of Orthodox Jewish rabbis and a number of Evangelical and secular organizations are urging the high court to take up the case and protect religious liberty. "We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from such a wide range of people and groups," Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said in...

Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare—a move that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was optional and up to state discretion—is a sore subject for fiscal conservatives and led to him being, not just left out of an event held in his backyard, but attacked by several of the event’s speakers, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and AFP President Tim Phillips. Obamacare critics do not like how the law allows Medicaid, originally enacted as a safety net to provide health coverage for poor mothers and children, to be expanded to cover able-bodied, working-age adults. Federal funds cover the costs...

The most common occupation among American men is driving. But the advent of the driverless car could put lots of cab drivers, truck drivers and limo drivers out of work in the not-so-distant future. Automation may also replace the jobs of many retail salespeople, cashiers, office clerks and food and beverage workers, said Derek Thompson, senior editor of The Atlantic, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria that will air Sunday. "You look at the fleet of automated technologies, of software that exists right now, and it's rather frightening to me to think about how many jobs can be replaced...

Conservative American talk show host Glenn Beck has slammed frontrunner Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying he is a false conservative.Beck, a former member of the Republican Party, said in an interview on Saturday, “I haven’t heard him talk about the Constitution or small government.” “It’s hard to say you espouse conservative principles and small-government principles when you are saying that you think [the] Canadian health care system works and is wonderful,” he added. “I look for a man of integrity, humility, who is rooted in the Constitution,” Beck stated, “because if you root yourself in the Constitution, we...

Radical feminist website RH Reality Check published a hit piece on Thursday against Holly O’Donnell, a whistleblower featured in several of the undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of unborn babies’ organs and tissue. Sharona Coutts – a former reporter at ProPublica and the site’s vice president for “investigations and research” – revealed O’Donnell’s alleged sexual preferences, after finding her profile on the OKCupid dating website, as well as posts on other sites. Coutts’s hatchet job actually sparked a backlash among many liberals on Twitter and other online outlets, who accused the author of “slut shaming” the former StemExpress employee....