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FEMA director arrives in BR Monday, August 29, 2005 FEMA Director Mike Brown arrived at the state Office of Emergency Preparedness in Baton Rouge shortly before 11 a.m. and joined a conference call with Gov. Kathleen Blanco and other federal and state officials. Brown will hold a press briefing with Blanco at 3:30 p.m., although state officials could also provide more information after a noon conference call with local officials who are tracking the storm damage. Researchers watching the storm from Baton Rouge have gotten reports of 6 feet of water at Jackson Barracks in the Lower 9th Ward, as...

oronto-- On the same day Canada’s historic same-sex marriage bill passed through the House of Commons, thousands of emails were pouring into Allstate Insurance Company over conservative columnist J. Matt Barber. Allstate may have unwittingly spawned an anti-same-sex-marriage martyr in the spunky J. Matt Barber. Barber, a former employee of the insurance giant was fired--allegedly terminated, all for writing a column posted on several websites that was critical of same sex marriage and espousing his signature Christian beliefs. As WorldNetDaily first reported, J. Matt Barber was a manager in Allstate’s Corporate Security Division, its investigative arm, at the Fortune 100...

Asked if Muslims worship the same Almighty as Jews and Christians, President Bush replied some months ago, "I believe we worship the same God." The Islamic deity, known as Allah, in other words, is the same Supreme Being to whom Jews and Christians pray.The president's statement provoked widespread dismay among Evangelicals; one poll found 79% of their leadership disagreeing with this view. Pat Robertson pungently explained why, observing "the entire world is being convulsed by a religious struggle. … whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible,...

On this day last year, hundreds of Minnesotans came to the state Capitol to witness the first hearing on a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. Proponents said the need was immediate — that activist judges across the country would be taking the meaning of marriage into their own hands and allowing same-sex couples to wed. Opponents were just as adamant — a constitutional amendment would enshrine discrimination and divide the state. The issue returned to Minnesota on Tuesday as Sen. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, and supporters announced a renewed effort to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment to...

Muslims and Christians: Not the Same JesusMark Roberts Imagine for a moment a person who believes George Armstrong Custer won the Battle of Little Bighorn.  Somehow this person has come to believe all kinds of wrong information about Custer.  He says Custer fought for the Confederacy, had red hair, and defeated Crazy Horse at Little Bighorn. Despite all these factual gaps he then announces “I believe in Custer.”  What do we make of this?It would be true that this individual shares some things in common with those who believe in the real George Custer.  However, this person does not...

Dr. Charles McVety, President of Canada Family Action Coalition, says "People of faith and good will across Canada are deeply disappointed and saddened that Prime Minister Paul Martin has breached their trust by once again breaking his word". Mr. Martin has broken his election promise to allow a free vote re-defining marriage and is now threatening Canadians with an expensive frivolous election and accosting Members of Parliament with loss of their position and the rigors of a campaign to regain their job. In addition Mr. Martin is threatening to fire Cabinet Ministers. He also seems to have plans to withdraw...

Paul Martin yesterday threatened to call a general election after Conservative leader Stephen Harper warned that passage of the Liberal government's promised same-sex legislation will lead to polygamy. The threat escalated an already ugly battle over gay marriage that increasingly shows just how divided Canadians are on the issue. In recent days, religious leaders including Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Toronto, have joined the debate and urged the Prime Minister to maintain the traditional heterosexual definition of marriage.

King legacy honored Pols, schools evoke dream BY BILL HUTCHINSON DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Manhattan Country School on E. 96th St. sponsors march from school to Central Park yesterday in observance of Martin Luther King Day. With soulful songs and stirring speeches, New Yorkers of all colors remembered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday. Gov. Pataki paused to praise the civil rights leader for his courageous fight against injustice that was cut short by an assassin's bullet. "Thank God for the memory, for the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," Pataki said at a ceremony in Albany, where...

More Of The Same Monday January 10, 7:00 pm ET Ibd Politics: Sen. Hillary Clinton's former finance director has been indicted for filing false reports on campaign fund-raising activities. Why are we not surprised? As anyone who lived through the 1990s knows, the Clinton White House showed an unwillingness to play by the rules, especially in the artful practice of political fund raising. Think back to Al Gore's "no controlling legal authority" excuse for making fund-raising phone calls from federal property while serving as vice president. Or to the apparent laundering of Clinton-Gore contributions at a Buddhist temple fund-raiser that...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Saskatchewan has become the seventh Canadian jurisdiction to allow same-sex marriages. Madam Justice Donna Wilson of the Court of Queen's Bench ruled Friday that the traditional definition of marriage, as it currently exists, discriminates against gay and lesbian couples. Five couples who were denied marriage licences because they were not of the opposite sex filed a statement of claim seeking a declaratory judgment that the common-law definition of marriage be changed. The group wanted the definition changed to read "two people to the exclusion of others," rather than "two people of the opposite sex." "The judge found that it is...

When the California Supreme Court looks at the legality of same-sex marriages in San Francisco on Tuesday, it will be led by its most politically adroit chief justice in decades. Since being promoted to the top spot in 1996 by Gov. Pete Wilson, who had named him to the court five years earlier, Ronald George has cultivated three governors, the Legislature, the news media and the public while tiptoeing with his colleagues through the minefields of abortion, civil rights, prisoner releases and the gubernatorial recall.

<p>David Knight, son of the state senator who was the author of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, defied his father's law and wed his partner of 10 years Tuesday in a quiet ceremony attended by just two friends in San Francisco City Hall.</p>

A WEST AUSTRALIAN couple who are brother and sister by adoption but unrelated by blood are battling a federal law preventing them from marrying. Kevin and Deborah Jefferies have been in love for at least 10 years and wish to get married, but under the Federal Marriage Act 1961 ? which prevents brothers and sisters from marrying ? their relationship is taboo. The couple became siblings on paper when their parents married and Kevin's father adopted Deborah and her sisters. "There's so many people who can get divorced so easily ? we can't even get married to start with," Kevin...

IX. AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE One of the most insightful—and disturbing—windows on the view of the legal profession (at least some very influential members of it) on marriage, comes through in an examination of the recently approved Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (“Principles”) put together by the American Law Institute (“ALI”).332 The historic contributions of the ALI towards legal changes have not necessarily been salutary.333 But aspects of the recent Principles are particularly troubling. One disturbing part of the Principles is chapter 6, which recommends the creation of certain rights to be made available to unmarried couples on the...

This is a book review by Judge Posner of Gerstner's new book, Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution In June, the Supreme Court, in a case called Lawrence v. Texas, ruled that statutes criminalizing homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional. Immediately lawyers began wondering whether this meant that homosexuals have a constitutional right to marry. (To marry persons of their sex, that is; there is no prohibition against a homosexual marrying a person of the opposite sex.) They were encouraged in their speculation by Justice Antonin Scalia's suggestion, in his dissenting opinion, that the logic of the majority opinion so dictated. Evan Gerstmann...

"How dare we in this country spend $87 billion on war when 44 million people have no health insurance? ... It's up to the church to lead on some of these moral issues," asked Vicky Gene Robinson, newly-ordained homosexual Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Delivering his first sermon as bishop in the diocese's All Saints Church, the same church where he married his wife before divorcing her and abandoning their two children to pursue a homosexual lifestyle, Robinson said that he wants bring God's message of love to "those on the margins," adding that Jesus "looked at...

Hijackers in same hotel as Saudi minister By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 03/10/2003) A senior Saudi Arabian official, now minister for the holy places, stayed at the same hotel as three September 11 hijackers the night before the suicide attacks. American investigators are trying to make sense of the disclosure that Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman al-Hussayen, who returned to Saudi Arabia shortly after the attacks, stayed at the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia. Three of the attackers stayed at the hotel that night and crashed a plane into the Pentagon the following day. His nephew's American lawyer, David...

Penthouse Publisher Guccione Says Men Are Basically the Same, Only Sex Lives Vary Depending on Country All men are basically the same, according to Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione only their sex lives vary depending on the country they're from. "The British are reserved, the French are arrogant, the Italians are lovers, and the Germans like to spank each other," Guccione tells Details magazine for its September issue. "Sex will always be the dominant factor in any man's life whether he realizes it or not. It's what motivates him to buy the car he drives, the house he lives in,...

The Consequences of Lawrence v. Texas Justice Scalia Is Right that Same Sex Marriage Bans Are At Risk, But Wrong That A Host of Other Laws Are Vulnerable By JOANNA GROSSMAN lawjlg@hofstra.edu ---- Tuesday, Jul. 08, 2003 Recently, and famously, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court invalidated Texas' anti-homosexual-sodomy law. It did so by invoking the constitutional right to privacy. But it also indicated that constitutional equal protection doctrines would have provided another reason to invalidate the statute, which targeted only same-sex sodomy. The decision extended long-overdue recognition of the rights of gays and lesbians. In doing so, it...