Free Republic

A majority of members of Congress who were educated at Catholic colleges and law schools are pro-abortion. That’s the finding of a new report from The Cardinal Newman Society. In all, 52 of 92 (56 percent) elected officials in the last Congress and current Congress that attended Catholic colleges, according to their congressional websites, have voted for pro-abortion rights and/or related funding. In the 112th session of the House of Representatives there were 65 congressmen and women who attended Catholic colleges or law schools. Out of those, 35 support abortion rights. Out of the 12 Catholic-educated congressmen in the incoming...

Bangkok, Thailand - Over two months after the bloody finale of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, a lingering row over civilian casualties continues to roil a fractured society. Sri Lankan authorities have insisted that their final military push against Tamil Tiger rebels didn't target hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped behind enemy lines. But aid workers, church officials, and government doctors reported that heavy shelling had caused mass casualties. A preliminary United Nations report estimated that 7,000 had died between January and May. On Wednesday, however, a group of doctors who had provided dramatic firsthand accounts of civilian suffering in...

The most accurate crime statistics are on murders. When proponents of infringements on the Second Amendment talk about murders, they often claim that murders by strangers are only a small percentage of the total, often about one quarter. This statistic is misleading, because it implies that people that you are close to are the most likely to murder you. The largest category of victim to murderer is unknown. That is 44 percent of the murders reported to the FBI. The next largest category is acquaintance. It is 21 percent of murderers. The misleading part is that all people who...

GENEVA — Despite the rhetoric from both sides over the need for stricter gun control regulations — and the fear instilled by a rash of random shootings in public places nationwide — statistics show relatively few people will fall victim to violent, firearm-related crimes committed by strangers, according to a new study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That study shows strangers committed about 38 percent of non-fatal, violent crimes including rape, robbery and assault in 2010, the most recent data available. Of that amount, only an average of 10 percent used a firearm while committing the crime. In...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about how the gun-death data showed a very weak correlation with gun-law strictness. I used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) to derive a gun-homicide rate. In the comments section, a reader pointed me toward more-detailed data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), which captures death-certificate data from all the states. Despite interference by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the CDC has kept up the basic data, if not research into the details of who, how, and why. But what we can...

Last week someone from FR posted up a link showing all the gun crime/murders and how it was happening in most cities run by dems. Anyone have that article or know what publication it came from? I would like to have it to prove a point to a liberal fool I work with. Not that it'll do any good as he's already far beyond brainwashing. Thanks in advance...

“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”- Bill Clinton’s over-the-top ‘fact’ on mass shootings SOURCE: WaPo (1-11-13)The Fact Checker:Bill Clinton’s Over-The-Top ‘Fact’ on Mass Shootings “Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.” — Former President Bill Clinton, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9, 2013 Bill Clinton on gun control: 'This...

A detailed analysis of FBI statistics covering ten full calendar years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks reveals that, on a per capita basis, American Muslims, contrary to spin, have been subjected to hate crimes less often than other prominent minorities. From 2002 to 2011, Muslims are estimated to have suffered hate crimes at a frequency of 6.0 incidents per 100,000 per year — 10 percent lower than blacks (6.7), 48 percent lower than homosexuals and bisexuals (11.5), and 59 percent lower than Jews (14.8). Americans should keep these numbers in mind whenever Islamists attempt to silence critics by invoking Muslim...

Last spring, Michigan eliminated its helmet requirement for motorcycle riders who had additional insurance coverage and met other conditions. Six months after the bill went into effect, MLive ran an investigative series claiming to show the "regrettable impact of the change." The series focused on one main point: Motorcyclists who chose not to wear a helmet were more likely to die or be seriously injured in their crashes. This is true, but the analysis is lacking in other areas and the insinuation that allowing people to not wear helmets is more dangerous is not supported by the data. First, MLive...

Religion In America: Evangelicals Surge As Catholics Wane The percentage of Americans who say they are strong in their religious faith has been steady for the last four decades but a new sociology analysis claims that religious groups who have become more staunchly devout have surged while others, notably Roman Catholics, who have sought to become more liberal under Vatican II in that time, have faded in popularity. Catholics now report the lowest proportion of strongly affiliated followers among major American religious traditions. The drop in intensity could present challenges for the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., the study...

California's unemployment rate hit single-digits in November for the first time in almost four years, thanks in part to a holiday hiring surge by retailers. The jobless rate fell to 9.8% from 10.1% in October, according to data in an overall jobs report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. The drop in the unemployment rate, determined in a survey of households, came even as a separate payroll survey found that employers in the state shed 3,800 jobs. “The state showed a very significant and encouraging drop in the unemployment rate,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at the Fermanian...

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871...

Gun control advocates just need to look at Virginia. Between 2006-2011 gun sales went up by 73% and at the same time gun-related violent crimes fell 24%. Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas R. Baker, who specializes in research methods and criminology, said this proves that more guns do not in fact cause more violence...

Thanks to a link at The Gun Wire, I see the “New York Times” has an unsigned op-ed titled ‘Promises on Gun Control.’ I will not quote it, other to observe that it could have have been pulled from the Time’s 1968 editorial pages. Then as now, the Times is heavy on “the scourge of gun violence in this country,” and light on anything like research, investigation, or facts to back opinion. So let’s light a candle to pierce the darkness of ignorance. The United States has had four, and apparently now we have a fifth, major gun control drives....

Romney 366,178 0bama 347,947

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 7.3% in mid-October, down considerably from 7.9% at the end of September and at a new low since Gallup began collecting employment data in January 2010. Gallup's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 7.7%, also down from September. October's adjusted mid-month measure is also more than a percentage point lower than October 2011.

“One omission by one state–you wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but in this case it drove the number down by 10%,” said analyst Stephen Stanley with Pierpont Securities. Economists are speculating the state could be California, the most populous state in the nation. “It was likely a state with a large population and we suspect that it was California based on the occasional massive swings that have occurred in its claims data in the past,” said Daniel Silver, an economist with JPMorgan, in a note. “In short, this reading is worthless in terms of informing on the...

“One omission by one state–you wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but in this case it drove the number down by 10%,” said analyst Stephen Stanley with Pierpont Securities. Economists are speculating the state could be California, the most populous state in the nation. “It was likely a state with a large population and we suspect that it was California based on the occasional massive swings that have occurred in its claims data in the past,” said Daniel Silver, an economist with JPMorgan, in a note. “In short, this reading is worthless in terms of informing on the...

President Obama’s advisers attacked critics for suggesting the White House fudged jobs figures, comparing them to “lunatic” birthers. The sub-8% unemployment stats were released by the non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday, but former GE chief Jack Welch and several Tea Party figures claimed the numbers were cooked. Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs called such comments “incredibly dangerous” and said Welch had embarrassed himself. “There's a number of people that believe the real unemployment report is somewhere in a safe in Nairobi with the president's Kenyan birth certificate," Gibbs said sarcastically on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

“23 million Americans are out of work.” False. Barrett Blankenship of the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that Romney’s claim is unequivocally false. “The September jobs data show that because of the upward revisions to the July and August numbers, only 22.97 million are out of work,” Blankenship said. “Romney’s failure to acknowledge that is, frankly, disturbing.”