Free Republic

Exclusive: Jane M. Orient, M.D., says political demagoguery is replacing science “From what I understand from doctors, that’s (conception as a result of rape) really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.” – Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo. All decent people, including U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, agree that forcible rape is a heinous crime. Almost all would...

Rogue 4 July tweets on TV news channel's politics service go viral but Fox News is apparently back in control Fox News has apparently fallen victim to hacking, with its politics Twitter feed repeatedly announcing President Barack Obama had been shot dead. @foxnewspolitics began tweeting the information to its 33,000 followers at about 2am local time, with the posts rapidly being shared around the internet. The rogue tweets appeared to begin after the account sent a message saying Fox had just "regained full access to our Twitter account". The following tweets all related to the supposed death of Obama, with...

<p>On Sunday April 18, Westboro Baptist Church came to Gainesville. One of their stops was a liberal "Open doors, open hearts, open minds," church near us, so we took part of our Sunday Service time and went as a church to stand with them.</p>

IMDB only has Sarandon, Phillippe, Bruce Dern and our very own Jason Alan Smith from Do Not Disturb listed as the attached cast, but in Phillippe’s latest interview he revealed that there’s more people involved… According to Phillippe, “I think I’m doing a Western in May, with Susan Sarandon, Billy Bob Thornton, Richard Dreyfuss [and] Bruce Dern,” he said. “It’s called The Big Valley, which was a [television] series in the ’60s, and so it’s sort of based on that.”

Everyone in Washington knows the record Federal deficits and debt are out of control and can't continue. President Obama knows it. The ultraliberal Democrat Congressional leadership knows it. Rank and file Congressional Republicans and Democrats know it. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been openly saying so. Obama's economic policies, adopted by the Democrat-controlled Congress, call for total Federal borrowing of $3.5 trillion this year alone! The Federal debt is projected to soar over the next 10 years to a peacetime record of 84% of GDP, and to keep on growing past the all-time record of 113% of GDP during World...

To provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes, and for other purposes. This is a bill in the U.S. Congress originating in the House of Representatives ("H.R."). A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate and then be signed by the President before it becomes law. Bill numbers restart from 1 every two years. Each two-year cycle is called a session of Congress. This bill was created in the 111th Congress, in 2009-2010. The titles of bills are written by the bill's sponsor and are a part of the legislation...

Are Catholics Born Again? | Mark Brumley | IgnatiusInsight.com http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/mbrumley_bornagain_nov07.asp "Have you been born again?" the Fundamentalist at the door asks the unsuspecting Catholic. The question is usually a segue into a vast doctrinal campaign that leads many ill-instructed Catholics out of the Catholic Church. How? By making them think there is a conflict between the Bible and the Catholic Church over being "born again." To be honest, most Catholics probably do not understand the expression "born again." Yes, they believe in Jesus. And yes, they try to live Christian lives. They probably have some vague awareness that Fundamentalists think...

I'm finishing up Buchanan's book and am looking for people who have read it who: 1) Argue in detail with any of his points. 2) Recommend essays from experts who challenge some of Buchanan's contentions. Just going on what I read in the book, what he says makes sense.

The U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the Bush administration's heavy-handed threats to prosecute Oregon physicians has revived the debate over whether California should allow doctors to help their terminally ill patients commit suicide. The fact that Oregon's law has survived the court challenge does not make physician-assisted suicide good public policy. It emphatically is not, for the simple reason that it exposes the most vulnerable members of society – the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the mentally impaired, the terminally ill – to unwarranted pressures to take their own lives because they are a financial burden on their families and...

Maureen Dowd begins her book Are Men Necessary? with a confession: "I don't understand men." If only she'd left it at that, we could simply add "men" to the long list of subjects into which she has no particular insight: history, psychology, philosophy, religion, economics, literature, art, constitutional law, international diplomacy, and several other topics upon she comments in her twice weekly column for the New York Times. But Dowd had to go and write a book about men and women, and Putnam had to go and publish it, and now it's sitting on my desk, waiting to be reviewed,...

President Bush recently suggested that the military be given broader powers to deal with domestic crises like Hurricane Katrina or a potential bird flu epidemic, but emergency response and security groups in the U.S. say the military already has the power it needs to provide both relief and protection to citizens, and question whether the president's real motives aren't political. In mid-September, after Katrina and the subsequent civil disorder struck New Orleans, President Bush told the nation that the military should play a bigger role in such major domestic crises."It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires...

When the U.N. Fails, We All Do 'In a sense things got better after the peacekeepers left,' Rusesabagina told me. 'People realized no one was going to help them'By Fareed Zakaria NewsweekDec. 13 issue - You have never heard of Paul Rusesabagina. But if you watch the stunning new movie "Hotel Rwanda," you will never forget him. The movie tells the true story of Rusesabagina, an "ordinary" Rwandan, a hotel manager, who was able to shelter and save more than 1,200 people—Tutsis and Hutus—in the midst of the Rwandan genocide. He is a Rwandan Schindler, who in a series of...

The Washington Post had a story on Monday that contained possibly the greatest hint to a sitting cabinet secretary to start looking for another job that has ever been printed. The article reported, "One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long." Provided it is not very long! Yo, Mr. Secretary, I'd say someone in the White House wants you gone! If I were you, I wouldn't renew any leases for more than a month at a time - or buy any really green bananas for...

Scientists in South Korea are reporting today that they have created the world's first mature, cloned human embryos -- an advance that could speed the development of new therapies but also brings scientists a big step closer to being able to make cloned babies. Each embryo was grown from a cell taken from a woman, a form of reproduction -- or, more precisely, replication -- never before achieved in humans. There was no contribution from a father.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today warned the world could slide “into brute competition based on the laws of the jungle” and that the “War on Terrorism” declared by the United States in the wake of the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington could sharpen global tensions and endanger human rights and civil liberties. Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Annan also called for the abolition of agricultural subsidies in rich countries and urged business leaders to swing support behind efforts to meet the Millennium Goals he set in the year 2000 to conquer poverty...

Well, for those of you brave enough to still lay claim to the land of the “fruitier and nuttier” as home on the Left Coast—and not yet taken up residence in an undisclosed cave somewhere in upper-Montana—then, perhaps you have heard of the reckless abandon on the part of Gov. Davis for not only signing SB 60—“Driver’s Licenses for Illegal Immigrants”—into state law, but also of his latest attack on foster care families and the Golden State’s credibility (or, rather, what’s left of it)—by penning his authorization to a bill that would require all foster parents, and foster parents who...

We all know le problème: we are a nation of monoglots, linguistically challenged and so culturally inferior and economically constrained. Only one in four of us can claim to speak in foreign tongues, whereas our chic European chums babble away in a veritable Babel. European governments have lobbied, and the British Government has responded: from 2010 every primary school shall teach foreign. It’s a further good intention paving the road to ruin of our education system. We should shrug off our linguistic hang-ups, and instead of reinforcing language teaching, abolish it tout de suite. Ordering everyone to learn another language...

The US government is planning to demand a radical overhaul of the UN weapons inspections regime if Iraq today denies in a formal declaration that it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration will ask for the UN inspection teams to be reinforced with scores of new investigators who would be "refocused" on seizing documents and questioning Iraqi officials, spiriting some of them out of the country with their families for in-depth interviews, according to officials in Washington. However, Washington's demands are likely to bring to a head a simmering quarrel with the UN weapons inspectors over how they...

Hate Crimes Bill Passes Pa. House Goes to Governor for Signature or Veto After a 90-minute debate, HB 1493, which adds “sexual orientation,” “gender” and “gender” identity to Pennsylvania’s “ethnic intimidation” statute, passed the House by a vote of 118-79. Having already passed the State Senate last year, the measure now goes to Governor Mark Schweiker. He can either sign it, making it law in Pennsylvania, or veto it, which will kill the legislation. Please Call Governor Mark Schweiker at (717) 787-2500 or (800) 932-0784, and urge him to veto House Bill 1493, the “Hate Crimes Amendment." Reasons Why HB...