Free Republic

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Tuesday called for a "world political authority" to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat. The pope's call for a re-think of the way the world economy is run came in new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations. Called "Charity in Truth," parts of the encyclical appeared bound to upset conservatives because of its underlying...

July 1, and July 2nd I wrote an article about the chances for a 3rd party candidate starting a campaign. Friday July 3rd, 2009 Gov. Sarah Palin announces she is resigning her position as Governor of Alaska... The McCain camp and the Republican party tried to use Sarah Palin as a party puppet, Sarah was not a good puppet, she was not a good puppet as Gov. of Alaska, and since being thrown in the spotlight she has proved to be a rough around the edges Republican. Sarah Palin is a head strong conservative Republican, but in expressing her views...

The Pope has called for reform of the United Nations and financial bodies, giving them the "real teeth" needed to tackle economic and social injustice. Benedict XVI said the blind pursuit of profit and economic mismanagement had "wreaked havoc" on the global economy. The market, said the Pope, must not become the place where the strong prevail over the weak.

My reply to Linder's letter follows his letter. db Dear Mr. Bachert: Thank you for contacting me regarding the use of foreign military personnel in local law enforcement operations. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue. First, it is true that the U.S. Armed Forces will be holding training exercises in July 2009 with military personnel from Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom in the Southeast region of our country. These multilateral operations are a part of the government's strategy to prevent and manage terrorist threats and attacks. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on our homeland, the...

An exam board has scrapped a GCSE biology question about creationism after admitting it could be misleading. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance paper asked pupils how the Bible's theory of creation seeks to explain the origins of life. AQA stressed that pupils taking its biology GCSE were not required to study creationism as a scientific theory. But it admitted that describing it as a "theory" could be misleading, and said it would review the wording of papers. The review was prompted by a complaint from teachers and a university lecturer. 'Misleading' In a statement, AQA said: "Merely asking a question...

The nation's hospitals agreed last night to contribute $155 billion over 10 years toward the cost of insuring the 47 million Americans without health coverage, according to two industry sources. The agreement that three hospital associations reached with White House officials and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee is the latest in a series of side deals that aim to reduce the cost of revamping the nation's health-care system and to neutralize influential industries that have historically opposed such reforms... Most of the savings -- about $100 billion -- would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, said...

It is almost in an atmosphere of the Emperor’s New Clothes that we dare to comment on the recent death of Michael Jackson. As the eulogies come streaming in from all sides, highlighting his musical career and bizarre personal life, few are the voices that cry out like the little child that the emperor had no clothes. There was no essence to the Jackson existential myth. He was the ill-fated casualty of his own self-destructive fantasies. That is not to say that his death was without any meaning beyond that of personal tragedy. It speaks volumes of our culture. What...

Husbands of the world rejoice! President Barack Obama, who has seemed to set an impossibly high bar for many men when it comes to dealing with their wives, has finally stumbled — and in a very public way. “I don’t know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I’m sure that you’re all going to have wonderful careers,” he said as he warmed up the audience before delivering a commencement speech at an economics school in Moscow Tuesday. Obama seemed to be playing off an introduction that referred to him meeting...

Before you start spooning up your next bowl of Frosted Flakes, ponder this: driven partly by the demand for ethanol, the price of the corn in your flakes is about 40 percent higher than it was a few years ago; the sugar easily cost you more than double the world price; and your milk is at least 15 percent more expensive than it would be in many other countries. Americans pay much more than they should for their food. Thanks to a thicket of subsidies and tariffs that support American farmers and tilt the growing field against cheaper foreign producers,...

The Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century, a Vatican official said on Thursday in a rare self-criticism. Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun. Known as the father of astronomy, he wasn't fully rehabilitated by the Vatican until 1992, nearly 360 years later. At a news conference presenting a new volume of documents on the Galileo case, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, head of the Vatican's secret archives, said...

A huge mysterious medieval book, penned by a Benedictine monk on animal skin with bizarre devilish illustration and incantation. But who has the missing pages, and why? Codex Gigas – literally translated means “Giant Book”, photograph below, with a box of matches resting on it, gives an idea of the scale of the almost metre long text, it takes two people to lift it, which makes it the largest medieval manuscript in the world. The book can be found in the National library in Stockholm – it has 600 pages – all made from animal (donkey) skin, the front and...

What the hell has happened to Bruce Bartlett? This guy at one point was a dedicated Reaganite. Nowadays, his columns vary from endorsing a VAT to pay for big government, lecturing Republicans that they need to 'get real and accept the welfare state', attacking the tea party protesters as 'partisans', trashing Republicans for not offering an alternative to the stimulus (in reality they did). Bartlett has essentially told Republicans to 'give up' on pushing for lower taxes because that's not realistic. He's also attempted to make the case that Washington can raise taxes on people now because 'people enjoy the...

An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.Policies are failing to decarbonise economies, the report says The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail. They want G8 nations and emerging economies to focus on an approach based on improving energy efficiency and decarbonising energy supply. Critics of the report's recommendations say they are a dangerous diversion. The report is published by the London School of Economics' (LSE) Mackinder Programme and the University of...

Featured Term (selected at random):DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL General term in mystical theology to identify every form of purification through which God leads persons whom he is calling to a high degree of sanctity. It is called "night" to distinguish a person's normal spiritual condition of seeing, although dimly, by the light of faith; whereas in mystical purification a person is deprived of much of this light. There is a "groping in the night." It is called a "dark" night to emphasize the intensity of withdrawal of God's illuminating grace. The purpose of such purification is to cleanse the...

Al Gore on Tuesday compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis. The former vice president said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change. He also accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid difficult decisions. Speaking at Britain's Oxford University at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by the Times of London, Gore said, "Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to...

Laura Tyson, a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory board, thinks we should consider another stimulus, this one focusing on infrastructure projects because the Porkulus bill in February was "too small.".....Rasmussen has a new poll out today which indicates that 60% of Americans are opposed to a second stimulus this year while only 27% are in favor. 2010 is coming and many in Congress, of BOTH parties, are in jeopardy of keeping their jobs. People are fed up with out of control spending in Washington and their - our - discontent will be made clear in the voting booth.

Relativism is as relativism does and Barack Obama does it well. His less than tepid response to evidence of a rigged election in Iran a few weeks ago and the subsequent brutalization of the Iranian people by an Islamofascist regime says more about our President’s worldview than it does his foreign policy. Obama’s response? He launched the most vapidly uninspired course of inaction since the days of one-term Jimmy: “It's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling,” he lectured. Critics pounced, calling the President’s hyper-measured reaction “timid” and “passive.” So he stepped it up...

As of 11:18, I do not know who the guest host is, though I rather enjoyed Mark Belling yesterday. I'm glad to see 0's "no meddling" policy still holding strong....Not. I guess it only applies in cases of mass slaughter, such as in Iran. Deposed dictators, despite not supporting US, get all 0's meddling they can handle.

Media Bias Blowback by: Evan Sumortin, July 07, 2009 On June 5, 2009, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), along with a dozen other congressional Republicans, formed the Media Fairness Caucus devoted to fighting liberal media bias. Smith has waged his own campaign against unfair coverage in weekly one-minute speeches on the House floor. The caucus is intended to build on his effort. In an interview with Accuracy in Media, Smith argues that the media’s coverage during the 2008 election heavily contributed to the Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s victory. “Both the bias in favor of Obama and the bias against bringing up...

Male seahorses have a clear agenda when it comes to selecting a mating partner: to increase their reproductive success. By being choosy and preferring large females, they are likely to have more and bigger eggs, as well as bigger offspring, according to Beat Mattle and Tony Wilson from the Zoological Museum at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Seahorses have a unique mode of reproduction: male pregnancy. Male seahorses provide all post-fertilization parental care, yet despite the high levels of paternal investment, they have long been thought to have conventional sex roles, with females choosing mating partners and males competing...