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The Allure of Lourdes Written by John Horvat    Friday, July 31, 2009 A Place of Violent ContrastMy first impression of Lourdes was that it is a place of dramatic contrast, born of violence and extremes. I found it unexpectedly dramatic. The rocky foothills of the Pyrenees are filled with abrupt cliffs, mysterious caves and scraggly brush. The River Gave rapidly flows with violent intensity. While praying at the Grotto, it was not uncommon to feel sudden gusts of strong winds that added to the sense that something different and important was happening there. The intensely hot sun of...

FOR NEARLY FIVE MONTHS, two American journalists have been held hostage by the government of North Korea. Most Americans, it seems, couldn’t care less. The abduction of the two women - both married, one the mother of a young daughter - hasn’t evoked one-tenth of the passion that followed the death of Michael Jackson or the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. Why aren’t we up in arms over this abuse of our fellow citizens? Why is there no deafening hue and cry for their release? Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were seized...

August 2 SAINT STEPHEN IPope and martyr(†257) Saint Stephen was by birth a Roman. After being promoted to Holy Orders, he was made Archdeacon of Rome under the holy Popes Saint Cornelius and Saint Lucius. When these had both suffered martyrdom, Saint Stephen was elected Head of the Church in the year 254. Controversy concerning the rebaptizing of heretics gave Saint Stephen much trouble. The heretics themselves were rebaptizing Catholics who left the orthodox faith to join them; certain oriental bishops decided then to rebaptize those who returned to it from their errors, and some African bishops joined them in...

Hidden misery of Mao’s slave teenage brides Michael Sheridan THE film’s title, 8,000 Girls Ascend the Heavenly Mountain, suggests that Chinese audiences will see a tale of joy when it is aired on television this autumn. It dramatises the lives of thousands of girls aged 13 to 19 who went to China’s remote far west in the 1950s to follow soldiers sent to colonise the turbulent Muslim region. In real life it was a trip to purgatory. As shooting for the film unfolds in Beijing under the watchful gaze of party censors, an astonishing story of mass deception, forced marriages...

Just five years after the HMO Act of 1973 was signed into law, the U.S. Senate Committee on Human Resources, Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, held a hearing to discuss amending the Act. Following are excerpts from Senator Ted Kennedy's opening statement at the March 3, 1978 hearing: "Today the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research holds hearings on proposed amendments to federal statutes supporting the development of health maintenance organizations...These amendments would extend and strengthen current authorities supporting HMOs in this country.... "As the author of the first HMO bill ever to pass the Senate, I find this...

The recently passed “cash for clunkers” program (currently on-hold, as it ran out of funding in one week) is a perfect example of how government policy can make the economy worse. By incentivizing Americans to destroy fully paid-for cars so they can go deeper into debt buying brand new ones, the government weakens an already crippled economy. The last thing we want to do is subsidize Americans to go deeper into debt by buying more stuff. Don’t they realize that is precisely the behavior that got us into this mess? Think about it this way. If your friend were in...

Harriet Harman: you can’t trust men in power Isabel Oakeshott, Deputy Political Editor HARRIET HARMAN has demanded that one of Labour’s two top posts should always be held by a woman — because she believes men cannot be trusted to run organisations on their own. Labour’s deputy leader secretly tried to change party rules two years ago to ensure that it could never again be led by an all-male team, but she was foiled. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Harman reiterates her belief in the principle and says her role as Gordon Brown’s second-in-command has changed for ever...

On the first day of school last year, 17 girls from Roosevelt Middle School were sent home because their "booty shorts" left little to the imagination. The boys are another story. Boys are "sagging," their jeans so low that whoever is watching can see the brand of underwear. The "sagging" jeans and short-shorts fashion was so bad at Roosevelt that Principal Linda Roundtree instituted a dress code for this school year. But Roosevelt is not alone; nearly two dozen Milwaukee Public Schools have some type of dress code. Roundtree told me that the parents love it because it's a lot...

Dissolvable bikini row A bikini that dissolves in water has outraged killjoy women's rights campaigners. The saucy thong swimsuit - sold as the perfect present for dumped boyfriends - looks like a real bikini but disappears completely after just a few seconds in water. Sellers in Germany bill the Get Naked costume as a chance for men to get their own back after a break-up. But women's rights campaigner Rosmarie Zapfl stormed: "It is an absolute insult to women that this has been invented." The dissolvable bikinis are being sold on the German revenge website www.racheshop.de with sizes 34 and...

Here is a glimpse of what life might be like under ObamaCare. I found the original version of this on of all places the ACLU site. I wonder if someone over there has read the bill!

WASHINGTON: Distrust still lingers among a majority of Muslim nations over US foreign policy and rabid anti-Americanism persists despite recent overtures by President Barack Obama, a new survey has indicated. Obamamania, may be sweeping the rest of the world, but it is not touching the bulk of the Muslim nations, a survey by Washington-based Pew Foundation of 24 countries and the Palestinian region has revealed. "Large numbers continue to consider the US an enemy, including big majorities in Pakistan (64 per cent) and the Palestinian territories (77 per cent)," the report said. "In predominantly Muslim nations, widespread concerns about American...

The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known. Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy. Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment. The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid...

The president's media blitz may be wearing us out. President Barack Obama appears to be breaking every record kept on U.S. presidential press coverage. Over the first six months of this year, he was cited in a staggering 1.1 million stories across mainstream, Internet and social media--an average of 6,100 references a day. That's more than triple what Obama's last two predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, got in the mainstream press during their first six months. The president is tagged on 216,000 YouTube videos and mentioned in an average 15,000 blog posts a week, according to Icerocket.com. Mark...

As we have all seen over the last couple of weeks, there are enough Representatives with concerns about what is in the bill and its effects to prevent the Democrat caucus from simply ramming it through like the “Stimulus” package. As Representative Tom Price of Georgia put it so well on Wednesday July 29, 2009, his Statements in committee are linked here. ++++++snip+++++++ It's Clunker Health Care! Representative Price is correct. There are other solutions for the failings of our Health Care system. And there is no need for a Trillion dollar clunker of a system that removes your freedom...

The most lasting image of Matt Holliday remains a winning experience, his face-plant slide scoring the deciding run in the Colorado Rockies' playoff win over the San Diego Padres to reach the 2007 postseason. The most recent image, developed in the 22 months since, is of a player constantly exposed to "learning experiences." Those experiences include the Rockies' hard fall after reaching the '07 World Series, his refusal to accept a four-year, $72 million extension and a curious subsequent trade to a small-market American League team that flipped him to St. Louis as part of the Oakland A's latest reinvention....

<p>Attorney Taitz filed a NOTICE OF MOTION AND MOTION to Expedite authentication, MOTION for Issuance of Letters Rogatory for authenticity of Kenyan birth certificate filed by Plaintiff Alan Keyes PhD.</p> <p>Barry's Kenyan B.C.??</p> <p>Possible Malware Warning! 2009-08-05 The Orly Taitz website is currently compromised. It contains a hidden iframe that links to a Chinese malware site (security-alerts.cn.) I strongly suggest that you disable all JavaScript before visiting. The exploit was NOT detected by Norton AntiVirus 2009 nor AVG (both with current definitions)! It's fresh, folks. Beware!</p>

Hizbullah has enjoyed an enviable run of political and military "achievements" including its "divine victory" over Israel in 2006, the "glorious day" in May 2008 when it occupied Beirut, and securing diplomatic recognition by Britain in April 2009. More recently the Lebanese Shiite militia has been dealt a series of setbacks including defeat in the Lebanese elections, the arrest of an Egypt-based Hizbullah cell, reports of the group's involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, the apprehension of a Hizbullah cell plotting to bomb the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan, and the post-election protests in Iran that...

Listen to Candidates Bucking For United States Senator Harry Reid Seat in 2010 We have had candidates that have been campaigning for US Nevada Senator Harry Reid Seat in 2010. Two Veterans that served in the Armed Forces Jeff Durbin US Air Force Retired and Bill Parson US Marine Corps Retired. On June 20, 2009 we have had Jeff Durbin Independent American Candidate for US Senate on the Veterans In Politics Talk Show on All Talk Radio. On August 1, 2009 we have had Bill Parson Republican Candidate for US Senate on the Veterans In Politics Talk Show on All...

Mary 759. Let us turn from your dogma of Christ to those dogmas concerning your goddess Mary. It would be mortal sin for any Catholic to regard Mary as a goddess. If a Catholic expressed such a belief to a Priest in confession he would be refused absolution unless he promised to renounce such an absurd idea. If you wish to attack Catholic doctrine, at least find out what Catholics do believe before you begin. 760. If you call her Queen of Heaven do you not do her an injustice in refusing to her the title of goddess? It would...

<p>The international military mission in Afghanistan has delivered "much less than it promised" due to the lack of a realistic strategy, an influential committee of lawmakers said Sunday. In a report, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said without a clear strategy stabilising Afghanistan had become "considerably more difficult than might otherwise have been the case."</p>