Free Republic

There is no authoritative biblical or theological guidance in the church. There are only many voices. During last week's biennial Church Wide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the church affirmed major policy recommendations to allow for the blessing of same-sex unions (which practice will soon inflate to same-sex marriage) and the rostering of gay and lesbian pastors in partnered relationships. Earlier in the week it also passed by one vote—out of over 1,000 total votes cast—a Social Statement on Sexuality that admitted there was no consensus on the moral evaluation of homosexual conduct, and offered no...

It is a shame that the current health care debate hardly resembles a debate — rather, it has devolved into a screaming match among the fiercest partisans on both sides. For more than 60 years, presidents from both parties have tried to pass meaningful health care reform. There is no doubt that the sector needs reform now more than ever, but that does not mean we should be hastily or superficially negotiating a bill that carries a price tag of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years and that could fundamentally alter more than 15 percent of our entire national...

CHENNAI, India (Reuters) – A leading French chess player turned up drunk and dozed off after just 11 moves in an international tournament in Kolkata, losing the round on technical grounds, domestic media reported Friday. Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev arrived for Thursday's match against India's Praveen Kumar in such an inebriated state that he could hardly sit in his chair and soon fell asleep, resting his head on the table, Hindustan Times newspaper reported. Indian papers carried pictures of the world number 58 sleeping and the organizers' futile attempts to wake his up. The game was awarded to the Indian on...

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OOP, Better Buy a new winter coat. At the UN's World Climate Change Conference in Geneva one of the worlds top climate change scientists, predicted that we are facing 10-20 years of global cooling. The Scientist, named Mojib Latif said the cooling would be the result of changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Latif also said that the NAO may be partly the cause of warming during the past 30 years. Latif says that he is not a global warming skeptic, and says that after the cooling,...

On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: "Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader." Oh, dear! "A Canadian author":...

Our Social Security Franklin Delano. Roosevelt (Terms of Office March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945), a Democrat, introduced Social Security (FICA) Program. He Promised: 1. That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary, 2. That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program, 3. That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year, 4. That the money the participants put into the Independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore,...

Everybody panic! President Obama is going to speak to the nation's schoolchildren on Tuesday. And a new group of worrywarts -- call them "speechers" -- can't stand the idea. The prospect of the nation's elected leader addressing its youngest citizens has turned into a coast-to-coast freakout, with parents threatening to pull their children from school lest Barack Obama pollute their minds with his thoughts about the importance of staying in school and getting an education. Even schools in the liberal stronghold of northern California, where Barack Obama pulled nearly four times as many votes as John McCain in last year...

This is what happened when a Raritan, New Jersey woman programmed Glenn Beck's 5:oop.m. show on her Cable DVR Program,...she documents the results with a handheld camera...

Israel said Friday it will construct hundreds of new housing units in West Bank settlements before any slowdown in building, an announcement that drew harsh criticism from Washington, which demands a complete settlement freeze as a prelude to renewing Mideast peace talks. Israeli officials painted the move as a concession to the U.S. demand because it might bring a temporary halt to other construction. But since it would also mean building the new units and finishing some 2,500 others now under construction, it looked more like defiance than acquiescence. Israel's proposal also does not include any freeze in building in...

Jack Straw has reignited the row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber by admitting for the first time that trade and oil were an essential part of the Government’s decision to include him in a prisoner transfer deal with Libya. The Justice Secretary said he was unapologetic about including Abdelbaset al Megrahi in the agreement, citing a multi-million-pound oil deal signed by BP and Libya six weeks later. The admission directly contradicts Gordon Brown's insistence only days ago that oil deals were not a factor in the prisoner's release. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Straw also...

Visiting Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo (L) shakes hands with Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, in Havana on Thursday.

OTTAWA -- Canada's six NHLteams are scrambling to find alternative travel arrangements south of the border after the U.S. Department of Transportation banned Air Canada's charter fleet from flying between U.S. cities. In a furious exchange with the Obama administration over the mid-August ruling, Canada has launched its own investigation and will soon close its skies to U.S. sports team charters in retaliation, warns Transport Minister John Baird.

Someone has ranked 53 incoming Yale freshmen women based on how many beers it would take for guys to find them attractive and sent out an e-mail with what’s called the "The Preseason Scouting Report." The e-mail sender was anonymous, but whoever it is, is causing some outrage on the ivy-league campus less than a week into the school year. The rating system uses words like "sobriety, " five beers," or "10 beers," and women say the feel victimized and university officials are trying to track who sent the e-mail. Freshman Karen Molokoch found out about the e-mail from a...

President Obama is staking the success of his health care plan on his personal popularity with a prime time address to the nation on Wednesday. House Democrats will be cheering him on and encouraging him to double-down in his support for a public plan option. For Obama, this is the wrong message and a big gamble. He won the election by promising to govern from the center but has let Congress tack hard left on key issues from the stimulus to global warming. The backlash at town hall meetings and tea parties this summer is evidence that the president needs...

I’m a Glenn Beck fan. I know that he’s become Fox News Channel’s most notorious gadfly, and that he accused Barack Obama of hating White people and regularly sheds tears on his television show, but that’s why I like him. America needs to hear voices like Glenn Beck, because if he weren’t on the air, he might do something really dangerous, like run for office, or actually create policy and that’s 100 times worse than anything he’s said on the air. Beck’s show is replete with calls for taking over or taking back the government from the evil czars that...

The fight over global warming and Canadian oil is heating up, and Minnesota, which gets 80 percent of its oil from Canada, is sitting on the griddle. A group of oil companies and big industries launched a TV and radio ad campaign this week to try to snuff out rules that might raise the cost of piping Canadian tar-sands oil through the Dakotas to refineries in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, environmentalists on Thursday appealed a federal decision that allows construction of another major pipeline across northern Minnesota to bring in even more tar-sands oil from Alberta.

Torture is a delicate business. The aim is to injure but not incapacitate — to inflict precisely enough pain and terror to break a subject's will, but no more. To calibrate the proper degree of abuse, the torturer must have an accurate sense of how much agony the subject's mind and body can tolerate. In the Bush administration's program of "enhanced interrogation," this expertise was provided by doctors and psychologists — professionals who are supposed to heal and comfort. A new report by Physicians for Human Rights assembles the evidence and reaches a sickening but inescapable conclusion: "Health professionals played...

I was invited to cover the Illinois Conservative Summit sponsored by the United Republican Fund of Illinois. The URF is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and is Illinois’ oldest, independent, conservative GOP organization. The URF’s charge is to advance conservative policies and principles by supporting candidates that will advance limited government, individual rights, free enterprise, and traditional values. Today’s forum is a Q and A session with six Republican candidates for governor where a set of four fixed questions and one candidate specific question was asked each candidate. Each candidate got 20 minutes for the whole session and were...

Lucas Wondra has Down syndrome and communicates with a few words, sign language and a PDA with a speaker and voice software. But when it comes to the Boy Scouts, he concedes no disability. On Monday, Lucas, a 16-year-old freshman at Hutchinson High, became an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America and the latest in a collage of medals and merit badges covering his uniform. Scout Master Bill Whitlow said Lucas is the first Scout with Down syndrome from Troop 301 to achieve his Eagle rank. "I feel like it's been a community effort," his...