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In Naperville, IL, two mothers were arrested last week for refusing to allow utility workers to install controversial smart meters on their homes. The city’s new Naperville Smart Grid Initiative requires new controversial smart meters to be installed in every home. Residents opposed to the smart meters have been fighting the initiative for over two years. Jennifer Stahl, an advocate against the smart meters initiative, told The Blaze she “was protecting” her property when she refused to allow the smart meter installer install the device. She felt “like a momma bear protecting her babies,” she recalled. Many opponents to the...

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ROME, January 25, 2013 (Zenit.org). Why can’t priests marry? It’s a question people often ask and the requirement of celibacy has also been blamed as one of the causes of sexual abuse by priests.A recently published translation of an Italian book addresses the topic in a question and answer format, “Married Priests? Thirty Crucial Questions about Celibacy” (Ignatius Press). It is edited by Arturo Cattaneo, with contributions from a wide variety of scholars.We are faced with a great educational challenge in explaining the Church’s teaching on priestly celibacy, admitted Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.He likened...

Isaiah 45:24 In Jehovah is All my Righteousness and Strength.

Quaid claims he is being hunted by "Hollywood star-whackers" who killed his friends David Carradine and Heath Ledger. Quaid faces felony vandalism charges in Santa Barbara.

Behold the Girandoni air rifle, a 20 round high capacity tubular magazine and air reservoir which fired at roughly the same velocity as a modern .45 ACP. It can punch straight through a 2x4 at 100 yards. Invented by Tyrollean Bartholomaus Girandoni around 1779, this revolutionary rifle is four feet long and weighs a manly 10 pounds. It's semi-automatic rate of fire and, for the period, its immense firepower reserve made it a fearsome thing to contemplate in battle. No appreciable bang, no smoke and at least 20 rounds before its punch began to diminish.

A Texas teen says a Halloween movie inspired him to shoot his mother and sister to death after watching the main character in the film murder his family “with ease and with little remorse.” Jake Evans, 17, wrote a chilling four-page confession for the killing of his mother Jamie Evan, 48, and his younger sister, Mallory, 15. Jake writes in his confession that after watching Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of the horror movie “Halloween,” he lured his sister out of her room and shot her multiple times. He then killed his mother. “While I loaded the gun back up, I...

Travelers have a warning for drivers who park their cars near Denver International Airport (DIA). Rabbits are chewing the wires under many cars costing owners a lot of money. The rabbits get in and chew the brake lines, the clutch lines and other wiring. Local car repair shops estimates they can do thousands of dollars in damage. “When I had the trouble with the oil light coming on, the dealer told me the wires that controlled the air conditioning were chewed,” said Ken Blum, one car owner who knows all about the not so funny bunny business at DIA. Blum...

Authorities say a North Port woman was scamming a local church by saying four of her sons died fighting for our country. It turns out 49-year-old Shirley Ann Duncan never had any children die in combat. She does however have one currently serving in the military and he's the one who turned her in. "This really takes the cake." Mark Coffey is the senior pastor at the Community Life Center Church in Port Charlotte. He says it was just too real to believe it wasn't. "When you come up and you are dressed in black and you literally have tears...

Machine gun fire from military helicopters flying over downtown Miami Fl

Skyfall, the latest James Bond blockbuster that grossed more than US$1 billion in ten weeks, has been lambasted by author Sebastian Faulks. Faulks, who was commissioned by the estate of Bond creator Ian Fleming to write a Bond novel, described the film as 'pretty distasteful', criticised some of the acting and said the film's attempts to show a sensitive side to the spy hero had failed.

The Hage family last Thursday filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, appealing a claims court judgment that stripped away part of their $14 million award in a suit against the U.S. Forest Service over grazing rights in Monitor Valley. Nye County Commissioner Lorinda Wichman said Tuesday she’s afraid the ruling by a court of appeals for the federal circuit overturning part of the judgment in the Wayne Hage case — that only hand tools are allowed to be used to maintain roads in the national forest — could jeopardize the $250,000 the county spent on the...

Zero Dark Thirty is too important to be boycotted by anyone but activists. Zero Dark Thirty, screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow’s new film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is weathering a storm of criticism. Critics overwhelmingly give the film positive reviews, but activists claim that it approves of and even glorifies the use of torture against suspected al-Qaida terrorists held in secret CIA prisons and “black” sites. The accusation is ludicrous. Nothing in Zero Dark Thirty suggests that either Boal or Bigelow approves of torture. So many have accused Bigelow of torture advocacy that she took...

The image was taken innocently enough: A landing helicopter kicked up a dust storm as French soldiers moved toward Niono, in northern Mali, an area held by al-Qaida-linked militant groups. The soldiers pulled on their goggles to protect their eyes from the dust. One soldier pulled up a black bandana -- with a white skeleton face printed on it -- over his nose. Behind him, light beamed through tree branches, creating an otherworldly image -- the soldier looked like a skeleton in French military fatigues. Photographer Issouf Sanogo of the Agence France-Presse news agency and Yann Foreix of Le Parisien...

The Sunday Times marked Holocaust Memorial Day in a less-than-traditional manner, running a virulently anti-Israel cartoon depicting a big-nosed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of writhing Palestinians. The cartoon included a caption beneath the image entitled "Israeli elections- will cementing peace continue?" Drawn by Gerald Scarfe, the cartoon appeared in the national paper on Sunday. “This cartoon would be offensive at any time of the year, but to publish it on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is sickening and expresses a deeply troubling mindset,” said European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor. “This insensitivity...

Somewhere in the panic around the birth of the 7 billionth person, the news that the world's population growth was actually slowing got lost. According to a recent article in Slate, it took the world 13 years to grow from 6 to 7 billion people, but only 12 to go from 5 to 6 billion. The implication is that population growth is slowing, and according to some estimates, may stop completely within the lifespan of people alive right now. The world's population may cap out at 9 billion. So we're saved, right? After all, many of the world's ills, from...

Obama: I'd Get More Done If GOP Wasn't Punished for Working With Democrats By Fox and Limbaugh By Noel Sheppard Created 01/27/2013 - 3:22pm "If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you'll see more of them doing it." So said Barack Obama in an interview just published by The New Republic: FRANKLIN FOER, EDITOR NEW REPUBLIC: Are there any forces for reform within the Republican Party, people you've been able to establish some sort of working relationship with? PRESIDENT...

.... Fortunately, despite worries about a warming planet, no one is predicting the end of snow anytime soon. Some cold places will see more snow, because warmer air can carry more moisture. In the Northern Hemisphere, snow coverage this past December was the greatest since records began in 1966, Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab reported. But Dr. David Robinson, a climatologist at Rutgers, warns that year-to-year fluctuations and regional differences can deceive casual observers. In general, he says, there has been an “overall decline in snowfall.” Other studies echo that conclusion. The United States Global Change Research Program’s recently released...

Original Iwo Jima monument, which used to be housed at the Intrepid Sea-Air- Space Museum, to hit the auction block. The 10-ton piece, inspired by the iconic photo taken at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 and the model for the flag-raising Marine Corps War Memorial statue in Arlington, Va., will be up for sale at Bonhams auction house on Feb. 22. It is listed for sale for $1.3 million to $1.8 million.

In the dispute over homosexuality the Bible plays a less significant role than in the past because it is viewed as a book of miracles and supernatural revelation, having nothing to do with science and the modern understanding of sexuality. This is not based on objective assessment; it is rooted in the Enlightenment rejection of the Bible, especially Hume's dismissal of miracles. Hume argued that unless universals in religion could be ascertained, no religious truth claims can be verified. Since Hume's time, anthropologists have identified universals in religion, notably burial in red ochre, serpent veneration, and water shrines. Kant also...