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Vanessa Williams went public in 2012 about being sexual assaulted by a woman when she was 10, writing about it in her memoir “You Have No Idea.” Recently, Teri Hatcher and Lady Gaga spoke out about sexual assaults in their past. Williams told FOX411 why she decided to share her traumatic event, and how she can relate to Bill Cosby’s alleged victims. “I wanted young girls to be able to identify to know you’re not alone. The scary thing is the people that come up to you that have similar stories," Williams said. "It’s the most disturbing part of it....

After a 3-year study of American women’s religious orders, undertaken because of problems that are both grave and obvious, the Congregation for Religious has released a report that avoids direct criticism of religious orders, instead suggesting that the communities should evaluate themselves. But for Catholics who long for a genuine revival of religious life in America, today’s report should not be too disheartening. First, because we knew this was coming. Second and more important, because another Vatican inquiry, aimed specifically at the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR), is still underway. This battle isn’t over yet. When the process began,...

The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials. The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.

RUSH: I just got a note. "Hey, you know, this is a good thing that you're talking about here, the loss of honest media, targeting anything conservative. Do you do you take any hope in people seeing what you're talking about more and more?" Yeah, I do. Look at the last two midterm elections. I think the American people see clearly what's happening here and they don't like it. I think the American people are totally -- those voting, anyway -- are very aware of all of this. And they're voting to stop all of this stuff. All of this...

You’ve got to be careful what you share online. Over the weekend Facebook and Twitter were suddenly inundated with links to a new recording of the Christmas hymn “Angels From the Realms of Glory” mashed up with “Angels We Have Heard on High.” It was recorded by The Piano Guys and features David Archuleta, a one-time runner up on American Idol. It is a creative recording that intersperses shots of the musicians with video taken to record the world’s largest nativity scene. The song is beautifully sung and the music is rich; it is no surprise that it quickly gained...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D.) announced on Monday that he will seek to reinstate a restriction on gun sales that limits individuals in the state to one handgun purchase a month. The law was repealed during the previous administration of Gov. Bob McDonnell (R.). McAuliffe’s request for the Republican-dominated legislature to reinstate the law is likely to fall on deaf ears, according to a report by Reuters.

The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command’s recent announcement that it has successfully completed tests on its GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle prompted an immediate rebuttal from Russia: They, too, are close to unmanned submarine drones. The U.S. Navy first trumpeted its successful test on Friday.

The late Richard John Neuhaus famously wrote of bioethicists: Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on the way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as unexceptionable. In my over 20 years engaged in trying to push back against the bioethics movement, I have found that to be an absolutely accurate formula.Take, as one example, dehydrating the cognitively devastated to death–a slow and potentially agonizing death. That was once unthinkable, it became debatable in the 1980s, and is now unexceptional.Allowing infanticide has now reached the “debatable on the way...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Abraham New International Version (NIV) 16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by...

Word For The Day, Wednesday, December 17, 2014-- higgledy-piggledy ; In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". [hig-uh l-dee-pig-uh l-dee]hear it pronounced adverb in a jumbled, confused, or disorderly manner; helter-skelter. adjective confused; jumbled, chaotic, messy Origin: "confusedly, hurriedly," 1590s, a "vocal gesture" [OED] probably formed from pig and the animal's suggestions of mess and disorder. Reduplications in the h-/p- pattern are common (e.g. hanky-panky, hocus-pocus, hinch(y)-pinch(y), an obsolete children's game, attested from c.1600). Rules: Everyone must leave a post using...

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed three Texans Tuesday night for lifetime judicial appointments, capping an effort to fill vacancies in the state that have languished for years. The nominees — U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman of San Antonio, Texarkana lawyer Robert Schroeder III and Sherman Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant III — were approved by a voice vote on Congress’ final night this year. Pitman, the first openly gay U.S. attorney in Texas history, will be the state’s first openly gay federal judge.

December 17, 2014, 08:15 am Obamas say they're no strangers to racism By Justin Sink The president and the first lady chronicled a series experiences in People magazine that they say demonstrated some of the latent racism that blacks in America continue to face. "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," the president said. The first lady said someone had asked her husband to get them coffee because he was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,...

The new Republican-controlled Senate's first act in January will be approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. McConnell told reporters that the bill would be based on a measure that failed in the Senate last month that was co-sponsored by North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu. "It'll be open for amendment," McConnell said. "I will hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments but there'll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process." Landrieu pushed for a Keystone vote in November in a last-ditch effort to...

Michigan State University trustees approved a salary increase from $520,000 to $750,000 for President Lou Anna Simon. The 44 percent base income raise, which also includes an annual $100,000 "retention bonus," came over her objections. “This is not what I requested,” Simon said, according to MLive. “Trustee (Joel) Ferguson and other members of the board were very clear that they were my bosses in this regard and this is something that would be done at their request.” ForTheRecord says: Trustees praised Simon for her “leadership and dedication” and said she “continues to excel on the board-established performance criteria (of her...

If you listen to the Obama administration you might believe the economy is roaring. On some level jobs are being created. The problem of course is that they’re barely keeping up with population growth. Millions of jobs were lost when the recession took place in late 2008-2009. Very few of those jobs have been recovered, leaving millions in long term unemployment. The real unemployment rate, the Federal government’s U-6 number, is 11%. U-6 unemployment counts both the long term unemployed, which the official unemployment rate doesn’t do, as well as those who are underemployed. U-6 used to be the way...

My phone, email, and social media accounts instantly start blowing up Tuesday in response to the news Jeb Bush was going to “actively explore” a 2016 presidential run. Except the near-orgasmic response wasn’t from whom you might think. It didn’t come from conservatives, but from the mainstream (liberal) media. Twelve hours later, a Google search for “Jeb Bush actively explore” returned over 3.8 million results, and the first page of entries was almost entirely comprised of mainstream media hits. Herein lies one of the primary reasons why Jeb Bush is never going to be elected President of these United States....

With a win against the estate of late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle behind him, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura now has his sights on HarperCollins, the publisher of the bestselling memoir "American Sniper." Ventura filed a lawsuit Monday against the New York publisher, alleging the publicity generated by the book with a "false and defamatory" segment "substantially increased sales of 'American Sniper,' thereby generating millions of dollars in revenues and profits for Harper Collins." HarperCollins does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said Tuesday. A federal jury in St. Paul found in July that a segment of the...

Well that didn’t take long. The election is over and the House Republicans have deposed John Boehner (R-OH) as Speaker. Meet Speaker Barack Obama. "The Republicans responded to Speaker Obama’s requests. Violating quickly, briskly and exactly every last word of their campaign promises to defund Obamacare and to fight amnesty. The fix was in.” Speaker Obama and his loyal number two, Joe Biden, spent last week rounding up the votes to get their Republican colleagues in the House to fund Obamacare and amnesty plus all manner of spending programs. The Republicans responded to Speaker Obama’s requests. Violating quickly, briskly and...

ALEXANDRIA, Va.— Seven hundred and sixty-three. No, that’s not how much the national debt is ticking upwards per second, or how much you’ll pay annually for premiums under Obamacare. It’s the total number of applications that 49 states — every state except Hawaii — have sent petitioning the U.S. Congress to call for a controversial Article V convention of states to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution and rein in the federal government. The concept of a convention to bring power back to the states may not be widely known, but it’s an idea that’s slowly gaining steam as Americans...

When a unit of North Carolina’s Curtiss-Wright Corp. won a roughly $300 million deal in 2007 to supply components for new reactors in China, industry officials trumpeted China’s nuclear boom as good for U.S. business. Today, Chinese companies are competing for that business—and foreign companies risk getting left out. Meanwhile, Curtiss-Wright’s contract is caught up in a legal dispute, while Chinese authorities blame the company in part for the delay of a landmark nuclear project. U.S. and other foreign companies are now struggling to keep their hold in China, the industry’s biggest growth market and a rare bright spot more...