Free Republic

In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy efficient, the power use at the former vice president's house has increased more than 10 percent, a nonprofit research group reported Tuesday. "A man's commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home," said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, in a news release. "Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption." Using data obtained through a...

Mayme (right) and Clarence Vail are the longest married couple still living in the United States, and were photographed Thursday , July 19, 2007 at their retirement center in White Bear Lake, Mn. The couple has been married for 83 years. (Scott Takushi, Pioneer Press) (Staff)Little did Clarence Vail know when he wed his high school sweetheart in 1925 that those vows would one day make them famous. Clarence and Mayme Vail became local celebrities as their commitment surpassed the 80-year mark, making them contenders for the Guinness Book of World Records and international symbols of a healthy marriage. But...

I received a gift in the mail today - an honorary certificate along with a citizenship card for Boys Town. I am now an official Honorary Citizen of the famous Nebraska village which was started by Father Flanagan over 90 years ago. Boys Town is one of the charitable organizations that my wife and I have donated to through the years. I first became aware of it, probably like most people, through the 1938 MGM movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. My citation reads as follows: "In appreciation of Assistance Rendered Father Flanagan's Boys' Home Presents Mr. Greg Crosby...

Over the past 13 days, over 300,000 [479,000 at last count] Americans have signed a petition calling on their government to act immediately to ease high gas prices. These concerned Americans have sent a simple, powerful message to Congress: Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less My message today is aimed directly at the nearly one-third of a million Americans who have joined this campaign: Instead of acting to lower gas prices, your representatives in the Senate began debate yesterday on a measure that will increase gas prices. Instead of heeding your voice, Congress is acting in defiance of it. Instead...

From its name, cap-and-trade legislation sounds harmless enough. Unfortunately, cap-and-trade would be more aptly called "tax and trade" or "tax and spend" and it is far from harmless, posing a serious threat to our economy and our personal freedoms. A parliamentary maneuver was used on Friday to kill debate in the Senate, but this is only the beginning. With many national leaders, influential lobbyists and powerful special-interest groups pushing hard for a cap-and-trade bill, there is no doubt that this is going to be a hot debate in the months to come as well. The bill in question is called...

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to. "I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more...

According to author Roy Davies, former head of factual programming for BBC Wales, new evidence demonstrates that Charles Darwin stole his theory of evolution from a Welsh scientist working in Indonesia. And according to Australia's Northern Territory News, Davies' publisher is launching a campaign to have the Australian city of Darwin renamed after the Welshman. If Davies and his publisher get their way, the theory of evolution may soon be known as "Wallace's Theory," and the capital of Australia's Northern Territory will become some derivation of Alfred Russel Wallace's name. "I researched the book for 12 years," Davies told the...

It's good that graduation ceremonies are called commencements, as celebration yields to anticipation. Next week I'll speak at the commencement of City School of Austin, a diverse Christian school that my wife and I helped to start six years ago. The following day the moving van cometh, transporting some of our earthly goods to New York City. That will be the end—unless my mad mission flops—of our 25 years in Austin. Did I say "mad mission"? Oops, cat's out of the bag. Susan and I have had a succession of mad missions. Did I tell you about the time we...

Is William Wilberforce your ancestor? What does it mean to be an evangelical? Decade after decade new declarations and explanations emerge, and some are mouthfuls of mush. But the latest, titled "An Evangelical Manifesto: The Washington Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment," scheduled for unveiling on May 7 by a group including Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and leading lights Rick Warren, Os Guinness, Dallas Willard, Timothy George, and Richard Mouw, is likely to do some good. Although "manifesto" is an arrogant-sounding word, this one's confessions are credible, its hopes holistic, and its goals generous....

Planned Parenthood, the U.S. abortion industry's biggest presence, is using Mother's Day to promote its conferences and raise funds, triggering a jaw-dropping reaction among those who battle its agenda. "You have to admire the utter chutzpah of the people at Planned Parenthood," said statement on the American Life League website, which has a specific STOPP program to reveal Planned Parenthood's activities. "You would think that of all the holidays of the year, this organization that kills the babies of more than 255,000 mothers a year, would find little to celebrate on Mother's Day. But you would be wrong," the group...

No doubt you felt a surge of Gopher Pride when you learned that a Waseca couple hit the Powerball. The big lottery jackpots always seem to go to people in far-away Cooter County. Bufus! Put down the banjo and git out of the tree, your daddy done won us some Britney-size money!They end up blowing through $150 million in a few years, which isn't surprising: You take an ordinary feller, give him unimaginable wealth, and he will justify building a catapult that throws Ferraris in the air so he can shoot them down with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Sure, he'll...

The Minnesota Department of Health wants the final curtain to close on "theater nights" at Bugg's Place. The department filed a lawsuit this week against the South St. Paul bar for holding the events, which attempt to skirt the state's new smoking ban. The department filed a similar injunction request in April against Bullseye Saloon in Elko; a hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. The bars have claimed they operate a Freedom to Breathe Act of 2007 exception allowing actors to smoke as part of a "legitimate theatrical performance." The law, which went into effect Oct. 1, prohibits smoking in several...

Despite protest from the head of The Episcopal Church, clergy from a diocese that is moving toward a split with the national church are meeting with Archbishop Gregory Venables, head of the conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America. Venables was invited by the Rt. Rev. Jack Iker, bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, to discuss this weekend issues affecting the diocese and the global Anglican Communion which has been wracked by division. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, however, urged Venables "not to bring further discord into The Episcopal Church" by accepting the invitation. His...

Medical news is always contradictory; one day coffee cures leprosy, the next it causes Epstein-Barista syndrome. But even by the usual standards, the latest news was intriguing: this season's flu vaccine targeted the wrong bug, and that led to the worst flu season since the last time the vaccine aimed at the wrong bug. So it's not an exact science, exactly. You'd like to think they head out with tiny nets, capture this year's strain, bring it back to the lab and work all night until someone shouts "EUREKA!" and holds up a test tube while the lightning crashes outside....

The academic left is fond of buzzwords that sound harmless but function in a highly ideological way. Many schools of education and social work require students to have a good "disposition." In practice this means that conservatives need not apply, as highly publicized attempts to penalize right-wing students at Brooklyn College and Washington State University revealed. "Social justice" is an even more useful codeword. Who can oppose it? But some schools made the mistake of spelling out that it means advocacy for causes of the left, including support for gay marriage and adoption, also opposition to "institutional racism," heterosexism, classism...

Dear Governor Pawlenty: It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and somebody is making a phone call. Not to the White House. A child has spiked a fever of 104. Worried parents are trying to reach a doctor. When people have medical emergencies or just simple medical questions, whether it's 3 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon, they don't care how the Health Care Access Fund is divvied up. They're worried. They want to talk to doctors they trust, find out what is wrong and have their doctors make it all better. Public policy that helps that happen is...

Unless we're subjected to another major league game of "double-dare ya" between the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the 2008 session will soon come to a merciful end. With luck, we'll still have a few bucks in our over-taxed pockets and a few freedoms left to enjoy. But with political food fights the name of the game at the Capitol, it can be hard to see beyond the battle du jour and ask ourselves the big question: Who do we want to be as a people in Minnesota? To get some perspective on this, it can be helpful to visit...

I've been cheering for Barack Obama in his Democratic war with Hillary Clinton for both positive and negative reasons. Positive: He's a terrific talker, he didn't seem antagonistic toward Christianity, and we could use a president who inspires college students and twentysomethings not to be so cynical. Negative: A been-there, done-that feeling concerning the Clintons. But now I have that déjà vu sense concerning Obama as well. For 25 years I've taught at the University of Texas and seen the arrogance of academia and the belittling of the purportedly benighted masses. Obama's San Francisco comment about small-town (and small-minded) people...

What do you get when you cross a "Zero Tolerance" policy with a 6-year-old boy? A police report. No joke: Last fall Randy Castro smacked a female classmate on the bottom during recess at their school in Prince William County, Va. She told the teacher. In the old days, Randy would have been called in from recess and given a talking-to and a warning. But now we're much more alert to male aggression. Randy soon found himself in the principal's office, the subject of an incident report that labeled his obnoxious little-boy behavior as "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive." It...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a CBS News interview that will air on Sunday, says the Constitution neither allows legal abortions nor does it prohibit them. Scalia has been outspoken recently about how the Constitution does not guarantee any abortion rights. During the "60 Minutes" interview with correspondent Lesley Stahl, Scalia said the Constitution is silent on the issue of abortion. He said he favors overturning Roe v. Wade, which has ushered in 35 years of unlimited abortions, but says states aren't forced to ban abortions if the case is reversed. "On the abortion thing, for example, if indeed...