Free Republic

Gianna Jessen came into the world as a surprise. Her 17-year-old mother knew she was pregnant. She also knew she didn't want to be. She underwent an abortion procedure, having toxic saline solution injected into the womb during the third trimester. Jessen, then in the womb for 7½ months, spent 18 hours in the solution. "It burns the baby inside and out," she said. "(The mother) is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours." But when a 2-pound Jessen emerged, she was alive.

Will Massachusetts still have "gay marriage" by the end of this year?The Article 8 Alliance and its allies in the state legislature have a plan to abolish homosexual "marriage," this year if possible — not only abolish it in Massachusetts, but declare null and void the several thousand "gay marriages" that have been performed there since the state Supreme Judicial Court "legalized" it by judicial fiat almost a year ago."We're way ahead of where we were on this last year," said Brian Camenker, Article 8's executive director. "More and more legislators are agreeing with us and will vote for us...

The lack of constituency for Article III in the U.S. Constitution among those so concerned about federal judicial tyranny is an ongoing mystery. Perhaps they have never read it, or having read it never understood the meaning or implications. Maybe they understood it as well as anyone, but rejected that approach in preference for more difficult Constitutional means of restoring the rule of law that federal courts routinely break. The relevant portions of Article III involve only the first sentence of Section 1 and only the first two clauses of Section 2. The essence of those 200 words can be...

Pro-life women took their families to Washington, D.C., to show congressional liberals that frozen embryos are human after all. Most credible scientists will admit that an embryo is a human being, with all of the DNA and chromosomes that a human being will ever need from birth to death. But some researchers and lawmakers don't want you to know that. Because they want you to think it should be legal to use federal funds to destroy this human being—so small that it is nothing more than a "dot," claimed one U.S. Senator—to help cure diseases like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's....

A memorial service to honor babies that were aborted will begin at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, at the National Memorial for the Unborn, 6230 Vance Road. The site is adjacent to AAA Women’s Services. Officials said, "Jan. 16, 2005 marks the 32nd anniversary of the tragic U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v.Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. These two cases removed the right of the states to restrict abortion-on demand, including late-term abortions performed on viable fetuses. More than forty-three million abortions have been performed since those rulings. That is the population of 17 states in this...

The "creation" controversy has splashed down in Gull Lake, Mich. Last spring, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette, a parent complained that two middle school biology teachers were giving the concept of "intelligent design" equal treatment in the classroom with the theory of evolution. The district has told them to stop, and both are now crying foul, appealing to the community for help.Gull Lake parents are divided."Intelligent design," or ID, contends that the diversity of life on Earth and the complexity of some biological systems could not have arisen by means of evolution. To correct that perceived inadequacy, ID stipulates that...

President Bush announced that he has appointed Claude Allen, who served as an aide to former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, to be his new domestic policy advisor. Allen, whose appointment to the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was twice blocked by Democratic filibusters, is the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services where he has served since 2001. Allen is a staunch opponent of abortion rights. As Virginia’s top health administrator, Allen helped draft the state’s parental notification law and supported a law imposing a 24 hour waiting period and requiring biased information be...

WASHINGTON – Will the new year give us a new Supreme Court justice? Or two, maybe three? Statistically, that should happen. The current court has not changed for 10 years, and that hasn't happened for 180 years.The likeliest to create a vacancy is Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He has indicated no intention of retiring - on the contrary. But doctors say that an 80-year-old undergoing chemotherapy for thyroid cancer cannot expect to remain active for very long.And so, though no one wishes Justice Rehnquist ill, there is much discussion about whom President Bush is likely to nominate. He has said...

(Ventura, CA) - After a year of interviewing thousands of adults, ministers, and young people, many insights into the spiritual contours of Americans emerged from the studies conducted by The Barna Group. In his annual yearend summary of some of the highlights and lowlights from his company’s research, cultural analyst George Barna noted that there is reason to be encouraged – and concerned. Reflecting on the more than 10,000 interviews his firm completed during 2004, Barna identified some of the outcomes he felt were most noteworthy. Those facts were divided into four types: the most encouraging outcomes, the most surprising...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Jan. 4 that Republicans would not yet pursue a rule change to prevent the filibustering of judicial nominees -- but he warned Democrats that such a rule change could take place if needed. "Some ... have suggested that the filibusters of the last Congress are reason enough to offer a procedural change today, right here and right now. But at this moment I do not choose that path," Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, said during opening remarks on the first day of the new Congress. "My Democratic colleagues have new leadership. And in...

The law-breaking branch of the federal government has become more powerful than the law making branch, the President, and even the Constitution. How did five out of nine judges on the U.S. Supreme Court become so infallible that no one questions anything they say? When the Most High Court speaks, the nation must prostrate fall. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, during his confirmation hearings, said that he would not attempt to overturn Roe v.Wade and that he considered it the "settled law of the land." The abortion edicts from the Supreme Court aren't acts of Congress, nor a constitutional amendment,...

The late Harry Blackmun's papers show how he's still shaping the Supreme Court today on issues like abortion. But the cases he thought he'd closed aren't closed after all. When the Library of Congress opened the late Justice Harry Blackmun's massive collection of papers for public inspection on March 4, two journalists already had been looking through the 1,600 cardboard boxes of documents for two months. Both are ardent fans of Blackmun and his most famous ruling—Roe v. Wade—and had been granted exclusive access at the Blackmun family's request. The reporters—The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse and National Public Radio's...

Human beings are imperfect.And some are more imperfect than others.So, elections are choices among imperfect alternatives.A voter's task is to choose the best available viable candidate.Rudy Giuliani WAS preferable to his predecessor as Mayor of New York City, David Dinkins, notable as New York City's first African-American mayor and a very good dresser.Giuliani lost to Dinkins the first time, but, after Dinkins' dangerously inept handling of the Crown Heights riot, not even the Democrats could stop Giuliani from winning the rematch .Guiliani WAS a great improvement.He made New York City a safer and more enjoyable cityAnd the thought of Dinkins...

RICHMOND, Va. -- Same-sex marriage is back on the General Assembly's agenda, as Republicans attempt to strengthen what some legal experts already consider the most restrictive anti-gay law in the nation. Democrats say they'll fight to repeal it. "The Supreme Court better get the message that average Americans just don't connect with same sex marriage," Marshall said. "These are children who are quite well developed," Black said. "And we're simply saying that if they have to be killed, then let's at least be sufficiently merciful to spare them from this excruciating pain that they suffer."

Millions of Americans believe that the U.S. Supreme Court has an unfriendly attitude toward religion and the role of religion in American life. They believe the Court has discriminated against the rights of religious Americans and treated them like second class citizens. The school prayer cases of the 1960's are just one of many examples that suggest the Supreme Court has been intolerant and unfair. Recently, the High Court has announced that it will decide two cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. The cases originate from Kentucky and Texas. How will the Supreme Court decide...

Chemical castration of a man with AIDS convicted of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old boy at Lake Tahoe has been upheld by a state court. Rudolph Christopher Steele, 43, of South Lake Tahoe had appealed the El Dorado County Superior Court sentence for his 2003 conviction by a jury on sodomy and oral copulation charges. He contended the hormone suppression therapy - dubbed "chemical castration" - that the court ordered he undergo when paroled was improper. The state Board of Prison Terms is the agency to impose such conditions, Steele argued. Steele also said the hormone suppression might interfere with his...

The Supreme Court at year's end is in an odd period of stasis. There is a palpable feeling that someone hit the pause button, and no one is sure what will happen when the Court starts up again. Will it join the Republican juggernaut that has strengthened its hold on the other branches, or will it remain defiantly, sometimes quirkily, contrarian -- as it was in June's enemy combatant cases and at other times this year? And will the Court continue on its conservative path of state-oriented federalism, or will it reverse field, as it seemingly began to do in...

Professor Antony Flew, 81 years old, is: ‘a legendary British philosopher and atheist and has been an icon and champion for unbelievers for decades.’[1] In his most famous book, God and Philosophy, Flew concluded: ‘though as always subject to correction by further evidence and further argument, that the universe itself is ultimate; and, hence, that whatever science may from time to time hold to be the most fundamental laws of nature, must, equally provisionally, be taken as the last words in any series of answers to questions as to why things are as they are.’[2] In other words, nature (probably)...

The most censored speech in the United States today is not flag-burning, pornography or the press. The worst censors are those who prohibit classroom criticism of the theory of evolution.A Chinese scholar observed, "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin." Polls show that the vast majority of Americans reject the theory of evolution, as have great scientists such as William Thomas Kelvin and Louis Pasteur. But that does not stop an intolerant minority from trying to impose a belief in the ape-to-man theory on everyone else.Local school...

HR 3893 IH  2d SessionH. R. 3893To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVESMarch 4, 2004 Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary A BILLTo limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as `We the People Act'. SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds the...