Free Republic

The controversy over a recent study on gay parenting illustrates a sociopolitical groupthink operating in the social scientific community. Scientists should go where the science takes them, not where their politics does. University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus’s study, “How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” published in the academic journal Social Science Research last year, caused a firestorm in the scientific community. Unlike most previous studies, Regnerus found that children of parents who had experienced a same-sex relationship fared worse than children of heterosexual parents on...

LONDON — Could the nuclear deal with Iran help ease the way toward peace talks on ending Syria's civil war? Immediately after the accord with Iran was finalized, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague set to work to prepare a political transition to stop the fighting in Syria. Iran is the principal backer of Syrian military strikes against government opponents and has made clear its intention to carry that influence to planned peace talks in Geneva. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says there is no excluding Tehran. "Without any doubt, the Islamic Republic...

by Angelo Paparelli, ABIL Immediate Past President Nation of Immigrators The last few weeks have witnessed severe shocks to the health care system known as Obamacare. The President has issued mea culpas for the not-ready-for-prime-time web site, Health.gov, and for his campaign promise to Americans that if they liked their health insurance plan, they could "keep it. Period." Americans who've lost their preferred health plan have also experienced shocks, of the sticker variety, when they learn the price of replacement coverage. Viewers of Washingtonian pratfalls who look at Beltway antics through the prism of immigration are neither surprised nor amused....

“Shocked” wouldn't be accurate, since we were accustomed to our uninsured patients' receiving inadequate medical care. “Saddened” wasn't right, either, only pecking at the edge of our response. And “disheartened” just smacked of victimhood. After hearing this story, we were neither shocked nor saddened nor disheartened. We were simply appalled. We met Tommy Davis in our hospital's clinic for indigent persons in March 2013 (the name and date have been changed to protect the patient's privacy). He and his wife had been chronically uninsured despite working full-time jobs and were now facing disastrous consequences. The week before this appointment, Mr....

I mention to Pope Francis that there are Christians who live in situations that are irregular for the church or in complex situations that represent open wounds. I mention the divorced and remarried, same-sex couples and other difficult situations. What kind of pastoral work can we do in these cases? What kinds of tools can we use? “We need to proclaim the Gospel on every street corner,” the pope says, “preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound. In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons...

Jewish groups in the United States on Tuesday gave backing to President Barack Obama as he seeks approval from Congress to launch a military strike in Syria. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), released a statement in which it urged Congress “to grant the President the authority he has requested to protect America’s national security interests and dissuade the Syrian regime's further use of unconventional weapons.”

Sanford police have turned over all of the evidence from the George Zimmerman murder trial to the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Yesterday we broke the news [24]of what is prima facie evidence, sourced by none other than the Federal Reserve's official August 16, 2007 conference call transcript [25], that then-NY Fed president and FOMC Vice Chairman Tim Geithner leaked material, non-public, and very much market moving information (the "Geithner Leak") to at least one banker, in this case then Bank of America CEO Ken Leiws, in advance of a formal Fed announcement - an act explicitly prohibited by virtually every capital markets law (and reading thereof). It was refreshing to see that at least several other mainstream outlets, including Reuters [26],...

A rule of the modern age: all confident, reelected presidents trip up in the second term. LBJ was sunk by Vietnam. Reagan faced Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton had his comeuppance with Monica. George W. Bush was overwhelmed with the Iraqi insurgency and Katrina. And Obama will have his as well, obsequious media or not. Supposedly fundamental partisan swings of an era usually prove transitory: LBJ’s landside led to Nixon four years later, whose landslide then led to Carter in 1980, whose supposed new politics of humility and apology led to Reagan, whose small government-paradigm shift nonetheless by 1992 gave us Clinton,...

It is tempting for people who earn less than $400,000 to think that they got off easy this week under the tax deal to end the fiscal impasse, given that only those with incomes above that level will be in a higher income tax bracket in 2013. But the legislation that both houses of Congress have now approved could increase taxes on people with incomes that are not quite that high as well. That’s because the bill includes language that begins to do what both President Obama and Mitt Romney proposed at various points in the past: Limit certain tax...

A Norwegian company led by Alf Bjørseth will start burning thorium fuel in a conventional test reactor owned by Norway’s government with help from U.S.-based nuclear giant Westinghouse. Bjørseth is now running his private company Scatec AS, and establishing new companies within Scatec based on the latest technologies in the areas of renewable energy and advanced materials, including a thorium fuel effort through a holding company called Thor Corporation. Thor Corporation owns Thor Energy and also has shares in businesses related to thorium fuel, thorium mining and separation of rare earth elements. Fen Minerals holds the mining rights to the...

If the news media had to work for a living, this is what they would all be asking right now. The reason is simple. The projections the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made for Representative Ryan's budget imply that he literally wants to shut down the federal government.

Anybody who believes Paul Ryan wants the government out of healthcare is falling for a typical Paul Ryan scam. He slices, he dices, he throws up some smoke and then he brings out the mirrors---and then he brings in the government. Ryan's plan calls for keeping medicare intact for anyone who is 55 or older, then he gets slippery with his plan. For Americans currently under 55, his plan will give them a health insurance voucher as high as $8,000 per year. Government will get to decide what insurance companies are eligible to accept the vouchers. Ryan says all the...

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I received the following reply on another site. The comments about the Tea Party freshmen voting record looks suspect, but I don't have the specific knowledge to rebut it. Can anyone assist me?Thank you! The Tea Party got co-opted about 47 seconds after their nascent birth. The original TP message was about opposing the bailouts of the banks, ending the twisted fascist relationship between governments and banking cartels, and refusing to engage in more foolish Keynesian debt-fueled stimulus to plant the "green shoots" of America's "recovery." After co-option, by the likes of Dick Armey et. al, this message was immediately...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sierra Club says it will block an energy company's plan to export liquefied natural gas from the booming Marcellus Shale formation. Virginia-based Dominion Resources Inc. is seeking to export 1 billion cubic feet per day through a terminal it owns in Maryland. A previous legal settlement gives the Sierra Club the ability to reject any significant changes to the purpose or footprint of the existing natural gas terminal in Cove Point, Md.

Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, had a thing for nuclear bombs. He wanted them bigger, smaller, faster, used in ways that no one had thought of before or since, and always more of them. He suffered no fools, and though he would be more villified than any other American scientist in the 20th century, he always dismissed his critics as lacking in common sense or patriotism. Amid Cold War paranoia and fears of the Soviet nuclear program, the stakes were simply too high: for the free world, building the most powerful weapon in history was a matter...

According to Forbes, Oprah Winfrey is worth $2.7 billion. The 57-year-old former actor became famous for her Oprah Winfrey Show (which ceased production in May) but still runs a vast media empire. She owns a production company (Harpo Productions), a cable network (OWN), a magazine (O), Oprah.com and the Oprah Radio satellite station. She also owns estates in Montecito, California and Fisher Island, Florida; houses in Lavallette, New Jersey, Douglasville, Georgia and Telluride, Colorado; and assorted properties on the islands of Antigua and Maui. The latter includes 100 acres in Hana, 1,000 acres Upcountry (which boasts a small, terribly exclusive...

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/billionaire-boondoggle/1428210002001

"I wish in retrospect I'd protested when Brian Williams took them out of it because I think it's wrong," Gingrich told "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. "And I think he took them out of it because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they've done in every debate. "We will serve notice on future debates, we're not going to allow that to happen," Gingrich added. "That's wrong. Media doesn't control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to. It's almost silly."