Free Republic

A deal has been struck involving an infant caught up in the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch. "I understand y'all have reached a tentative agreement," Judge Barbara Walther said today after a 2 1/2-hour delay, so lawyers could negotiate behind closed doors. The deal gives the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services sole conservatorship over the baby, born two weeks ago to Dan Jessop and his wife, Louisa Jessop Bradshaw. It names the parents as temporary possessors. "I feel good about it," Dan Jessop said as he walked out of the courtroom. "It's one step closer...

Chris Jardine gingerly reached out with his fingerless hands to touch the new wheelchair he was just given. He lifted his body into the new chair, but after a moment he pulled himself out and went back into his old wheelchair. “I want to wait and get up Christmas morning and have this be my Christmas gift,” Jardine said in his 10-by-10 room located in an old hospital in Mahaica, Guyana. Jardine was in dire need of a new wheelchair. His old one had loose and broken wheels, making transportation especially dangerous and difficult. The new chair would be more...

Philipina Heintzman, 81, drove 80 miles across the South Dakota prairie to experience history in the making: a woman running for president, something she never dreamed as a child that she would live to see. That event, a Hillary Rodham Clinton rally in Bath on Thursday, also marked history unraveling. As Clinton's prospects sink in the Democratic race, Heintzman and many women like her are feeling the poignant letdown of seeing the first woman with a strong chance at the presidency fall short. "It would hurt my feelings a lot because I think she should be No. 1, she should...

Meeting with the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked, “Whom say ye that I am?” Simon Peter, the chief Apostle answered, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:15–16). Peter later testified that Jesus “was foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20). He was “in the beginning with the Father, and [is] the Firstborn” (D&C 93:21). When the Father’s plan—the plan of salvation and happiness (see Alma 34:9)—was presented (see Alma 42:5, 8), one was required to atone to provide redemption and mercy to all those who accepted the plan (see Alma 34:16;...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation's biggest state to tie the knot. Domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage, the justices ruled 4-3 in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George. Outside the courthouse, gay marriage supporters cried and cheered as news spread of the decision. "Our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and...

Shortly after word came Thursday that the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on gay marriage in that state, the LDS Church released the following statement: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognizes that same sex marriage can be an emotional and divisive issue. However, the church teaches that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is the basic unit of society. Today's California Supreme Court decision is unfortunate." The LDS Church was active in urging California residents to ban gay marriage through a public referendum in March 2000. Proposition...

It has been a busy month for Carolyn Jessop. In addition to myriad media interviews, promoting a best-selling book and taking care of her family, she just returned last week from her third trip to Texas helping educate government workers, volunteers and professionals about the unique culture of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. Jessop, Shannon Price and other Utahns have been sharing their insights into the religion with Texas authorities. Both Jessop and Price still strongly believe Texas is doing the right thing by placing more than 450 children into state custody and investigating allegations of abuse. "There's a level of...

The historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took issue Monday with a New York Times opinion piece comparing FLDS polygamists in Texas to 19th century Mormons. In a statement released Monday, church historian Elder Marlin K. Jensen took exception to author Timothy Egan's portrayal in the Times. "Mr. Egan's cavalier comparison of FLDS polygamy practices with those of 19th century Latter-day Saints is historically unsupported and simply wrong," wrote Elder Jensen, a member of the church's Quorums of Seventy. "By implication, he also unfairly impugns the integrity of all Latter-day Saint marriages and families, the very...

Thousands of women filled most of the Brigham Young University Marriott Center on Friday to hear from Sister Julie B. Beck, general president of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sister Beck spoke to the theme "Strengthen Thy Stakes: Standing Strong and Immovable in Faith" for BYU's Women's Conference, which is co-sponsored by the LDS Relief Society. "Our task is great in this world," said Sister Beck. She is also the former counselor in the Young Women general presidency for the LDS Church. Sister Beck told a story about her mother, who was living...

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is waving her fists across Indiana, signing autographs on boxing gloves. “We need a president who’s a fighter again,” Mrs. Clinton said at a rally on Thursday, adding that the next president must understand what it is like to “get knocked down and get back up: that’s the story of America, right?” In recent days, Mrs. Clinton has chided the experts for “counting me out” and Senator Barack Obama for his inability to “close the deal” and declared that no one was going to make her quit. “She makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy,” North...

Since being ejected from the Oval Office in 1980, Jimmy Carter has spent his days conducting rogue diplomacy in global hot spots, dashing from the embrace of one dictator to another and generally making life miserable for sitting American presidents. For this, Mr. Carter is often called our greatest ex-president. Accordingly, his latest round of unauthorized diplomacy with Hamas will surely only enhance his post-presidential resume. But truth be told, no amount of hobnobbing with terrorists or international do-goodery at the expense of American interests will ever erase Mr. Carter's miserable legacy as president. From his disastrous handling of both...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has asked U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to review the federal efforts to stop child abuse or other criminal activity in polygamous communities. Reid said the raid earlier this month at the Fundamentalist LDS Church ranch in Eldorado, Texas, "illustrates the depth of the problem and the pressing need for federal leadership to combat this problem." Two years ago, Reid wrote former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the federal government needs to work with state officials to look at the "broader pattern of serious criminal conduct by all those who use multiple marriages to...

A recent essay by Alison Piepmeier of the College of Charleston provides some of the best examples of the cruelty, heartlessness, and utter self-absorption embodied in the modern feminist movement. Aptly titled, “Choosing Us,” the essay shows that, for feminists, abortion is a device to prevent one thing: Feminist inconvenience. Alison begins her abortion story by informing her readers that her unwanted pregnancy began with an “ecstatic, hushed fling on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor a few weeks earlier” while her brother and his girlfriend were in the other room. She had used contraception, but the contraception had...

There could be some discord during the Tournament of Roses Parade as demonstrators promise to raise issues during the holiday spectacle that has been going on for more than a century. Human rights advocates plan to protest a float honoring the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and anti-war activists, including "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan, intend to rally for peace. The theme of this year's New Year's Day parade is "Passport to the World's Celebrations." It will feature 46 floats, 21 marching bands and 18 equestrian units. Volunteers have busy in Pasadena and nearby areas this past week decorating the floats with...

Gallup asked whether Americans would vote for candidates with particular characteristics. The first day of polling was the day of Mitt Romney's speech. Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [ITEM A-H READ IN ORDER], would you vote for that person? Catholic? 93 percent yes, 4 percent no. Black? 93 percent yes, 5 percent no. Jewish? 91 percent yes, 6 percent no. A woman? 86 percent yes,...

Craig Jessop, the director and conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, doesn't have a clue about self-promotion. Won't sit down to do interviews for stories about himself. Won't take credit. Insists on sharing the baton and the stage. Has a humble streak about as big as the "Hallelujah Chorus." Even now, he is cringing as he reads this, so let's move on to ... ... Mack Wilberg, the choir's associate director. Same story. He is loathe even to come out and take a bow on stage and has to be coaxed into it. After performances he disappears to who knows...

Mitt Romney walked onto the Olympic stage in 1999 a rich businessman still smarting from losing his first bid for public office. He walked off, three years later, a star-polished candidate who would be elected governor of Massachusetts in a matter of months. This was the place of his emergence and his transition. In rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, which had been tarnished by scandal, Mr. Romney learned the ways of Washington and the hurly-burly of politics, mastered the news media, built a staff of loyalists and made fund-raising connections in Utah that have proven vital to...

The first-ever comprehensive, one-stop "Welfare Complex" of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will open in Layton by the end of 2008. Now under construction at 900 W. Hill Field Road, the 65,000-square-foot facility on 6.3 acres of land will put seven different aspects of the LDS Church's welfare program — Deseret Industries, Distribution Services, Family Services, LDS Employment, Bishop's Storehouse, Family Home Storage Center and a Humanitarian Service Room — all under one roof. According to Scott Anderson, manager of construction for Deseret Industries, this type of new complex — a single-story block building — should become...

LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley read "1776" and "John Adams" cover to cover, but he only skimmed another best-seller by historian David McCullough, the 1,000-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Harry Truman. "At my age of 97," President Hinckley joked Wednesday with McCullough, "I cannot afford to read anything that long." McCullough joined additional luminaries and nearly 1,400 others crammed elbow-to-elbow into a downtown hotel ballroom to honor President Hinckley with the Municipal Citizen of the Century Award for his decades of work building bridges in Utah's communities. The Utah League of Cities and Towns presented the award on the...

MOUNTAIN MEADOWS, Washington County — The lilting melody of a lone bagpipe and a Christian sermon on forgiveness echoed across this small mountain valley Saturday, as did the names of 120 men, women and children who were massacred here. Their memory is a solemn warning about the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric, peer pressure and myth disguised as fact, according to Western historian and author David Bigler. Members of the Mountain Meadows Association and others whose ancestors were either killed or did the killing on Sept. 11, 1857, joined in a memorial service — and later, a dinner meeting — to...