Free Republic

It’s the one drink you don’t want your new date to order during your first outing. Some Chicago bars are using a new method to help protect women’s safety. CBS 2’s Audrina Bigos shows us a secret code system that triggers a silent alarm if women feel they’re in danger. Inside New Line Tavern in the West Loop, Marisa Kersten noticed a sign in the ladies’ room. It tells women how they can get assistance from the staff in event a first date implodes or is turning scary. They need to repeat some secret codes at the bar. Staff member...

A radio listener recent wrote me about an interview I did on EWTN Radio with Barbara McGuigan. I mentioned that I had been doing a teaching on dating and modesty at a Theology on Tap Session. At that session I charged the men not to leave that night until they had asked a woman out on a date.This intrigued the listener who wanted me to expand on this just a bit and what if anything she could do to get the twenty-somes in her family (both male and female) to start dating again. Here is something of the response I...

Is Harry Reid trying to woo Charlie Crist into caucusing with the Democrats? According to the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Wallsten, the Florida governor has had more than one conversation recently with the Senate Majority Leader about what he might do if he wins his campaign for the state’s open Senate seat. Crist, who quit the GOP to run as an Independent in April, hasn’t said which party he’ll caucus with if he wins. Asked this morning for clarification on the substance of the Reid/Crist talks, Jim Manley, a spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader, gave the Upshot a "no...

TEMECULA – Seeking to reverse recent setbacks and improve their long-range political position, California's gambling tribes moved yesterday to establish common ground with labor-backed Democrats who blocked five new gambling compacts last summer. The tribes not only invited Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to speak at a national gaming conference at Pechanga Resort and Casino, but also embraced him as someone who “could be one of our own,” and then gave him an extended standing ovation. Afterward, tribal leaders and others lined up to have pictures taken with the mayor. Just six years ago, some of the same tribes helped...

Cowboy president is courting disaster, says Powell's man By Francis Harris (Filed: 21/10/2005) Colin Powell's right-hand man has launched a blistering attack on the White House, describing President George W Bush as "cowboyish", his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak" and American foreign policy as "courting disaster". The attack came from Col Larry Wilkerson, who for four years was Mr Powell's chief of staff at the state department during the first Bush administration. In a sometimes savagely phrased speech at a Washington think-tank, the former US marine said that the Bush team had so damaged the country's foreign...

Men who spend big money wining and dining their dates are not frittering away hard-earned cash. According to a pair of UK researchers, they are merely employing the best strategy for getting the girl without being taken for granted. Using mathematical modelling, Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London, UK, found that wooing girls with costly, but essentially worthless gifts – such as theatre tickets or expensive dinners out – is a winning courtship strategy for both sexes. Females can assess how serious or committed a male plans to be and males can ensure they are not just...

Gay & Lesbian Churches Promote Courtship Several leaders of the Metropolitan Community Church, have announced a courtship mentoring program to replace the random, sometimes destructive "dating" which has hitherto been the norm for romance among the gay and lesbian community. Courtship introduces supervision (sometimes, 100% chaperoning), and careful spiritual counselling, into the pair-bonding process, with romantic activities and emotions only allowed full sway after the success of the relationship is reasonably assured. The courtship movement had its genesis among the fundamentalist homeschoolers in the 1970's, but lately it has been spreading through other segments of Christendom. Its adoption by gay...

It was hard to tell who was more surprised at the Ofer court last week – the Israeli military judge presiding over the hearing, or the accused, Muhammad Zeidat, 22, a Fatah Tanzim member suspected of placing two bombs near troops and involvement in two shooting attacks. During the court proceedings, Zeidat's girlfriend stood up and asked the judge for permission to conduct a brief engagement ceremony before Zeidat returns to jail. "I know that my English language is poor, but Muhammad and I planned to be engaged before he was arrested," said Mona al-Adra, 22. "I did not come...