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Listen While You Freep! All programs are replayed for 23 hours and again on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number - 866-884-TALK (8255) Heating the EDGE of a New Media! 1pm EST - THE BUZZ CUT! - "American Warriors!" Buzz is joined once again by Ollie North, retired Marine officer, best selling author and star of Fox News' "War Stories." Buzz and Ollie will discuss America's men and women in uniform, the patriots who fight for liberty and national security. War mongers? NO! Selfless citizens who serve their country in time of need? ABSOLUTELY!...

Two years and 25 million copies later, Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code," has all but gone into hiding. Gone are the days when he could sit undisturbed in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, sketching out the murder scene that opens his blockbuster novel. He has stopped taking commercial flights because of the commotion that usually accompanies him, with people lining up in the aisle to get his autograph on books, cocktail napkins, even the occasional air-sickness bag. He has given almost no interviews over the last year, immersing himself instead in researching and writing the...

VATICAN CITY - The cardinal leading the Vatican's charge against The Da Vinci Code urged Catholics today to shun it like rotten food and branded the bestseller "a sack full of lies" insulting the Christian faith.

ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- A top Catholic cardinal has blasted "The Da Vinci Code" as a "gross and absurd" distortion of history and said Catholic bookstores should take the bestseller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies." Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, became the highest ranking Italian Churchman to speak out against the book, an international blockbuster that has sold millions of copies. "(It) aims to discredit the Church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close...

Vatican appoints official Da Vinci Code debunker Michelle Pauli Tuesday March 15, 2005 Guardian Unlimited With sales of over 18m copies in 44 languages, topping bestseller charts all over the world and earning its author more than £140m, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a global phenomenon. And now it has become the first book ever to have an archbishop dedicated to debunking its contents. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and a possible successor to the Pope, has been appointed by the Vatican to rebut what the Catholic church calls the "shameful and unfounded errors" contained within...

The Roman Catholic Church in Italy has spoken out against what it says are "shameful and unfounded lies" in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, broke the church's official silence on the controversial book. Its story about the Church suppressing the "truth" that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene has convinced many fans. But the cardinal's spokesman denied reports that the clergyman was asked by the Vatican to hit back at the book. Carlo Arcolao told the BBC's News website that it had been the cardinal's own decision to make a public...

Look at the pictures of Leonardo's "Last Supper" before and after restoration. Then think of the big to-do about Mary Magdalen's allegedly sitting next to Christ in this painting. Then prepare to laugh -- and get mad at the thought of so many souls torn away from Christ because of Dan Brown's lying book. http://www.kensmen.com/catholic/xdavincilastsupperphotos.html

I'm reading The Da Vinci Code." That's one example. That and "The one book I'd love to be stuck with on a desert island is Conversations With God." The next television star to spout those statements to the press is going to get it from me. I understand, of course, that celebrities need to show the rest of us that they're literate. I sympathise completely because, let's face it, few of them are. At the same time, to pick titles that are strong contenders for 'Ghastly Prose of the Year' awards is tragic. Consider this, from the opening lines of...

ROME - Art experts and conservative clerics are holding an unusual "trial" in Leonardo da Vinci's hometown aimed at sorting out fact from fiction in the "The Da Vinci Code" after many readers took the smash hit novel as gospel truth. The event in Vinci, just outside of Florence, began Friday with an opening statement by Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a Leonardo museum. He said he will produce photographs and documents as evidence of the mistakes and historical inaccuracies contained in Dan Brown's best-seller. "Leonardo is misrepresented and belittled," Vezzosi said in a telephone interview hours before the event began....

There is no law against writing twaddle. Just as well, comes the joyful cry, otherwise many journalists would be out of a job and newspapers would have acres of white space. No, no, not newspapers … books. There is no law against writing several hundred pages of twaddle with no basis in fact and finding success with a bestseller. Good news, then, and good luck to him, for Dan Brown, whose The Da Vinci Code has now sold more than 1.8 million copies and rising. To whom? Conspiracy theorists who believe Brown’s assertions that secret organisations such as the Priory...

Dan Brown sparked controversy with his novel based on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper - now a French clothing company has followed suit in Italy. The authorities in Milan have banned a billboard featuring an all-female version of the 15th Century fresco, which the fashion house itself says was inspired by the hotly debated book. The campaign has run without controversy in both Paris and New York. But its use of religious symbols could offend Milan, the town hall ruled.

PARIS (AP) - Scenes for the film adaptation of the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" can, in principle, be shot in the Louvre, but details must still be worked out, the director of the famed museum said Friday. "There is really a very strong desire to see the movie for this book, which has world renown, shot in the Louvre," Henri Loyrette told France-Inter radio. "It is a yes in principle from our side." Filming the adaptation of Dan Brown's mystical thriller is expected to start in June, with Oscar-winner Ron Howard directing. Tom Hanks will play Robert Langdon,...

It wields huge influence in the Vatican yet is condemned as a sinister and ruthless Catholic sect. Now the fundamentalist group is taking control of a British parish for the first time - and one of its members is in the Cabinet. Peter Stanford gains rare access to the closed world of Opus Dei 17 January 2005 From the outside, Netherhall House in Nutley Terrace is a bland 1960s student block, tucked away in one of the maze of streets that tumble down the hill from London's leafy Hampstead Heath to the A41 dual carriageway. But behind the unassuming façade,...

Anticipation high for talk on 'heretic' best-seller EAST MEMPHIS By Lela Garlington Contact reporter October 30, 2003 Was Jesus fully human? Was the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene more than just disciple and Savior? What was the role of women in the earliest Christian movement? These are just some of the theological questions Rev. John W. Sewell will explore as he talks about the runaway best-seller "The Da Vinci Code" for the next three weekly Wednesday night sessions at St. John's Episcopal Church. Anyone who has read the book is invited to attend the discussion that will be held...

No Time Out for Christmas! It seems there is no time out in the nation's Cultural War. Not even Christmas is sacred. The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) is protesting Time magazine's publishing of statements against the virginity of Our Lady in the cover article of its December 13 edition. The American TFP is strongly objecting to what it considers a most unwarranted attack on Mary and the Catholic faith. The Time article cites authors that call into question the circumstances of Our Lord's birth with declarations like: "Critics may also have alleged that...

The newsweeklies discovered long ago that Jesus Christ sells magazines. So it is not surprising to find him on the covers of Time and Newsweek a few weeks before Christmas.... What are we to make of the Gospel accounts of the Nativity? For a Christian, of course, they are true, an article of faith. But faith does not preclude looking at them as historical and literary documents.... Since the late 18th century, there has been a scholarly assault on the four Gospels, and some of the "experts' quoted by Time and Newsweek are simply bringing up the rear of this...

The Knights Templar theme is also the plot of the new hit film, "National Treasure." We talked with the authors of "Templars in America" to see how their research matches up with the fictional movie. Who were the Knights Templar? On the surface they were a medieval, monastic order who gave the appearance of being part of the church and devout Christians. In actual fact, they were anything but that. Yes, they were a monastic order, they’d been approved by the pope, and they were virtually independent of all civil and other church authorities, being responsible through their grand master...

The mayor of a French village besieged by obsessive fans of The Da Vinci Code has been forced to dig up the body of a mysterious priest and encase it in a concrete mausoleum to deter rapacious treasure hunters. The cemetery has also been closed after tens of thousands of tourists swamped Rennes-le-Chateau, in southeastern France, where a 2,000-year-old local mystery inspired the plot of the best-selling religious thriller. Legend has it that the area, known as the "Valley of God" and once a remote Roman outpost, conceals an remarkable collection of religious relics and treasures. They are said to...

Tom Hanks has been pegged to play the lead role in Sony's upcoming film "The Da Vinci Code," the adaptation of author Dan Brown's best-selling thriller, Newsweek has learned. Director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer, the duo who helped make Hanks a star with their 1984 comedy "Splash" and rehired him 11 years later for "Apollo 13," cast Hanks as the globe-trotting scholar Robert Langdon, a decision based partially on the cerebral (riddle-solving, code-cracking) nature of the action in "Da Vinci," Newsweek reports in its Nov. 22 issue (on newsstands Monday, Nov. 15). "Tom is an exciting actor to...

History and critical thinking are inseparable for a good education. If read merely as fiction, The DaVinci Code would be an interesting mystery story. However, when the claim is made, both in the book and in the ABC documentary, "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," that a historical core lies behind the story, then it demands our attention. The DaVinci Code, with 6 million copies in print and a Time magazine cover, is a popularized version of what some radical theologians have been saying for some time now, as they have attempted to rewrite the early history of Christianity by relying on...