Free Republic

If the Rep and Dem Senators leading the fight to gut our interrogation options in the face of a vaguely worded clause in the Geneva Conventions just stopped talking and thought about what they were saying, they would be surprised to find out they were interpretting the conventions in such a way as to violate the purpose for the conventions to exist in the first place. The Geneva Conventions were developed to assure soldiers and civilians were treated humanely during the inhumane times of war. Therefore, any act by the terrorists should be no more allowed than acts of misguided...

PBS ranch series receives some local advice Cowboy life BY RAY WESTBROOK AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Cowboys riding hard after cattle in the heat of a Big Bend summer in 1867 could find relief from their work only by falling exhausted at night onto their crudely fashioned camp site. It was life hanging by a thread, with neighbors perhaps 25 miles away and no way to reduce the distance by speed. Today, the scene has been repeated south of Alpine, except a TV camera followed the cowboys wherever they rode. Producers of a reality show about 19th century ranching, which will air nationally...

Syria demands humanitarian access to Golan Damscus says it will oppose emergency service emblem agreement unless it can send 'humanitarian workers' to Golan The approval of a new emblem allowing Israelis to join the Red Cross movement was held up Tuesday by Syria's demand that Israel allow its humanitarian workers into the Golan Heights. The move could delay until at least Wednesday a decision by the 192 signatories of the Geneva Conventions on a "Red crystal" Emblem that Israeli paramedics could use in place of the red cross or Muslim red crescent. Israel's Magen David Adom - or Red Shield...

An Iraqi blogger in Baghdad has posted on his site, THE MESOPOTAMIAN, a letter or an "urgent message to the American people and the Coalition, on behalf of the Baghdadis": Greetings Friends, Firmness must not be equated with intransigence. As our Book says, “ If they veer towards peace you do likewise” (Bad translation of the Qoranic verse). There is a very thin line that separates the two methodologies. Firmness must be exercised towards a political end, and must not be allowed to become counterproductive. Now the moderates from all parties who can exert real influence must be given support...

What Caused Minneapolis? by Les Fairfield What drove the Episcopal Church over the cliff at Minneapolis in 2003? What led the Church to approve homosexual practice, by approving the Rev. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire? Was it mere cowardice? A failure of nerve? A capitulation to the culture of white upper-middle-class American suburbia? In part the decision at Minneapolis grew out of all these causes. But the most important cause was theological. In the 1960s the leaders of the Episcopal Church revived a non-Christian religion called "Catholic Modernism." And that theological faux pas led directly to the approval...