Free Republic

The pontiff has a bad habit of dissing women and marginalizing sexual minorities. Is he as liberal as his image suggests?News emerged last week that Pope Francis has strongly criticized modern theories of gender, comparing them to the educational policies of Hitler and the destructive possibilities of the nuclear arms race.In an interview included in a new book by Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, Pope Francis: This Economy Kills, and released in part in the Italian daily La Stampa, Francis compared gender theory to nuclear arms: “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few...

It would be funny if the stakes — the future direction of this country for many years to come — weren’t so high. It’s still hard not to feel just a bit of schadenfreude watching many of Barack Obama’s supporters, particularly those who are among the well-positioned or financially well-off, fidget, whine, and moan as they discover what those of us who actually researched and studied the guy before the election knew about him. Slowly but surely it is dawning on many of these elites that Obama is exactly what he was in rare unguarded moments during his presidential campaign,...

Europeans were among the loudest cheerleaders for Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. Soon after he won the Democratic candidacy 200,000 people turned out in Berlin to hear him speak. But now that he is settled in the White House, many Europeans feel snubbed. Just six weeks into his presidency, Europeans are already fretting that Obama has yet to visit Europe. His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, flew west for her first foreign trip, spending a week in Asia last month, before traveling to the Middle East. Meanwhile, Obama has returned the Winston Churchill bust that sat in the Oval...

Obama: We're in the worst recession since the Great Depression! We've got to take this serious. We must be bold. I know, let's bbq up some pork. Let's have a pork bbq big enough to feed the entire nation. But why stop there? Let's really be bold and bbq up enough pork to feed the entire world! I'm such a smart economist. All the rest of you only think you're economists. Now go vote yes on my pork bbq.

Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won. That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy. As far as political arguments go, “I won” has its power—provided it’s made on behalf of an agenda ratified by the American electorate. But Obama didn’t campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan. If he had pledged in...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Dozens of Iranians burnt posters of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in Tehran on Tuesday and waved Palestinian flags in support of Gaza, according to a witness and photographs. Iranian demonstrators have often burnt effigies or pictures of U.S. presidents in protests. This appeared to be the first time Obama's picture had been defaced so publicly, a week before his inauguration as president.

Husband cut off wife’s ears, nose on Eid day by Abudlhadi Hairan December 23, 2007 Qalat: A man named Mumtaz in southern Zabul province of Afghanistan first shaved wife, Nazia’s head and then cut off her ears, and nose and damaged her teeth on the first day of Eid ul Adha, an Islamic ritual of sacrifice. Hospital sources in Qalat, center of Zabul, told this scribe by phone that Nazia, 17, was admitted on Wednesday (First day of Eid) evening and now she was in a critical condition due to the severe beating she has borne. Provincial Police Chief of...