Free Republic

The heart-wrenching photographs taken in the moments after the Boston Marathon bombings show the blue-and-yellow jackets of volunteers, police officers, fire fighters, emergency medical technicians, even a three-foot-high blue M&M. Conspicuously absent are any clerical collars or images of pastoral care. --SNIP-- When the priests at St. Clement's, three blocks away, heard the explosions, they gathered sacramental oils and hurried to the scene in hopes of anointing the injured and, if necessary, administering last rites, the final of seven Catholic sacraments. But the priests, who belong to the order Oblates of the Virgin Mary, weren't allowed at the scene. The...

US Secretary of State John Kerry again warned Wednesday that time was slipping away to reach a Middle East peace deal, and for the first time said there may only be a year or two left. Appearing before US lawmakers for the first time since becoming America's top diplomat in February, Kerry said his three trips to the region already were proof of his commitment to try to find a way to resume peace talks, AFP reported. The Obama administration is "trying to find out what is possible," Kerry told the House foreign affairs committee, as he laid out the...

Pastrami lovers came out bright and early Friday morning to line up in front of Langer’s Deli in Westlake as the restaurant celebrates its 65th anniversary by giving away free sandwiches. By 7 a.m., nearly 40 people had formed a queue outside the eatery on the corner of South Alvarado and West 7th streets. “This is a way for the owner, Norm Langer, to show his appreciation to his customers and to the community at large for everything they’ve given him,” said spokesman John Schwada. On Friday and Saturday, customers will receive a free No. 19 sandwich, the deli’s most...

American cities have never experienced modern total war, leaving Americans to imagine the impacts of catastrophic warfare on their urban centers. This article examines post-1945depictions of the death of U.S. cities in films, short stories, and novels from the “thriller,” “future war,” and science fiction genres since 1945. Cities are conspicuous by their absence from fictions of future war and its impacts, often disappearing offstage to allow the plot to follow survivors in small-town and rural settings. This pattern spans depictions of the immediate days after atomic bombing (or a surrogate disaster such as a stray meteor or plague) and...

As Tea Party Activists must know by now, the House passed line item veto powers for president Obama. SEE: US House votes to give Obama limited line-item veto Thursday February 9, 2012 “WASHINGTON(Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to give President Barack Obama a limited line-item veto authority on Wednesday in a rare display of bipartisanship on bitterly divisive spending and budget issues.” CLICK HERE for the roll call vote. I never though Paul Ryan would sell out to the Washington Establishment and approve granting this blackmailing power to the President, and ignore our Constitution’s written procedure regarding...

Who has really gone "well over the line," Rick Santorum or Barack Obama? Former White House Press Secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs is alleging that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum went "well over the line" when he questioned Obama's Christian values. Gibbs told ABC's "This Week" that it's time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that, if we disagree, we have to question character and faith." See here. If Robert Gibbs really believes that Rick Santorum went "well over the line" by merely questioning Obama's so-called "Christian virtues," he must then concede that Barack Obama...

During construction of the Hiawatha Line, the joint venture in charge of the light-rail project told federal authorities that minority and disadvantaged subcontractors were being included. Now it has agreed to pay the government $4.6 million to resolve allegations that those claims were false. According to the Justice Department, Minnesota Transit Constructors Inc. violated the federal false claims act by telling federal transportation officials that it hired companies qualified as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises to work on the light rail. The program helps businesses owned by minorities, women and other disadvantaged individuals obtain work on federal construction projects.

National Park Service spokesman Bill Line has lashed out at conservative critics of the trashing of the National Mall by attendees of the leftist One Nation Working Together rally held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.The Park Service is part of the Interior Department which is headed up by Obama appointee, former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (Dem.-CO).Line spoke to the Daily Caller, in an unprecedented protest of coverage by the Caller and other conservative news sites and blogs that criticized the One Nation Rally for the large amounts of trash left at the Lincoln Memorial, the World...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday noted that it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not him, who promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington. Pelosi famously vowed in 2006 to “drain the swamp” that ensnared Republican members and their leaders during the George W. Bush administration. During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Hoyer clarified that he has never used that phrase. "I didn’t use that term," Hoyer said when asked if he thinks Democrats have "drained the swamp." "What I believed and continue to believe is that we have made the ethics process work, and...

CALLER: Hey, my point to you was in the last hour you were speaking with another caller, and you guys had agreed that all these policy initiatives out of the administration were, in essence, a big-time federal power grab. My question is when are the states going to stand up and say, "No more?" If they don't stand up on Tenth Amendment grounds, which would be the right thing to do, why don't they stand up on selfish grounds? Their politicians, they're losing power. When are these state guys going to say enough? RUSH: This is an excellent point, and...

Lindsay Lohan faces ban from India Lindsay Lohan could be banned from travelling to India following a documentary and false child trafficking claims. By Dean Nelson in New Delhi Published: 12:24PM GMT 18 Mar 2010 Hollywood actress and model Lindsay Lohan could be blacklisted by the Indian government following her trip to the country last December when she falsely claimed she had rescued 40 child workers. Her comments, which highlighted the plight of child labourers, ruffled feathers in India and alerted officials who discovered she had broken the country's visa rules by travelling as a tourist while working on a...

RENO, Nev. -- A fight broke out Thursday at a Reno, Nev., clinic giving shots for swine flu when someone reportedly tried to cut in line. Washoe County Health District spokeswoman Judy Davis says she didn't have any details of the incident, but it involved people in high-risk groups waiting for a chance to get the shot. A witness told the Reno Gazette-Journal that a man took a swing at a woman, then jumped on her and they fell to the ground. They left after a security guard stepped in and broke up the fight. Davis says 1,200 vaccines were...

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel posted this photo essay showing the HUGE lines of people being forced to wait outside in the rain for flu shots.

I recently had my second opportunity in Sderot to host a group from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). EAPPI is a program supported and funded by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, a major supporter of the anti-Israel divestment campaign. According to NGO Monitor, EAPPI policies reflect a radically pro-Palestinian agenda, presenting a biased Palestinian narrative and failing to make any mention of Palestinian terror or the human rights of Israelis. In fact, the principal agenda of EAPPI includes the Ecumenical Campaign to End the Illegal Occupation of Palestine.

The following is the full text of Caroline Glick's speech after accepting the 'Guardian of Zion' award. For nearly as long as I can remember, the image of the watchman on the gates of Jerusalem has been the singular image of Jewish strength for me. It is has always been to the Jewish watchmen, ever vigilant, to whom we have owed our lives, and our survival as a people. Today these watchmen preserve our freedom in our land. For 50 generations in exile, it was the memory of those Jewish Centurions, manning the barricades, that inspired us to keep faith...

US President Barack Obama has drawn a line on Israeli settlement expansion before he meets with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas as part of his urgent quest to revive peace talks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Obama made it clear, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited here last week, that he wants "no natural growth exceptions" to his call for a settlement freeze.

The New Haven firefighter case is one of the most controversial rulings in Sotomayor's record, and one that will no doubt be a prime source of criticism from conservatives. The case, Ricci vs. DeStefano, was brought by Frank Ricci and a group of his firefighting colleagues (all non-black including one Hispanic man). The men were denied promotion after an examination to determine their eligibility to move up yielded no successful black candidates. As a result, the New Haven authority decided to discard the exam results and grant no promotions. Ricci and his colleagues argued they'd been discriminated against, but their...

Today, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced that a statewide study of future rail lines would include all options. That's something, supporters of a line through Rochester feared wouldn't happen. So today, there is new hope the city will see the dream of a rail line, come true. It takes a little over an hour to travel from Rochester to St. Paul. A new rail line could cut that time in more than half. “Whether is the legislature, or University of Minnesota, or other things to get up there and back, obviously it would be a real benefit," Brede says. That's...

Raisinet Theory on Immigration The political obfuscation of the phrase "back of the line".... Consider hundreds of people waiting in line for a new hit movie. They've been waiting outside the theater for hours in the cold pouring rain. Along come a bunch of people who sneak in the back door of the movie theater and sit down in front of the big screen. The manager of the theater knows that it's unfair, but instead of kicking them out and making them get in the back of the line outside in the rain, he stipulates that as punishment for cutting...

Mitt Romney is an intelligent man who sometimes seems eager to find bushel baskets under which to hide his light. Romney faults Rudy Giuliani for opposing the presidential line-item veto. But Giuliani doesn't, unfortunately. The facts -- not that they loom large in this skirmish -- are: When in 1997 Bill Clinton used the line-item veto, with which Congress had just armed him, to cancel $200 million for New York state, Giuliani harried Clinton all the way to the Supreme Court. It agreed with Giuliani that the line-item veto was an unconstitutional violation of the "presentment" clause. Today, Giuliani says,...