Free Republic

This year, the Grammy Awards weren't just about the music, they were also about making a statement in the same-sex marriage debate. Heavily hyped in the hours leading up to Sunday night's show, 34 couples -- both gay and straight -- exchanged rings and said "I do," as officiated on stage by Queen Latifah. The actress/rapper/talk show host was recently deputized by Los Angeles County to legally conduct wedding ceremonies and will sign the marriage certificates for each couple. The event took place on a stage set to resemble a giant chapel with stained-glass windows during a performance by hip-hop...

It’s not every day 33 couples of different types — same-sex, heterosexual, interracial — tie the knot at once on live TV. In fact, it was unprecedented…until the 56th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night. During their performance of “Same Love,” Grammy-award winning duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were joined on stage by Queen Latifah, who officiated a mass wedding, followed by a surprise performance by Madonna, who sang her hit “Open Your Heart.” “I look forward to the day when presiding over a historic wedding ceremony like this is just the norm,” Latifah, 43, told reporters backstage...

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis cap off an enormous year at tonight's GRAMMYs, garnering nominations in multiple categories -- including for Song of the Year for "Same Love." The duo will perform the marriage-equality anthem during the ceremony, and during the performance, dozens of couples will be wed in an on-air ceremony.

Former Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron, who is preparing for the NFL Draft, was watching the Grammys on Sunday and felt that the "really demonic" performances showed that "there is a lot of evil in the world." At the Grammys, Katy Perry dressed up as a witch and was "burned at the stake" in her act while gay couples were married to the song "same love." Though it was unclear what performance prompted the tweet, McCarron later re-tweeted a response in which one of his followers wrote, "I know right? I can only imagine what Katy's Preacher Father is thinking." Other...

The ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning when federal agents arrested two men at Kennedy Airport who were found with more than $140,000 hidden in cardboard boxes with honey jars bound for Yemen. For the agents, aware that terrorists were said to use honey shipments to hide money, that slender lead could not be ignored. If the world was suddenly different for everybody back then, in October 2001, with federal agents and prosecutors both properly alarmed and also under sudden pressure to make terrorism cases, they still relied on old techniques developed in generations of Mafia and...