Free Republic

High up in the clouds, John F. Kennedy Jr. discovered a serenity and peace that often eluded him on the ground. "The sunset is so beautiful," he radioed his flight instructor on his first solo flight in 1996. "Can I go around one more time?" Permission was granted. And for the next three years, Kennedy escaped the burden of being the son of a beloved slain President, the burden of being a sex symbol hounded by paparazzi, by soaring above it all. But tragedy is the Kennedy family curse. In retrospect, it no longer shocks or surprises that the thing...

The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal. At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and...