Free Republic

Seattle mayor Greg Nickels (D) announced that henceforth weapons will be banned from all city-owned property—as a safety measure. The ban is believed to have been inspired by a shooting last month that injured three people at Seattle Center. Nickels allowed that criminals aren’t likely to abide by the new rules, but contended, nonetheless, that safety would be enhanced because “thugs won’t have to exert as much force to get what they want. A robber won’t have to shoot if he knows his victim is unarmed. So, some money may change hands, but there’ll be no need for violence. Even...

An Ohio county public library has closed its meeting rooms to the public rather than allow them to be used by a Christian group. George and Cathy Vandergriff wanted to host a Crown Financial Ministries "Financial Freedom" workshop in a public meeting room at the Clermont County, Ohio, public library. Tim Chandler, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), says the couple was told that, because the class would be quoting from the Bible, they could not hold it at the library. "The Supreme Court said, more than 25 years ago, that once you've opened up meeting space, you...

It will start with warning signs and bureaucratic policy reviews. Or pat-downs and bag searches at park entrances, festival gates and holiday events? Although resorting to such measures would be a "shame," Nickels said, he would not rule them out during a Monday news conference to announce his prohibition of concealed weapons on city property. "We do hope that our parks and our Seattle Center events remain open and accessible and welcoming to all," Nickels said. "But we will also make sure that they're safe." Nor is it yet clear whether Nickels' move will land the city in court --...

SEATTLE -- Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has signed an executive order that asks all departments to come up with a plan within 30 days to ban guns at all property owned by the city.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has signed an executive order that asks all departments to come up with a plan within 30 days to ban guns at all property owned by the city. The mayor's office says a public hearing will be held to gather comment on Monday's order but it does not require city council approval.Nickels says the added gun restriction is needed because of a shooting at last month's Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center that wounded two people.

Thousands of stone Ten Commandments monuments on highly visible properties in communities across the nation, millions of smaller plaques in Christian and Jewish homes, and a massive bronze showing the biblical image of Moses holding the stones on which God wrote… The target of the ACLU? Nope. Thanks to the ACLU! Joe Worthing, the executive director for Project Moses, says his organization, only a few years old, is well on its way to reaching many of its goals of placing Ten Commandments monuments all over the nation, and it's because of a complaint from the ACLU. The ministry was launched...

Washington DC, Apr 4, 2008 / 06:40 am (CNA).- The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case in its next term to decide whether a Utah city must allow a monument to be installed in a public park by a New Age group that promotes pyramids, mummification, and sexual ecstasy, Cybercast News Service reports. This week Supreme Court justices agreed to hear a case involving a Salt Lake City-based religion called Summum, whose founder claims to have been visited by “highly intelligent beings.”  The group, arguing on First Amendment grounds, has sought to erect a monument to its “Seven Aphorisms”...

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a free speech case in which a church wants to place a religious monument in a park. Officials in Pleasant Grove City, Utah, asked the court to step into the lawsuit brought by the religious group known as Summum, saying that if the group prevails, governments would be inundated with demands to display donated monuments. The dispute stems from Pleasant Grove City's refusal to allow the display of a "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" monument in the same park that is the home for a Ten Commandments monument donated by the Fraternal Order of...

PRESERVING Boston Common should mean much more than keeping the grass green ("Large events may become uncommon at city's beloved park," Page B1, March 20). The Common was America 's very first public grounds and the city should not regulate away the right of the people to assemble peaceably there for the sake of a greener lawn. If greener grass is what the city wants, they can achieve that by not allowing dogs to urinate on the grounds. Boston Parks Department maintenance people have told anyone who asks that dog urine, not peaceable assemblies, is what damages the grass most.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether a religious group must be allowed to put its monument in a city park near a similar Ten Commandments display. The justices agreed to hear an appeal by the city, Pleasant Grove in Utah, arguing that a lower-court ruling for the religious group could affect whether cities around the nation must display privately donated monuments on public property. The Summun religious group, founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, sought to erect a monument to the tenets of its faith, called the "Seven Aphorisms," in a...

A nearly 50-year-old monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments does not violate the Constitution just because it sits nearly alone on public grounds in a Washington city, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday. The division between church and state is a core principle of American democracy, but courts have long struggled to find exactly where the dividing line falls. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cited precedent rulings in this latest case, which involves a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) granite monument near the Old City Hall in Everett, Washington, about 25 miles north of Seattle. The court found that the...

Another tradition is making some people uneasy: the Easter Bunny. Some folks, worried that the Easter Bunny correlates too closely with Christian traditions and is therefore offensive to non-Christians, are abandoning the little fellow. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the town of Walnut Creek renamed its Easter Bunny the "Spring Bunny." The Spring Bunny participates in the town's storied annual tradition, the Spring Egg Hunt. Some malls across America are changing the Easter Bunny's name, too. According to WorldNetDaily.com, some store managers are calling their bunny "Baxter the Bunny," "Garden Bunny" or "Peter Rabbit." Peter Rabbit was the name...

Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say It’s Wrong By Jim DeMint and J. David Woodard Thursday, January 17, 2008, 6:47 AM On August 31, 2007, the president of Clemson University opened a letter from the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union that read, “Coach [Tommy] Bowden . . . has abused his authority as . . . head football coach by imposing his strong personal religious beliefs upon student-athletes under his charge.” In published reports, cited in the letter, the coach encouraged his players to attend one church service as a team during the two-a-day...

Christianity and Christians in general are encountering many types of persecution in the public square, even though many critics would disagree. Some of the more prominent examples include the removal of the Ten Commandments from public buildings along with the banishment of prayer and Bible-reading. Christians throughout the United States are having their faith put to the test. Christians are facing many diverse circumstances in the public squares of America. This is caused by the anti-Christian forces that are attempting to ban the mentioning of God’s name in the public square. The major attack against Christians in the public square...

A proposed Kwanzaa celebration at the County Commission chambers caused an e-mail war among Shelby County employees earlier this week. Now it has also prompted a lawsuit. Probate Court Clerk Chris Thomas filed a complaint in Chancery Court Friday to block the Kwanzaa celebration set to be hosted by County Commissioner Henri Brooks on Dec. 26. “The reason I filed the lawsuit is because of the discrimination against Christians, Jews and other faiths by allowing the Kwanzaa celebration to happen and by not allowing us to have a ceremony,” Thomas said. “I’ve asked Mayor (A C) Wharton to stop it...

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- A Wiccan pentacle has joined a controversial nativity scene at Green Bay's City Hall. The manger scene was put up by City Council President Chad Fradette, who wanted to defy an anti-religious group that was protesting another nativity scene in a nearby town. However, the Wiccans said that was an abuse of power and requested that the Wiccan symbol go up next to the nativity. "I want to see all those other faiths that we don't get an opportunity to see in Green Bay, Wis., because we are sometimes relegated to that," said Wiccan Kelly Winters....

By Pastor Ted Weis, Congregational Church, Little River, Kansas Characteristic of the mainline church tradition, the United Church of Christ (UCC) is a denomination committed to freedom of thought, social justice, and understanding others. So when you enter the doors of a local UCC church, it's possible to hear advocacy on a whole host of social issues, from many viewpoints-- at a worship service, a Sunday School class, or a community event. The free exchange and consideration of ideas is essential in order for an individual or group to decide beliefs and direct actions. To this end, United Church of...

This is the time of year, as Hillary Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate “the birth of a homeless child” — or, in Al Gore’s words, “a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.” Just for the record, Jesus wasn’t “homeless.” He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic over-regulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare it’s surely only a matter of time...

Let's keep religion out of the presidential campaign, if possible. I say, to each his own. Let's rejoice that the founding fathers established a secular nation and that no one has to publicly defend his or her beliefs. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- put on the defensive because of his Mormon faith -- recently felt compelled to explain his religion to skeptical voters. So he tore a page out of John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign appearance before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston. At the time, Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, had to dispel rumors that he would be...

American voters are behaving curiously. A recent Fox 5/Washington Times/Rasmussen poll reveals interesting insight on religion in the public sphere. The poll is seemingly in sync with much of America's failure to acknowledge faith as we head down a ruinous path of social pathology. Indeed, decades after taking prayer out of public schools, hijacking Christmas and Easter and replacing those two holy seasons with the secular nicknames "winter break" and "spring break" and treating the displays of the Ten Commandments like a top-10 list on a pop-culture magazine, comes this latter-day refrain: Religion and politics don't mix. Small wonder we...