Free Republic

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis hurried through the medieval monastery that is part of her 500-room palace. It was a chilly autumn night in Bavaria, with rain spitting outside, as she arrived at the chapel to pray. The room glowed red, lit from a crypt below where her husband and other family members lay in their coffins. The princess knelt and soft bells sounded. Her dinner guests, a British baroness and her husband, slipped in to join her as a priest led prayers. Princess Gloria, 64, who burst onto the international scene in the 1980s..as since evolved into a...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With the potential to nominate as many as three or four Supreme Court justices, there is little doubt that one legacy President Bush will have is how he shaped the views of the nation's top judicial panel. When Bush begins nominating new justices to replace the aging members of the court, one of the key battles will revolve around abortion. A recentCBS-New York Times poll found that 64 percent of those polled said they thought Bush would appoint pro-life judges who favor making abortion illegal. They may be right. A survey of the most often discussed...

WASHINGTON - Soon after President Bush took office, two events set in motion what has become an extraordinary battle between the White House and Senate Democrats over the appointment of federal judges. First, the new president and his aides turned to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group, to help select candidates. Of Mr. Bush's first batch of nominees, 8 of 11 were proposed by the society. There could have been no clearer signal that Mr. Bush intended to follow the pattern set by his father and President Ronald Reagan of shifting the courts rightward and reaping the political benefit...