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"Shriners hide the terrifying abuses of a secretive organization behind smiling clowns, candy and tear-jerking, sentimental ads for children’s hospitals while soliciting millions from an unsuspecting uninformed public."

I have a contractor who works on a property I manage. Super guy. He is in to the local Shriners organization in a big way. I forwarded a picture of him in a parade to the owner of the property. The owner's response was, "He's into all that stuff." Am I missing something? Yes, I have heard about the Masons' connection to the Shriners but all they do to help sick, particularly burned children is pretty ok in my book.

A San Diego County Shriner group is seeking $20 million from the federal government, claiming it is responsible for the destructive brush fire that burned their Mount Laguna camp last July. The Al Bahr Shriners filed a complaint against the Bureau of Land Management Friday to recoup losses caused by the Chariot Fire. That blaze scorched 7,055 acres and destroyed or damaged 150 structures at the Al Bahr Shrine Camp, which included an 87-year-old lodge, two dormitories, five rental cabins and a dining hall, the complaint says. Last month, Cal Fire announced investigators had determined the cause of the Chariot...

Shriners ask city for permission to hold a 5 and 1/2 HOUR parade. City grants 3 Hours so they are parading double file. See practice video. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/420/index.html?media_id=147656471

Q. "You were asked about world government and you said 'there is no world government'. What is your role in groups like the bohemian club, freemasonry, and that sort of thing, Council on Foreign Relations? Gingrich: "I don't belong to the Bohemian Club, I have no role in freemasonry. And my primary activity in Council on Foreign Relations was on figuring out how to fight terrorism"

SOUTH BEND — An Elkhart man was placed in handcuffs Monday and threatened with 230 days in jail after he refused a judge’s order to remove his fez. According to police reports, the 56-year-old man was attending a court hearing Monday for his son in St. Joseph Superior Court Judge John M. Marnocha’s courtroom when court staff asked the man to remove his fez. The man refused, saying it was his constitutional right to wear the fez – a tall, round hat usually adorned with a tassel – and refused to take it off. Workers inside the courtroom said the...

Arielle Levin Becker of the Washington Post wrote about John Philip Sousa’s professional stature as regards his past association with the Marine Corps Band: If there’s any question about the place Sousa has in the band’s memory, a visit to the director’s office settles any doubts.  Sousa is immortalized in four photographs and paintings, including one of him in a Navy uniform, and perhaps in a fifth — there is speculation that, in the front row of a Civil War-era photograph of the band, a young Sousa is hiding between two trombone players. The baton that [departing U.S. Marine band...

The problems facing Spokane's Shriners Hospital for Children are daunting: too few patients, high costs, falling donations. It's a troublesome scenario that has put the hospital on the short list for closure as its parent organization staggers from massive investment losses that threaten to wipe out one of the best-known philanthropic organizations of the past century. "Either we close six hospitals now, or we might have to close all 22 in a matter of five to six years," national Shriners board Chairman Ralph Semb said last week. "Our entire system is at stake. There's no easy fix," he said. The...

Facing hard times, Shriners may close 6 hospitals Buzz Up Send By KATRINA A. GOGGINS, Associated Press Writer Katrina A. Goggins, Associated Press Writer – Thu Apr 9, 7:03 pm ET GREENVILLE, S.C. – Shriners hospitals, which have provided free care since before the Great Depression, are considering closing a quarter of their facilities as donations stagnate, costs increase and the charity's endowment shrivels. The group's director says it's the only viable option. Officials at the Florida-based organization say it is siphoning $1 million a day from its endowment to balance the budget for 22 hospitals in the U.S., Canada...

Shriners Hospitals for Children, an organization where the practice of medicine has long been unfazed by finances, is struggling with a money crunch and may close some of its hospitals. Rising health care costs and an endowment that has lost $2 billion -- a quarter of its value -- in three years may give Shriners no other choice but to shrink the 22-hospital system to save it. At the group's annual meeting on Monday in Minneapolis, 1,400 Shrine representatives are scheduled to vote on closing the hospital there. Officials at the Shriners International headquarters in Tampa said the Minneapolis hospital...

It might be a bit cynical, not to mention premature, to call President Bush's new $2.9 trillion budget "dead on arrival." But the myriad proposals on everything from the Pentagon to the National Park Service are certainly going to be massaged a bit-mutilated in some cases, probably-by the new Democratic-controlled Congress. One thing you can bank on, though, is that when all is said and done, nixed and negotiated, Uncle Sam will still be in the red. As the White House figures it, the federal government will be spending $244 billion more than it collects in 2007 (or about 1.8...

[John] Wayne, arguably the No. 1 all-time cinema hero, bought into the most valuable tenets of the Shriners' fun brand of freemasonry – friendship, morality and brotherly love. Who wouldn't want to join a fraternity with tenets like those? Apparently, a lot of us these days don't. In 1975, the same year Universal Pictures released "Rooster Cogburn," the Shriners opened Afifi Shrine Temple next to the Scottish Rite Temple, on nearly 20 acres in Tacoma's West End. They needed more space to accommodate a growing membership that numbered roughly 8,700 Afifi Shriners plus their circus calliope, old clown jalopies, parade...

She is a national hero in her homeland, hailed for plucking her little sister from their family home as it was consumed by flames. Now, Nastya Ovchar, her body burned extensively during the rescue of her sister, lies in a room at Shriners Burns Hospital Boston, half a world away from her home in the Ukraine. If they made a movie about Nastya, they could well call it ''The President and the Little Girl," for it was the intervention of a national leader who had endured his own share of physical suffering that assured the 5-year- old could receive lifesaving...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

A 2,300-mile trip on an airplane is a one-day foray, in a car it's a long trip that will take a few days, but on horseback, it is an epic journey that can last months. It is with the locomotive means of the epic journeyer that Bob Gacke of Port La Vaca, Texas, has chosen to undertake a 2,300-mile odyssey across the American interior to bring attention to, and raise money for, Shriner Hospitals. "I've been a Shriner for 25 years and I just have a real passion for the care of these kids in these hospitals," Gacke said Tuesday...

23 people - and one goat - spill out of overloaded taxiby SHARIKA REGCHAND A minibus taxi carrying 17 adults, six children and a goat was impounded in Commercial Road on Saturday. Senior Provincial Traffic Inspector Zain Mahomed said traffic officials stopped the taxi, which was en route to the Transkei, when they noticed that the sliding door was not closed properly. He said a passenger was sitting on top of luggage and holding a goat with its head sticking out of the door. The taxi was impounded and taken to the Mkondeni testing grounds where it was found to...