Free Republic

When Pope Benedict XVI greets U.S. President Barack Obama at the Vatican on July 10, the symbolism and sheer star power of the encounter will keep the pundits chattering away. The photo op alone is worth a thousand words: The 82-year-old man in white, the world's most recognizable religious leader and head of its largest single denomination comes face-to-face with the charismatic first black President of the world's last superpower. And the scheduling efforts of both the Vatican and the White House suggest a shared appreciation of the symbolic weight the first encounter between Obama and Benedict could carry. It...

Jurgen Van Acker is 27 years old and severely handicapped. He cannot walk, talk, sit or eat, but mentally there is nothing wrong with him. With the help of his computer he can communicate. Recently he became a television celebrity in Belgium when he asked that the welfare office pay his prostitutes. When Jurgen turned 18, his mother Frie Van Acker told him all about sex and asked whether he would like to have sex. Jurgen indicated “No.” One evening three years later, however, he wrote on his computer: “I want sex.” That same evening, Frie contacted a prostitute. Every...

Cubs Win. All you need to know.

<p>Never mind that business about a camel passing through the eye of a needle, said to be analogous, in its difficulty, to a rich man entering heaven. In ads all over town, Citibank has been telling us to "live richly," and it is now doing so on a huge billboard -- 140 feet long -- above the portico of Grace Church, at Broadway and 10th Street. The avenue bends just where Grace Church stands, making the 1846 building visible for miles downtown, a beautiful neo-gothic jewel nestled among taller structures, a sacred pause before Broadway veers uptown to theatrical fame.</p>

Sen. John Kerry spent the weekend in the Hamptons but never got to the beach. There is no time for sand and sea when you are gathering money for a presidential campaign. The man from Massachusetts had a pretty good couple of days. Several dozen New Yorkers (mostly) paid $500 each to hear him at a brunch in Southampton, where he was introduced as the candidate with: "the war record of John Kennedy, the brains of Bill Clinton (news - web sites), the toughness of Lyndon Johnson and the hair of Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)." A good time...

<p>THERE'S nothing genteel about this finger food. Corporate bigwigs are forking over as much as $700 a head for dinner parties where guests are served sushi off a naked woman.</p> <p>The secret gourmet trend has taken off in the past six months in L.A., and now New York is getting on the act.</p>