Free Republic

A GUN-control group has called for a total ban on semi-automatic handguns to prevent them falling into criminal hands with deadly consequences. Speaking at the launch of a new national anti-handgun advertising campaign, National Coalition for Gun Control chair Sam Lee said the future looked bleak in relation to guns. "What we are going to see in the future is more high-powered handguns on the streets because gun manufacturers are developing what are called quick-draws, which means they can be quickly grabbed and aimed at someone," Ms Lee said. The campaign launch comes just days after the fatal drive-by shootings...

In an effort to increase its ranks for coming wars, the U.S. military is recruiting - and paying - children as young as 14 years old for future combat duty. By Tim Schmitt Colin Hadley spends most of his days after school skateboarding or playing Halo II on his new X-Box with friends. He sleeps until noon or later on weekends and rarely, if ever, does any schoolwork outside the classroom, where he pulls down solid C's and a few D's - just enough to get by. He's the typical 15-year-old American boy: cocksure in demeanor, certain the world revolves...

Is it just me?? Or is every news network on "Pope Death Watch". It seems to me they are just foaming at the mouth to show the "The Pope is Dead" graphic on the screen. Now with doctors, hospice workers, and Priests reinforcing this to keep the viewers watching.... I know the Pope is dieing, but its almost like the news networks are almost impatient.

James Robbins in the National Review explains the media's field day with one phrase from the 600-page report on U.S. intelligence. Although the report was wide-ranging and discussed many important intelligence issues, including an underestimation of al Qaeda's WMD program and a failure to note how strongly bin Laden wanted to acquire and use radiological weapons, the media focused solely on the words "dead wrong," in regards to Iraq's WMD intelligence. It is pretty clear to everyone that for decades now, our intelligence capabilities have been slowly destroyed, a process which only accelerated during the Reno-Deutch-Gorelick-Berger years of the Clinton...

The death of Terri Schiavo has taught us some tough lessons about the matter of life and death and about the proponents on both sides of this issue. Pro-life and pro-choice (right to die) advocates hooked up in a battle for the ages. While they set their feet in cement in this war of good and evil, they succeeded only in cementing the fate of the only powerless person in this entire sordid affair, namely, Terri Schiavo. Terri, was given a pair of cement shoes and was sent off to wear them in a better place where she would no...

One single tune that lingers in my mind from the musical, My Fair Lady, is "Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait." And on occasion I love to make all those horrible, inarticulate sounds that dear Eliza Doolittle made while trying to recite "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." Bless her heart . . . with excruciating effort, she tried her hardest to enunciate words as she was directed. Her H's were silent, her language was mangled, and she could never please the arrogant professor, Henry Higgins, who made a bet he could change this street...

The Score? American Thinker 1, New York Times 0. Less than a week ago, we debunked a trashy propaganda effort by the New York Times to paint Colombian President Uribe's war against Marxist terrorists as a losing effort. We called it The Fallujah Treatment because it duplicated what they tried to do to U.S. troops during the battle of Fallujah. Back then, the mainstream media claimed Americans were 'losing' Fallujah well before the battle was finished. Their aim was to demoralize us. After the Times piece on Colombia appeared, a slew of equally gloomy reporting followed because the mainstream media...

A Glimpse Ahead Timothy Snodgrass The Impossible Will Come Alive In 2005 01/28/05 In January of 2004, as we began to intercede for the New Year the Holy Spirit gave us the prophetic slogan, "The Seas will Roar in 2004". This year we were given a new slogan, "The Impossible will come Alive in 2005". As the veil of darkness begins to come down over nations and regions, along with great shakings will come great breakthroughs; signs, wonders, healings and a spectacular release of miracles in impossible circumstances. This year, although we are ultimately poised to gain much ground, there...

Guest columnist King County voters in good hands By Corky Mattingly Special to The Times I've been particularly troubled by one recurring comment regarding the gubernatorial recount in King County. It pertains to county Elections Director Dean Logan's professionalism and integrity. There also have been suggestions that Logan's decisions are based on partisan politics and are without justification or regard to Washington state law. As president of the Washington State Association of County Auditors, I assure you nothing could be further from the truth. All 39 counties conducted the recount process according to the rules currently in place, which are...

No Name Calling Week?     1/12/2005By Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.Yes, name-calling is wrong. But this event’s sponsors reveal the agenda behind banning it. “There is a special place in hell for people like you!” These words were directed at me by a teacher during this past summer’s National Education Association (NEA) convention in Washington, D.C. This delegate to the NEA convention made his prediction in response to my presence at the NEA’s Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus booth in the convention exhibit hall. His cheery salutation caught me off-guard given the message of tolerance and acceptance I had been hearing around the exhibit hall....

God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It Jim Wallis HarperSanFrancisco 01/05 Hardcover $24.95 Book Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat Read an excerpt on hope. In a Nutshell: Many in America yearn for a fuller, deeper, and richer conversation about religion in public life and especially about the role of faith in politics. The major political parties, however, as evidenced by the Presidential election of 2004, have failed to articulate "the prophetic voice of religion." According to Jim Wallis, the Right has focused its energies mainly on sexual and cultural issues while...

Milorad Ulemek, a first-time novelist, has been a great success, according to his publisher. In just two weeks, his novel about the war in Bosnia, "Iron Trench," has sold close to 70,000 copies, a record in Serbia, according to the publisher, Mihailo Vojnovic While pleased with sales, Vojnovic, the director of M Books, concedes that the novel's success may have less do with its content than with its author's notoriety. . Milorad Ulemek is Serbia's most infamous paramilitary soldier, a man human rights groups say was responsible for some the worst atrocities in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. He...

MADRID, Spain — In a substantial shift from traditional policy, the Catholic Church in Spain has said it supports the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. "Condoms have a place in the global prevention of AIDS," Juan Antonio Martinez Campos, spokesman for the Spanish Bishops Conference (search), told reporters after a meeting Tuesday with Health Minister Elena Salgado to discuss ways of fighting the disease. The Catholic Church has repeatedly rebuffed campaigns for it to endorse the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS. The Vatican states that condoms, because it is a form of artificial...

Foxnews Alert Exclusive! They will go before the Supreme Court tomorrow to file a petition!

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

The campaign to oust Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld continues unabated at The Weekly Standard, with the latest salvo being fired by Frederick Kagan in his article Fighting the Wrong War. Mr. Kagan attempts to make a reasoned, thoughtful counter to Rummy’s defenders, but instead discusses key issues in generalities rather than specifics, and fails to place events of the 90s and today within an accurate historical context. Kagan charges Rummy’s defenders with evasion, and an over-reliance on “deflecting all criticism from him [Rumsfeld] onto the Clinton administration.” In a sense, he is right that what has occurred in the past...

This is a vanity of sorts, but I wanted to write about a situation I found myself in last night, and the calling all men have in their lives. Last night, around the turn of the 1 am hour EST, I was posting to FR. I should have gone to bed an hour and a half earlier, but the topic I was posting to was too interesting to me. At that moment, I heard two people yelling outside my house. My first thought that it was my roommate arguing with someone, since she had company over. So I went upstairs,...

Armed intruders broke into a family's house in Britain, only to apologise and leave again, having realised they intended to beat someone up next door instead. A woman was upstairs with her children in Swinton, Yorkshire, northern England, when two men armed with a knife and a plank of wood broke in through a back door. "The intruders made their way upstairs where the occupant was with her two children," a South Yorkshire police spokesman said. "It became obvious the intruders had got the wrong address and they left, apologising. No threats were made, although the woman was in a...

We live in a time when what is left is right, what is good is bad, what is up is down, and what is true is false. This is a period of our history unmatched in its preponderance of mind-control mechanisms meant to manipulate public opinion and fool people into believing what is black is white, what is white is black, and gray is all that matters. Every day I hear people parrot what they ingest from the mainstream media, foolishly believing they are informed and are paying attention. I learned some time ago that lies and deception are not...

"I want to go to trial on Monday; I've been locked up for nearly eight years," declared Charles Thomas Sell. "The federal court has no evidence, they have no witnesses. I want my trial one week from today. I am not incompetent in any way, shape or form." His statements rang true to bystanders attending his hearing on Nov. 22 in the federal courthouse in St. Louis. Whatever happened to the right of an accused to have a speedy trial? Once a successful dentist in St. Louis County who treated many indigent patients, Sell was accused of Medicaid fraud in...