Free Republic

Poll asks what people think of Palin's speech -- "not so good" is running ahead, so Freep away!

CHICAGO (AP) - The menacing row of concrete towers where four of Katie Sistrunk's children were shot is almost all gone now, replaced by weeds and fields, mud and memories. The cage-like balconies that looked like prison tiers to Beauty Turner have all but disappeared. The gangs that peddled crack to Krystal McCraney Moore have found new places to haunt. One hollow-eyed lookout still paces at the entrance of the last high-rise, watching for police so he can alert drug dealers who lurk in the graffiti-scarred, darkened stairwells. This is the end of the Robert Taylor Homes, the final days...

Columnist charged with domestic battery October 1, 2005 BY SHAMUS TOOMEY Staff Reporter Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested at his home late Wednesday and charged with striking his wife during an argument. Steinberg was charged with domestic battery and interfering with the reporting of domestic battery, both misdemeanors, Northbrook Police Sgt. Tony Matheny said. The second charge stemmed from Steinberg taking the phone away from his wife to prevent her from calling police, Matheny said. Steinberg appeared in court Thursday morning and was released on a recognizance bond. "I'm deeply humiliated to have brought...

Teacher had '01 reprimands Berwyn district warned suspect A longtime South Berwyn School District 100 band teacher charged last week with sexually abusing five students was twice reprimanded in 2001 for "inappropriate touching" of students, but school officials never notified police or the state's child welfare agency, authorities said Monday. Robert Sperlik Jr., 45, of the 2300 block of Westover Avenue in North Riverside was ordered held without bail Jan. 17 on five counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, one count of aggravated kidnapping and two counts of kidnapping that allegedly took place between 1999 and 2001, said Cook County...

November 2001 -- I am sitting in a cavernous room on the second floor of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in New York City. It is the room assigned to the evening’s meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society (GLAS). The room is way too big for the unusually small number of members assembled here tonight. Our words bounce ominously off the ceiling and exposed brick walls like thunder, ricocheting back over us, almost swallowing us up. We are only six tonight. Up two from the last meeting, when we were merely four. The group is surprisingly ...

(CNSNews.com) - The Roman Catholic diocese in Rochester, N.Y. not only refuses to acknowledge the recent ordination of a female priest in a breakaway religious community. The diocese insists members of the renamed Spiritus Christi parish can no longer even claim to be Catholic. The breakaway group was once part of the Corpus Christi parish in Rochester, but separated from the Roman Catholic diocese after Bishop Matthew Clark removed and defrocked the pastor and assistant pastor in 1998. Clark acted after the parish sanctioned same-sex marriages and the handing out of communion to non-Catholics, contrary to Catholic teaching. Nevertheless, ...

<p>State Representative George Rogers was reelected Tuesday to a seat on the New Bedford City Council, despite facing trial next month on charges of disseminating pornography to a minor.</p> <p>He won the seat by 352 votes against political newcomer Naomi Carney, with 36 percent of registered voters going to the polls.</p>

- A long-standing debate in education circles is the effectiveness of teacher certification, but while many in the public education establishment firmly believe that certification is necessary, others have differing opinions. Mike Antonucci, director of The Education Intelligence Agency, said, "You have to have some sort of licensing for teachers so that we have some protections from child molesters and completely incompetent or unqualified people going in there." "But that is not a defense of the way we do things. The problem with the certification is that we put everybody through the exact same system," Antonucci said. "The routes to ...

<p>A teacher's baby has died after being left alone in a car in a school parking lot in Sauk Rapids, Minn., authorities said Wednesday.</p> <p>"Heat could have been a contributing factor, if not the cause" of the child's death, said Benton County Attorney Robert Raupp. However, he emphasized that an autopsy, which could establish the cause, had not been completed.</p>

Emphasize, while disciplining young children, that they are not to hit a Muslim, but rather forgive, and are only to get their anger out on the enemies of Allah who fight against Muslims. Teach them the meaning of "Ashiddaa'u 'alal kuffari ruhamaa'u baynahum" (Strong against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves). You can make a makeshift enemy (could be a punching bag for instance) if you have to, and encourage children (especially boys) to use it and build their strength as well as learn to control and direct their anger. Show them the pictures of Mujahideen (while making dua, praying, ...

Emphasize, while disciplining young children, that they are not to hit a Muslim, but rather forgive, and are only to get their anger out on the enemies of Allah who fight against Muslims. Teach them the meaning of "Ashiddaa'u 'alal kuffari ruhamaa'u baynahum" (Strong against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves). You can make a makeshift enemy (could be a punching bag for instance) if you have to, and encourage children (especially boys) to use it and build their strength as well as learn to control and direct their anger. Show them the pictures of Mujahideen (while making dua, praying, ...

Founders - Yahoo! ID: themujahid Age: 18 Gender: Male Location:USA Comment: "Jihaad and the rifle alone; no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues."

<p>I was a pretty average third-grader when my parents decided to risk my academic and social future by home schooling my sister and me. I was a pretty average third-grader when my parents decided to risk my academic and social future by home schooling my sister and me.</p>

In the wake of last Tuesday's horrible tragedy, the country has become united as it has never been in my lifetime. Racial, religious and class differences seem, on the surface, to have been put on the back burner for a little while. "We're all Americans," I've seen a lot of people say, "We're all in this together." Today I even saw a picture of homeless man's bicycle, which had been adorned with the American flag. This man, who by all rights should be, and probably normally would be very bitter about his situation, said to the photographer who took the ...

I ran across this photo labelled "King of Afghanistan". Who is he? Where are his descendants and what became of them? Couldn't we dig up some exiled royals and set them on the Afghan throne, under our protection? Go the url to take a look!

'Everybody Loves Garrison Keillor," read the mass e-mail from Joseph Fox Books, announcing a forthcoming event. Well, no, they don't. Keillor's reading on Tuesday at the Free Library of Philadelphia was canceled after the day's tragic events. The program will be rescheduled for the fall, followed by a $250 meet-and-greet benefit. Fans will be thrilled, but public-radio listeners can be squarely divided into two factions: those gaga over the grand pooh-bah of Lake Wobegon, and those who find his small-town ramblings as grating as . . . Garrison Keillor. He's mined his small-town shtick for more than 25 years on ...

CNSNews.com) - Minister Louis Farrakhan has warned President Bush that declaring war on terrorism could "trigger the war that would end all wars, the war of Armageddon." Farrakhan is the leader of the black Muslim separatist movement Nation of Islam and the architect of the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. In a speech Sunday at a Chicago mosque, Farrakhan implied that U.S. foreign policy is to blame for last weeks terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. He called on American officials to summon "the courage to look at the foreign policy" and asked if the policies have ...

A good-looking married couple from Chicago, professional, accomplished and just the other side of middle age, are on their annual August vacation in northern California, reminiscing about their youth, their fugitive days. They are sitting on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the soothing sounds of the crashing surf floating up to surround them like background music in yoga class. A chilly fog has rolled in. In the old days, the couple enjoyed coming to such places. The sea air tasted like freedom. But they had to be careful about who saw them trying to be normal. They had to ...

Seen today on a highway near Naperville, west of Chicago: two muscular young men driving a shiny black Ford pickup truck, decorated with an American flag at each side of the truckbed. On the back of the truckbed, over the white word "Ford", someone had posted these words(with those stick-on letters): DANCE IN THESE STREETS AND I'LL DANCE ON YOUR &*#^ING HEAD

If you're a gay man thinking about donating blood this week, forget it -- unless you're a virgin. Even during the current national crisis, nearly all homosexual and bisexual men are still banned from giving blood to help others. "There's a large group of people who are willing to participate, but they're excluded. It's not only discriminatory, but it's counterproductive to address the problems we're facing now," said Nathan Purkiss, legislative aide for San Francisco Supervisor Mark Leno, who has pushed for looser rules. Blood donations, which have been dipping to precarious levels in recent years, skyrocketed in the ...