Free Republic

While some registered voters remain undecided, either impeded by Mitt Romney's Mormon faith or President Barack Obama's troubling social policies, one coalition of Catholic clergy is hoping its free phone app will help Christians decide how to vote based on the issues come November. The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has made available for Android, Windows and iPhone devices what it says is the first free non-partisan voting guide for Catholics. Its Catholic Voting Guide by Little i Apps LLC was created to help users "cast a responsible vote using a well-formed conscience based on Catholic moral principles." "With Election Day...

To avoid being whipped, mutilated, and jailed, women in Timbuktu now have to wear black veils and loose-fitting clothing. Radical Islamists, who took control of the city months ago, are laying down their law – Sharia law – and for the first time since they’ve arrived, they’re specifically targeting women. Over the past few weeks, Islamists from two armed groups – Ansar Dine and Mujao, who took over northern Mali in April – have increasingly made use of corporal punishment against the local population. This includes whipping, amputations, and even stoning people to death who do not obey Sharia law....

Equatorial Guinea has asked the International Court of Justice to order France to end a corruption inquiry into the oil-rich country's ruling family. The ICJ confirmed the move, but said France's consent to the court's jurisdiction was required. In July, Paris issued an arrest warrant for the son of Equatorial Guinea's leader on money-laundering charges.

In a way, it's probably good that Joe Wilson wasn't sitting up front at the Vice Presidential debate this week nor, more importantly, at the various political roundtables analyzing it ever since. Had he been, the congressman would probably have gone hoarse by now from all of the opportunities to stand up and shout, "You lie!" And that has certainly been the overriding theme since the opening moments of the battle between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden. Both sides are claiming that the candidates' performances were overshadowed by the "fact" that each of them were lying over and over and...

The rise in the consumer confidence rose more than expected. Despite real GDP growth hovering barely above 1% and the crash in durable goods orders, this is indeed a surprise. Or is it another Fed induced bubble? According to University of Michigan, consumer confidence has risen to Bush-era levels of September 2007. Just to put it into context, I put a yellow line through the 100 level. We still have a long way to go to get to 100 from 83.1. Here is a chart of wage income divided by GDP. Why are consumers more confident? Perhaps consumers are reacting...

Once again, the toothless committee of unexceptional Norwegians has bestowed the world’s highest honor not for achievement, but for expectation. Hey EU! Kissinger and Obama are waiting to congratulate you backstage. In case you thought the crumbling, ineffective, and overly-bureaucratic European Union was on life-support, the Eurozone in danger of splintering, and the single currency on the verge of collapse, a group of unexceptional Norwegians would like you to remember that the 27 member states of the EU are, in fact, the global bulwark against war and misery. But when the Nobel Committee announced in Oslo on Friday that it...

In his final days, icon radiomouth Neal A. Boortz is doing his best to go out without class. Last night he spent some time insulting pro-life conservatives with the same homicide rationalizing talking points we hear ad nauseum from the misanthropic Left--gee, do you think anyone who listens to his pro abortion rants are tempted to vote for the GOP ticket? Is Obama on his knees under his desk? Or is senility finally taking it's toll?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwilbVYvUg

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Carlos Beltran and the never-give-up St. Louis Cardinals began their latest comeback celebration quietly, plucking cans of beer from a blue bin that was hurriedly wheeled from the home to the visiting clubhouse in the middle of the ninth inning.

U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer warned on Friday that a proposal to give a United Nations agency more control over the Internet is gaining momentum in other countries. Proposals to expand the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union's (ITU) authority over the Internet could come up at a treaty conference in Dubai in December. European telecommunications companies are pushing a plan that would create new rules that would allow them to charge more to carry international traffic. The proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association could force websites like Google, Facebook and Netflix to pay fees to network operators around the world.

Metro Police, under pressure from media outlets, have released a video message from Sheriff Douglas Gillespie detailing to Metro employees his objection to a Clark County grand jury review of a deadly officer-involved shooting. In the Oct. 3 video, which department officials previously said was for internal use only and refused to release to the public, Gillespie informs his employees of District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s decision to convene a grand jury to review the Dec. 11, 2011, fatal shooting of Stanley Gibson.

Poll at end of Salim Mansur column trashing 0's foreign policy. Romney leading, probably because of 0's Keystone Kop routine about the pipeline.

PORTLAND, Oregon—Because of its variable nature, wind energy is not suited to be the lone or primary source of a grid’s total electricity, according to a new Cascade Policy Institute–Reason Foundation study. If used to produce more than 10-20 percent of a system’s electricity, wind power increases operating costs, due to the need for expensive storage facilities or continuously available CO2-emitting backup power generation facilities.

BEAULIEU-SUR-MER, - A woman participating in an aquabike lesson in France said she was attacked by an octopus that immobilized her legs with its tentacles. The woman, whose name was not released, said she was aquabiking -- riding an exercise bike submerged in water -- in Beaulieu-sur-Mer when she felt something moving around her legs, The Local.fr reported Friday. The woman soon discovered an octopus had wrapped its tentacles around her legs, stopping her from pedaling. Experts said the octopus was likely attracted by the movement in the water.

Priorities: While our consulate in Benghazi was guarded by unarmed Libyan contractors making $4 an hour, our embassy in Vienna received an expensive charging station for its new electric cars to help fight climate change. Even MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell says Vice President Joe Biden lied during Thursday's debate when he said twice that no one in the Obama administration knew that requests for extra security had been made by our Libyan ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and other members of our consulate in Benghazi. The State Department knew "in real time," as Mitchell put it in her post-debate analysis, that requests had...

Most non-Christians are confounded when they see vehicles on the road with an NOTW sticker affixed to the window or bumper. They either don’t know what the letters stand for or – if someone clues them in – they don’t know what exactly the phrase means. Not of This World. Two polls provide some insight. One, from the Public Religion Research Institute, was released a few weeks ago. The other, from Baylor University, was released last year. In the PRRI survey, 81 percent of the 2,500 sampled said that religion played an important role in their lives. And most of...

WASHINGTON - The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the "Arab Spring" revolutions and boost support for the region's young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. Clinton, seeking to reinforce the Obama administration's Middle East policy following a wave of anti-American violence and last month's deadly attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, said Washington cannot be deterred by "the violent acts of a small number of extremists."

This could be the lamest defense yet for the lapses that led to the murder of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. According to a former diplomat appointed by Bill Clinton, providing tighter security for Ambassador Stevens might have prevented him from carrying out his diplomatic duties. Daniel Serwer, the Clinton diplomat in question, offered his excuse for the Benghazi debacle on MSNBC's Up With Chris Hayes this morning. View the video here.

Obama, Biden and Hillary are hiding behind an amorphous "intelligence community" to explain why they propagated the lie that a video and a demonstration led to the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. Team Obama is now firmly committed to this story. They can't disown it or walk it back. Evidence to the contrary exists. We have testimony that members of the State Department received real-time information about the attack and knew even as it was going on that there was no demonstration and that it was a terrorist attack. They appear to be in a trap of their own...

Coming out of Thursday’s one and only Vice Presidential debate, the one thing that remains perfectly clear is that Joe Biden did nothing to stop the Romney-Ryan momentum. “The Big Mo” for the Republican ticket began with a bang almost 10 days ago due to the excellent performance delivered by Governor Romney at the first debate. At points Thursday night, a split screen was featured to show close-ups of both candidates at the same time, and the contrast could not have been more dramatic. In the left screen we saw the past. We saw an arrogant, liberal machine politician way...