Free Republic

A new study has found that Catholics now have the lowest proportion of "strongly affiliated" followers among America's major religious traditions, while evangelicals are growing stronger in their devotion to their faith. Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, whose findings rely on a survey conducted among a cross-section of Americans on an annual or bi-annual basis since 1974, notes that from about a 5-percentage-point difference in the 1970s in how strongly Catholics and evangelicals felt about their religion, it has increased to around 20 percentage points today. Roughly 56 per cent of evangelicals now say they're strongly...

After officers arrested Jerry Warren Jr. on suspicion of committing a Wicker Park robbery Saturday, the soon-to-be-22-year-old said he only wanted some birthday money, authorities said today. His plan didn’t work. Warren, who police say netted a whopping $4 in the robbery, was ordered held Sunday on $125,000 bond. He will have to post $12,500--3,125 times more than he’s accused of stealing--to leave jail.

Skyrocketing demand for petroleum engineers and other oil and gas workers has companies going to new lengths to lure top talent and keep employees out of competitors’ grasps. Winning over recruits isn’t just a matter of providing 35 percent salary hikes and $100,000 signing bonuses. Headhunters say company culture and non-monetary perks are gaining sway in attracting and retaining employees. Stories of eager employers making unique concessions for high-demand job candidates abound. An oil executive started paying for his employees’ shoeshines. Free gasoline and a reinstated pension enticed an experienced project manager back to a former employer. And recently, a...

Israel has asked Jordan twice in the last two months for a green light to attack chemical weapons facilities in Syria, according to a report by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sent representatives of the Mossad intelligence agency to Amman twice already, to coordinate the matter with the Jordanians and receive their "permission" for the operation, Goldberg wrote.

Newsmax Norquist: 'Tea Party 2' Backlash if Obama Sends Nation Over Fiscal Cliff Sunday, December 2, 2012 04:09 PM Grover Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, predicted a tea party backlash that would dwarf the movement’s success in the 2010 midterm elections if President Barack Obama pushes the nation over the “fiscal cliff. “Tea Party two is going to dwarf tea party one if Obama pushes us off the cliff,” warned Norquist on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” When asked “Are you over?” by host David Gregory, Norquist responded, “That was last week’s news.”

Credit Suisse Group AG (CS) said Monday it will start applying negative credit rates on cash clearing accounts above a certain threshold, effective from Dec. 10. "We invite our customers to keep cash balances as low as possible to avoid negative credit charges," Credit Suisse said in a statement sent via the Swift payments system to customers in the Swiss interbank market.

We've taken you through a tour of Window Managers in Linux, and now it's time to show you the Window Manager's bigger brother: the desktop environment, or DE for short. With a sea of choices out there, we can see where Linux newbies might feel a bit overwhelmed. Catch us after the break and we'll show you some of our favorites, along with a few honorable mentions. First things first: a desktop environment is an implementation of a graphical user interface commonly mimicking a physical desktop. Think about your grade school desktop on your computer screen, with folders, binders...

CAMP MINDEN, LA (KSLA) - Authorities now believe they're dealing with more than 6 million pounds of M6 powder at Camp Minden. Original estimates had the stockpile officials say was improperly stored on property leased by Explo Systems, Inc. at 1 million pounds.

The barefoot homeless man who was given a pair of shoes by a kind-hearted beat cop is wandering the streets shoeless again. Jeffrey Hillman, 54, was spotted panhandling on the upper West Side Sunday without the $100 boots NYPD Officer Lawrence DePrimo bought for him on a frigid November night in Times Square. “Those shoes are hidden,” Hillman told The New York Times after he was spotted walking around with no shoes on Broadway near W. 79th St. “They are worth a lot of money. I could lose my life.” A tourist from Arizona snapped a cell phone photo of...

Google and Amazon are coming under growing pressure to follow Starbucks’ lead and pay a fairer share of tax in Britain as the chancellor plans to clamp down on rich companies and individuals. The multinationals will be among the targets of a £154million clampdown to be unveiled by George Osborne today aimed at raising another £5billion tax in the next three years. They are also being accused by MPs of ‘immorally’ minimising their tax bills, while giving ‘unconvincing and, in some cases, evasive’ evidence to a Commons committee investigating their financial affairs. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Commons public accounts...

GOP poll inspectors illegally removed from voting locations. More than 100 percent of registered voters turning out to vote. .snip...Illegal campaign contributions, deceased and illegal-alien voters, “lost ballots” and intimidation at the polls. It’s enough to make voters ask: Does America still have free, fair and accurate elections? After witnessing a flood of reports detailing incidents of likely vote fraud and abuse this election, WND has launched a petition urging Congress to open an independent and comprehensive investigation. Sign WND’s petition urging Congress to investigate fraud and abuse in America’s election system! As WND reported, the “battleground” states seemed to...

Listen Live: Sound Off Connecticut with Jim Vicevich 9 a.m. to noon ET (Da ily Thread)Sound Off Connecticut is a popular conservative/libertarian call in talk show hosted by Jim Vicevich weekday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon ET. Although based in Connecticut, the show welcomes callers from all over the United States! This is your chance to sound off America! Call into the show toll free (800) 966-9842! Listen to the LIVE AUDIO STREAM at http://wtic.com - it's free and NO registration is required! If you're in southern New England listen over the air to WTIC 1080 AM, the 50,000...

Serbians reacted angrily at the acquittal of a former Kosovo guerrilla leader by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), less than two weeks after the court freed two Croatian military commanders who were accused of war crimes, EurActiv Serbia reports. The acquittal of ex-Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leader Ramush Haradinaj was met by fierce criticism of The Hague tribunalÂ’s work. Serbian officials said the decision was a blow to international justice and made the process of reconciliation in the region more complicated. Â… Belgrade considers that the tribunal has lost credibility and has shown bias in acquitting...

Obama Endorses Debbie Wasserman Schultz for a Second Term as DNC Chief Daniel Halper December 3, 2012 8:39 AM President Barack Obama will endorse Debbie Wasserman Schultz for a second term as Democratic National Committee chief, a Democratic official tells Politico. "Because of the outstanding job she has done, the President will ask the members of the Democratic National Committee to ratify his choice of [Rep.] Debbie Wasserman Schultz to continue leading the Party as Chair when they meet in January," an anonymous "senior Democratic official" tells Mike Allen. "The DNC will meet [in Washington on Jan. 22], the day...

WICHITA — A Jamaican woman faces sentencing for entering into a sham marriage with a Fort Riley soldier to get legal immigration status. Shannakay Hunter now lives in New York City. U.S. District Judge Monti Belot gave her permission to participate by phone in her sentencing Monday, rather than traveling to Wichita for the proceeding. Hunter was convicted in August of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud, marriage fraud and lying to the government. She faces up to five years on each count but is likely to get far less prison time — if any — under federal guidelines. The man...

Urgent action is needed to boost carbon prices to €150 per tonne ($215.65/ton)—2,250% higher than current levels—if the EU is to meet its decarbonization goals by 2050, the former secretary-general of the UNFCCC has told EurActiv in an interview. “We very quickly need to see a carbon price in the order of €150 a tonne because that’s the kind of level that drives the price signals that we really need,” Yvo de Boer said on a phone line from Manila, in the Philippines. EU carbon allowances are currently trading at €6.60 per tonne ($9.49/ton), but a price of around €150...

The football world was rocked Saturday morning when Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend then turned the gun on himself. This tragedy was bad enough but then the left decided to use another tragedy for political again. What did the left do in light of this tragedy? Last night, in the weekly edition of Sunday night football, the Cowboys hosted the Eagles in a game with playoff implications. At halftime, NBC sportscaster and liberal nut job Bob Costas decided to launch into a tirade about the Belcher murder/suicide and gun control. Costas quoted a Kansas City Sports...

On today's Morning Joe, asked by substitute host Willie Geist how much of the tough talk by Republicans and Dems over the fiscal cliff was posturing, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said that 80% was posturing, then added "a lot of it is, let's see how big yours is versus mine." Steele was careful to suggest he was simply talking about the size of the two parties' respective . . . plans. But between the smirks, raised eyebrows—and an immediate intervention from Geist—it seemed obvious that Steele was making a macho allusion to something else. View the video here.

(CNN) -- He was a 20-year-old male model. His lover was a 65-year-old man who was a television journalist. They were from Portugal, visiting New York City. The older partner broke off the relationship and ended up mutilated and dead. Now, almost two years later, a New York jury has convicted model Renato Seabra of the grisly second-degree murder of Carlos Antonio De Castro in their InterContinental Hotel room in Times Square. "This was a brutal and sadistic crime, where Renato Seabra bludgeoned, choked, and mutilated his victim before murdering him," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said following...

Amid the media frenzy over Tiger Woods and Bengals receiver Chris Henry, a key aspect of both stories slipped through the cracks: Like millions of other men, Woods and Henry were -- allegedly at least -- the victims of domestic violence perpetrated by their wives or girlfriends. Beyond its brutal physical and psychological costs, domestic violence against men exacts a cruel economic toll at the personal, societal and national levels.For the most part, the media, authorities and average citizens see domestic violence as a crime that is committed by men and victimizes women. Consequently, funding to combat the problem has...