Free Republic

My solution is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: The rich should give their children to the poor, and the poor should give their children to the rich. Homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors. Now, I recognize that some naysayers, hopelessly attached to their privilege, will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.

An article entitled After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live? was recently published in the London-based Journal of Medical Ethics, advocating that if abortion is allowed, then society also has the right to kill a newborn child. This outrageous deduction by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva takes abortion to its logical conclusion. The abstract states: “By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue...

In an article today (1 October) by Kelly Brewington, the Baltimore Sun takes Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett to task for his unusual comment on his radio show this week. The article is focused mostly on the reactions to that comment. The reporter writes, "Democrat leaders leapt on Bennett, a prominent Republican analyst, describing his statement as the latest in a long trail of public comments by white conservatives unfairly linking blacks to crime and sexuality." Source: hard copy, Baltimore Sun, page 6A, 10/01/0522 Here is Bennett's statement, "...if you wanted to reduce crime, if that were your sole purpose,...

Is the refrigerator only an appliance, or does it speak much more to our values and cultural needs? Is it simply a holder of food, or does it say something about how we live and who we are? After long years of viewing refrigerators as a block of cold, static kitchen furniture, many have begun to see an opportunity for change. Some refrigeration reformers are questioning the very role of a refrigerator in the household, becoming more vocal about changing refrigeration issues and rights. Jerusha Chauderey, charter member of Women Opposing Refrigeration Dependence, hopes the public will consider a full-scale...

Years ago, this country did away with debtors prisons. The nation in general, and poor people in particular, would be well served to bring them back. The harm to business from unpaid debt, and the reduced productivity and even business failure unpaid debt can bring, is obvious. Businesses or individuals who are not repaid the money they loaned or who are not paid for the goods or services they produced and sold on credit are prevented from accumulating needed and even expected capital for expansion, and they are frequently thrown into serious financial constraints making it hard to pay their...

ANNAPOLIS — A bill introduced yesterday would save the black bears of Western Maryland — by spreading them into every county of the state. House Minority Leader George C. Edwards of Garrett County offered the modest proposal in part to highlight differences between rural and suburban parts of the state. For years, Mr. Edwards and his Western Maryland colleagues have watched as lawmakers from suburban jurisdictions — such as Prince George's and Montgomery counties — have tried to enact laws banning bear hunts. "If these people want to tell us we have to live with the bears, they should be...