Free Republic

[Episcopal News Service] A group of clergy and lay people from across the church have created a liturgy template that Episcopalians are invited to use in response to the June 24 Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion in the United States. The liturgy is titled “A Service of Lament and Healing” and includes suggested prayers and readings, a litany based on the prayer of St. Francis, and a time for people to express their feelings through activities like writing or lighting candles. The template is available as a Google Doc in English and Spanish. An introduction to the...

Here's a poser for you: you're trying to knock together a TV ad highlighting the effects of war on children. What's the plan? Well, you could go down the traditional route of earnest voice-over accompanying footage of said kids miserably awaiting a better life or, on the other hand, you could arm up a squadron of attack aircraft and go and raze a Smurf village to the ground. Let's face it, it's a toughie. Not for Unicef Belgium though, which earlier this week reduced an enchanted Smurf hamlet to smouldering rubble - much to the horror of some TV viewers...

Two dozen San Francisco schoolkids sporting white turtlenecks and Santa hats got a very un-Christmaslike civics lesson the other day when they showed up at Union Square hoping to delight Christmas shoppers with holiday carols. "They just wanted to set up next to the Christmas tree and sing,'' said Donna Vargas, one of the parents who escorted the fifth- and sixth-graders from San Francisco Day School on Friday's outing. Instead, they got the boot. Seems they didn't have a city permit -- so after a brief run-in with the park's security, the kids were shooed away. "How can children not...

OPATCONG TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Everyone agrees that this recently rural township, its sleepy streets fringed by old farms, is a fine place to rear children. And in just a few years, hundreds of children have arrived, each like an invoice addressed to taxpayers. Now the town faces another expense, the legal defense of a new ordinance that will, in effect, keep down the number of families moving in. The courts will decide whether the restriction, limiting new multifamily housing units to two bedrooms, crosses a fine line between zoning meant to slow galloping development and zoning meant to keep out...