Free Republic

We are in fact entering a "Brave New World". The 'Battlefield of Ideas' has moved into Cyberspace, and is embroiled in Ideology and Rhetoric the way Talk Radio and Television were before us. The question is: Can Conservatives hold this ground, too? See the full article at the Liberty Tree Revolution

Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened. Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients. Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death on the Liverpool care...

Almost one of every six foster children on mood-altering drugs in Florida is being medicated without the court order or parental consent required by law, according to a study released Thursday by the state Department of Children and Families. DCF Secretary George Sheldon acknowledged there was "no rational basis" for 433 foster children in Florida being given psychotropic drugs without the required documentation. He vowed that by next week, the agency would ensure that the children have parental consent to take the drugs or that their cases are scheduled to go before a judge. The study is more fallout from...

A hundred and eight billion dollars — $108,000,000,000. Not exactly an eye-popping sum anymore, in an era of multi-trillion-dollar annual budgets and multi-trillion-dollar annual deficits. Still, even with government spending streaking into the stratosphere, $108 billion is not mere chump change, especially when it’s leveraged as seed money. That’s precisely what the $108 billion President Obama is demanding for the International Monetary Fund should be seen as: leveraged seed money aimed at growing the IMF into its new envisioned role as the World Federal Reserve. That objective was the primary agenda item at the much-ballyhooed G20 Summit in London at...

He’s going to have to work on the hair . . . But when it comes to big, splashy firings it looks like Pres. Obama has his Trump shtick down, very publicly handing GM CEO John Wagoner his walking papers. On Morning Joe just now, Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations chillingly called the phenomenon in which presidents fire private-sector CEOs a “brave new world.”

Better shave before you go get your drivers license updated in Indiana. That picture on your Indiana driver's license will NOW be part of a pilot HOMELAND SECURITY program which will test face-recognition technology at three undisclosed branches during mid-November in Indianapolis, said Dennis Rosebrough, BMV communications director. They say this program was designed to prevent residents from obtaining more than one driver's license or identification card or from stealing someone else's identity in order to sell it to the public. However, the applications of this program are much more broad and sweeping. How would you feel if the DMV...

I was typing a message just moments ago in a political discussion group I belong to. I was responding to how Mr. Obama's "all 57 states" is excused by liberals as being "purely a casual slip of the tongue" but yet Dan Quayle was portrayed as dumber than a box of hammers for his "casual slips of the tongue". I suggested that perhaps Obama is just so much more intelligent than the rest of us mere mortals and thinks on such a different plane that we as unenlightened conservatives can't possibly comprehend his brilliance. Then something hit me like a...

Watch our latest TV ad to learn the truth about teaching gay marriage in public schools if Proposition 8 fails http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l61Pd5_jHQw

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Thomas Glessner is a constitutional attorney and the president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a public interest law firm that provides legal services to more than 1,100 pro-life pregnancy resource centers in all fifty states. His new books tackles key bioetics issues the pro-life community is increasingly confronting. In his provocative new book, Glessner discusses the ongoing cultural battle between the traditional sanctity of life ethic -- the foundation of Western Civilization and American culture -- and the modern quality-of-life ethic, which is increasingly gaining control over the hearts and minds of...

With virtually no fanfare, President Bush has signed into law a plan that orders the government to take no more than six months to set up a "national contingency plan" to screen newborns' DNA that would be put into use in case of a "public health emergency." Further, the new law requires that the results of that DNA program, including "information … research, and data on newborn screening" shall be assembled by a "central clearinghouse" and be made available on the Internet. According to records of Congress, S.1858, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was approved in the Senate on...

Shakespearian Dytopias by: Bethany Stotts, February 12, 2008 Chicago, Ill.— A recent Modern Language Association (MLA) panel hosted by the Division on Shakespeare asked “What Does Science Have to Do With Shakespeare?” According to Professor Henry Turner of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, if the question encompasses attitudes toward science, “then the answer to [the] question is: quite a bit.” He listed many areas on which Shakespeare’s work touches, including “cosmology, medicine, mathematics, meteorological phenomena....astrology, and other so-called ‘sciences.’”... ....Similarly, Professor Paula Blank argued that Shakespeare explored how humanity itself defies measurement. “Shakespeare’s rhetoric of measurement exposes more often...

Heat created by burning the dead at crematoria could be used to keep mourners warm under plans to make funerals more environmentally-friendly. Instead of letting the gases emitted by cremation escape into the atmosphere, councils want to use them to heat radiators or even generate electricity. They admit some might find the idea of being kept warm by the remains of their loved-ones macabre. But there are thought to be no religious objections, and ever-tighter controls on pollution mean such systems could become commonplace.

NEW YORK, November 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The meaning of human nature itself is under threat from a new philosophy of “soul-less scientism” that will undermine “our own self-understanding as human beings” and reduces the aspirations of mankind to the purely material realm. This new philosophy outstrips the danger posed by the actual techniques and technologies of modern biomedical science, said Dr. Leon Kass, speaking to a New York audience in October.  “Scientific ideas and discoveries” he said, “are being enlisted to do battle against our traditional religious and moral teachings, and even our self-understanding as creatures with freedom and...

The government has a duty to look after the health of everyone and sometimes that means guiding or restricting our choices Lord John Krebs, of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Government ministers should shrug off media accusations that they are running a nanny state and introduce tougher public health measures, experts say. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said the time had come to consider a whole host of interventions in the UK after the introduction of a smoking ban. Its proposes raising alcohol prices, restricting pub opening hours and better food labelling to fight obesity. The government said it was...

A British pro-life group warns that a new type of embryo research, likely to be approved this week by a U.K. government panel, undermines human dignity. Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority is expected to give a green light this week to U.K. laboratories seeking to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows. British scientists want to use the hybrid embryos in order to research genetic diseases. Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, opposes the embryo-destructive research. He says that an "a-nucleated" cow egg will only...

(Excerpt) Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government's fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were "at ease" with scientists creating the hybrid embryos. Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies...

Is it safe? Nobody knows.More and more, parents at wit's end are begging doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful antipsychotic drugs. In the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs. Even children as young as 3 years old. Last year, 1,100 Medicaid children under 6 were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice so risky that state regulators say it should be used only...

IN May the Food and Drug Administration approved a new birth control pill, Lybrel. It is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the other pills already out there (about 98 percent) but boasts one advantage: Women who take it will never get their periods. Lybrel is landing on pharmacy shelves this month. And now war has been declared on menstruation. Already the first few volleys in this battle have been exchanged. Gird yourselves, women, for a barrage of advertising and research highlighting the debilitating effects of periods and the joys of menstrual suppression. After all, periods and their mood swings...

ERLANGEN, Germany, June 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria, gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the “crime” of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust. In response, Jim Hughes, Vice President of International Right to Life Federation has called on pro-life activists internationally to take action on the matter by contacting German authorities to demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion for the pastor (see contact information below story). Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews...

Robot teachers for USA nursing institute By Thomas Claburn 7 June 2007 12:15 AEST General News Educators annoyed by the mental absence of gadget-engaged students now have their revenge: they can be physically absent while they teach. The Nursing Institute of West Central Ohio today said it would begin using the Remote Presence Robotic System (RP-7) to allow nursing faculty to teach from remote locations. Debi Sampsel, executive director of the institute, said in a statement that the RP-7 would help alleviate a shortage of nursing faculty. "As baby boomer nurses in education approach retirement, this technology will provide them...

Pharmed food crop approved for growth despite controversy.Rice modified to express proteins often found in breast milk will be planted in Kansas. It's certainly not the first crop designed to produce pharmaceutical proteins given the go-ahead in the United States or elsewhere (see 'Turning plants into protein factories'). But this is among the first food crops containing genes that produce human proteins to gain approval for large-scale planting. Many other pharmaceutical genetically-modified (GM) crops are grown indoors or in inedible plants such as tobacco. The rice strains, made by Ventria Bioscience in Sacramento, California, produce lysozyme, lactoferrin and human serum...

THE way was cleared today for scientists to conduct experiments using hybrid animal-human embryos after the UK Government bowed to a storm of protest from researchers who said a proposed ban could hurt British science. The Department of Health said it would accept a recommendation from the Commons Science and Technology Committee that inter-species embryos could be created for research. Scientists want to use the hybrid embryos to find cures for illnesses such as Parkinson's, stroke and Alzheimer's. In December, the Government had proposed a ban on creating the hybrid embryos, due to what it called "considerable public unease," with...

LONDON, April 27 (UPI) -- Two British couples want to use an embryo selection technique to eradicate a breast cancer gene that runs in their families. Scientists say screening for the defective BCRA1 gene would reduce the likelihood of cancer, The (London) Guardian reported Friday. The London Times said an application to test for the breast cancer gene was submitted Thursday by a doctor at University College Hospital. The newspaper said Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has already agreed to it in principle. The application is expected to be approved within four months. The couples will have in vitro...

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today. Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue. The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm. But the results...

For the millions of Americans whose vision is slowly ebbing due to degenerative diseases of the eye, the lowly neural progenitor cell may be riding to the rescue. In a study in rats, neural progenitor cells derived from human fetal stem cells have been shown to protect the vision of animals with degenerative eye disease similar to the kinds of diseases that afflict humans. The new study appears today (March 28) in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One. The lead author of the study, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher David Gamm, says the cells - formative brain cells that...

LONDON, February 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British government’s plans to ban the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos are over after a group of 45 scientists, ethicists and politicians published an open letter in January saying that a ban would hold back the advancement of British science.   The Times reports that the government is now dropping plans to ban the experiments and will instead offer funding for a public debate before new legislation is drafted.   The open letter, published in the Times in response to the government’s December 2006 announcement that it planned to draft legislation to ban...

The ad in the back pages of the free Washington, D.C., news weekly was curious enough, warning women that they or their loved ones could suffer from debilitating diseases like Parkinson's or cancer and inviting them to let their eggs "be part of the cure." But it's had reverberations 2,500 miles away where a debate in California is raging over how scientists can acquire the human eggs critical to stem cell research -- specifically, whether it is ethical or even legal to pay women thousands of dollars to provide them. The ad in the Jan. 3 issue of The Washington...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/303306_joel12.html Peer into future after car ban -- it isn't prettyMonday, February 12, 2007By JOEL CONNELLYP-I COLUMNISTA longtime friend came up at a party last week, asking what it would take to get me on board the campaign that seeks to tear down the Alaskan Way Viaduct and not replace it.I cited a prediction by Department of Transportation boss Doug MacDonald that the "street option" would mean 12 hours of daily congestion on Interstate 5. "Good!" said my friend, once on the Seattle School Board. "Cars suck," added a woman chiming in on our exchange.Inspired by her persuasive depth,...

TOLLWAY giant Transurban is looking to expand its e-tag system to give customers cashless entry into Sydney car parks. Transurban will roll out an electronic tag toll system in Sydney similar to its Melbourne operation if it succeeds in its $1.26 billion takeover bid for Sydney Roads Group. The deal would leave Transurban in control of most of Sydney's roads, adding the M1 Eastern Distributor, the M4 and M5 to the M2 and M7 motorways it already operates. The acquisition would make Transurban the country's dominant toll road operator. It would use this base to deliver thousands of its e-tag...

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way. ~snip~ The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the...

OLYMPIA, Wash. - An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled. Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage. Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their...

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected. The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents. Over the...

No need for a father figure for IVF babies? The need for a child to have a father should be removed from the law governing fertility treatment, a government White Paper said today.  Clinics must still consider the welfare of any child born as a result of IVF or other fertility treatment but whether a father figure is present will no longer be necessary, under government proposals. Do children need a father figure? Tell us in reader comments belowThe move would make it easier for single women and lesbian couples to have children using donor sperm.  The Review of...

Gunshots ring out in a neighborhood, and law enforcement's first move is to pull up a computer screen to see whether the sound came from areas equipped with electronic devices that track the source of gunfire. Then a public safety employee keys up another monitor and uses Global Positioning System technology to identify the locations of the city's worst-known violent offenders -- to determine whether any of them are in the spot where the shots were fired. Such a brave new world is coming to Oakland -- and it seems likely that it will become a reality elsewhere in California...

State of Missouri General Election  - November 2006 - General Election Tuesday, November 07, 2006 Click here for a printer friendly version  Ballot Issue Name Votes    % Of Votes  Constitutional Amendment No. 2 - 2006    Precincts Reporting 3672 of 3734    Stem Cell Initiative Yes 1,059,202  51.1%   No 1,013,850  48.9% Total Votes

Stem-cell researchers have applied to produce an embryo using an animal’s egg and a human cell British scientists are to submit plans to create a hybrid embryo — part human, part cow. They are to develop a way of creating stem cells that does not require human eggs, but the application seems likely to be met with controversy. The team, from the University of Newcastle, would take a cow’s egg and remove the nucleus. They would then replace it with the nucleus of a cell taken from an adult human, such as a skin cell. The hybrid would be overwhelmingly...

A young woman has put her eggs for sale on the internet to pay off £15,000 of credit card debts. Alexandra Saunders posted her details on an American website after reading about the huge amount that can be made in a woman's magazine. The 26-year-old, who already has three jobs to try and pay off her debts, thought it would be an easy way to make money. It is illegal for a woman to sell her eggs within the UK but egg donation is big business in the US where childless couples pay up to £20,000 in exchange the...

Anand: Mark and Darcy Cornwall have come all the way from California because they couldn't afford not to. They've been trying to have a baby for the past five years and their last attempt ended in a miscarriage. On their first trip to India, they have found the woman who has agreed to carry their baby - a surrogate mother. 33-years-old and with three grown children, she knows the joys of motherhood. She also understands the pain of poverty. For her attempt to carry the Cornwalls' baby to maturity, she will be paid $5,000. Just like her there are so...

Houston, TX (AHN) - In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen at an alarming rate, some schools like Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston, have decided to take security measure into their own hands. Every morning, some 16,000 students swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus, while a radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building. Furthermore, nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor-from parents, volunteers, to the guy who fills the Coke machine - must surrender his or...

Clutching her Hermes holiday bag under her arm, Susan Barrington, a 52-year-old housewife from Buckinghamshire, can't help smiling as she leaves the exclusive clinic in London's Wimpole Street. She has been given the final go-ahead to travel abroad for a cutting edge nonsurgical treatment that promises to make her look ten years younger. She doesn't care if the treatment is expensive, involves babies and is so controversial that it is not allowed to be performed in this country - among her well-heeled friends, this is the ultimate new elixir of youth. The attractive brunette has opted for a controversial stem-...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

CHICAGO -- This week, a series of public forums on a program requiring all pregnant women and children through age 18 years to be tested for mental health needs is being held this week in five different locations statewide. One group of parents learned about the state's plans to proceed with this program and on Monday issued an alarm asking for parents and citizens concerned about the new program to voice their opinions at the forums. "We're moving toward social training over academic training with this program," Larry Trainor, a Mt. Prospect parent of four children and a contact for...

“We were all an embryo at one point, and we ought to as a society be very careful about being callous about the wanton destruction of embryos, of life,” White House aide Karl Rove told the Denver Post this week. He was explaining why President Bush is committed to casting his first-ever veto against a bill--which may pass the Senate as early as next week--that would give tax dollars to researchers who deliberately kill human embryos to extract their stem cells. “The president is emphatic about this,” Rove said. This veto threat is necessary because of Senate Majority Leader Bill...

A woman left infertile after cancer treatment cannot use her frozen embryos to have a baby, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. Natallie Evans started IVF treatment with her then partner Howard Johnston in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up. Ms Evans went to the Strasbourg court after exhausting the UK legal process. She now hopes to appeal to the Grand Jury of the European Court, but still wants her ex-fiancé to change his mind. Ms Evans said: "I'm still as determined to do whatever it takes to have...

THESE ARE THE SENATORS WHO VOTED TO GIVE SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO ILLEGAL ALIENS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL PARTY, THESE POLITICIANS NEED TO BE DEFEATED IN 2006, 2008 OR 2010, WHENEVER THEY NEXT COME UP FOR OFFICE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW; THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION -- THAT IS, UNLESS THEY DO NOT MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH FOREIGN WORKERS WHO NEVER PAID INTO IT AND AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING LEFT OUT. Grouped by Home State Alabama: Alaska: Stevens (R-AK), Yea Arizona: McCain (R-AZ), Yea Arkansas: Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR),...

VeriChip reveals its colours By Nick Farrell: Thursday 01 June 2006, 15:41 AFTER YEARS OF insisting that VeriChip RFID technology will not be used for Big Brother purposes, the company's chairman has proposed tagging immigrant and guest workers in the United States. Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation seems to have got carried away when being interviewed on "Fox & Friends" when responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here". He suggested that if foreigners were tagged using VeriChip RFID implants at the border, the technology could...

I am curious why none of the media covers the most important aspect of the Malvo shootings. If you look at Newspapers on the dates when the shootings are underway you discover something I find quite interesting. The shootings begin to dominate the news the day before the debate on the Iraq war starts and they catch them the day after the declaration of war??? If you ask most people "do you remember the debate about starting the second Iraq war", they will all answer "yes of course". But if you followup with the question "name one point in the...

I recently received a reply to a post that stated: "This should be beneath a "freeper". Sad." So I asked.. what is it that makes a FReeper? My reply (and I will admit was tasteless) was also questioning. It stirred controversy and was removed? Why Moderators? Can you not tell me? Did it not meet with your "FReeper" mentality? According to all posted guidelines it should be listed but no, you chose to delete it. Yes.. I'm the first one IBTZ, I'm sure you'll nick me for speaking up..

Note: This commentary may not be suitable for young children. Please use parental discretion. Leann Mischel, a Pennsylvania college professor, was ready to have a second child. And she wanted the new baby to have the same father her son did. The problem was that Mischel had no idea who he was: The father of her son was “Donor 401” at a sperm bank. And the bank had sold out of Donor 401’s genetic material. But Mischel was in luck. As the Washington Post put it, Carla Schouten, another sperm-bank mother from San Jose, had “the gift of a lifetime...