Free Republic

The Divine Man is a 'social animal,' and what he believe in is the power of association. The human idea is therefore this: Let us all unite - if possible, all the kingdoms and countries of the earth, and this union in pyramid form, which evinces the ever higher and higher, supports at its peak an Over-King. He must be considered closest to God, as close indeed to make God anxious and pay him attention. In Christian terms the situation is just the reverse. Such an Over-King will stand furthest from God, just as the whole enterprise of the pyramid...

Rochelle Pender's family and co-workers were stunned Friday to learn that the smiling Walmart greeter was dead. Police said employees at the 2500 Forest Hills Road store were chasing a suspected shoplifter Wednesday when someone ran into Pender. She fell and hit her head and died two days later. ... A Walmart spokesman said Pender, 71, had been with the company for 15 years and was a beloved member of the team at the Wilson store. "She's going to be greeting people in heaven now," Langley said.

Retired hockey enforcer Bob Probert, as adept with his fists as with a stick in a 16-season career with the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks, died Monday after suffering chest pains while boating with his family. He was 45. "Bob lost the fight of his life this afternoon," said Probert's father-in-law, Dan Parkinson, a police officer who performed CPR before Probert was rushed to Ontario's Windsor Regional Medical Center. Probert was on a boat in Lake St. Clair with his wife, children and in-laws when he "developed severe chest pains" Monday, family friend Rich Rogow told a Monday evening...

GARDAI discovered a pipe bomb stashed close to a Dublin shopping centre last night. The viable device was found at 12.07am on waste ground adjacent to Clare Hall Shopping Centre, and close to a bus stop. The army bomb disposal unit carried out a controlled explosion on a pipe bomb they deemed viable which was packed with explosive. Gardai carrying out a planned search before midnight had discovered the device not far from a bus stop and called in the army's Explosives Ordnance Division to inspect it. The area was sealed off, and the improvised device was detonated in a...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- After this most bizarro of playoff wins, one might have expected the Carolina Hurricanes' dressing room would have been electric with euphoria, or at the very least, giddy with relief. Instead, there was quiet introspection. "What do you see in this dressing room?" defenseman Aaron Ward asked, gesturing to the oddly silent dressing room. "It's the knowledge that we absolutely escaped with a game, 100 percent by the skin of our teeth." Bruce Bennett/Getty Images Rod Brind'Amour's winning goal in the waning seconds was his second of the game on Monday night. A few moments earlier, Rod...

Original manuscripts by Bach, Mozart and Brahms form part of a 139-item collection of sheet music donated to the Juilliard School in New York. The artefacts - donated by collector Bruce Kovner, chairman of the music acedemy's board - will be housed in a reading room from September 2009. Highlights include working manuscripts of Beethoven's only opera Fidelio and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 9. School president Joseph Polisi said it was "by its very definition priceless". A lifelong music lover, Kovner began collecting manuscripts more than 10 years ago when he noticed a flow of rare artefacts coming onto the...

We are the valiant Knights of Peace Who prattle for the Right: Our banner is of snowy fleece, Inscrib'd: "TOO PROUD TO FIGHT!" By sweet Chautauqua's flow'ry banks We love to sing and play, But should we spy a foeman's ranks! We'd proudly run away! When Prussian fury sweeps the main Our freedom to deny; Of tyrant laws we ne'er complain; But gladsomely comply! We do not fear the submarines That plough the troubled foam; We scorn the ugly old machines- And safely stay at home! They say our country's close to war And soon must man the guns; But...

As those thinking of becoming soldiers arrive on the slushy doorstep of the U.S. Army recruiting station here, they cannot miss the message posted in bold black letters on the storefront right next door. "Remember the Fallen Heroes," the sign reads, and then it ticks off numbers: the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, the number wounded, the number of days gone by since the war began. The sign, put up by Scott Cameron, a former soldier, has stirred intense debate, though always polite, in this city along the western edge of Lake Superior. In a way, many of...