Free Republic

SAN DIEGO, California, July 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The general counsel for the National Education Association (NEA), America's largest teacher's union, complained last week of the "conservative and right-wing bastards" that are "after" the NEA. At the same meeting, the NEA rejected a proposal that would have ceased their abortion advocacy, and went on record in support of same-sex "marriage." "We are not paranoid, someone really is after us," said General Counsel Bob Chanin in an address to NEA affiliates on the occasion of his retirement. "Why are these conservative and right-wing bastards picking on NEA and its affiliates? I...

ANAHEIM, CA - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it's "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance. In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that "the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." The presiding bishop said that view is "caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus." According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer...

Every week I head on over to Townhall.com to check out the latest postings of some of my favorite commentators. Today I happened across Mike Adams newest column in which he "breaks" the news of Frank Lombard's Amazon.com Book Wish-list. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Frank Lombard, a University of NC Duke professor is currently in jail charged with, and has admitted, sexually molesting his 5 year old adopted sons. Using the name "Perv Dad for Fun", Lombard, in a chatroom, offered up his son for sex to an undercover cop. On June 30, 2009 I found...

The Washington Post is marketing to institutional executives and lobbyists dinners with congressmen, Obama officials and its own reporters, according to Politico.com. The "salons" will be held at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. Price for access ranges from $25,000 to $250,000, according to the flier. So much for the role of watchdog. At least now, there is no excuse for doubting everything you read. The new service was made known to the general public by a health-care lobbyist offended by the policy. The flier baldly said the dinners would provide access to the paper's “health care reporting...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan, June 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Researchers at the University of Michigan have concluded that the love stories told in classic Disney and other G-rated children's films - such as the Little Mermaid - are partially to blame for the pervasiveness of what they label "heteronormativity." "Despite the assumption that children's media are free of sexual content, our analyses suggest that these media depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape," wrote researchers Emily Kazyak and Karin Martin, in a report published in the latest issue of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) publication Gender & Society. Kazyak...

Video of NYS Senate Democrats sitting defiantly through the Pledge of Allegiance in protest after losing political control of the Chamber to Republicans. Only one courageous Senator tried to stand to honor the flag, but he was immedaietly pulled down into his seat by fellow Democrats. The video is from WCBS-2 TV on 6/23/09, taped during a "special session" of the Senate called by Democrat Gov. David Paterson in an effort to end a three-week walkout by Democrats that has brought government to a screeching halt. Grim-faced Democrats refused to acknowledge even their presence in the Chamber, failing to answer...

BURIEN, Wash. -- Controversy is surrounding a new sculpture at the Burien/Interim Arts Space. The bronzed piece is of a squatting, nude woman, and it leaves little to the imagination, according to concerned parents. "Just cover it up a little bit. Too much parts showing for the little kids," said parent Adam Sankey. Anybody can walk through the privately-owned art space at Fifth Avenue SW and SW 150th Street. And for some, that's an issue, especially with a new library right next door. "I don't want my kids around it," said parent Jole Sankey. "My 8 year old doesn't need...

Responding to concerns that psychologists might be required to counsel homosexual couples about strengthening their relationship, Catholic leaders in Nebraska are asking for conscience protections for psychologists who refuse to treat or refer clients because of religious or moral convictions. Speaking during a licensing rules hearing before the Board of Mental Health Practice, Nebraska Catholic Conference executive director Jim Cunningham proposed a “convictions of conscience” rule for psychologists. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that he warned that Catholic Charities in Omaha and Catholic Social Services in Lincoln might have to stop hiring licensed counselors and psychologists if they are not...

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408http://www.gunowners.org Friday, May 15, 2009 Do you know what your supposedly "Republican" senator is doing right now? Well, it turns out that Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is also leading the "hit parade" on behalf of legislation which would expand the scope of government in a way unprecedented in human history -- and which would place your most private medical data into an anti-gun database. Hard to believe? But there he is: Sen. Graham is right up there with certifiable liberals like left...

A campus Christian group that receives funding from the student activity fee is coming under scrutiny after a student was asked by advisors to step down from its leadership team when he told them that he had openly accepted his homosexuality. This incident is also raising questions about the effectiveness of campus mechanisms for addressing instances of discrimination. Chris Donohoe ’09, who joined the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship when he was a freshman, said he had been openly struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his faith in Chi Alpha before he was asked to step down from the leadership team...

It's Not About Homosexuality--Not Really by Paul R. Hinlicky — April 14, 2009 It is not only, or perhaps even primarily, about homosexuality. My whimsical lament “I Think I Want a Divorce” got quite an echo in “this church”; apparently, the bone-deep disenchantment articulated in the piece has been building up among theologically serious Christians in the ELCA for many reasons for a long time. Slowly we are waking up to reality. The truth is that Luther is being overshadowed by Zwingli, so to say; plainly put, homosexuality is being used as a wedge issue by the religious Left. This...

In a bid to marginalize criticism of the massive expansion of government emerging from the Obama Administration, professors at Harvard’s “Third Conference on Law and Mind Sciences” presented evidence for what they dubbed “anti-socialist personality disorder.” In one paper titled “The Palliative Function of Ideology,” Ph.D. candidate Jaime Napier from NYU postulated that the self-reported higher levels of personal happiness of conservatives was, in itself, a sign of serious mental illness. “In a world wallowing in poverty and oppression, angst and neurosis are the healthy responses,” Napier wrote. “Liberals manifest a robust magnitude of both angst and neurotic tendencies in...

THE push to make the song I Am Australian the national anthem has been renewed after its emotional rendition at the national day of mourning for bushfire victims. The internet is abuzz with comments that the song, written by Bruce Woodley and Dobe Newton in 1987, would make a better national anthem than the current one, Advance Australia Fair. Online encyclopedia Wikipedia lists it as an alternative to Advance Australia Fair and several online petitions call for it to be used as the anthem. The song was the stand-out moment of the bushfire memorial service on February 22 and its...

President-elect Barack Obama Washington DC, Nov 23, 2008 / 07:48 pm (CNA).- Citing what they call America’s “promise of equality,” the Obama administration plans to push for homosexual rights by including protections of sexual orientation, “gender identity” and “gender expression” as civil rights. His office proposes expanding hate crimes statues and the adoption rights of homosexuals while supporting full civil unions for “LGBT couples” to give them “legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples.”The proposals are announced under the Civil Rights section of their agenda presented at Change.gov, the web site of the Obama campaign’s self-described...

Researchers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas are pioneering the use of spatial statistical modeling to analyze brain scan data from Persian Gulf War veterans, aiming to pinpoint specific areas of the their brains affected by Gulf War Syndrome. Richard Gunst, Wayne Woodward and William Schucany, professors in SMU's Statistical Science Department, are collaborating with imaging specialists at UT Southwestern Medical Center to compare brain scans of people suffering from the syndrome with those of a healthy control group. The SMU team is working with renowned UTSW epidemiologist Dr. Robert Haley, one of the foremost experts on the syndrome. A...

Costa Rican artiste Guillermo Habacuc Vargas is making headlines for tying a dog from the street in an art gallery as part of an exhibit to starve it to death. The title of his exhibit "Eres Lo Que Lee" was written across the gallery in dry dog food. The food and a bowl of water were both out of the dog's reach. Eventually the animal died of starvation. The artist claimed the dog was sick and would have died anyways. Now Vargas has been selected to represent Costa Rica in Visual Arts Biennel of Central Americas 2008. The organizers have...

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster... --snip-- An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs...

Images from the attack on Combat Outpost Inman. On the morning of March 23, 2008, an Easter Sunday, a massive blast rocked the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Eight kilometers away at Forward Operating Base Marez, the US Military Transition Team for the 6th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, prepared for the worst. The blast was so large many thought incoming rounds landed close by inside the base. But a large plume rising in the distance in the northwest made it clear a very large suicide vehicle attack just occurred inside Mosul. The US adviser team, led by Lieutenant...

People gaze in disbelief at the cultural landscape — all the divorce, cohabitation, promiscuity, sexually transmitted disease, single moms, ill-mannered children, failing public schools, substance abuse, domestic violence, abortions, pornography and incivility — and can't fathom how America fell this far this fast. No one event triggered this devolution, but it undeniably was pushed along many times by the moral relativism of the last 50 years, when most of society's widely accepted norms were undermined by the quicksand of nonjudgmentalism; when the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, were abolished in favor of differences that were to be...

Like many Americans who have severe forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Ms. Saks and Ms. Spikol are speaking candidly and publicly about their demons. Their frank talk is part of a conversation about mental illness (or as some prefer to put it, “extreme mental states”) that stretches from college campuses to community health centers, from YouTube to online forums. “Until now, the acceptance of mental illness has pretty much stopped at depression,” said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “But a newer generation, fueled by the Internet and other...

When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms. But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to "defend" the U.S. and California constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." * The loyalty oath from the California...

Associated Press A state police academy leader has disavowed the slogan of the most recent graduating class urging one another to "go out and cause" post-traumatic stress disorder. Each class at the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training Academy is allowed to choose a slogan that is printed on its graduation programs, and the class of 43 graduates came up with "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it." According to the Veterans Association, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers suffer from PTSD, which causes nightmares, flashbacks and physical symptoms that make sufferers feel as if they are reliving...

(NANJING, China) -- Mi Zhantao, a poor 25-year-old living with his parents outside this provincial capital in eastern China, was battling depression and had trouble socializing. Doctors said he had schizophrenia. They recommended brain surgery. Mr. Mi's family spent about $4,800 -- the equivalent of four years' income, and more than their life savings -- on the operation, at No. 454 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Nanjing. The highly controversial procedure involved drilling tiny holes in the young man's skull, inserting a 7?-inch-long needle and burning small areas of brain tissue thought to be causing his problems. The...

It's one thing to set fire to The Man at the Burning Man festival a few days early -- at least the effigy is built to be burned, albeit at a specific hour. But Paul Addis, the guy who bummed out thousands of burners by torching The Man before festival participants were ready for it, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of trying to torch a historic cathedral in San Francisco. Here's a slice from the story:(Edit)On the one hand, I can understand the power of the image to someone who sees the church as an oppressive institution. On the other...

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The organization cited excerpts from the university's Office of Residence Life Diversity Education Training documents, including the statement: "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class,...

Teacher sex cases problem in stateBy Dylan T. Lovan Associated Press LOUISVILLE - In elementary and secondary classrooms across Kentucky, teachers have harassed, molested - and in the worst cases - sexually assaulted the students they were entrusted to nurture and protect. State officials handled nearly 100 instances of teacher sexual misconduct over a recent five-year period, ranging from minor violations like using sexual language to more serious, criminal acts like inappropriate touching and even sodomy and rape. That's about two violations for each month on the school calendar. In a sample of teacher disciplinary actions from 2001 to 2005...

A Minnesota college student was suspended and ordered to undergo "mental health evaluation" for his response to campuswide e-mails from school officials concerning the Virginia Tech massacre. The college, Hamline University, a private, liberal-arts institution affiliated with the Methodist Church, has a policy on "Freedom of Expression and Inquiry" that guarantees that Hamline students will be "free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly or privately." With such a strong guarantee on students' "freedom from censorship and control" by the university, student Troy Scheffler's e-mail must have been horrifically bad to warrant...

Liberal Senate Democrats and the U.S. State Department are desperate to get the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty ratified. But Senator David Vitter, a conservative Republican, keeps getting in the way. Through skillful questioning during Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, the Louisiana Republican got a leading treaty supporter to acknowledge that America's enemies can manipulate the process of mandatory dispute settlement under the treaty so that the United Nations Secretary-General plays the key role in the outcome. Vitter called this a "recipe for disaster" for America and urged more hearings into the treaty's flaws.

Recently I wrote in a general piece on the disintegration of American society that one problem was the position and actions of the ACLU, which, I said, defends child molesters and child pornography. Some people seemed surprised by this reference and statement, not believing that the ACLU would countenance child molestation and pornography, and think that I am mistaken. I was a resident of Massachusetts in 1997 when a 10 year old child, James Curley, was sexually abused and then horribly murdered by two men.

Bidwell Junior High School administrators said a letter sent home with students in an eighth-grade class Tuesday was a good idea for a history lesson, with bad execution. The letter, which appeared to ask parents to renounce their U.S. citizenship, prompted phone calls to the school from several irate recipients. He concluded the letter with "After careful consideration of the facts of our current situation, I have decided to announce to everyone that I am no longer a citizen of the United States, but a free and independent member of the global community." "The point was, I wanted to ask...

The 60s sexual revolution was in full bloom as I headed to college in 1969. Founded on a new definition of happiness ... the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ... the revolution spawned a new vocabulary. Words birthed in the sexual revolution ... liberation, freedom, self-expression, empowerment ... all of these defined the supposed rewards of releasing strictures and limits of a more "primitive world" imposed on human behavior. We demanded a better happiness. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. No limits. No fear. A new kind of happiness at the end of the...

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In July 1976, less than three years after the District of Columbia was granted the right to govern some of its own affairs, its newly elected city council asserted its new powers by passing one of the nation’s most controversial laws on one of its most controversial issues: gun control. In direct defiance of Congress and the White House, the council outmaneuvered the National Rifle Association (NRA)—then a million members strong—and voted 12–1...

Patrick Henry had it right. Forget the past, and you're destined to make the same mistakes in the future. Gun control has been an absolute failure. Whether it's a total gun ban or mere background checks, gun control has FAILED to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. But gun control fanatics still want to redouble their efforts, even when their endeavors have not worked. Congress is full of fanatics who want to expand the failed Brady Law to such an extent that millions of law-abiding citizens will no longer be able to own or buy guns. For months,...

In a speech in Tipton, Iowa yesterday, Senator John Edwards described his health care program "It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK. *** Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has issued a revised form 4473 which must be used as of Sept. 1, 2007 Read About It: BATFE (PDF link)

Another Federal Gun Law Planned This one expands the rights-denial list in NICS HR 2640 motivated by psychopathic murderer Calls for more "gun control" grow louder No calls for gun-safety training or expanded carry rights can be heardDept. of Homeland Security to contribute to NICS database GUN LAW UPDATE June 15, 2007 NEW FEDERAL GUN LAW COMING NEW FEDERAL GUN LAW COMING NEW FEDERAL GUN LAW COMING Dept. of Homeland Security to join in NICS database Dept. of Homeland Security to join in NICS database Rights restorations promised but fuzzy by Alan Korwin, AuthorGun Laws of AmericaPermission to circulate granted The House of Representatives, with...

Too many "Americans" are pre-programmed to expect the worst from the people who keep them free. This pre-programming is ideological. It is a legacy of Soviet psychological operations that merged with the Vietnam-era anti-war movement that provides the Democratic Party with its leadership today. War is just not Politically Correct and so no war effort can be supported, unless the issues at stake are not in the national interest and the war can be fought from 20,000 feet. The Amazing Grim, for whom I have the utmost respect and great admiration, writes about the danger of politicizing the military and adds...

I'm just about finished with Rowan Scarborough's fine book, Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA. It's highly recommended. Paints a very different picture than what the MSM provides. Lots of detail Here is the material from the inside flap of the book: "From the Inside Flap How Bush-hating CIA Bureaucrats Are Sabotaging the War on Terror Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, intelligence collection has become the number-one weapon in the effort to defeat al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. A plot penetrated is an attack stopped. And to the outside observer, the CIA has performed well as a...

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Charges against a man accused of repeatedly raping and molesting a 7-year-old girl were dismissed last week because the court could not find an interpreter fluent in the suspect's native West African language. Mahamu Kanneh, a Liberian native who received asylum in this country and attended high school and community college here, according to The Washington Post, was denied a speedy trial after three years awaiting a court-appointed interpreter who could speak the tribal language of Vai.

Cardinal Roger Mahony has announced that the Church will pay out $660 million to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse by priests. It’s the Catholic Church’s failure to act swiftly and decisively on the matter that has disillusioned and enraged church members and victims. No one likes a cover-up, especially religious devotees who believe the church is a means of salvation and priests are mediators between the people and God. But there remains a more sinister cover-up. The Church must come to grips with reality and admit that the priesthood is so dominated by homosexuals that Paul Wilkes, who...

The House of Representatives has fast-tracked new legislation to "improve" the National Instant Criminal Background Check System by allowing doctors to now decide who can own firearms.

Much has been written recently about the fact that Democrats, arguably with malicious intent, mercilessly attack Republican positions, programs, and political appointees without offering any positive alternatives of their own. This has been ascribed variously to their hatred of George W. Bush (which is certainly a factor), to the fact that a significant percentage of the Democrat base and their elected representatives are unrepentant '60s-style liberals (this, too, plays into the current scenario), even, as Michael Medved has put it, to "an internal contradiction deep within the liberal soul." The bottom line is that, no matter how we might characterize...

The Framing Wars By MATT BAI Published: July 17, 2005 After last November's defeat, Democrats were like aviation investigators sifting through twisted metal in a cornfield, struggling to posit theories about the disaster all around them. *snip* *snip* Democrats thought they knew the answer. Even before the election, a new political word had begun to take hold of the party, beginning on the West Coast and spreading like a virus all the way to the inner offices of the Capitol. That word was ''framing.'' Republicans, of course, were the ones who had always excelled at framing controversial issues, having invented...

Once elected, the party of "tolerance" will implement its jihad against conservatives, morality, and most of all, Christians! NoDNC.com staff reportThe "Democrat" agenda is nothing but a front for implementing the collapse of America that Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci defined long ago.  His plan was simple, expand the Marxist class warfare, which is economically focused, to the areas of values and morality.  In other words, wage a war on virtue, values, morality, and of course, any religious view that espouses morality - can we say Christianity and Catholicism?If the Democrats take control of one or both Houses of Congress...

A Virginia court found that Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was "mentally ill" and dangerous. Then it let him go. Back in 2005, the District Court in Christiansburg said that Cho was a danger to himself but not others. He was ordered to undergo outpatient care. The ruling came after Cho was taken to a nearby psychiatric hospital for evaluation in December 2005, after two female schoolmates said they received threatening messages from him and police and school officials became concerned that he might be suicidal. That information came to light two days after Cho, a Virginia Tech senior, killed...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court threw out death sentences for three Texas killers Wednesday because of problems with instructions given jurors who were deciding between life in prison and death. In the case of LaRoyce Lathair Smith, the court set aside the death penalty for the second time. It also reversed death sentences for Brent Ray Brewer and Jalil Abdul-Kabir. The cases all stem from jury instructions that Texas hasn't used since 1991. Under those rules, courts have found that jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence...

Melissa Busekros, the schoolgirl taken by police and placed in a psychiatric hospital because she was diagnosed with a "school phobia" and was being homeschooled, has fled state custody to make a midnight trip back to her own family, according to Joel Thornton, president of The International Human Rights Group. "At 3 a.m., in Erlangen, Germany, Melissa reached her home to the surprise of her entire family," Thornton told WND. "Earlier in the morning Melissa left a note with the foster family where she was being held and began the journey to her family. She left of her own volition."...

Until two years ago, the Roman Catholic diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., ran audits of its parishes only when they changed pastors. It was a risky, even foolhardy policy when you consider that a parish like St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, in Delray Beach, hadn't changed pastors in 40 years. In September 2003, upon the retirement of St. Vincent's pastor, the Rev. John Skehan, diocesan accountant Denis Hamel dutifully showed up to inspect the books and the procedures for counting Sunday collections. The new pastor, the Rev. Francis Guinan--a close buddy of Skehan's--told him to beat it. But the new...

TAMPA — A doctor told a panel reviewing Florida’s lethal injection procedures that executioners “did the worst thing they could do” during the botched killing of condemned inmate Angel Diaz last year. The testimony came from Mark Heath, a Columbia University anesthesiologist who has testified on the behalf of death row inmates in about 20 states. But despite such testimony, the key question of whether Diaz suffered pain during the execution remained murky. Heath said the execution team “did exactly 100 percent the wrong thing” during the Dec. 13 execution of Diaz, who was condemned for the 1979 shooting death...

Daily Mail UK 8th February 2007 As three men are convicted of planning 'another Soham', a blistering attack on the sexualising of the young By BEL MOONEY Object to sexualised images such as the photos of Girls Aloud posing as "sexy schoolgirls" and you'll be derided as a prude. But the truth is they're poisoning our culture ... and turning every child into a potential sexual target. How fitting it was that he made terrifying masks for sick horror movies for a living. His head was full of even sicker horror as he plotted the torture, rape and murder of...