Free Republic

The outcome in Iowa was both electorally inconclusive and politically clarifying. There is a Republican Party, supporting Mitt Romney, that wants to win an election. And there is a Republican Party, supporting Ron Paul, that wants to make a point about limited government. This division is not entirely ideological. There are rock-ribbed conservatives who believe that the highest political priority is the early retirement of President Obama. There are evangelicals — uncomfortable with libertarianism and the foreign policy of Charles Lindbergh — who have nevertheless joined Paul’s protest against swollen government Based on recent history, the party of electability will...

  New Year’s Resolutions David C. Stolinsky Jan. 1, 2012 Many people make New Year’s resolutions. Often these include vows to eat less and exercise more. Rather than these healthful but self-centered goals, may I suggest a different set of resolutions: Use compassion for those who deserve it. After we have punished the criminal, expressed compassion for all his victims, and done our best to relieve their suffering, then we can feel compassion for the criminal. But till then, feeling compassion for both criminal and victim leads only to more criminals and more victims – who need more compassion....

Newt Gingrich wants to pay poor kids to clean toilets. And all of the right people are horrified. The Nation says Gingrich is running on “a platform that seems to have been written by the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge.” The editors of the Newark Star-Ledger proclaim Gingrich wants to “bring back the days of Oliver Twist.” The host of “Meet the Press,” David Gregory, suggests Gingrich’s take on the inner-city poor is a “grotesque distortion.” This controversy started last month at Harvard, when Gingrich suggested in a speech that perhaps the best way to break the cycle of poverty in inner...

The famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill that, "If you're not liberal at 20, you have no heart...if you're not conservative by 30, you have no brain," may need some tweaking given the recent antics of the American left. Having built the credibility of their political movement on the grounds of compassion and empathy, their actions and policy proposals are reflective of just the opposite. Start with my home state of Indiana, whose Republican legislature and governor enacted a law to prohibit taxpayer dollars from flowing into the hands of any health clinic that performs abortions. Through entirely predictable demagoguery,...

Have you ever heard someone teach, preach, or say something that didn’t sound right? It was incorrect. It didn’t seem to agree with what you had been taught in the past. What was your response? Hopefully, like the Bereans of old in Acts 17:11, you picked up your scriptures and carefully searched through them and studied them to confirm what had been said. What did you do next? Some will remain silent and say nothing. Others will use this as an opportunity to spread gossip or rumors about the teacher/speaker in question with the intent of “tearing them down” and...

School choice, lower taxes, job creation: These, and not welfare payments, are what would really help the poor. In his autobiography, former British prime minister Tony Blair recounts the political epiphany that caused him to break with the old-style class-warfare–based Labour Party that he had grown up with. “In a sense they wanted to celebrate the working class,� he writes, “not make them middle class.� In many ways, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats appear to have the same attitude about the American poor. They talk frequently about the poor. They lavish programs upon them. (Last year the Obama administration...

Mrs Blair was merely performing an unpaid kindness in Albania, says Matthew Norman.Amid all the excitement of Eamonn Holmes's pioneering legal battle to stop the BBC broadcasting jokes about his obesity, and with Keith Chegwin under fire for nicking other people's gags, you could be forgiven for having missed the really significant comedic news of the week. In what leading scholars of mirth posit as Britain's most valuable comic export to that country since Norman Wisdom, Cherie Blair went to Albania. The great altruist made the trip, as you may already have guessed, to pay homage to her Albanian role...

At the end of the article there is a video of a Black Bear with only 3 legs. Because she is missing a front leg she walks upright like a human. Interesting video. I can see how some Indian in the old days may have thought from a distance that the bear was half human, thus the name Sasquatch, or as we white men would say "Big Foot". Follow the link below and you will find the video at the end of the article towards the bottom of the page.3 Legged Black Bear Foraging With Her Cubs

Check out this video from Turkey of a stray cat comforting his fallen friend. Sometimes we forget that even animals can feel the loss of a loved one. I have known humans who displayed less emotion over the loss of a friend or relative than this cat does. On this, the day we celebrate our beloved Mothers, I ask that you remember to tell your friends that you love them also. After all, there will come a day when it will be to late. Follow the link below to see the video of theStray Cat Comforting A Fallen Friend

Check out this video from Turkey of a stray cat comforting his fallen friend. Sometimes we forget that even animals can feel the loss of a loved one. I have known humans who displayed less emotion over the loss of a friend or relative than this cat does. On this, the day we celebrate our beloved Mothers, I ask that you remember to tell your friends that you love them also. After all, there will come a day when it will be to late. Follow the link below to see the video of theStray Cat Comforting A Fallen Friend

Ben-Peter Terpstra writes on why conservatives tend to give more than left-of-centre liberals. I can see why Ann Coulter detests the compassionate conservative label. Indeed, it sounds as patronising as the articulate black label because conservatism is compassionate, period. In Makers and Takers Peter Schweizer explains (page 70): Over the past fifteen years, the General Social Survey has consistently shown that religious conservatives are 25 percentage points more likely than [left-of-centre] liberals to donate money to help the poor and are 23 points more likely to volunteer time for that cause. As Arthur Brooks points out, the annual gap in...

You can teach compassion, as Peter tried to do in 1 Peter 3:8. But you cannot demand compassion. You cannot force people to be compassionate. You cannot write a law. People either are or they are not.

The current polls are indeed pointless useless, she gets better and better on a daily basis, just think how good she'll be by this time next year. She'll kill on interviews, debates and speeches. The best part of it is that she knows it too! http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2010/02/governor-palin-on-oreilly-tonight.html

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella Rome, Italy, Feb 8, 2010 / 03:02 pm (CNA).- The celebrated philosopher and theologian Monsignor Michel Schooyans has published his thoughts on the contemporary misuse of the concept of "compassion." According to Msgr. Schooyans, the Vatican newspaper and the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, are complicit in promoting "pseudo-compassion."Msgr. Schooyans, professor emeritus of theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and an expert in bioethics and demography, outlined the "bogus" employment of the concept of compassion in contemporary society by way of his recent work "The Pitfalls of...

The air is still Heat is intense The sweating bodies Purposed and tense. Below the surface Unseen to the eye The power in the elements Begins to collide. A second, a minute A stifled scream Darkness descends The earth shakes free. The black-skins die The white-skins too Death knows no prejudice Neither pick nor choose......

During the quake, our three-year-old grandson told his mom that he thought a train was coming through their house. Our son’s reaction was that he knew something bad had happened but not until Wednesday morning did they know that something REALLY BAD had happened. Indeed, something REALLY BAD had happened. Having served on many mission trips to Haiti the area of the REALLY BAD was a very familiar place. I have walked on those streets, shopped in the stores and visited the Compassion country office that was right in the midst of the devastation. I could mentally picture these houses...

As of Wednesday morning, Compassion International reports that they have not yet made contact with their Haiti office, which is near the epicenter of Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake. The quake has produced many aftershocks, including two of significant intensity - over 5.0 in magnitude. Communication to Haiti is virtually impossible with widespread damage to cell towers and communication lines. Compassion shared on Twitter that their reach in Haiti involves 230 churches helping 65,000+ children/families, 2,200 Child Survival Program moms and babies and almost 100 leadership students. “Based on the epicenter, media reports and our center locations, we expect centers have been...

This audio clip is from one of my recent shows, in which a caller wanted (I think) to publicly put me on the spot over why I "de-friended" him on my Facebook page. As you'll hear, the reason was because of something he said to some of the women there about their having had an abortion. The problem was that he branded such women as "murderers" because 1) abortion is murder and 2) they had aborted one or more of their children. His logic is correct, at least in a sense, because abortion is murder. But the way he put...

Now swallow your nice ObamaCare... it only tastes yucky for a second. No, don't throw it up! Now look what you did! Mommy will have to clean up after you. Again. Is there something disquieting about a president who only wants to spread love and compassion to all Americans -- or else? Or else he'll hate us forever? Or else he'll put us in jail? Or else he'll stamp his feet and cry? That's the feeling I'm getting. He is so intent on doing us all a big favor. ObamaCare is Just and Right and Compassionate --- and it has...

Pilot Lee Taylor of Eagle’s Nest Ventures of Diamondhead gives flying instructions to Sean Peneguy, 13, before their flight Friday. Sean was excited and a little nervous before his first airplane ride last Friday. He had a chance to take the controls during mid-flight. After spending most of last year checking in and out of hospitals battling cancer, one middle school student got a thrill of a lifetime. Sean Peneguy, a 13-year-old from Bay St. Louis, was diagnosed with bone cancer a year ago. Since then, he has been in chemotherapy and had surgery to remove a tumor from...

From an e-mail I recieved: I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing. Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious? In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the...

What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives? Wouldn’t the story be front-page news, especially in top, liberal newspapers? Wouldn’t it lead on CNN, MSNBC and the “CBS Evening News”? Might statues be erected to the man in the nation’s more “progressive” cities? What if the president was...

NEW YORK — New York City is buying one-way plane tickets for homeless families to leave the city. It's part of a program by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration to keep the homeless out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family. More than 550 families have left the city since 2007. All it takes is for a relative to agree to take them in. The city employs a travel agency for domestic travel and the Department of Homeless Services handles international travel.

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Investigators asked the public to be on the lookout Friday for a red van they believe carried three men involved in the deaths of a Florida Panhandle couple who were shot in their rural home while eight of their children slept. Surveillance cameras showed the van at the home of Byrd and Melanie Billings in Beulah, a rural area west of Pensacola near the Alabama border, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. The children were unharmed. The sheriff's office released an enhanced but still grainy photograph of a red, 15-passenger van dating to the late 70s or...

It has been the aim of the Democrat party since they lost the Presidential election in 2004 to subvert the Christian doctrine with the claim that Jesus was a socialist. Their goal is to convince Christians that their Social agenda is morally equivalent with the teachings and life of Jesus Christ. Considering the lack of historical and Biblical knowledge most Americans have, it is not surprising that many have fallen for the misinformation on what Jesus taught (and for whom the teachings were given). These Biblical revisionists have become especially adept at cherry picking Scripture to suit their agenda. Hence,...

Our economy is broke due to inflationary compassion as much as it is from inflationary greed by Wayne Lusvardi What shall we make of the following? Homeless Sensitivity Sleep-overs Overhead at the Fuller Seminary Bookstore in Pasadena recently: Guy talking on cell phone: "Hello. Yes, we're organizing churches to have a homeless persons sleep-over at their church to sensitize congregations to the homeless problem. If I heard the following cell phone conversation correctly, someone at Fuller Seminary was organizing a revolving homeless persons sleepover at different churches. Which jogs my memory as to what year it was that mainline liberal...

Our economy is broke due to inflationary compassion as much as it is from inflationary greed What shall we make of the following? Homeless Sensitivity Sleep-overs Overhead at the Fuller Seminary Bookstore in Pasadena recently: Guy talking on cell phone: "Hello. Yes, we're organizing churches to have a homeless persons sleep-over at their church to sensitize congregations to the homeless problem. If I heard the following cell phone conversation correctly, someone at Fuller Seminary was organizing a revolving homeless persons sleepover at different churches. Which jogs my memory as to what year it was that mainline liberal Pasadena All Saints...

Conservatives More Liberal Givers By George Will WASHINGTON -- Residents of Austin, Texas, home of the state's government and flagship university, have very refined social consciences, if they do say so themselves, and they do say so, speaking via bumper stickers. Don R. Willett, a justice of the state Supreme Court, has commuted behind bumpers proclaiming "Better a Bleeding Heart Than None at All," "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty," "The Moral High Ground Is Built on Compassion," "Arms Are For Hugging," "Will Work (When the Jobs Come Back From India)," "Jesus Is a Liberal," "God Wants Spiritual...

This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy. Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates. Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an...

So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot...When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. Mark 6:32-34 Jesus had taken His disciples aside to teach them and to find out exactly they had been doing (v30). As the disciples traveled in a boat, many followed them on foot. Picture this scene. Jesus is teaching in a boat on the way to a quiet...

Rent control, anyone? A resident of Brooklyn, New York is facing eviction. It’s a fairly common, nondescript occurrence in a city of eight million residents. This particular resident, however - sixty-six year old Ella Taliercio - has been attracting some attention. She has been living in her place of residence - in a neighborhood called Park Slope - for half-a-century. She currently pays $147.08 a month – a rate that has remained steady for two decades or better – in a neighborhood where $2000-a-month rents for two-bedroom apartments are not unusual. (The rent was $33 a month when she first...

HOUSTON (BP)--About 1,500 Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers are setting up units in Texas and were expected to be operational by the end of the day Tuesday to serve victims of Hurricane Ike. The primary focus of the efforts currently is food preparation, with 39 kitchen units on site in the state. The American Red Cross has asked Southern Baptists to be ready to prepare up to 375,000 hot meals a day, while the Salvation Army has requested 125,000 meals a day, bringing the total to 500,000. In addition to the 39 feeding units, more than 40 other types of...

Dennis Kucinich is currently on the floor of the House presenting his bill to impeach President George W. Bush. C-SPAN, 8:00 PM 9 Jun 2008.

Dr. Weiss spoke exclusively to Catholic Online about his experience in the dramatic events which occurred in Suffolk on Monday. He told of a medical community and facility which, through their response, transformed tragedy into triumph.

Faith & Politics The Compassion Forum Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama face the hard questions on faith and politics. Join Campbell Brown for a 2-hour CNN special event..."The Compassion Forum" --Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.

Update: Despite efforts from Fox News to facilitate this dying girl's wish to have her father at her bedise when she passes, the imovable, cold-hearted, beauraucratic, red tape of the Jucidiary, Bureau Of Prisons and U.S. Attorney are intransigent in their unwillingness to bend the "rules" to allow this to happen.

A little girl fights for her life, and her last wish is to see her father. But that wish may not come true. "They didn't expect her to still be here. She's fighting, day by day, minute by minute," said Vonda Yaeger, mother. 10/11 has followed the story of 10-year-old Jayci Yaeger as she battled brain tumors. Now doctors say she is about to lose that fight. Her last wish is to spend what time she has left with her father, but he is in a federal prison for drug charges. Less than six months ago, Jayci was energetic, fun...

This primary season has encouraged some serious soul searching about what it means to be a conservative. The discussion is important, not just as the party selects a nominee, but as we at long last move beyond the Bush era of “compassionate conservatism.” An important part of this discussion began when then-candidate Fred Thompson was asked if, as a Christian and a conservative, he supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative. Thompson responded: “Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it.”...

A woman in her late teens died from an acute asthma attack triggered by secondhand cigarette smoke shortly after arriving at her job as a waitress in a bar in Michigan, researchers reported on Friday.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2008 – Many servicemembers who have experienced combat, and their families, are familiar with the term “combat stress.” The effects of combat, however, aren’t limited to those directly connected to the experience. Dr. Joseph Bobrow, a clinical psychologist, addresses representatives of more than 100 troop-support groups on compassion fatigue, Jan. 25, 2008. Bobrow was one of several experts and officials to speak at the Pentagon for the third annual America Supports You National Summit. Photo by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Stress can affect anyone who cares for those individuals, Dr. Joseph...

That's very true. As America demonstrates, faith thrives in a free market. In Europe, the established church, whether formal (the Church of England) or informal (as in Catholic Italy and Spain), killed religion as surely as state ownership killed the British car industry. When the Episcopal Church degenerates into wimpsville relativist milquetoast mush, Americans go elsewhere. When the Church of England undergoes similar institutional decline, Britons give up on religion entirely. Instead of a state church, Europe believes in the state as church – the all-powerful beneficent provider of cradle-to-grave welfare. "Freedom requires religion," said Mitt Romney, and, whether or...

On Sunday the October 14th, the Times Argus published an article entitled "Scholar to bring 'Christian Left' message to Vt.", by Mel Huff. The article refers to Biblical scholar Marcus Borg, who teaches religion at Oregon State University. Professor Borg seems to be on a crusade. "We were trying to counter fundamentalist and very conservative Christianity by letting the public know there's another way of looking at this," In short, he is trying to promote the "Christian Left" as an anecdote to "counter the negative impressions of Christianity created by the Christian Right." What are those negative impressions? Borg says...

Supporters of the anti-illegal immigration measure adopted in Prince William County last week have argued that its most important purpose is to send a powerful signal to the county's mostly Latino illegal immigrants that they are no longer welcome. It appears the message has already been received: Terrified that new policies will lead to mass deportations, illegal immigrants and the many legal immigrant relatives and friends who live with them have been moving out of Prince William ever since July, when county supervisors first approved the plan's outline.

Most people would include compassion on the short list of human virtues. At one point, I would have been one of those people. But, no longer is that the case. Like so many other things, it has taken on a far different meaning in recent times. In the past, compassion was extended to the elderly, the abused, the innocent and the infirm. But during the last few decades, it has become an entitlement demanded by members of various voting blocs. In short order, it has been transformed into political currency doled out by political hacks trolling for votes. [more @...

Most people would include compassion on the short list of human virtues. At one point, I would have been one of those people. But, no longer is that the case. Like so many other things, it has taken on a far different meaning in recent times. In the past, compassion was extended to the elderly, the abused, the innocent and the infirm. But during the last few decades, it has become an entitlement demanded by members of various voting blocs. In short order, it has been transformed into political currency doled out by political hacks trolling for votes. But as...

EAST COUNTY: A woman in a car carrying 186 pounds of marijuana stabbed a Border Patrol agent in the leg while trying to get away yesterday, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said. The agent disarmed the woman and detained her until other agents arrived. He was taken to a hospital and later was reported in good condition, a border official said. The incident began about 11:50 a.m., when agents got a tip that people were loading something into the trunk of a Chevrolet Impala near Tierra del Sol, off state Route 94 in Campo. Agents tried to pull...

A man arrested by the Bedford County (VA) Sheriff's Office over the weekend has been charged with two counts of aggravated sexual battery. About 5 p.m. Saturday, officers were called to the Goodwill store on U.S. 221 in Bedford County because a male customer in the store had reportedly fondled two 8-year-old girls. The victims are friends who were visiting the store with relatives. Santos Guzman, 41, was apprehended in the parking lot. Chief Gary Reynolds, a special assistant to the sheriff and the supervisor of Bedford's Child Sexual Offender Registration and Tracking Unit, was off duty but was in...

The collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions but it was followed by bravery, stories of heroism and miracles also on a grand scale. Top fire fighter, Chief Jim Clark of the Minneapolis Fire Department exclaimed that the first miracle was the low death toll. Clark said, ““We were surprised that we didn’t have more people seriously injured and killed, I think it was something of a miracle.” With upwards of 500 cars crossing the bridge at any given moment that qualifies as a miracle for most of us.

WASHINGTON, July 16, 2007 – An admitted golf “nut,” Jack Farley said he has heard probably every handicap joke there is, having hit the green for the last four decades wearing a prosthetic right leg. Still, nobody cuts him any slack, he said. Jack Farley visits a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Farley is a peer amputee visitor at the center. His right leg was claimed by a mortar in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago. Farley was fitted for his first prosthesis at Walter Reed and met his wife there while being treated. Photo by...

VRINDAVAN, India (CNN) -- Ostracized by society, India's widows flock to the holy city of Vrindavan waiting to die. They are found on side streets, hunched over with walking canes, their heads shaved and their pain etched by hundreds of deep wrinkles in their faces. Hindu widows are shunned from society when their husbands die, not for religious reasons, but because of tradition -- and because they're seen as a financial drain on their families.