Free Republic

LORAIN, Ohio — It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data....

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — President Felipe Calderon on Thursday unveiled a “No More Weapons!” billboard made with crushed firearms and placed near the U.S. border. He urged the United States to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico. The billboard, which is in English and weighs 3 tons, was placed near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the United States.

Dear friend, Right now Virginia Republicans want make our Commonwealth a place where a woman who makes the agonizing and deeply personal decision to terminate a pregnancy must endure an invasive transvaginal ultrasound whether her doctor thinks she needs it or not. Republicans want to make Virginia a place where cracking down on imaginary "voter fraud" is sufficient justification for making seniors, African Americans and any of the thousands of people without government-issued identification jump through burdensome hoops just to exercise their right to vote. Republicans want Virginia to be a place where women don't know if they will continue...

They've got nobody to blame for it but themselves. President Barack Obama, with one swift contraception regulation, accomplished something his rivals have struggled to do: unify the Republican Party and fire up its base. “You never look for a fight, but you never walk away from a fight, and we will embrace this one a thousand percent,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a former head of the New Jersey chapter of Right to Life. On the other end of the Republican spectrum, Connecticut Senate candidate Chris Shays, a supporter of abortion rights, agreed with Smith and called on Health and...

The world’s first euthanasia film festival is being held in Amsterdam, sponsored by the Dutch Right to Die lobby (NVVE). This week, from February 6 to 12 is a "Week of Euthanasia" in the Netherlands, a celebration of a decade of euthanasia and assisted suicide. They were legalised on April 1, 2002. More than 35 old and new films and documentaries, from all over the world, from Hollywood to Bollywood are to be screened. They include Million Dollar Baby, Mar Adentro, The Barabarian Invasions, Las Buenas Hierbas, Igby goes down, Whose Life is it Anyway? and The Suicide Tourist. There...

Some developing news in the case of Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, who is a fugitive on drug and fraud charges. In 2009 it was discovered that he was involved in a plot to assassinate a rival and bribe Mexican officials. This has gone public, as has his $200,000 in fundraising done for Barack Obama. Obama has now returned the money, but the scrutiny on Cardona continues. It now appears that Cardona's links to the organized crime world also ties him to the DEA, which ran Operation Fast and Furious. Cardona was allegedly involved with a top drug cartel across the...

The NFL apologized today for rapper M.I.A.’s super inappropriate Super Bowl gesture. But her flashing of the middle finger during the halftime show wasn’t the only display that had a parents watchdog group up in arms last night. This year’s commercials, which began airing at 6:30 pm, a time when millions of children could be tuning in, were racier and more sexually suggestive than ever, according to the Parents Television Council.

Multi-agency effort yields indictment of five suspected human smugglersFive Los Angeles-area residents have been indicted for operating a human smuggling scheme that in many cases involved specially-built compartments under the hoods of cars. The operation relied largely on non-Spanish speaking African-Americans to transport loads of illegal aliens from the U.S.-Mexico border to the Los Angeles area. Four of the defendants, including the suspected ringleader of the scheme, Maria "Reyna" Lopez-Diaz, 60, of Compton, were taken into custody Thursday morning by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Border Patrol. Sign up for...

Michael A. Braun, the former intelligence chief for the DEA, testified this week at a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "collaboration between Latin American drug cartels and groups such as Iran's Quds Force and the Islamic terror group Hezbollah is growing 'far faster than most policymakers in Washington, D.C., choose to admit'" as reported by Guy Taylor for The Washington Times. Many critics of the U.S. open border policy long have warned that Muslim terror groups may exploit the smuggling routes which have been established by the drug cartels in order to gain entry into the United...

Five people are charged in a plot to employ African Americans from Compton to avert suspicion when bringing illegal immigrants across the border. In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green. The 60-year-old Compton woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles. In the end, the venture failed. Authorities announced charges Thursday against Lopez-Diaz and four others, including...

Recently JC Penney announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres will be the company's new spokesperson. Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful. Their marketing strategy is to help families shop and receive a good value for their money. Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The...

In a new study, bound to stir controversy, researchers have found that people with low IQ tend to have socially conservative ideals and prejudiced attitudes toward others, including people of different races and homosexuals. The new study published earlier this month in the journal Psychological Science found that British children with lower general intelligence factor (similar to IQ) are more likely to be racially prejudiced as adults. "We found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology," lead researchers Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University,...

It was a show of civil disobedience, and according to organizers of the event that was accomplished by holding multiple sit-ins that risked arrest and deportation.

To Be headed By Ramadan In what appears to be a highly significant coming together of Global Muslim Brotherhood leaders Tariq Ramadan and Youssef Qaradawi, Gulf media is reporting on the launch of new Islamic research center in Qatar to be headed by Ramadan. According to a Gulf News report: 12:00 January 16, 2012 Manama: A research centre specialising in Islamic legislation and ethical thought has been launched in Qatar. The Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) was inaugurated during a one day conference on Islamic ethics that discussed the application of Islamic ethics in environment, gender, economics,...

Dolly Parton is back on the big screen, starring alongside Queen Latifah in the Gospel-driven “Joyful Noise.” But the country music legend insisted that there is more to the movie than just music and a good time. “The film is uplifting and I want people to go away feeling better than they did when they got here, because times are hard right now. Everybody's been feeling a little scared and a little down, and the economy has been bad and people don't know what to think. We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these...

VATICAN CITY, January 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his annual address to ambassadors to the Vatican today, Pope Benedict XVI warned that laws permitting abortion and undermining the traditional family are threatening “the future of humanity.” Speaking particularly of the West, the Holy Father said, “I am convinced that legislative measures which not only permit but at times even promote abortion for reasons of convenience or for questionable medical motives compromise the education of young people and, as a result, the future of humanity.” Similarly, the pope spoke of “the family, based on the marriage of a man and a...

“Life with Archie No. 16″ hits newsstands next week, featuring the interracial, same-sex wedding of character Lt. Kevin Keller, a white American soldier wounded in Iraq, and Clay Walker, the black physical therapist who helped him recover. Archie Comics CEO Jonathan Goldwater told CNN it’s part of a concerted effort to make Archie Andrews’ universe mirror the diversity and complexity of today’s world

Looking back on 2011, Obama, Holder and Napolitano definitely violated their oaths of office, and conspired to incite an insurrection (that may yet happen). On July 25, 2011, in a meeting with La Raza (the race), a racist separatist group, Obama told them, " I need you to keep building a movement for change outside of Washington, one they can’t stop, one that’s greater than this community.” Obama has financially 'aided' them, but that is complex and will not be presented here. But the President knows about Aztlan and is inciting and encouraging them. Phoenix-based Nuestros Reconquistos claims that there...

Why should my taxpayer dollars be used to advance sharia finance? Goldman Sachs, one of the largest recipients of Obama's redistribution of taxpayer money, is going Islamic. Many of Obama’s cabinet and appointed czars are directly connected to Goldman Sachs. The Muslim Brotherhood is dictating Obama's foreign policy, and now its financial policy as well. Sharia finance prohibits investments in whole American sectors -- tobacco, pork, alcohol and some forms of entertainment. Further, 2.5% must go to zakat (Islamic charity aka jihad). I do not want my money going to advance jihad and starve American business. Where is the separation...

VANCOUVER, Canada, January 2, 2012 (bcptl.org) - Those who said there was a pro-homosexuality agenda were treated with scorn as alarmists before the propagandists for that agenda became as bold as they are now. But we have it directly from the managing editor of Xtra Vancouver: as clear an enunciation of the homosexual activist agenda for the schools as we may have seen anywhere. In the October 20th, 2011, edition of the Vancouver edition of the homosexual magazine Xtra, the managing editor of that magazine wrote in the online edition: �. . . the gay rights movement is shifting...

Charlie Sheen was clearly the man of the year. You'll recall that 2011 began with the oafish actor celebrating his own narcotic and sexual crapulence like a victorious gladiator working the crowds. He was egged on by a media with as much decency as the cons on the top tiers of the prison who chant "fresh fish" as the new inmates walk into general pop, their eyes stinging from delousing powder. Sheen succeeded at turning his own debasement into a national pseudo-event by calling the very definition of losing "winning." And that's what 2011 was all about: pretending to be...

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you. As many of you already know, the Archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederauer, "disinvited" openly homosexual Protestant clergy from Advent vespers in a local parish. The "LGBT Community" is thoroughly offended and is attempting to make this a wedge issue. As part of that effort, an unknown writer - the piece has no byline, although the writer's identity is probably known by the regulars - of the San Francisco Guardian Online wrote a piece titled Catholic Church rejects LGBT ministers in which he vents his anger. I left a comment in their...

(NewsCore) - A Rhode Island lawmaker is calling Gov. Lincoln Chafee "Governor Grinch" for defying politicians and deciding that the state would have a "holiday tree" instead of a "Christmas tree." The governor defended his decision by arguing that it is in keeping with the state's founding in 1636 by religious dissident Roger Williams as a haven for tolerance -- where government and religion were kept separate. Chafee, an independent, said in a statement issued Tuesday that his stand was a continuation of past practice, "and does not represent a change of course on my part." But Rep. Doreen Costa,...

"Success with Honor" is the motto of Penn State's athletic program. They got it half right. The alleged sexual abuse of young boys by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is disgusting, outrageous, and immoral. That so many at the school's highest level allegedly engaged either in covering up serial abuses, or turned a blind eye to them in order to maintain the "integrity" of the football program and its legendary coach, Joe Paterno, adds insult to unfathomable injury. Baseball may still be called the national pastime, but football has become the national religion. College football is played on Saturday, the...

Once a taboo topic on TV, abortion is being worked into the storylines of popular prime time series from “Friday Night Lights” to “Grey’s Anatomy.” And last week it was announced that Alan Ball, creator of HBO’s “True Blood,” is working on a new HBO series called “Wichita,” which will be based on the life of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion clinic doctor who was shot and killed by a pro-life activist in 2009. As plotlines involving abortion become more commonplace, some are celebrating the erosion of stigmas surrounding abortion, while others grow increasingly alarmed.

Two California high school students became one of the first lesbian couples crowned homecoming king and queen in the nation this weekend. Rebeca Arellano, a senior at Patrick Henry High School, was made the school's first female homecoming king when her name was announced Friday at a pep rally. "They were chanting my name and it was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had," said Arellano. Arellano's girlfriend, Haileigh Adams, who also attends Patrick Henry High School, was made homecoming queen at Saturday night's dance. "I was happier than when I won, my little Haileigh has just been...

I wrote about the murders of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia and their father's first wife Rona over two years ago, when their bodies were found in the Rideau Canal in Kingson, Ontario: Three or so weeks back, a submerged car was found in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont., containing the bodies of three teenage girls and their aunt — a story initially reported as Mysterious Death Of 4 Quebecers Baffles Kingston Police. When it emerged that the four female Quebecers were, in fact, Muslim, the tearful parents offered up a strange tale of an impromptu midnight driving lesson...

John Hope Franklin, the famed black historian at Duke University, once told the incoming freshmen, “The new America in the 21st century will be primarily non-white, a place George Washington would not recognize.” In his June 1998 commencement address at Portland State, President Clinton affirmed it: “In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States.” The graduates cheered. The Census Bureau has now fixed at 2041 the year when whites become a minority in a country where the Founding Fathers had restricted citizenship to “free white persons” of “good moral character.” With...

United States --(Ammoland.com)- Almost every morning the Disney Channel runs shortened versions of their “golden oldies” between some of their modern day cartoons as a way to fill time until the next scheduled show begins. One morning recently my kids were watching the Disney Channel when they featured an old Mickey Mouse classic called ‘Mickey’s Parrot‘ which was originally released back on September 09, 1938. In this episode, a parrot belonging to an escaped killer wanders into Mickey’s basement. Mickey hears it talking and thinks that the parrot is the killer who is on the loose who he just heard...

At this past July's Comic-Con International in San Diego, Archie Comics announced that not only would its exceedingly popular new character, Kevin Keller, the first openly homosexual member of the iconic Riverdale Gang, will star in his own ongoing series, but that readers would also see Keller get married in a future issue of Life With Archie. The publisher announced this week that the happy event will take place in Life With Archie #16, on sale in January.

Last week TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras" reality show enraged the world with a shocking performance by a 4-year-old sporting fake C-cup boobs and acting like a 20-something. . . . 3-year-old Paisley struts across the stage dressed as Julia Roberts in the opening scene of the movie "Pretty Woman." In thigh-high black patent leather boots and a tight blue mini skirt,

I have to laugh at you wingnuts, especially those of you “deep thinkers” who sit around endlessly debating whether His Serene Majesty the Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II, Lord of the Flies, Keeper of the Hoops, Master of the Greens, Bringer of Kinetic Military Action, Vacationer-in-Chief, Slayer of Osama, Atomizer of the Economy, and Protector of the Holy Cities of Honolulu and Chicago, is Chauncey Gardiner, the anti-hero of Being There, or the Manchurian Candidate III: This Time, It’s Personal. Why can’t the answer be both? I mean, it’s laugh-out-loud funny to watch you and your legions of Faux News...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba August 30, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A young man who admitted to downloading explicit pornographic images since he was 12, has been sentenced to two years supervised probation after he was charged for possessing photos and videos of children as young as 4 being sexually abused. Dr. Judith Reisman, a researcher on pedophilia and an expert on the insidious effects of pornography, told LSN that she is unsurprised that such a young man would be involved in child pornography. “Our government leaders allow pornography to pollute our once great nations and act surprised that we are breeding inhuman men,...

A man wearing a Santa hat sits on a roof. He's talking to his ex-girlfriend on a cell phone, trying with feigned cheer to wish her a Merry Christmas. He asks if she's with her new boyfriend. Yes, she replies, and she's with her whole family, opening presents. He says, "That's great, because I have a present for you," and he saws off his own head so it falls down the chimney into the fireplace. This isn't a horror movie. It's a cartoon, filmed in stop-motion animation, like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." It runs on the Cartoon Network, which is...

During a televised discussion of the past week’s riots in England on Friday night, a prominent English historian sparked outrage by insisting that black, Afro-Caribbean culture was to blame for the mayhem and looting, even when the rioters were white. David Starkey, who has presented several documentaries on the Tudor period, said during a BBC debate: “the problem is that the whites have become black — a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion — and black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together; this language, which is wholly false, which is...

Pundit Ann Coulter has joined gay conservative group GOProud as Honorary Chair of its Advisory Council, the group announced today: Coulter’s official title will be “Honorary Chair and Gay Icon.” “Ann Coulter is a brilliant and fearless leader of the conservative movement, we are honored to have her as part of GOProud’s leadership,” said Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board. “Ann helped put our organization on the map. Politics is full of the meek, the compromising and the apologists – Ann, like GOProud, is the exact opposite of all of those things. We need more Ann Coulters.” “I am honored...

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a controversial bill to include the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in California's public school textbooks. After the governor signed the bill introduced by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, he released a statement that said, "History should be honest. This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Sen. Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation."

Textbooks and history classes in California schools would be required to include the contributions of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans under a proposal given final legislative approval in the Assembly on Tuesday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown.

[…Liberal Republicans cave, pass “gay marriage” in NY…] Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, vowed that in conjunction with the state's Conservative Party, his group would spend more than $1 million targeting lawmakers who supported the bill in the next election. "All [the vote] means is that Gov. Cuomo was able to strongarm and push through, because of the weakness of some Republicans, a gay marriage bill," Brown said. "It doesn't go away and we're going to make sure the people are held accountable." Cuomo was said to be determined to see the legislation passed in time...

Google will often change its logo in order to celebrate random dates and holidays. However, Google has stated that it will not do anything special for religious holidays like Christmas or Easter. Google's reason is that it does not want to appear biased or discriminatory... However, Google doesn't seem to have ANY problem celebrating gay pride month. All this month Google has "decorated" their page with rainbows whenever anyone does a search related to homosexuality or gay marriage. Try it yourself.

<p>NBC's opening of the U.S. Open Golf Championship today included two readings of the Pledge of Allegiance, but omitted the phrase "under God" both times.</p> <p>The program commenced with children standing in a classroom setting, as they recited the "abbreviated" version of the Pledge, saying: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, with liberty and justice for all."</p>

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

The sentiments expressed by John F. Kennedy in his famous 1960 speech on religion and politics are being swept away by Republican presidential contenders. [snip] "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute;...... I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office." If, as seems increasingly likely, Texas Gov. Rick Perry jumps into the current race for the Republican presidential nomination, Houston also will be the scene of...

Hollywood matters. It matters because we watch Hollywood product day in and day out. Your children spend six or seven hours at school, and couple of hours with their friends, and a couple of hours with you. They spend a full three hours with the television. You get home from work, kick off your shoes, and plop down in front of the TV, hoping simply to chill out. Instead, you get unmitigated liberalism pouring out of your TV. But you continue to watch because it’s great. It’s fun, thrilling, dramatic, or hilarious. We think it has no impact on us....

The Culture War is not going well in Sanford, Maine, where homosexual deviants have been elected Prom King and Queen.

Sunday night on CBS’ hit reality TV series “Undercover Boss,” people of faith had their breath taken away by what they witnessed, sparking a Facebook and Twitter avalanche of support and praise...

The educrats strike again, and make themselves look ridiculous again, according to a 16 year old student identified only as Jessica, who volunteered to do a project at a local elementary school, supplying plastic eggs filled with jellybeans. From MyNorthwest.com: "I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay," Jessica explained. "She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat 'spring spheres.' I couldn't call them Easter eggs.

The notion that gender egalitarianism is central to the education process has caused dire consequences to Western Civilization. If proponents really sought political, social and economic equality between the genders, one might examine their claims with a sense of impartiality. However, the record of a feminized construct clearly demonstrates that equivalence is not their intention. Dominance of the masculine mind with codependent emotionalism out of a soap opera script surfaces as the real objective in the eternal war between the sexes. Imagine the inevitability of damage done to impressionable minds by an entire educational system intentionally designed to subjugate the...

Our national weeping and wailing over education spending cuts, public employee unions, and such like cause minds of a certain vintage to stop still and wonder. When were the divorce proceedings between home and classroom filed anyway? And who filed them, and why? It can be argued that the current traumas of education proceed from that divorce: further testimony to the general understanding that it's the kids who get hurt worst in divorce. The divorce between home and public school classroom -- accomplished by the end of the '70s -- was a national calamity. To put it another way, once...

Today's installment of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization comes from Hollywood -- as if that's a surprise. Tinseltown is demeaning Christianity again -- as if that's a surprise, too. But this time, it's not some gutter-mouthed punk. This time, it's a network doing it, formally. ABC has approved a pilot with the title "Good Christian Bitches." Is this what Christian women -- especially the good ones -- deserve? The first credit for this decision to offer offensive titles actually goes to CBS, which began this stupid trend with its awful sitcom "(Bleep) My Dad Says." Now one of...