Free Republic

Some of you know that I write the Question and Answer Column for Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly. I like doing that as it imposes a kind of disciplined writing on me, where I must answer questions very briefly, in about 400 words or less.A question recently came in about a topic that I have not written much about here on the Blog. I’d like to reproduce the question and answer here in order to include the concept in my blog compendium and also to encourage you, if you do not read my column in the Sunday Visitor to know about...

<p>DETROIT (WJBK) - A man's bullet proof vest looks the same as a woman's body armor on the outside. Of course, the woman's is contoured to fit her curves.</p> <p>However, when several female officers with the Detroit Police Department provided their height, weight and bra cup sizes, they never imagined a good portion of the rank-and-file at DPD would see it.</p>

Cam Edwards talks to Jessica Stanton, who wrote this article for The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/15/what-we-learned-when-we-sent-a-female-reporter-shopping-for-a-home-defense-handgun/ NRA News - June 17, 2013 - http://www.NRANews.com

PAINESVILLE, Ohio — Mary Ann Froebe stood feet apart with knees slightly bent and aimed the .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic. “You’ve got some adrenaline running through you right now,” said Esther Beris, the coordinator of the northeastern Ohio chapter of A Girl and a Gun Women’s Shooting League. “It’s O.K., just relax.” Ms. Froebe, 42, a small-business owner who described herself as a “virgin gun shooter,” concentrated and pulled the trigger. “It was awesome,” she said, her face flushed, after emptying the 10-round clip. “The sense of control, of being in charge of me.” In the debate over firearms regulations, the...

The emerging profile of Adam Lanza, the suspected shooter in the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., is depressingly familiar. He has been described as being socially awkward and a loner. He reportedly had Asperger's syndrome — a high-performing form of autism — and may have been afflicted by other psychiatric problems. And he was male. His sex almost goes without saying. According to Mother Jones, 62 mass shootings — defined as a single spree that killed at least four people — have been carried out in the U.S. since 1982. Only one was perpetrated by a female. In 2006, Jennifer...

Asia News recently reported how the misogynist crime of female genital mutilation (FGM) continues to be a “widespread traditional practice” in “rural areas and more remote areas of Indonesia, particularly the island of Java.” The story makes sure to remind us, naturally, that while this crime is being perpetrated in a Muslim country, the crime “is not a rule set in a rigid manner by the precepts of Islam.” It is only widespread, we are consoled, because of the actions of “the more extreme and integral fringe.” In her coverage of this news report, freedom fighter Pamela Geller shrewdly asks...

Except as otherwise provided in this title (sections 451 to 471a of this Appendix) it shall be the duty of every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, who, on the day or days fixed for the first or any subsequent registration, is between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, to present himself for and submit to registration at such time or times and place or places, and in such manner, as shall be determined by proclamation of the President and by rules and regulations prescribed hereunder. That is section 453...

"When the Church of England narrowly defeated a measure to allow women to be appointed bishops this week after a dozen years of legislative effort, many observers were surprised. After all, the group has ordained women as priests since 1994-what's the big deal with letting female priests become bishops? The answer helps explain why the measure failed. The Church of England is known for the graciousness with which it accommodates minority theological opinions. Since the 1990s, parties that disagreed about female ordination merely had to tolerate each other's presence. Female bishops, on the other hand, would hold significant ecclesial and...

The Church of England's governing body blocked a move Tuesday to permit women to serve as bishops in a vote so close it failed to settle the question of female leadership and likely condemned the institution to years more debate on the issue. On Wednesday, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron told the Church of England to "get on with it" and reverse the decision now, not five years from now. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said on Wednesday: "We have – to put it very bluntly – a lot of explaining to do," he said. "Whatever the motivations...

Matthew 19:4-9 King James Version: 4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He...

Shannon Eastin will become the first female to officiate an NFL game when she works the Green Bay at San Diego preseason match Thursday night. The regular NFL officials have been locked out by the league. Eastin is a college referee who has worked in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (FCS division).

Which is more than the 23% difference Dems frequently cite. Via Andrew Stiles: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) refused to answer questions about Senate Democrats paying their female staff members less than male staffers on Thursday. She may have ducked the question because a Washington Free Beacon analysis shows she pays the women on her staff $26,606 less per year on average. According to publicly available salary data at the website Legistorm, Pelosi’s female employees earned an average annual salary of $96,394 in fiscal year 2011. Male employees earned $123,000 on average, a difference of 27.6 percent. The...

A woman yesterday took command of a frontline warship for the first time in the Navy’s 500-year history. Commander Sarah West, 40, is now in sole control of HMS Portland, a Type 23 frigate and its mostly male crew of 185.

Back in 2008, I wrote a column called “The Four Stages of Conservative Female Abuse.” It’s a handy guide to the common types of attacks waged against unapologetic conservative women in the public square. You can read my related war on conservative posts here. The vile exploitation of S.E. Cupp’s image by Hustler magazine — see Twitchy for background/reaction and The Blaze for the original story– falls under category 2 and 4. Let’s review: The first stage of Conservative Female Abuse by the Left is infantilization. Right-wing women can’t possibly believe what they believe about the sanctity of life, self-defense,...

How is it that Dr. Hatem al-Haj, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics and a leading Muslim jurist, misunderstands Islamic law so severely as to think that this purely cultural practice has something to do with Islam? Surely it can't be that the mainstream media and Islamic leaders in the U.S. have been lying to us, and FGM really is justified in Islam, could it? Naaah. "AMJA Senior Committee Member: Female Genital Mutilation Is 'an Honor' per Islam," from Translating Jihad, April 27 (thanks to all who sent this in): A couple of weeks ago I posted a...

Obama highlights women at economic forum as party courts female voteBy Rachel Rose Hartman | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 21 mins ago President Barack Obama headlined an event Friday morning focused on one demographic that is quickly becoming the key voting bloc in 2012: women. At a White House Women and the Economy Forum, which coincided with the release of a White House report on the same topic, Obama spoke about the women who shaped his life, the impact women's inequality has on the country's economy, and the ways in which he says his administration has made women...

LONDON (AP) — She was instantly recognizable for the eye patch that hid a shrapnel injury – a testament to Marie Colvin’s courage, which took her behind the front lines of the world’s deadliest conflicts to write about the suffering of individuals trapped in war. After more than two decades of chronicling conflict, Colvin became a victim of it Wednesday, killed by shelling in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Colvin, 56, died alongside French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, the French government announced. Freelance photographer Paul Conroy and journalist Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro were wounded.

When teen hoop star Tayshana Murphy was chased and shot dead by gang members in her project in Morningside Heights in September, few knew her death was a double tragedy. Despite being one of the city’s best high-school basketball players and a likely WNBA draft pick, Murphy had been drawn into a deadly street crew and was killed because of a rivalry with another gang. Cops now have revealed that Murphy was caught in a troubling new trend: good girls recruited by neighborhood gangs into lives of violence, where carrying weapons and committing crimes is as commonplace as shooting a...

A female suicide bomber in Turkish-occupied northern Kurdistan killed three people and wounded around 20 in the town of Bingol on Saturday, Turkish authorities said. The blast occurred at a tea house close to the local office of the ruling AK Party in the town's main street at around 1:20pm, Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said. Police said the woman had detonated explosives strapped to her body and that they were hunting for another suspected bomber, and a cordon had been thrown round the town, 110 kilometers north of Diyarbakir, northern Kurdistan's main city.

Next month marks the 21st anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's enforced resignation as Prime Minister. It is now more than 30 years since she first gained power. She was not, of course, the first woman to lead a major country. That honour fell to Indira Gandhi in India and Golda Meir in Israel. But along with Gandhi, Thatcher's 11 years at the top make her the longest-serving woman prime minister the world has seen. The strange thing is that despite the advancement of women in business and the professions and the growing numbers of women entering politics in leading Western countries,...