Free Republic

The bishops of Australia are divided over whether their country should legalize so-called same-sex marriage. Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney has teamed up with Dan White, executive director of Sydney Catholic Schools, in urging parents of Catholic students to vote "no" on the national postal survey on same-sex marriage that's going on now in Australia. In a two-page letter sent to parents Friday, Abp. Fisher related, "We will be voting 'no' and encourage you to do the same." The archbishop affirmed Catholics weren't bigots for rejecting gay marriage. "Sadly, there has been a campaign to label those who support traditional...

Clean-up crews are racing to clear acres of debris at the largest Dakota Access protest camp before the spring thaw turns the snowy, trash-covered plains into an environmental disaster area. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Friday that the camp, located on federal land, would be closed Feb. 22 in order to “prevent injuries and significant environmental damage in the likely event of flooding in this area” at the mouth of the Cannonball River in North Dakota. “Without proper remediation, debris, trash, and untreated waste will wash into the Cannonball River and Lake Oahe,” the Corps said in its...

Dude! Spit it out!

May. 20, 2016 - 10:24 - Presumptive GOP nominee speaks out on EgyptAir crash

The 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro -- but with less than seven months until the Opening Ceremony, a slew of problems still show no signs of improvement. Will Connors had a good, if troubling, piece in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday laying out the concerns in Rio. Not only does the list of concerns appear to be trending in the wrong direction as the Games draw closer, it also shows no signs of improvement. Let's break down the biggest problems: 1. Questions over Rio's mobility plan Rio is racing to build a...

“There’s a constitution that I swore and oath to so don’t’ freakin mess with it with these citizens! Do you understand me”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s attorneys, who appear to be crafting a defense based around casting the older brother as a bullying mastermind of the Boston operation, renewed their push for evidence on Friday arguing the government had previously said the case was “might be relevant if Dzhokhar were aware of it.” They then pointed to a letter they received from prosecutors on Aug. 15, 2014, saying the government had a witness prepared to testify that “Dzhokhar had such an awareness.” The developments come just days before both sides are scheduled to release their initial list of witnesses in the bombings trial, which...

DeKalb County Police say they were caught off-guard Sunday by the unsanctioned party at a public park that ended with two women being shot. “This came really as a surprise to us,” the county’s public safety chief Cedric Alexander told reporters on Monday. But Alexander vowed that they would be prepared in the future. “We’re going to monitor social media going forward so that we can try to get ahead of them as quickly as we can and intervene and try to make sure those illegal crowds do not converge upon a crowd and become a threat to anyone,” he...

In both cases, presidents undertook ambitious projects: to remake part of the world, or a huge portion of the economy, along the lines that our government wanted. Redesigning Iraq proved to be impossible, and reorganizing health care may prove impossible as well. It is at least proving to be very difficult. The anti-war movement warned that fighting in Iraq would produce blowback terrorism against American civilians and chemical-weapons deaths among American troops. What actually happened — the disintegration of the Iraqi state followed by America’s desperate attempt to pick up the pieces — did not feature heavily in the opposition’s...

(CNSNews.com) – Although no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, a leading al-Qaeda ideologue last year recommended that jihadists in America include sporting events in their list of prospective terror targets.

Before you look to do harm to Chief Justice Roberts or his family, it’s important that you think carefully about the meaning – the true nature — of his ruling on Obama-care. The Left will shout that they won, that Obama-care was upheld and all the rest. Let them. It will be a short-lived celebration. Here’s what really occurred — payback. Yes, payback for Obama’s numerous, ill-advised and childish insults directed toward SCOTUS. Chief Justice Roberts actually ruled the mandate, relative to the commerce clause, was unconstitutional. That’s how the Democrats got Obama-care going in the first place. This is...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says there are multiple ways to resolve the debt ceiling mess, but it has to be bipartisan and it has to happen fast. The president urged Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Friday to come together on a plan that can pass the House and that he can sign.

More than 70,000 Minnesota homeowners were behind on their mortgages and received pre-foreclosure notices last year, a warning that the housing market still faces serious hurdles in 2011. About 71,665 struggling homeowners got the notices in 2010, up 8 percent from 2009, according to the Minnesota Home Ownership Center, which released the numbers Thursday. The number of notices rose 3 percent in the Twin Cities metro area, but 15 percent elsewhere in Minnesota. The numbers suggest that despite glimmers of hope in the job market, the state could see more people lose homes this year than they did last year,...

One fine messBy Colin McNickle, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, January 2, 2011 Never have so few worked so recklessly to shaft so many. Welcome to Pittsburgh, that unnavigable intersection of government hot air, buffoonery, incompetence, stupidity, arrogance and just about any other unflattering descriptive you can conjure up. Harsh? Why, yes. And necessarily so. Desperately trying to appease its public pocket-picking union bosses while concomitantly deferring any meaningful fiscal restructuring, Pittsburgh City Council hatched a cockamamie "present day/future day value" plan (versus real cash held in an unencumbered trust) -- a hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo paper plan based on future collections from what's...

The closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison and civilian trials for terrorists were more than policy changes proposed by Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. They were presented as a return to constitutional government - a dividing line from an uncivilized past.

If you serve our nation and your ballot came too late or wasn’t counted, let PJM know so we can get the message to Congress. Send your stories to story@pajamasmedia.com. The military voting mess of 2010 isn’t over. In some states, ballots continue to roll in. Whether or not these late ballots will be counted remains to be seen. I have learned that voters deployed across Iraq and Afghanistan received ballots far too late to be effective. The MOVE Act of 2009 was designed to fix this problem, but may have failed. One reason for the failure: open contempt inside...

"How can the [U.S.] solve its long-term problems—deficit spending, an underfunded Social Security system, spiraling health-care costs—when voters seem so uncertain which party should lead the charge?" ----- Voters this week look set to do something not seen since the early 1950s: Oust a substantial number of sitting House lawmakers for the third election in a row. The apparent Republican resurgence suggests the country is caught in a cycle of political volatility witnessed only four times in the past century, almost all during war or economic unease. [..] In many cases, [voters are] returning to the same candidates they rejected...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage giants, share much of the blame for the foreclosure crisis. Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee $5.5 trillion of mortgages -- more than half of all US home mortgages. Major banks -- Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase -- service the loans for Fannie and Freddie for fees. And when they do, they do what Fannie and Freddie tell them to do. To that end, Fannie and Freddie have long issued "Servicing Guides." Fannie's latest update (Aug. 31) noted that Fannie "has established time frames within which routine...

California is the nation's shameful example of what happens when Democrats influenced by big-government labor rule the statehouse for forty years. With 12.5% unemployment (up from 4.5% a mere three years ago) and a "recognized" budget deficit of $21 billion, California has just found that out it is in much, much more financial trouble than anyone, especially a Democrat, really wants to admit. California's governor Schwarzenegger commissioned a study by Stanford University, which has found that California's three public employee pension funds (The California Public Employees' Retirement System [CalPERS], California State Teachers' Retirement System [CalSTRS], and University of California...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama keeps reassuring the nation that stopping the Gulf oil spill and limiting the fallout on the region are his top priority. Yet so is protecting the country against attack. And getting people back to work. Presidencies usually don't allow for a dominant priority — just a list of priorities. During another hectic week, Obama made this promise: "This entire White House and this entire federal government has been singularly focused on how do we stop the leak and how do we prevent and mitigate the damage to our coastlines." From the Gulf Coast on Friday,...