Free Republic

LONDON - The U.S. publishing company Ignatius Press has refused to sell any works by Welsh singer Charlotte Church after she called German-born Pope Benedict XVI a Nazi and mocked the Catholic Church. The directors of Ignatius Press said they were offended when the Welsh singer mocked the Catholic Church in the pilot of a proposed eight-part television chat show. Church, dubbed the "Voice of an Angel" before she turned her talents to popular music, also dressed up as a nun and pretended to hallucinate while eating "communion" wafers imprinted with smiling faces signifying the drug Ecstasy. She smashed open...

LONDON (Aug. 7) - A rare photograph of Florence Nightingale went on display Monday to mark the 150th anniversary of the famous nurse's return to Britain from the Crimean War. The faded black-and-white photo, taken in May 1858, shows Nightingale reading on the grounds of her family home in Hampshire, southwest of London. It is one of only eight known photographs of one of nursing's most important figures. She shunned publicity, believing it would detract from her efforts to improve conditions in British hospitals. The photograph, which is going on show at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London, was taken...

There are doubts about tactics, but also resentment of media bias, says David Rowan When two shipwrecked Jews were finally discovered on a tiny desert island their rescuers could not understand why they had spent their days building three synagogues. “Isn’t it obvious?” one of the dishevelled survivors shrugged. “An Orthodox one for me, a Reform one for him — and a third that neither of us would ever set foot in.” When I began editing The Jewish Chronicle three months ago I was warned that this ever-so-slightly opinionated community of 300,000 or so people might drive me to empathise...

MEL Gibson once had close links to the Australian League of Rights, a Far Right group notorious for its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. The league claims the world is run by a secret society of Jews. The Hollywood star's foray into Far Right activist politics in Australia occurred in 1987 when he campaigned for a friend, Rob Taylor, who stood unsuccessfully for the northern Victorian federal seat of Indi. Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson's father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league's ideas. "They were...

More pieces of hidden bog book found More fragments of an ancient manuscript concealed in a Co Tipperary bog over 1,000 years ago with a view to later recovery, have been found by the National Museum of Ireland, writes Seán Mac Connell The discoveries also include a fine leather pouch in which the manuscript was originally kept. Museum experts have excavated the site at Faddan More, in north Tipperary, since the discovery of the manuscript last month by excavator driver Eddie Fogarty. He found the book on July 20th while digging peat on a bog owned by brothers Kevin and...

JPFO began our campaign to "Boot the BATFE" (www.jpfo.org/bootbatfe.htm) in January of 2005. The instigating factor was a tape we received, a tape that indisputably showed BATFE agents attempting to frame an innocent gun owner, John Glover. That tape -- which we promptly copied and began distributing as _BATFE Fails the Test_ (www.jpfo.org/batfevideo.htm) -- was something the BATFE _never_ intended you to see. Thanks to it, the charges against Glover were dropped and all but one of his firearms returned. Eighteen months later, we offer you something else the BATFE was hoping wouldn't get out: John Glover's story, straight from...

The Irrelevant UN By Jenni Vinson Trejo January 4, 2005 On January 8, 1918 President Woodrow Wilson explained to the US House and Senate that the world had gotten smaller and that nations now affected each other so we needed to form a group of nations who agreed to work together. The world was embroiled in World War I. Wilson put forth fourteen points intended to serve as the basis for an alliance and world peace. Point 14 says: "A general association of nations should be formed on the basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political...

Obviously pirates are hot right now, but how far will Hollywood go to cash in on the craze? Are we going to have to endure Pirates the musical pretty soon? The link to this short video suggests perhaps we will. http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?&ei=UTF-8&gid=g_af2533de687059f0dce14880e5ed20e5.af2533de687059f0dce14880e5ed20e5&b=0&vid=af2533de687059f0dce14880e5ed20e5.601451&rurl=video.yahoo.com&vdone=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fgroup%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26gid%3Dg_af2533de687059f0dce14880e5ed20e5.af2533de687059f0dce14880e5ed20e5&vback=Channel

LYMAN, S.C. - A couple was jailed on felony charges after police discovered their three adopted sons were severely malnourished, including a 5-year-old boy who weighed less than 20 pounds. An 8-year-old brother weighed less than 40 pounds and a 7-year-old brother weighed about 32 pounds when police found them Thursday. The boys also were treated for bruises, scratches, burns and head lice. Two of the boys told officers they were tied up to be kept from food in the mobile home. Dennis McCurry, 30, and Molly McCurry, 29, were each charged with three counts of intentional infliction of great...

The Party Of John F. Kennedy By Jenni Vinson Trejo July 7, 2006 Former President Bill Clinton spoke to the Democratic Leadership Council back on December 3, 2002. Clinton has always been politically astute. Most of what he warned his party of seems to have been prophetic. He was speaking to the Democrats after the loss of the Presidency and months after 9-11 had occurred. The following are excerpts from the speech he gave. “First, I don't think you can underestimate the impact of the psychological toll of September 11th on the American people. We long to be united and...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is "part of the problem" of illegal immigration into the United States. That according to Rep. Tom Tancredo, a fellow Republican, who blasted Schwarzenegger's reluctance to secure the California-Mexico border with additional National Guard troops, despite such a request from President Bush. Appearing on "The Big Story" on the Fox News Channel, the Colorado congressman and author of the just-released book "In Mortal Danger" was asked by host Julie Banderas, "What do you think about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger not upholding the president's wishes?" "I'm very disappointed in it, of course," responded Tancredo. "Disappointed in the fact...

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, when Americans celebrate Independence Day. But a YouGov survey for The Daily Telegraph suggests that the Stars and Stripes will be flying at half mast in the eyes of most Britons. There has probably never been a time when America was held in such low esteem on this side of the Atlantic. A majority of Britons think American culture and the actions of the present American administration are making the world a worse place to live in, and almost no one believes America is now, if it ever was, a beacon to the world....

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (July 2) - In this village settled by thrifty Pilgrims, you can still buy penny candy for a penny, but tourist Alan Ferguson doubts he'll be able to dig any 1-cent pieces out of his pockets. He rarely carries pennies because "they take up a lot of room for how much value they have." Instead, like so many other Americans, he dumps his pennies into a bucket back home in Sarasota, Fla. Pity the poor penny! It packs so little value that merry kids chuck pennies into the fountain near the candy store, just to watch them splash...

The poll found that 63% of all Britons had a favourable opinion of Muslims, down slightly from 67% in 2004 . . . Attitudes in Britain were more positive than in the US, Germany and Spain (where the popularity of Muslims has plummeted to 29%), and about the same as in France. Less than a third of British non-Muslims said they viewed Muslims as violent, significantly fewer than non-Muslims in Spain (60%), Germany (52%), the US (45%) and France (41%) . . . only 32% of Muslims in Britain had a favourable opinion of Jews, compared with 71% of French...

BRITISH Muslims are more radicalised than those in several other major western European nations, according to the authors of a new global poll. The Pew Global Attitudes Report found Muslims in Britain were more likely than their counterparts in France, Germany and Spain to feel there was a conflict between being devout and living in modern society. They were also the most likely of the groups in the three countries to say Arabs did not carry out the September 11 attacks. Their opinion of Westerners was lower and more of them described relations between Westerners and Muslims as bad. Almost...

TORONTO (CP) - It could take half a century or more for someone infected with prions - the cause of mad cow-like diseases - to start showing symptoms, say researchers, who drew that conclusion after studying a similar illness among Papua New Guinean people who once feasted on their dead. Their findings suggest that the number of human cases of variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (vCJD) could end up being much larger than originally suspected, say the researchers, whose study is published in Friday's edition of The Lancet. With 160 cases, the United Kingdom has the highest number of recorded cases in...

Hi all. I just received a really cryptic message from a friend of mine traveling through Europe. (Around the croatian / serbian area.) In her message, she requested that I find information of (I guess it's a phrase) "Lion of Judah" and what it might have to do with "Croatia". I've been googling this all morning, and So far All I can find are things to do with Ethiopia's flag, Rastafarians and Ancient Israel stuff... but nothing that ties "Lion of Judah" to "Croatia". Maybe "Lion of Judah" is a local company there? or Religious meeting place? or some sort...

WASHINGTON — Police labor officials, angry over a federal grand jury's refusal to indict Rep. Cynthia McKinney for assaulting a police officer, said Monday they want the House ethics committee to review her conduct. And they said the grand jury's decision last week sent the message that "it's okay to hit a police officer." "We hope that members of Congress will review her actions in light of their rules within their own ethics committee," Andrew Maybo, chairman of the U.S. Capitol Police Labor Committee, told reporters Monday at a news conference in Washington.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - One of two young boys allegedly abducted by their father was found dead in a lake Wednesday, and the other boy and their father were found nearby with knife wounds, authorities said. Katron Walker, 32, had cut his own throat and stabbed himself in the chest, Terre Haute Police Sgt. David Smith said. His 2-year-old son, Monte, was also hospitalized with injuries. Police were called to the lake early Wednesday after a resident recognized Walker's van from an Amber Alert and spotted him with the boys. "He was running from a trailer and had both boys...

Affinities of the Paleoindians by Mikey Brass I would like to make it clear from the start that my knowledge of the early occupation of the Americas is very limited. It is a peripheral interest of mine. I don't feel competent enough to make many pronouncements on the late Pleistocene timing of the migration(s) from north-east Asia into the Americas. Instead I focus primarily here on showing, contrary to reports eminating from both pseudoscientific and unfortunately some portions of mainstream archaeology, that the origins of the Paleoindians lay in mainland Asia. Christy Turner has identified what he terms the "Mongoloid...