Free Republic

WASHINGTON D.C., November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a narrow vote Thursday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would grant federal recognition to homosexual “marriages.” The bill, titled the “Respect for Marriage Act,” passed the Democrat controlled committee by a 10-8 vote, with the members of the committee voting along party lines. The “Respect for Marriage Act” was introduced in the Senate in March by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) with the goal of repealing the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). DOMA asserts that states where homosexual “marriages” are not currently recognized are not required to recognize same-sex...

From the Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry, this study was mentioned during Glenn Beck's radio show this morning: This Friday, the tax payer funded Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) is hosting a briefing for Members of Congress and their staff on their new study: Online Town Hall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century. The CMF study consisted of 21 townhall meetings where Members of Congress and CMF provided a moderator: “spoke via voice over IP, and constituents asked questions and made comments by typing them. Only off-topic, redundant, unintelligible, or offensive questions were screened, and only questions asked by people...

Next to the presidential election, California Proposition 8 is the most important vote in America. It will determine the definition of marriage for the largest state in America, and it will determine whether judges or society will decide on social-moral issues. In 2000, 61 percent of the voters in California, one the most liberal states in America, voted to retain the only definition of marriage civilization has ever had -- the union of a man and woman (the number of spouses allowed has changed over time but never the sexes of the spouses). But in May 2008, four out of...

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from the Daily Mail in Britain: "Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As anti-Islamic Activity' To Woo Muslims." Her Majesty's government is not alone in feeling it's not always helpful to link Islam and the, ah, various unpleasantnesses with suicide bombers and whatnot. Even in his cowboy Crusader heyday, President Bush liked to cool down the crowd with a lot of religion-of-peace stuff. But the British have now decided that kind of mealy-mouthed "respect" is no longer sufficient. So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated "anti-Islamic...

Long before Senator McCarthy enjoyed his hour of disreputable fame, another Joseph had discovered how to deal effectively with political rivals. Not only the inquisitive senator, but every political inquisitor since, has owed a primary debt to Comrade Stalin. It was Stalin’s sinister genius to realize that arguing a case was not the best way to prevail in a dispute. Engaging his opponents on the merits of their critique was not his choice. Instead, he arranged show trials to conflate them with Adolf Hitler and purge them from his party’s ranks. So why should it surprise me when the left-wing...

But for Dershowitz to try to stop publication of the book is simply unacceptable. The appropriate response to speech that is wrong is not to silence it, but to argue against it — because nobody has a monopoly on the truth. Dershowitz, of course, knows all this. He has said he doesn't want to suppress Finkelstein's freedom of speech, but that he wants to ensure that "maliciously false statements about me … are not published." In fact, he says he supports publication of Finkelstein's book — by some publisher other than UC Press, which, he told me, should not "give...

<p>WHEN THE New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in a divorce case recently that a married woman who had a lesbian affair had not committed adultery in the eyes of the law, one disappointed party was GLAD, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. In an amicus brief, GLAD had taken the side of the betrayed husband, who wanted to be divorced from his wife not on the neutral grounds of "irreconcilable differences," but on the specific fault ground of adultery.</p>