Free Republic

The first battle was joined about a week ago. My unit’s enemies had been enjoying many victories (all against the weak and defenseless) on battlefields outside of my area of operations when they finally showed up in a place my growling troops could get at them. I quickly consulted my small-unit leaders, analyzed the intelligence I was being provided with, called the enemy to let them know they were about to get whomped (I like to fight fair and have found that telling the enemy they are about to get their asses handed to them has a way of rattling...

Many of us secular types are rattled when those religious types implant themselves into the political debates of the day. Agitated or not, Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput, as the conscience of the Catholic Church in this community, not only has the right to voice his opinion on social issues, he has the obligation. Since Chaput has publicly opined on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research this election season, his right to free speech has been challenged, ironically enough, by groups purportedly advocating freedom of choice. A pro-choice group, Catholics for a Free Choice, recently filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue...

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian cleric based in Qatar and often described as a moderate has ruled that it is a religious duty for Muslims to fight Americans in Iraq, including U.S. civilians, his office director said Thursday. But Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said that two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq should be freed immediately. Qaradawi gave his opinion at a meeting Tuesday evening at the Egyptian journalists' syndicate in Cairo. "All of them (U.S. military personnel and civilians) are invaders who came from their country to invade our country and fighting them is a duty," said his office director Essam...

FR SWAT TEAM ACTION PROJECT John Kerry recently said he is "unsure" about The Passion of The Christ, the film Christians of all tempers are flocking to see, "I don't know," Kerry said when asked if he would see Mel Gibson's blockbuster film. "I am concerned," Kerry told reporters. "I think we have to be careful," he said echoing secularist critics complaints about Mel Gibson's depiction of Christ's last 12 hours. (Reuters, "Democrat Kerry Urges Caution on 'Passion,' 26 February 2004, by Patricia Wilson). John Kerry also said he is "not sure" God is on America's side in the war...

Seeing Rosie O’Donnell condemn President Bush just after she “married” her girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter, was bizarre in a tiresome sort of way. O’Donnell claimed, “We were inspired to come here by the sitting president and the vile and vicious and hateful comments he made.”If O’Donnell had any sense of humor or irony, she would look at herself and say, “Gee, for such a tolerant, open-minded person, I sure do condemn and vituperate an awful lot, especially on what should have been the happiest day of my life.”Maybe I’m some sort of pervert, but I don’t recall bearing anyone in the...

Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry is not sure God is on America's side in the war terrorism. Kerry made the startling comments during the Feb 29 Democrat presidential primary debate in New York City. Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times asked Kerry: "President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them. He's made quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America's side. "Is God on America's side?" Kerry replied, "Well, God will -- look, I think -- I believe in God, but I don't...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Christian warrior under fire by Pat Buchanan Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former Delta Force commander, seems to be exactly the kind of warrior America needs to lead us in battle against the kind of fanatics we face. The general is an evangelical Christian, and from his deep Christian beliefs he derives his convictions about the character of the war we are in and his courage to fight it. But these beliefs may yet cost this splendid soldier his post at the Pentagon, where he has been put in charge of the U.S. campaign to run...

Over the last week, we witnessed a number of people being arrested while defending the public postings of the Ten Commandments in a public building in the capital of Alabama. Many historians believe that the Ten Commandments form the foundation for U. S law. (Refer to the writings of Founding Fathers John Adams, James Madison, and George Washington to find out.) What the "secular" media fails to tell us is that the very court that turned down the legal request for delaying the removal of the Commandments monument has carved on its own walls these same Commandments and a statue...

The secularists are gloating. They got a court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building and another court order to suspend Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore who put it there. But anyone who thinks this confrontation in Montgomery is just about an inscribed rock and a defiant judge is out of touch with reality. The Ten Commandments dispute is the tip of the iceberg in the ongoing battle to obliterate every acknowledgement of God except behind the closed doors of churches. The goal of the secularists and the atheists is...

The Godless Party Media Bias & Blindness— And the Big Story They Missed by Rod Dreher As a practicing Christian, a political conservative and a professional journalist, I often find myself explaining how newsrooms work to my fellow believers, and trying to disabuse them of the notion that reporters and editors begin their days thinking, "How can we trash Christianity and/or conservatism today?" Even at this late date, over a year into the Catholic sex-abuse scandal, it is possible to find stalwart Roman Catholics—not only bishops, believe it or not—who are convinced that the whole thing is a put-up job...

Our Secularist Democratic Party By Louis Bolce & Gerald De Maio Anyone who has followed American politics over the past decade cannot help but feel some concern about the supposed fundamentalist Christian threat to democratic civility, pluralism, and tolerance. At the very least, the attentive citizen would find it hard not to regard the cultural and political positions of fundamentalists as outside the mainstream, given the volume of media stories that have conveyed this point. At the same time, the media's obsession with politicized fundamentalism distracts public attention from the changing role of religion in political life today. In particular,...