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It's customary to give a waiter a nice tip for good service. But one San Luis Obispo server was given the surprise of his life when a party he was serving gave him a $1,000 tip on an $800 check. He says it was a group of regulars who gave him the huge tip. He had just one table Saturday night, a party of 10. But that was more than enough.

Church officials say they will “combat evil” by hosting a positive worship service to counter a Harvard group’s Satanic mass planned for Monday evening. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston will host a Eucharistic procession from MIT to a nearby church for an hour of prayer, The Boston Globe reports. The religious procession will end up at St. Paul’s Parish in Harvard Square, just a 10-minutes walk from the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is set to hold a “black mass.” A black mass is a ritual performed as a parody of the...

Chick-fil-A has surpassed KFC as the top chicken fast food chain.  Chick-fil-A's sales in 2013 passed $5 billion, compared with KFC's $4.2 billion, reports Venessa Wong at Bloomberg Businessweek. Chick-fil-A has 1,775 U.S. stores, while KFC has 4,491. Despite a smaller footprint, Chick-fil-A's average sales are more than triple those of its larger competitor, Wong writes. And Chick-fil-A achieves these results despite being closed on Sundays for religious reasons. Wong illustrates a couple of reasons for Chick-fil-A's success. 

Yesterday... Comcast cable...my internet service provider...for the TIME BEING....had a Planned Outage,...in order to upgrade equipment that services this area. No Prior Notice was given to paying customers, During my call to :customer service" Yesterday...no mention was made of that fact that this WAS a planned outage. This Morning I experienced another Outage. Today's call to comcast customer service was Unbearably frustrating. The representative told me...that this was a planned outage...and an unplanned outage. AGAIN no announcement was made PRIOR to the outage. They do have an EMAIL SERVER dont they? Would it have taken a tremendous effort and great...

Ralph E. Moore Jr. doesn’t think twice about serving others. It is part of his daily life. “I deliberately chose a career to work with people who are poor and the working poor,” said Moore, a parishioner of St. Ann in Baltimore and the mentoring coordinator at The Adult Resource Center for the Living Classrooms Foundation in Baltimore. “As Catholics, (social ministry) is our history and for many people that’s who we are.” Moore was among the nearly 300 people who attended the 35th annual Archdiocesan Social Ministry Convocation March 8 at The Seton Keough High School in Baltimore. The...

Today the conservative talkers are jawing about the supposed "balance" between a person's right not to be discriminated against, and a business owner's rights of conscience. But the problem, you see, is that the first thing is not a right. I don't have a right to force people to like me. Or to hire me. Or to sell something to me. Someone will say that I do indeed have those rights, as created by the Courts or the Congress or Eric Holder (Fleas Be Upon Him). But the government cannot create rights. Only God can grant rights. And a government...

How would you like to have to pay a fee to be able to stream YouTube videos at full speed? What if you liked downloading music from, say, Last.fm or Soundcloud, but those sites suddenly became infinitely slower than bigger sites like Amazon or iTunes? Those are the kind of major changes to the Internet some folks are envisioning after a federal court ruling this week on what's come to be called "net neutrality." This stuff can get really confusing, with all the government jargon, Internet lingo and competing arguments mixed up in it. But it's also really important and...

Morton's The Steakhouse, a high-end restaurant chain, is responding after a firestorm of complaints on social media about how it treated a cancer patient dining at its Nashville location over the weekend. A man undergoing chemotherapy treatments says he was asked to take off his hat because it violated the restaurant's dress code. Robert Chambers says he put on a beanie to keep him warm --combating the side effects of his chemotherapy treatments. Chambers says a waitress then told him to take off the hat because it was against dress code. After explaining that Chambers had cancer, a manager came...

Last March, North Dakota gave us a heart-warming demonstration of traditional voluntary service -- in minus 20 degree weather. As the rising Red River threatened to flood Fargo, willing volunteers gathered by the thousands. Before long, they had filled and stacked over 2 million sandbags to barricade the city against the raging waters. Christians prayed for victory over the forces of nature, and by God's grace, the make-shift dikes held. About 6,000 volunteers of all ages had simply followed their conscience, worked together and met the need. Unlike President Obama's plan for government-directed "service," neither prayer nor God's comforting Truths...

A planned immigration reform rally will take place on the National Mall on Tuesday even though the site is closed due to the government shutdown. Organizers for the "Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform" were spotted Monday setting up a stage and equipment on the National Mall for the rally which will take place on Tuesday. A few scattered barriers around the park have signs informing visitors that the area is closed as a result of the government shutdown. Susana Flores, a spokesperson for the rally, confirmed for the Washington Examiner that the Park Service will allow the event to

One of the dirtiest little secrets about preaching is that many preachers are using what we used to call in radio “a service.” There are, or at least there used to be, businesses that sell jokes and one liners and gags and the like to “radio personalities.” We referred to these business as “a service” as in, “Wow, his show is terrible.” “Well, I’m not surprised, he uses a service.” If a “personality” needs a service he isn’t really much of a personality is he?

In yet another topic sure to enrage, Sterling Beard – writing at The Corner – catches up with the latest news on a strange case coming to us from New Mexico. It’s now gone all the way to the state Supreme Court, and the story may be at an end. In case you hadn’t heard, wedding photographers can’t refuse to take pictures at a gay wedding or they have violated the New Mexico Human Rights Act. The court found that Elane Photography’s refusal to serve Vanessa Willock violated the act, which “prohibits a public accommodation from refusing to offer its...

How Does America Service Her Debt? It has been interesting to monitor and track the Dow Jones Average on those days when the Fed’s actions regarding Quantitative Easing is in the news. Lately the news is about whom Obama will appoint to replace Ben Bernanke. This brings up concern about how the new Federal Reserve Chairman will administer Quantitative Easing. The Dow seems to drop considerably with any mention of the Feds easing the easing. Quantitative Easing (I’ve lost track of the numbers) is averaging $85,000 million each month. The market appears to favor the continued borrowing and accumulation of...

<p>Private carriers have been shipping alcohol for decades, but the postal service is prevented by law from engaging in the same business.</p> <p>On Thursday, Postmaster General Patrick Donahue said he hopes the agency can deliver alcoholic beverages and thereby raise $50 million a year.</p>

Post office a preview of Obamacare hell to come... (video)

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

DUNSEITH, N.D.—Few mothers are likely to get more cards, flowers and phone calls this Sunday than Joyce Dumont. Mrs. Dumont, 77 years old, a Native American of the Chippewa tribe, is at the root of a family tree so tangled that it seems more like a forest. By her reckoning, she has had 69 kids—including six through childbirth, five stepchildren, 11 who were adopted, several dozen foster children and a few who simply moved in when they had no better place to go. Her latest three were adopted by Mrs. Dumont and her husband, Buddy, also 77, over the past...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service says it has intercepted a letter addressed to President Barack Obama that contained a "suspicious substance." Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan says the letter was intercepted at a facility away from the White House. He says the letter was received Tuesday. The letter comes a day after lawmakers said a letter was mailed to Sen. Roger Wicker that tested positive for poisonous ricin. Tensions have been high in Washington and across the country since the deadly bombings on Monday at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170. Police have...

Fast food giant attributes its woes to less-than-cheerful employees (Newser) – McDonald's is attributing its recent struggles to the less-than-sunny dispositions of the teenagers taking your order. "Service is broken," declared a slide in a webcast for franchise owners last month. Customer complaints have been rising, executives told the franchisees, with "rude or unprofessional employees" topping the list, the Wall Street Journal reports. About 1 in 5 complaints related to friendliness, while others were about speed of service. One study last year gave McDonald's one of the worst drive-thru service times in the business, and the second-worst friendliness rating,...

RS 2477. What is it? It is a provision of federal law supporting the actions of these courageous townspeople. Though repealed in 1976, its powerful effects are not repeal-able. It is about preservation of public property, i.e. rights of way. It is a matter of liberty!! Of the freedom to travel!