Free Republic

Fifth-grader turned part-time gardener Emma Leyson is showing off her greens on Muse School’s campus. “This is the strawberry plant I planted,” Leyson told CBS2’s Stephanie Simmons. Thought to be the first of its kind in the country, the school recently adopted an all-vegan lunch menu. As part of their curriculum, the students learn how to create food from seed to table. --snip-- Paul Hudak, who runs the program at Muse, works closely with the school’s master chef to prepare a variety of vegan choices for the kids. --snip-- Before rolling out the new menu this school year, the staff...

With Mitt Romney campaigning...his Mormon religion is coming under increasing scrutiny. SNIP Now Mark Driscoll, pastor of the high-profile Seattle-based Mars Hill Church, has added his voice to the fray -- agreeing that Christians should consider Mormons as members of a "cult" and not "brothers and sisters in a common faith." Writing on his website Tuesday, Driscoll goes on at length about the various definitions of a cult. He is careful to say that Mormonism has "outgrown" the popular culture and sociological definitions of a cult because of its enormous growth and general acceptance in the nation. But, Driscoll writes,...

I subscribe to a Mormon apologetic Newsletter titled FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research). Normally it falls into my junk email account and I don't even open it, but today I had a few minutes and scanned the latest offering and was stunned to see the hypocrisy of the authors. Please note the entire email is posted below. This particular issue has a great deal of whining about those mean Christians who make the spurious claim that Mormons are not Christians, but are a cult. A couple of examples: -"Mormons are a cult" epithets into the national spotlight. In...

Rick Perry just gave a well received speech Here at the annual Values Voters summit in Washington, D.C.–though not flawless, the Texas governor is a lot sharper when he’s in control, not under fire in a debate setting. But the Texas pastor who introduced Perry has unexpectedly opened the door to a sensitive issue barely discussed in this primary so far: Mitt Romney’s faith. ....whether he had in fact been referring to Romney and Mormonism, Jeffers said he had. “Mormonism is a cult,” he said cheerfully, before rephrasing his onstage statement in a more explicit way: The choice, he said,...

The BYU football team lost by three on Saturday. Not on the scoreboard, of course. That showed a 44-point spread -- Utah 54, BYU 10. The collateral damage was to BYU's three cardinal values, the ones that are inscribed on all its paraphernalia, its marketing material and (new this year) on the turf at LaVell Edwards Stadium: Tradition, Spirit, Honor. • Tradition: Seven turnovers is not traditional; BYU has a tradition of success. This was the worst home defeat to Utah in school history, and it was among the Cougars' worst defeats ever. Saturday witnessed the destruction of tradition, and...

When Joseph Smith died in June of 1844, the Mormon Church faced a succession crisis. Mormon historian Richard S. Van Wagoner explained, “Despite frequent kidnaping and assassination attempts, Joseph Smith established no firm policies regarding presidential succession in the event of his death. The resulting confusion threw the prophetic transition into turmoil. He simply had not expected to die at thirty-eight. Never given to full disclosure to any man or woman, the prophet’s public and private statements between 1834-44 suggested at least eight different methods for succession, each pointing to different successors with some claims to validity.” (“The Making of...

Daren Palmer, the head of an Idaho firm known as the Trigon Group, has agreed to plead guilty to operating a $78 million Ponzi scheme that allegedly scammed fellow Mormons – including friends, neighbors and relatives – in a classic case of affinity fraud, The New York Times reported. According to government prosecutors, the Times said, Palmer raised more than $20 million by promising investors generous double-digit returns and then misappropriated their funds instead. He stands accused of swindling parents of children he coached in football, the newspaper said, and even his own father and brother-in-law along the way. He...

Without saying his name, Mormon leaders and grassroots Mormons daily reference Wilford Woodruff when they interact with non-Mormons and the media. How so? Well, they like to tell others how polygamy is a supposed bygone of another era; how a certain Lds "prophet" in 1890 put the kabosh on it...or, at least, started a mainstream Mormon move toward monogamy. Yet, there's a little-known episode that this same Wilford Woodruff said that occurred in the 1870s -- before becoming the head "prophet" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the last two weeks before he left the St....

Ever wonder about the final straw that will bring down western civilization? A British judge may have created it. On November 3rd, Mr Justice Michael Burton, the same judge that allowed continued showing of An Inconvenient Truth to children in British schools even while recognizing it to be a dishonest political propaganda film decided that: "A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations." The ruling means that an employment tribunal will decide whether Al Gore should...

As I'm writing this column for the Financial Post, I am simultaneously editing a page on Wikipedia. I am confident that just about everything I write for my column will be available for you to read. I am equally confident that you will be able to read just about nothing that I write for the page on Wikipedia.

Smoking a single joint of cannabis has the same impact on breathing capacity as up to five cigarettes, a new study shows. The researchers say this may be because cannabis users tend to inhale more deeply and, because joints are smoked without a filter, the smoke is hotter when it hits the lungs. Researchers from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand publish their findings online in the journal Thorax. Doctors recruited 339 volunteers who were divided into four categories: those who smoked only cannabis, those who smoked only tobacco, those who smoked both, and those who smoked neither. Cannabis-only...

Three ways to hate By Eliahu Salpeter Several weeks ago, the American Jewish Committee published a study entitled "Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism: A New Front of Zealotry," written by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld. As the title indicates, says Prof. Rosenfeld, "there is a certain structural similarity between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism - they are closely connected, so much so that sometimes it seems that the growing hatred of America is none other than a new form of Judeophobia and vice-versa as well." While the examples in the chapter on Germany are not the most convincing (in contrast to Rosenfeld's view, in Germany,...