Free Republic

Democrats are gloating over the sentencing of former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) last week. He was ordered to serve 10 years in prison for the vague charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Whenever prosecutors want to get someone who hasn’t actually committed a crime, they use those vague but scary sounding charges. He was also ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be divided between him and two other co-defendants.What did Stockman actually do to warrant this? He facilitated four donations from two donors totaling $915,000 to two nonprofits he was associated with. One of the nonprofits...

While Americans continue to struggle with the moral and legal issues surrounding partial-birth abortion, the Europeans have moved on to legalizing euthanasia for fully born children. Call it retroactive-abortion. Child euthanasia is still illegal in Holland and doctors are terrified of being prosecuted, but there is a growing number of physicians and poltician who are advocating legalizing doctor-assisted euthanasia for babies and very young children. Each year in Holland at least 15 seriously ill babies, most of them with chromosomal abnormalities, are helped to die by doctors acting with the parents’ consent. But only a fraction of those cases are...

A federal judge is scheduled to rule today on a California atheist's lawsuit seeking to bar clergy-led prayer during President Bush's second inauguration next week. Judge John D. Bates yesterday heard oral arguments in the case during a two-hour hearing before a packed courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Michael Newdow, the 50-year old Sacramento, Calif., lawyer who filed the suit against President Bush last month, took part in the proceedings by telephone. Outside the courthouse, representatives of religious groups protested Mr. Newdow's suit. The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, executive director of the Christian Defense Coalition,...

THE screaming starts at 11am sharp each day in the basement of the Raby care home near Prague. That is when a little boy called Vasek Knotek is locked in his cage. For a brief period each morning Vasek, who is about five, is let out to be fed and washed. But once his cage has been cleaned he is forced back inside. Vasek shakes the iron frame with all the force he can muster and tears at the wire mesh that confines him. His screams of anger ring through the building. In an adjacent cage his friend Michal puts...