Free Republic

Almost 39 weeks ago, Kristine Casey set out on an unusual journey to help her daughter and answer a spiritual calling. Her goal was achieved late Wednesday when she gave birth to her own grandson at age 61. Casey, possibly the oldest women to give birth in Illinois, served as a surrogate for her daughter, Sara Connell, who had been trying for years to have a baby. Connell and her husband, Bill, are the biological parents of the child Casey carried, which grew from an embryo created from the Chicago couple's egg and sperm. Crying and praying, Connell and her...

I guess the hard work of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a turn off to the president. Here is Ben Smith on Steve Rosen's column regarding Obama's distancing himself from the Middle East peace process: "Obama invested heavily in the peace process early on and got burned in no small part by - as his team sees it - the Palestinian side and Arab leaders who stepped back from promises of confidence-building steps. Now he has started to back away, at least personally, from a process with no immediate reward." On the Iran issue, his approach has...

I'm amazed by the soothsayers: Ayn Rand, for instance, who warned us fifty years ago of the risk of dictatorship or civil war if collectivism persisted. Or economist Friedrich Hayek, who wrote in the 1940s that we'll become serfs if we move toward big government. However, what feels most prophetic lately is an obscure movie from the l970s called Little Murders. The writer, Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, predicted that the '60s would unleash a feral, primitive society. The movie has a checkered history. It started out as a play on Broadway in the mid-'60s that was such a bomb, it...

All McCain voters are selling the rest of us TRUE CONSERVATIVES out! Enough! Show you have the values of your convictions and leave the BLUE BLOOD REPUBLICANS in Washington, crawling on their knees for forgiveness!

Charity, do-gooding, philanthropy it’s all just selfishness masquerading as virtue. So says the cynic. In modern times, the theory that each of us, despite occasional appearances of self-sacrificial nobility, is ultimately and invariably looking out for No. 1 got a big boost from Darwin’s theory of evolution. By the logic of natural selection, any tendency to act selflessly ought to be snuffed out in the struggle to survive and propagate. So if someone seems to be behaving as an altruist — say, by giving away a fortune to relieve the sufferings of others — that person is really following the...

Former professional basketball player Jason Caffey had two children with his wife, and at least six other children with women in metro Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana and Illinois. Professional football player Travis Henry, a Denver Broncos running back with a $25 million contract, has nine children by nine women in four Southern states, including a Lithonia boy fathered out of wedlock three years ago. Caffey, who earned as much as $5 million a season in a 10-year NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks, filed for bankruptcy in Alabama in August. His wife, who lives in...

On Thursday, Congress attempted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. SCHIP? Isn't that something to do with health care for children? Absolutely. And here is Bay Area Democratic Rep. Pete Stark addressing the issue with his customary forensic incisiveness: "The Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the...

Egoism is a state of mind where a person values all things in terms of their value to the self. Egoism and selfishness are virtues, in fact the greatest of all virtues, as they enable life. All living beings are selfish. To survive, they must be. Without fulfilling one's basic needs of water, food, or protection, one would cease to exist. Although selfishness is a necessity, many people hold selflessness as their goal in life, and this altruistic thinking is a dominating and corrosive mainstay of today's society. If one were to give all of his money to charity or...

'Embryo Bank' Stirs Ethics Fears Firm Lets Clients Pick Among Fertilized Eggs By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 6, 2007; A01 A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors. The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences,...

ELTON JOHN: 'I WOULD BAN RELIGION COMPLETELY' Sat Nov 11 2006 15:42:55 ET Sir Elton John wants religion banned completely -- because he believes it promotes hatred of gays. Speaking to the Observer Music Monthly Magazine the singer said religion lacked compassion and turned people into "hateful lemmings". The PRESS ASSOCIATION reports: In a candid interview for a dedicated Gay issue of the magazine he shared his views on topics as varied as being a pop icon to Tony Blair's stance on the war in Iraq. He said there was a lack of religious leadership, particularly in world politics, and...

As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their suburban Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick. Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him unusually susceptible. By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Mr. Kingsbury and his...

LONDON, August 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This week, a popular BBC radio announcer told the public that she had entered into a “suicide pact” with friends should she be incapacitated by illness. Jenni Murray, the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, a feminist and euthanasia advocate, said that she does not want to be “trapped” into caring for her mother who is ill with Parkinson’s disease. Murray, a member of the Order of the British Empire and a patron of the Family Planning Association, is airing her views tonight on a BBC television program called “Don’t Get Me Started.”...

John Gizzi, veteran political editor of the conservative weekly Human Events, normally is an optimist. Over the years I have watched him find the one possible thread to explain the rationale for the election of a conservative Republican. John knows more about politics than any 10 political junkies combined have forgotten. If there is a way to see a possibility for a Republican victory Gizzi makes the case. And that is as it should be inasmuch as he is writing to give conservatives hope. He and his paper's message are always the same: "Shoulder on." You can imagine my shock...

Selfishness Has Its Value to the EconomyBy Peter Brown Self-interest gets a bad rap these days. It is both the driving principle of capitalism and a fact of human nature. And, it explains so much about many Americans' ambivalence toward Wal-Mart. A survey of attitudes toward the nation's largest retailer among New Yorkers, who might be expected to be among the least supportive of the firm and its practices, explains much about that love/hate relationship. They don't like the company and wish it were operated differently. But in a New York minute they are on their way to shop there....

DEAR ABBY: I am a female who is almost 38 years old. Most of my adult life has been spent in school, working or traveling. It is only in the last two years that I have met someone and settled down somewhat -- although we are not married. We are both artists, so much of our time is filled doing the things that we love and believe in. Neither of us feels a giant void in our relationship or our lives that needs to be filled by a baby. In the past year or so, several of my co-workers and...

I've had it with the phrase "Bridges to Nowhere." Someone has to speak up for Alaskans. I've lived in Ketchikan and the Mat-Su valley, two of the places next to "nowhere." Ketchikan is a thin strip of roadway on a mountain cliff next to the ocean. The bridge would connect Ketchikan to the island next door, which has many square miles of flat land that could be developed for the benefit of the community. The Knik Arm bridge connects Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, with the Mat-Su valley, Alaska's fastest growing community. Calling the Knik Arm bridge a bridge to "nowhere"...

Before the divorce rate began its inexorable rise in the late 1960s, the common wisdom had been that, where children are concerned, divorce itself is a problem. But as it became widespread -- peaking at almost one in two first marriages in the mid-1980s -- popular thinking morphed into a new, adult-friendly idea: It's not the act of divorcing that's the problem, but simply the way that parents handle it.

On Sunday they packed 'em in -- a circumstance you wouldn't have noted for some long while in English churches, which, like European churches in general, seem to resound mainly with historic echoes. But there was praying to be done, and it seemed to the English people meet, right and their bounden duty -- as the Book of Common Prayer would have it -- to lay their sorrows and perplexities before the Lord. And so, three days after the explosions and screams that scarred a London morning, something like the old European civilization popped back into view. I didn't say...

Why are some people more prone to give charity or put themselves in danger in order to help others? A team of Israeli psychologists claim they have the answer - they've located the first gene linked to altruistic behavior. According to a study conducted by Prof. Richard Ebstein and colleagues at the Hebrew University and Herzog Memorial Hospital in Jerusalem, a link exists between people who appear selfless and seek to help others, and a gene variant on chromosome No. 11. Volunteers who filled out a questionnaire exhibiting these traits then had DNA samples taken where the gene variant was...

Mass shows support for dozens of gays, lesbians 'Let go of anger and hate,' pastor says BY STEVE SCOTT Pioneer Press Responding to requests by families and friends of gays and lesbians, the Rev. John Clay celebrated a Mass of healing and support Thursday night at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in St. Paul. Nearly 150 people at the church at West Seventh Street and Western Avenue heard Clay call for people to love "those who aren't like us." He implored them to "listen to what it feels like to grow up in a society in which the majority is hostile"...