Free Republic

Former First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of a healthy food and beverage company she co-founded that is targeted at fighting childhood obesity. The former first lady spearheaded the Let’s Move campaign, a program aimed at ending childhood obesity, during her time at the White House. She announced her latest venture at the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything Festival on Wednesday, May 3. "We're hoping not to just provide healthy and delicious drinks and snacks for kids, but to jumpstart a race to the top that will transform the entire food industry," Obama wrote in a PLEZi Nutrition...

OTTAWA, March 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Canadian Religious Conference (CRC), the official organization representing the over 200 religious congregations in Canada (groups of monks, nuns and priests organized into religious orders), has publicly voiced dissent to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The controversial statements come in a letter and document written by Alain Ambeault C.S.V., the President of the Canadian Religious Conference, which intends to make suggestions to Canadian bishops as they go for their once-every-five-year visit with the Pope in the coming months. "Today, I speak for the 230 religious congregations (sisters, brothers, priests) that live in...

Reports in the national press that some modern megachurches are “closing” on Christmas in order to encourage families to “have a more personal experience on that day” have shocked many traditional Christians. The Chicago Tribune first reported this phenomenon on December 6, in an article about the godfather of megachurches, Willow Creek. Other articles followed, in USA Today and other papers, chronicling the trend throughout the United States. This is nothing new for Willow Creek, and the WillowCreeking of America is evidenced by the spread of this trend. Many, many churches, including Rockford’s Heartland Community Church (which recently purchased Colonial...

U.N. reform agenda watered-down General Assembly adopts wording stripped of details UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down draft document on poverty, human rights and reform for this week's summit of world leaders to consider, shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ambitious goals after weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details...

"Only a madman could maintain that the distinction between the honorable and the dishonorable, between virtue and vice, is a matter of opinion, not of nature.” – Cicero in de Legibus The last 40 years or so has seen a dramatic shift in the way people view moral truth. It has been a move away from the idea of morality as a set of objective and universal standards, to the view that moral codes are merely the synthesis of popular opinion. Consider the Episcopal cleric who supported the ordination of homosexual priest, Gene Robinson, as bishop of the Diocese of...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - If you've noticed that your Jack Daniel's is carrying a little less kick these days, you're probably right. The famed "sippin' whiskey," which advertises a recipe traced back to the nation's first registered distillery, has lowered the alcohol content of its flagship brand, Old No.7 Black Label. The whiskey now registers 80 proof, instead of 86 (or 40 percent alcohol versus 43 percent), and some drinkers feel betrayed. "You can't screw with a legend like that and get away with it," said Frank Kelly Rich, editor of Modern Drunkard magazine. "I'm sure Jack is spinning in his...

Who knows of any high schools that require all students to take semester courses of chemistry, physics, biology, and earth science in 9th and 10th grades? I've heard of schools that cover all four disciplines in 9th grade, which still allows three years for the more serious student to take more in-depth courses in the three core sciences. But I've not been able to find schools teaching a semester-only curriculum for two full years. Public schools in Portage Michigan are abandoning their college preparatory curriculum in favor of mandatory semesters for everyone, and many parents are upset, not just because...

Protests over the recently unveiled revised oath to be taken by new U.S. citizens has immigration officials working on yet another rewrite. Complaints from those who criticized the weakening of the portion pledging to serve in the military, as well as the elimination of a promise to bear arms, apparently has not fallen on deaf ears, the Associated Press reported. According to the report, immigration officials announced the new oath earlier this month, saying they were revising the language for the first time in 50 years. Officials hoped to remove such archaic language as the promise to "renounce and abjure...

A Maryland minister was barred from giving the opening prayer in the state Senate after he refused to drop a reference to Jesus. The Rev. David N. Hughes of the Trinity and Evangelical Church of Adamstown, Md., intended to round out his invocation yesterday with the line, "In Jesus' name, Amen." But the sergeant at arms – on the orders of Senate President Thomas Mike Miller Jr. – shut the reverend out of the body's chambers. Miller issued the orders after two Jewish lawmakers threatened to stage a boycott of the legislative session if the phrase was not removed. "I'm...