A Visit of Faith and Reason
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Benedict XVI's first visit to America as Pope this week is an exciting and joyous event for the nation's millions of Catholics. But his visit carries a message of hope and reconciliation for all Americans, regardless of faith. The Pope is both a deeply faithful and a deeply learned man. He has been called "a voice of faith and a voice of reason in our time."

Pope Hails America's Founding Principles
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In a speech delivered on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday morning, Pope Benedict XVI spoke positively of America's Founding Fathers and lauded the principles they embraced in creating the United States. "From the dawn of the Republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the creator," said the pope. Pope Benedict then noted that both John Paul II and George Washington believed that free societies were dependent on the religious convictions and moral rectitude of the people.

Brown upbeat on US ‘special relationship’
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Gordon Brown heaped praise on George W. Bush with language evoking Tony Blair on Thursday, as he sought to overcome the impression that the “special relationship” had entered a cooler phase. Speaking at a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Brown said he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Mr. Bush in a transatlantic bond that was “stronger than ever”. “The world owes President Bush a huge debt of gratitude in leading the world in our determination to root out terrorism,” Mr. Brown said.

Outrage: Yale Art student uses her own abortion as project
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Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.. Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. The next day the college indicated that the project was not real but now Shvarts disputes the Yale’s version of the story.

Obama Compares Pro-Life Republican with Weathermen Terrorist
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Sen. Barack Obama has compared a conservative, pro-life, U.S. senator with a former member of a 1960s-era radical group, The Weathermen was a terrorist that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and NYPD Headquarters, among others.

Children's hospital launches sex change for kids program
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The renowned Children's Hospital Boston has launched a new program to drug children to delay puberty so they can decide whether they want a male or a female body, according to a report today in the Boston Globe.

Hillary: Bosnia and Back Again
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Hillary Clinton for President of the United States? You decide if honor counts.

Planned Parenthood Has 'Racist Agenda,' MLK's Niece Says
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The niece of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is among a group of pro-life black leaders calling for an end to federal funding for Planned Parenthood because of what she calls Planned Parenthood's "racist agenda." “Planned Parenthood is definitely a racist organization - they have a racist agenda," said Dr. Alveda King. "Since 1970, there have been nearly 50 million abortions and about 17 million of those have been blacks. It's black genocide. They are killing our people and fooling us."

Pope Benedict Tells Catholic College Leaders to Uphold Pro-Life Values
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As pro-life advocates expected and hoped for, Pope Benedict XVI told leaders of Catholic colleges and universities that they need to uphold Catholic values. The speech is considered a great help for pro-life advocates concerned about college hosting pro-abortion speakers and candidates. The Pope said academic freedom on college campuses has "great value" but that it does not justify abrogating Catholic teaching about the value of human life in the face of abortion and concerns on bioethics issues like euthanasia and stem cell research.

Hamas MP sees Islamic conquest 'very soon'
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A member of the Palestinian parliament representing Hamas declared in a televised message that Islam "very soon" will conquer Rome, spread throughout Europe then take over the Americas.

Benedict Jimmy
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Former President Jimmy Carter today warmly embraced a top Hamas terrorist and laid a wreath on the gravesite of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom Carter called a "peace fighter" and a "dear friend."

Lieberman: Carter Is 'Naive' at Best
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Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., told FOX News that "at best, President Carter is being naive" in trying to negotiate with avowed terrorists. "There is a long list of people who thought they could reason with dictators and killers, going back to Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in the 1930s, but it has been shown to be absolutely wrong."

Rise in Food Costs Attributed to Energy and Transportation Costs
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USDA economists explained the jumps in a recent presentation to the Food Marketing Institute, starting with the factors everyone knows about: sharply higher commodity costs for wheat, corn, soybeans and milk, plus higher energy and transportation costs. The other reasons are more complex. Rapid economic growth in China and India has increased demand for meat there, and exports of U.S. products, such as corn, have set records as the weak dollar has made them cheaper. That's lowered the supply of corn available for sale in the U.S., raising prices here. Ethanol production has also diverted corn from dinner tables and into fuel tanks and therefore cause an increase in pricing.

McCain calls for summer-long suspension of gas tax
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Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax and several tax cuts as the likely presidential nominee sought to stem the public's pain from a troubled economy.

Estonia’s Flat Tax a Huge Success
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Two-time former Estonia Prime Minister Mart Laar visited The Heritage Foundation today, extolling the benefits the flat tax brought to his country. First passed in Estonia in 1994, Laar cited two immediate benefits he witnessed when the flat tax was implemented: First, government revenues went up as the simplicity of the new system “killed” tax avoidance; and second, growth skyrocketed. Indeed healthy economic growth has been a staple of the Eastern European countries that adopted the flat tax since the fall of the Berlin Wall, including Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

A Century of Taxes
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The real growth in taxation in the last half-century has been at the state and local level. State and local receipts have doubled from about 8 percent of GDP in the mid 1950s to a peak of 17 percent in 2000 and 2005. Here we are all getting riled about our federal income taxes when it turns out that federal taxes aren't the problem. It's the state and local taxes that are killing us.

Flat Tax and Fair Tax
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It's April and federal income-tax due day. What better time for a Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video that explains the flaws of the current tax system and that argues for either a flat tax or national sales tax.

Private Faith, Big Government: Understanding the Impact of Marginalizing Religion
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Traditionally, religious congregations in America have served as important social institutions for pro­viding for those who are in need, both within and outside of their fellowships. An increasing division between "public" and "private" spheres of life has relegated religion to a reduced social role as trends within many churches have led to an unbalanced focus on spiritual beliefs and psychological health. Together, these trends narrow the focus of reli­gion and open the door for government to present itself as the authority most responsible for meeting material and social needs. As the perceived respon­sibility and social relevance of local congregations weakens, citizens’ potential reliance on government is likely to increase.

ACLU: Tear down this wall!
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The timely visit of the pope, and the intimidated silence of the atheistic opponents of religion, tells me the hour has come for us collectively to shout – to demand of the creators of this fabricated "wall of separation" depriving the constitutional rights of multiple millions of Americans – "ACLU, tear down this wall!"

New prosthetic arm for Vets
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Inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen. previews the extraordinary prosthetic arm he's developing at the request of the Department of Defense, to help the 1,600 "kids" who've come back from Iraq without an arm (and the two dozen who've lost both arms). Kamen's commitment to using technology to solve problems, and his respect for the human spirit, have never been more clear than in this deeply moving clip.

Iwo Jima Veterans Blast Time's 'Special Environmental Issue' Cover
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The cover of the April 21 issue of Time took the famous Iwo Jima photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the American flag and replaced the flag with a tree. “It’s an absolute disgrace,” Marine Veteran Donald Mates said. “Whoever did it is going to hell. That’s a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor.” Mates also said, “the making the comparison of World War II to global warming was erroneous and disrespectful.”

Keyes mulls third-party candidacy
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Alan Keyes, who worked in the administration of Ronald Reagan and unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president three times, announced Tuesday night that he has left the party.

LA: Sheriff and Police Chief at Odds over Latino Gangs
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LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, on April 4th, told a largely African-American audience in Compton that when Latino gangs are at war with black gangs over drugs and turf they are sometimes satisfied to kill any young black living in their rival’s territory in order to flex their criminal muscle. Baca’s observations put him at odds with LAPD chief Bill Bratton.

Sheriff runs brothel from inside his own jail
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Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail. Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.

Privacy and Property Rights Story
The Fifth Amendment, which deals with the legal concepts of the grand jury, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process and eminent domain, was written as a response to and as protection from the abuses that the American colonists had suffered under British rule. The Revolutionary War was not just about taxation and representation. The British had set up special courts whose judges (and, often, juries) were Tories. These courts ignored Colonial law and served at the will and for the bidding of the Crown. The British army not only entered private homes without warrants, it confiscated private homes for quartering its troops. The Fifth Amendment was written to prevent these kinds of abuses by the new government. Now, Fifth Amendment violations are happening again across American.

Obama sat on anti-Second Amendment board
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Before Barack Hussein Obama became a national political figure, he sat for eight years on the board of the Chicago-based, Joyce Foundation, that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions. The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners’ rights, as well as two groups that advocated handgun bans. And it paid to support a book called “Every Handgun Is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.” In addition, the board position was a paid position in which Obama made over $70,000.

Moving Forward to Secure the Border
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More needs to be done to achieve border security, which cannot be fully accomplished until all components of an effective national policy are in place. The Administration must vigorously enforce immigration laws in the workplace, and Congress must provide for temporary worker programs and visa reforms to get employers the workers they need.

CNN Reporter arrested for Meth possession and more
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CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park at 3:45am with Meth in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said. He was reportedly once offered a position for the English-language version of the controversial Al Jazeera network, but said he turned it down because being gay and Jewish, he didn't think it would be a good fit. On his official CNN bio, the network calls him "one of the most instantly recognizable members of the CNN team."

'Expelled' propelled to box office top 10
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Opening on about half the screens of other top 10 movies, “Expelled," Ben Stein's documentary on academia's censorship of any ideas hinting of intelligent design, scored an impressive $3.2 million in its opening weekend – more than all but eight other movies.

Presidential Primary Results
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Republicans – Delegates – 1,191 Delegates Needed
McCain is the Republican nominee.
Democrats – Delegates – 2,025 Delegates Needed
Obama - 1648 Clinton – 1508