Alabama recently began requiring all of its state-funded public health clinics to hand out "morning-after pills" (search) to women who are worried they may be pregnant and inform patients of their availability.
Not surprisingly, the decision has been met with controversy in the state, with some Department of Public Health nurses quitting their jobs rather than participating in an effort that goes against their religious beliefs.
Alabama health officials say the initiative, which began in April, is in the public's interest and protects their $5 million in federal family planning grants.
Aderholt wrote the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for clarification and received a response saying that family planning projects must offer a "broad array" of contraceptive methods but do not have to provide "all available methods and services."
Aderholt said Wednesday he's getting a majority of Alabama's congressional delegation to sign a letter telling state health officer Don Williamson that the federal government does not require distributing the morning-after pill.
However, Public Health got a letter from Health and Human Services in January that said it "should consider the availability of emergency contraception the same as any other method which has been established as safe and effective."
In an interview, he said he planned to relinquish his shares [of National Review] today to a board of trustees he had selected. Among them are his son, the humorist Christopher Buckley; the magazine's president, Thomas L. Rhodes; and Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale and one of the magazine's youngest current contributors.
For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient Indian settlements so remarkably well-preserved that arrowheads and beads are still lying out in the open.
Archaeologists are calling it one of the most spectacular finds in the West.
Hidden deep inside Utah’s nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles (208 kilometers) from Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles (19 kilometers) and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.
The site was occupied for at least 3,000 years until it abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished.
A peace activist who supports the inclusion of gays in the ministry was elected Saturday to lead the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. for the next two years.
The selection of the activist, Rick Ufford-Chase, comes as the church prepares for a fresh round of debate at its annual convention this week on whether to repeal a ban on gay pastors.
The nearly naked looks once favored by pop stars like Christina Aguilera and television shows like "Sex and the City" are giving way to more demure styles that feature far less skin, fashion executives say.
From the runways of Europe to the malls of America, shirts and skirts are getting longer and the waistband on jeans, which had been going south in a hurry, has begun to rise, these people said.
"People are tired of seeing so much skin," said Greg Scott, chief executive of Bebe, a 195-unit chain that is known for selling slinky tank tops and short skirts....
"That whole midriff-baring thing is completely over," Scott said.
Vice President Cheney cursed at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy during a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were having their annual group picture taken earlier this week, Leahy and Senate sources said Thursday....
During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush’s anti-abortion judges, the aides said.
Cheney then responded, “f--- off” or “f--- you,” two aides said, both speaking on condition of anonymity.
A tough Chicago priest foiled two would-be robbers who tried to steal money from the church collection box, keeping one of them in a headlock until the cops came.
St. Agnes' Church in the city's West Side had been robbed before, reports WBBM-TV, so video cameras were installed overlooking the collection box.
On Wednesday afternoon, church volunteers saw a man lay out tools and try to break into the box, which was holding about $300.
Father Matt Foley ran in and grabbed the man's tools, but the crook fought back, and the tussle wandered into the street, then a nearby alley.
[The] two men who had gotten free meals at the church were arrested.
Fans in New York and other cities have been scratching their heads, though, trying to figure out what the Hebrew letters that flash on a video screen during part of Madonna's show mean....
Thanks to our friends Seth and Gigi, who'd been in the mosh pit dancing up a sweat, we finally broke the code....
The Hebrew letters don't spell out Hebrew words, my friends. They spell out English words, which is quite bizarre.
Seth showed us his special bracelet that allowed him into the mosh pit. On it were three Hebrew letters that looked like they spelled out a Hebrew word. Then we realized the letters sounded out to read: "Love."
The rest of the Hebrew involved in the show also seemed to be gibberish, at best. But Madonna invoked Kabbalah and her superficial interest in Judaism several other times during the evening, besides wearing a T-shirt that read "Kabbalists Do It Better."
Countless dinosaur bones lie buried in the rocks of South Dakota but the Christians excavating one remote cliff-face were digging not just for reptilian vertebrae but for the hand of God.
With screwdrivers, hammers and shaving brushes for tools, the group was seeking and, as far as it was concerned, unearthed proof that the animals perished not millions of years ago but in Noah's Flood circa 2300 BC.
To these believers in the Bible's literal truth, they are not dinosaurs but "missionary lizards", which are powerful weapons in the battle for young American hearts and minds.
Boston Catholics grieving the loss off 65 diocesan churches are even more downhearted to learn that their former places of worship are being sold as luxury condominiums.
The Archdiocese of Boston last month announced it would sell off some of its churches in order to balance the budget.
Bernie McFarland and his father bought St. Peter and Paul's Church, one of the most venerable in Boston, to turn it into high-priced condos.
"We retained as much of the interior as we could to make a beautiful living space," said McFarland.
With the original plaster work, stained glass windows, arches, moldings and even the paint on the ceiling, these condos are selling for between $300,000 and $1 million.
The Cleveland Museum of Art has bought what it thinks is an ancient bronze sculpture of Apollo the Lizard Slayer by the classical Greek sculptor Praxiteles. If it is authentic, it will be one of the most important ancient bronzes in an American museum.
About five feet tall, the bronze Apollo originally depicted the young god pulling back a laurel sapling with his left hand while holding an arrow aimed at a lizard with his right. The image is known from two marble copies from the Roman period, in the Louvre and the Vatican.
The Roman historian Pliny the Elder saw what he considered to be the original sculpture in the first century. "Although Praxiteles was more successful and therefore more famous for his marble sculptures, he nevertheless also created beautiful works in bronze," Pliny wrote. "He made a youthful Apollo called Sauroktonos (Lizard Slayer), waiting in ambush for a creeping lizard, close at hand, with an arrow."
If the work is Greek and of the classical period, it will be the only monumental Greek bronze sculpture attributed to any Greek master through literary sources.
A secondary school in Suffolk has become the first in Britain to ban girls from wearing skirts and order them to switch to uniforms with long trousers.
The decision by Kesgrave High School, near Ipswich, was reached after warnings were ignored and hemlines crept up to "inappropriate" levels. The new policy will come into effect in September.
"These days girls wear very short skirts which is against the school uniform policy," explained Margaret Young, one of the governors.
"Two years ago we sent out letters to parents asking them to make sure skirts were regulation length, which is just above the knee. The impact was short-lived and it wasn't long before skirts were very short again.
"We simply do not want our girls going outside with a 'come-hither look'.
Remains found near Stonehenge are almost certainly of an ancient people who built the monument, excited archaeologists have revealed.
Researchers investigating the origins of the seven 4,500 year-old skeletons found buried on Salisbury Plain last year have run chemical tests to trace their origins and age.
They have concluded they are of people from south-west Wales - the same region from where bluestones forming the world-famous iconic monument originate.
Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, of Wessex Archaeology, said: "In medieval times, people believed that the stones could only have been brought to Stonehenge by Merlin the Wizard.
The two Lexington gay men who made worldwide news by parenting quadruplets and then a fifth child have separated amid allegations of domestic violence that a judge dismissed, according to court records.
Lexington attorney Michael Meehan declined to comment yesterday on Fayette Circuit Family Court Judge Kim Bunnell's decision earlier this month to reject his petition for a domestic violence order against his former partner Thomas Dysarz.
Bunnell ruled on June 1 that there was "insufficient evidence" to issue a domestic violence order. Such an order would have put restrictions on Dysarz's interaction with Meehan. Court records show separate addresses for the men.
Meehan has custody of his biological children -- the quadruplets born to Meehan and surrogate mother Brooke Verity on July 26, 2002.
Dysarz, who has custody of his biological child, Brandon Lane Dysarz, born in January, declined to comment yesterday.
A Christian student club is suing Penn State University for rejecting it as a student organization after being told the school already has "too many" Christian clubs.
[W]hen DiscipleMakers Christian Fellowship applied for registered status in April 2004, a university official charged with reviewing religious student organizations refused to approve the group because there were “too many [Christian] groups anyway and they were beginning to compete."
Unlike secular school clubs, Penn State requires religious student organizations to undergo a separate review process, the Christian Legal Society says.
The Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest who served in Congress during the 1970s, says he has advised the campaign to clamp down on religious rhetoric and "keep cool on the Communion thing" after four Catholic bishops either barred Mr. Kerry by name from taking Communion in their dioceses or said pro-choice Catholics should be denied the sacrament.
[T]he Kerry campaign also has sidelined its new religion adviser, closing journalists' access to Mara Vanderslice and ignoring her advice on how to appeal effectively to religious voters.
"Every time something with religious language got sent up the flagpole, it got sent back down, stripped of religious language," a Kerry campaign source said of Miss Vanderslice's ideas on overcoming Mr. Kerry's secular image.
Miss Vanderslice, 29, grew up Unitarian in Boulder, Colo., then attended Earlham College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Ind.
She joined a college socialist group, majored in peace and global studies, and graduated in 1997. After interning for a year at Sojourners, a liberal evangelical magazine in the District, she joined the Jubilee USA Network, a D.C.-based group that campaigns for Third World debt relief.
Plans were, said Miss [Amy] Sullivan, for the campaign to assemble a "people of faith" page for the Kerry Web site, at which point Miss Vanderslice was to be announced as the contact person.
But with Miss Vanderslice not being allowed near the press, "They have no one in their communications shop who is conversant in religion," she said.
For each element of Judeo-Christian faith, secularism has its counterpart. Like Christianity and Judaism, secularism promises eternal life — well, long life, which is the central point of the most common strain of secular faith and which explains the pop-cultural focus on moral commandments having to do with physical health: Thou shalt not smoke. Thou shalt not get fat. Thou shalt fight global warming by taking the bus to work. Indeed, thou shalt vote for public subsidies for mass transit. In secularist doctrine, a fat person isn't merely unhealthy; he is a sinner in need of salvation. To address his situation, one secular gospel preaches the good news of the South Beach Diet, another that of the apostle Atkins.
