Category Archives: Freedom

A year ago this Sunday, I was making berry pies in the kitchen when I glanced outside: Dad had taken another face-plant in the grass.

Time to get a plastic chair, twist his limbs to a kneeling position and use his still-strong arms to get upright.

At 84, the former athlete-turned-dentist and father of four had been struggling with Parkinson's, the dementia that it often brings and the general indignities of old age. So the few choices he had left he cherished deeply, including being able to roam or nap or eat sweets whenever he wanted.

And roaming often involved, as care workers would say with a gasp, "A fall!"

Falls are the No. 1 cause of injury and deaths from injury for elderly people in the U.S, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Older Americans fell 29 million times in 2014, causing 7 million injuries and costing an estimated $31 billion in annual Medicare costs, the agency says, citing the latest statistics. Falls evict people from their homes, shorten their lives and destroy their quality of life.

But not to fall means not to roam, which was a no-go for us.

So when nursing home officials or physical therapists asked "Has he fallen at any time in the last six months?" we were savvy enough to sidestep possible elder abuse lawsuits.

"Why yes, he has," was a fine reply. "About three times a day" was not.

Sometimes Dad was so black-and-blue from his falls that he looked like a boxer's punching bag. He had contusions on his head, his arms, his legs. Despite being wrapped like a mummy in Band-Aids, he bled across the house like a hemophiliac.

But after drinking milk every day of his life, Dad never did dent a single bone, while mom, his 80-year-old caretaker, cracked a toe, a finger or a rib every other month.

This is the first Father's Day since he passed away, so of course it's a kick in the gut.

Dad, however, would not have cared one whit. He was old school, honor thy father every day of the year, don't get sucked into this commercial hoopla unless, perhaps, it's a gift of sturdy overalls that will be worn for years in the garden.

Richard Joseph Norman, born May 18, 1932, in the hard-luck upstate New York town of Ogdensburg, was an only child and a scholarship boy. So for the rest of his life, he concentrated on two things: family and charity. And he created those families wherever he went.

Drafted into the army as a dentist, Dad was Alan Alda 15 years before "M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H" went on the air, a maverick who brought wit and kindness to an institution not known for either quality. His bosses did never understand why so many enlisted men with girlfriends in distant cities had frequent dental problems on Friday afternoons.

Charity to Dad was not writing a check or attending a banquet. Every Thursday on his day off, Dad would drive around Rochester to round up supplies for the local homeless shelter sacks of potatoes, onions and carrots, industrial-sized cans of beans or tomato sauce. On Monday nights in the fall, he would hold a free dental clinic for migrant workers.

At his office, those who came to work for him stayed for life. And Dad knew everything about his patients, not just how their cracked molars were doing, for long before Rochester folk embraced psychologists, everyone talked to their dentist.

In hindsight, we had plenty of signals of the end. ?Dad whose license and keys had long been taken away snuck out and crashed a car while mom was taking a nap. He blithely walked into a frigid river in his underwear for a swim. Plagued by insomnia, he ventured out in the snow to visit neighbors' porches or parked cars at 4 a.m. thank God no one shot him.

Once as I was trying to get Dad back into bed at 3 a.m., he became stressed and stepped back with his right foot. I felt sick, knowing that was just what a former black belt would do before delivering a kick that could shatter my tibia. I let him eat the cookies.

Still, Dad became lucid as a fox the day we had to put him in a nursing home.?

"I did not sign up for this, Sheila," he said, eyeing the meager twin bed and the room's barren industrial patina. The snores of his new roommate reverberated through a flimsy curtain.

Dad lasted just over a month in that restricted setting.

The first few days he walked around its circular hallway compulsively, carrying his walker like a knapsack, seeking the one unlocked door that would lead to freedom. Within a few days, the facility's rigid fears about falls meant he was effectively locked into a wheelchair. Soon afterward, he struggled to swallow and gave up on eating.

So this year my berry pies have no ardent admirer and Dad's 12 grandchildren have no one to tease them. Two family weddings have brought us together but we still crumble at the sound of "Taps," remembering the yellow birch leaves that fluttered down on his grave.

Dad's lessons on family and charity will live on, however. So on this Father's Day, I want to celebrate a full life well-lived, a spirit that roamed and gave laughter and kindness to friends and strangers alike. There is no better legacy.

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Pies and freedom: A Father's Day look at a dad who roamed - ABC News

Economic Freedom and Peace Go Hand in Hand CNSNews.com The standings of more than 150 countries in two independent indexes, The Heritage Foundation's 2017 Index of Economic Freedom and the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Peace Index, track each other rather closely. For example, North Korea ...

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Economic Freedom and Peace Go Hand in Hand - CNSNews.com

FREEDOM -- PennDOT has announced northbound Route 65 in Freedom will be closed Friday night through Monday morning, weather permitting.

The northbound lanes will close to traffic 6 p.m. Friday and reopen 6 a.m. Monday as crews conduct painting on the bridge that carries traffic from Third Avenue to southbound Route 65 in Freedom. All northbound traffic will be detoured.

As the posted detour, northbound traffic will take the Freedom exit and follow Third Avenue to the northbound Route 65 ramp.

Additionally, southbound Route 65 traffic will be restricted to a single 10-foot, 6-inch lane during the entire weekend. Third Avenue will also be restricted to 10-foot, 6-inch lanes.

Four additional weekend closures are necessary to complete the bridge-painting operation.

This $20.21 million roadway project includes milling and resurfacing, concrete pavement patching, drainage and guardrail updates, ramp reconstruction, curb and sidewalk work, bridge and retaining wall preservation, sign structure maintenance and signal improvements. The overall project will conclude in late October 2017.

Gulisek Construction Co. is the prime contractor.

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Route 65 in Freedom to close again this weekend - Timesonline.com

Indianapolis, Ind., Jun 15, 2017 / 01:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops voted on Thursday to make their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty a permanent committee of the national bishops conference.

The very idea of religious freedom and its root in human nature is challenged today, said Archbishop Lori, chair of the ad hoc committee, at a meeting of the U.S. bishops Thursday.

He added, how important it is that we remain in the public square through advocacy for the freedom of religious institutions to fight poverty, provide health care and education, serve immigrants, and protect human life.

In 2011, the ad hoc committee was formed for a period of three years, as the bishops were deeply concerned about a broad trend of threats to religious freedom on the local and national level, Archbishop Lori noted, speaking at the annual spring general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Indianapolis.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to U.S. bishops in January of 2012 during their ad limina visit, warned of grave threats to the Churchs public moral witness presented by a radical secularism where there were certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.

Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices, the Pope said. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

The U.S. bishops voted in 2014 to extend the committee for another three-year period. Then on Thursday, they voted to make the committee permanent by a vote of 132-53, with five bishops abstaining.

Most notably, the committee established the annual Fortnight for Freedom, a two-week campaign of prayer, penance, and advocacy for the Churchs continued freedom to serve in the public square, starting on June 21, the eve of the feasts of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher, and ending on July 4, Independence Day.

One of the most notable threats the ad hoc committee warned of was the contraceptive mandate. The Department of Health and Human Services, interpreting the Affordable Care Act, had issued rules under the Obama administration that employer health plans had to cover sterilizations, contraceptives, and drugs that can cause abortions.

While churches and their immediate auxiliaries were exempt from the mandate, many religious institutions, including hospitals, universities, and charities, were not. Changes to the regulation offered by the Obama administration still violated the religious beliefs of the Catholic organizations, bishops and Church leaders contended.

In May, President Donald Trump promised regulatory relief from the mandate for religious non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The struggle against the HHS mandate is not over, Archbishop Lori warned on Thursday. Victory is not assured.

The promised relief could change with another presidential administration who could again enforce the mandate against religious groups, the archbishop said.

And other threats to religious freedom persist, he said, like the legalization of same-sex marriage, which could pose problems for religious institutions that uphold the Churchs teaching on marriage.

The archbishop cited then-Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who admitted during oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, that there could be an issue with the tax-exempt status of religious universities teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman, if same-sex marriage were the law of the land.

Some bishops voiced their strong support for the committee on Thursday, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who chaired the USCCB when the committee was formed, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. The most recent president of the USCCB, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, also supported making the committee permanent.

The bishops of the world look to us, Cardinal Dolan told his fellow bishops, to be the real quarterbacks in defense of religious freedom.

A few bishops voiced objections to making the committee permanent in the discussions before the vote on Thursday.

Several were concerned about how it would appear to make the religious liberty committee permanent at the same time that the bishops working group on immigration, begun in November, finished its formal work.

However, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, vice president of the conference, clarified later on Thursday at an afternoon press conference that the working group will continue, although Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston-Galveston, president of the conference who had begun the working group last November, had not specified a timeline for how long it would continue.

Furthermore, Archbishop Lori stressed, the conference already has a standing Committee on Migration. The important thing is that as the sun sets, theres a permanent committee in place, because we understand the questions of migration are permanent, he said.

Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vt. also voiced concerns that funding for the religious freedom committee could eventually dry up, while Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark said that domestic religious freedom concerns can be handled by the domestic policy committee, referring to the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

I am not convinced that there is a need at this time for it, he said of the religious freedom committee.

Bishop Francis Kalabat of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle in Detroit strongly supported extending the committee, however.

There are currently 60 million refugees in the world, he said. What percentage of them came as a result of a lack of religious freedom?

Who you back up, or who backs you up, is who gives you the strength in the Middle East, he said, noting that if the U.S. shows strong support for religious freedom, it also shows support for persecuted Christians elsewhere.

Religious freedom, Archbishop Lori stressed, covers a wide spectrum of ministries, a wide spectrum of advocacy, and there is need for some consistency for a clearing house and a clear voice.

Religious liberty is a concept that really relates to ones fundamental stance towards God, he said, that first and primal relationship towards God. As Dignitatis Humanae states, he noted, religious freedom is rooted in human nature and granted by God as a fundamental human endowment.

On Thursday, the bishops also voted to approve new guidelines for the celebration of the sacraments of persons with disabilities.

The new guidelines were said to pay deeper attention to allergy problems, for example the gluten intolerance or alcohol intolerance of a communicant. They encouraged parishes to be more aware and accommodating of persons with disabilities in the distribution of the sacraments.

Archbishop Kurtz tweeted on Thursday that the National Catholic Partners on Disability were excited about the revised guidelines.

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US bishops vote to make religious freedom committee permanent - Catholic News Agency

A unique restaurant experience in the town of Freedom

Rob Caldwell and Krister Rollins, WCSH 7:17 PM. EDT June 15, 2017

A renovated grist mill that's been in the town of Freedom since 1834 is home to Maine's buzziest restaurant: The Lost Kitchen.

Over the years, 207 has done a lot of stories on restaurants in Maine. The range is extraordinary - from donut shops to elegant inns where wine and dinner for two can run a thousand dollars.

So we have some authority when we say there is no other restaurant in Maine like The Lost Kitchen in the town of Freedom.

Its set in a renovated grist mill an hour and a half from Portland. And this April, they booked every reservation for the 2017 season in a matter of hours.

Erin French is the owner and chef. Her first job was in her parents' diner. She tried to get away from food but always found herself coming back to it.

She created a pop-up restaurant in her apartment and lost that in a nasty divorce. She moved back home with her parents, found an Airstream trailer and gutted that and started her pop-up again.

Then the old grist mill - which she had walked by on her way to Girl Scout meetings as a kid - was renovated. And now in the town of Freedom, with a population of 700, under the direction of an owner and chef who has always cooked but has no formal training, you can find The Lost Kitchen.

2017 WCSH-TV

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A unique restaurant experience in the town of Freedom - WCSH-TV

World War II era aircraft are at the Corvallis Airport through noon Friday as part of the Wings of Freedom tour put on by the Collings Foundation. (Ray Whittemore Photography)

CORVALLIS, Ore. - World War II era aircraft are at the Corvallis Airport through noon Friday as part of the Wings of Freedom tour put on by the Collings Foundation.

Walk-through tours of the aircraft are available until 5 p.m. Thursday and from 9 to noon Friday.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for children 12 and under.

Flights are available for a fee.

The tour moves on to Aurora, Oregon, on Friday. The planes will be available for tours and flights starting at 2 p.m. Friday and through 5 p.m. on Sunday.

After that the tour moves on to Bremerton, Wash., on June 19; Port Angeles, Wash., on June 21; and Seattle on June 23 before heading east to Yakima on June 26 and Pasco on June 30.

Flights are available before and after the ground tours.

The advertised rates are:

Call 978-562-9182 for flight reservations.

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Wings of Freedom tour visits Corvallis - KVAL

The House Freedom Caucus announced Thursday it will oppose reauthorizing the FISA Amendments Act, the legal basis for U.S. surveillance programs, without "substantial" reforms to the law.

Section 702 of that law has come under fire recently after revelations that this provision was used to capture communications of President Trump and his transition team as it had conversations with foreign officials. Under the law, this kind of incidental collection of information from U.S. citizens occurs, but U.S. citizens caught up in that surveillance are usually masked, unless intelligence officials decide there is a good reason to unmask that person.

Republicans argue the outgoing Obama administration unjustifiably unmasked and then leaked conversations involving Trump's team, which has created demands among conservatives for reform.

"Government surveillance activities under the FISA Amendments Act have violated Americans' constitutionally protected rights," the Freedom Caucus board said in a statement. "We oppose any reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act that does not include substantial reforms to the government's collection and use of Americans' data."

The Freedom Caucus has not said what specific reforms it will pursue.

But Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is close with the Freedom Caucus despite not being a formal member of the conservative group, has proposed for three years in a row an amendment to Section 702 to prohibit warrantless searches of government databases for information on U.S. citizens.

Other changes to the law proposed by civil liberty advocates include narrowing the pool of foreigners that the government can legally target for surveillance, thereby limiting Americans who could be caught in the web, to include only those who may pose a threat to U.S. interests.

Congress also could require the circle of officials who can authorize unmasking to be smaller, and tighten the constraints on doing so.

Section 702, which expires Dec. 31 along with other portions of the law, has been reauthorized in past years despite hand-wringing from libertarians and some Democrats. This year's effort is more difficult given the political fighting over the law.

In April, numerous news outlets reported that Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama's national security adviser, sought the identities of people close to Trump whose communications were captured after the election in surveillance of foreigners by U.S. spy agencies.

Intelligence and national security experts say that it's both legal and normal for someone in Rice's position to unmask people.

More here:

Freedom Caucus will oppose FISA reauthorization without reforms - Washington Examiner

President Trump is expected this Friday to reverse the Obama administration's policy of opening up political and economic relations with Cuba. Thanks in part to the advocacy of Florida's Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, America will likely return to a policy that allows us to exert our political, moral, and economic strength to push for freedom and human rights in an authoritarian regime just a hundred miles from America's shores.

It has already been over half a year since Fidel Castro passed away at age 90 as a seemingly out-of-place historical icon, with a peace that few of his victims knew. Just like when Venezuela's Hugo Chavez passed away in 2013 or North Korea's Kim Jong-Il in 2011, there was briefly a flash of hope that this would be an opportunity for the repressive police state and command economy to finally unravel itself.

Yet Cuba continues to remain an authoritarian regime that has little room for freedom of any kind, whether political, economic, religious, or otherwise. For America to reward a regime that has steadfastly refused to move in the direction of freedom with sudden political and economic legitimacy would be a surrender of the moral struggle we've waged with Cuba for the past half-century.

Proponents of President Obama's Cuba-opening policy cite precedent in how America has regularly established relations with authoritarian regimes, including Communist ones such as China and Vietnam and otherwise. Proponents further cite the theory that increased interrelation pushes authoritarian nations to slowly edge towards human rights and international cooperation.

Yet it would be difficult to back up such claims with historical examples. Nations such as Vietnam and China are deeply immersed in the world economic system, yet their human rights abuses continue just as frequently as before. In fact, often our ability to condemn such abuses becomes limited because of how deep our economic interrelation now is with them.

With no change in human rights in Cuba, American dollars will be spent funding authoritarian repression and a regime that has historically supported insurrectionism across Latin America and the world against America's interests. That tarnishes America's moral authority in exchange for a small economic gain.

We see in a nation like Venezuela how the socialist regime has been able to survive in large part because of foreign financing and aid. While Cuba continues to slog on economically, nonetheless by establishing economic relations with the regime it is almost certain it will never collapse economically of its own accord. In a terrible irony, America would be indirectly subsidizing socialist repression.

Lastly, while America has in the past opened up to nations such as China and Yugoslavia, those decisions were based significantly due to incredible geopolitical concerns at the time due to the Cold War and the Soviet Union's threat. There is no current excruciating geopolitical situation that demands that we must make the difficult decision of compromising our commitment to freedom and opening up to Cuba.

Furthermore, the same argument for establishing relations with Cuba could very well be applied to a nation like North Korea. North Korea differs from Cuba by degree, not by type. North Korea's repression reaches a level beyond even the tastes of the Cuban regime, but nonetheless once a rationale is embraced that so easily puts aside our commitment to human dignity, that is the natural end.

America has stood firmly on the side of freedom for the Cuban people for over half a century. Our strong stand against Cuba's regime has been undoubtedly a bulwark in preventing socialist repression from spreading across South America, as was a real concern during the Cold War.

President Trump and Senator Rubio are wise and right in continuing to push the cause of liberty in Cuba. While it may be a long time before the Cuban people see freedom, we cannot abandon their cause so easily.

Erich Reimer is a Republican activist and freelance writer.

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Trump's expected reversal on Cuba is a victory for freedom - Washington Examiner

Washington

Two court cases seeking to shape the place of religion in U.S. society are under review by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati, one with the possibility of reaching the Supreme Court of the United States.

Anti-religion activists are fighting the practice of county commissioners in Jackson, Michigan, to open their public meetings with prayer. The circuit court heard oral arguments in Bormuth v. Jackson County June 14. A similar case dealing with prayer in public meetings, Lund v. Rowan County, was heard in March by the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia.

Once those courts issue their rulings, if they conflict with one another, the Supreme Court may hear the cases to resolve the issue of prayer in the public square.

Oral arguments in New Doe Child #1 v. The Congress of the United States are set to be heard by the 6th Circuit June 16. In the case, atheist Dr. Michael Newdow argues that the national motto, "In God We Trust," inscribed on American currency, violates his freedom to practice atheism under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Back in 2014, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty urged the Supreme Court to allow for prayer in public meetings in the Town of Greece v. Galloway case. The law firm based its argument on the Founders' understanding of establishing religion as well as the historical tradition of prayer in public meetings. In that case, the high court ruled the town should be permitted to open municipal meetings with a prayer.

Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si'. Explore Pope Francis' environmental encyclical with our complimentary readers' guide.

Attorney Daniel Blomberg, counsel for the Becket Fund, said in a phone interview with Catholic News Service June 13, it is not so much the issue of whether legislators can open their sessions with legislative prayer. "What is compelling these issues is why it would be an Establishment Clause violation," Blomberg said.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Blomberg said anti-religion activists have tried to use the Lemon test in efforts to fight any acknowledgement of religion in the public square. It is a three-part test for interpreting the Establishment Clause before determining a law or practice is constitutional or unconstitutional. The Lemon test looks at the purpose of a governmental practice; whether it has the potential to advance or promote religion; and if it encourages state entanglement with religion.

But, the Supreme Court hasn't used the Lemon test in over a decade, including in Establishment Clause cases in the past five years. According to Blomberg, the justices have used the historical understanding of the Establishment Clause instead.

"The Sixth Circuit seems to be leaning toward following what the Supreme Court did in the Town of Greece case," Blomberg said. "This would say that we're not going to do the Lemon test, we're not going to even pay attention to it. We are going to ignore it and we're going to focus on how we do constitutional interpretation in every other Bill of Rights case. All those cases start with understanding what the Constitution meant in the context in which it was passed."

This is not the first time courts have considered similar cases seeking to remove the word "God" from various forms of government materials, including coins, or to take "God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

"They need to do what the Supreme Court said to do in the Town of Greece case and that isstart with history and do what the Supreme Court said to do: Ignore Lemon," Blomberg said. "These cases are all going to go away if the court stops giving litigants the opportunity to raise them. This is another reason why the Supreme Court may feel the need to get involved on this issue."

The protection of religious liberty remains an important battle for securing of natural rights, according to Blomberg.

"Religious liberty is a fundamental right and if we don't fight for religious liberty for our friends in Jackson County, people we don't know and we will never meet, if we don't fight and protect their religious liberty then what we're really doing is eroding our own religious liberty," he said. "Because if one set of people doesn't have religious liberty, no one has religious liberty."

Without the freedom of religious liberty, all freedoms are at stake, Blomberg said.

"If we have a society that doesn't respect people's individual and community relationships with their God," he told CNS, "then we're not going to have a society that is going to respect their free speech rights, or their freedom of assembly rights, or the rights to equal protection."

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Federal appeals court hears arguments in two religious freedom cases - National Catholic Reporter

The new One World Trade Centerwas designed by an architecture student who was never credited because one of his advisors stole the idea and submitted it as his own ... according to a new lawsuit.

In the docs, Jeehoon Parksays he whipped up a 3D model for a 122-story building for his grad school thesis at the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. His design, completed in 1999, was intended for Chicago's Cityfront Center.

But Park says one of his advisors was an Associate Partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) ... and he believes that firm had access to his design, and used it to build the Freedom Tower.

Park says side-by-side photos of his Cityfront model and Freedom Tower show a "striking similarity." He also points out a 2010 book discusses how SOM's design is closely related to Park's thesis.

Park, now an architect in Georgia, wants a fat paycheck from SOM for using his design ... and wants SOM to give him the credit he deserves.

We reached out to the firm ... no word back so far.

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I Designed It Way Back in '99 ... - TMZ.com