Pope Benedict XVI: People are manipulating God-given gender to suit sexual choices, destroying the “essence of the human creature”

Note how the media always takes a defense of traditional values and turns it into something ‘anti,’ or ‘an attack’ in their headline.

Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy — one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting family values in the face of vocal campaigns in France, the United States, Britain and elsewhere to legalize same-sex marriage.

In his remarks, Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an “attack” on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

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North Korea charges detained American Kenneth Bae with crime against state

Kenneth Bae is accused of possessing a hard disk containing footage of the government executing defectors and dissidents. If convicted he’s facing 5 – 10 years of hard labor.

North Korea said on Friday it had detained an American tourist on charges of perpetrating a crime against the state and is putting him through criminal proceedings, indicating it is set to try him.

Kenneth Bae, a Korean American tourist who traveled to visit North Korea last month, has been detained by police in the reclusive state, associates of his family and activists in Seoul said last week.

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It won’t last: Exports, government spending buoy growth

Your tax dollars propping up a weak economy. That’s not the growth your grandfather had in mind.

The U.S. economy grew faster than previously estimated in the third quarter as exports and government spending provided a lift, but that boost is likely to be lost amid slowing global demand and a move towards tighter fiscal policy.

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Video: At Victoria Soto’s funeral, Paul Simon sang ‘The Sound of Silence’, favorite song of teacher who shielded students from Adam Lanza’s bullets

Business Insider, December 16: “The next classroom down the hall was Victoria Soto’s. Soto hid all of her students in the closet and remained in the classroom to talk to Lanza. She told him that her students were in an auditorium at the other end of the school. At that moment, 6 children burst out of the closet and tried to run away. Lanza shot all of them, as well as Soto and another teacher. The 7 kids who stayed in the closet survived.”