Daily Archives: June 15, 2017

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.

See the original post:

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

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

Excerpt from:

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

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.

Original post:

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

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.

See the rest here:

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