Free Republic

Austria’s chancellor resigned Monday, citing insufficient political support within his party to deal with challenges, including efforts to confront the ongoing migrant crisis. The surprise move by Werner Faymann followed a back-of-the-pack showing last month by his Social Democratic Party in the first round of the presidential election, which was led by the right-wing Freedom Party that favors a harder line against migrants and refugees streaming into Europe. Faymann, chancellor since 2008, was the European Union’s second-longest-serving national leader after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and among the highest-profile political casualties amid uneasiness over the waves of migrants and others seeking...

Word for The Day, Monday, 5/9/16 ; In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". ubiquitous; adj. existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time; omnipresent: ubiquitous fog; ubiquitous little ants. Etymology:"turning up everywhere," 1837, from ubiquity + -ous. The earlier word was ubiquitary (1580s), from Modern Latin ubiquitarius, from ubique. Related: Ubiquitously ; ubiquitousness. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in some way, relate to the news of...

If you enjoy watching paint dry, you may enjoy the Transit of Mercury taking place right now. It is cloudy here, so we can't see it directly.

The singer defended her support for the "asshole" GOP candidate and said of Hillary Clinton: She "talks to black people as if we're children or pets." Donald Trump can add another member of Hollywood to his list of supporters. On Saturday afternoon, singer Azealia Banks expressed her support for the GOP candidate in a spree of tweets, kicking off the conversation with, "I REALLY want Donald Trump to win the election."

Regulators in Washington are showing increasing interest in tightening rules on political speech on the web, arguing that the dissonant voices enabled by "new media" have become too influential. If that effort is successful, experts wonder whether it could impact more traditional media as well, especially in how it relates to conservatives. "The best example we can give is going back a few years to when the [Federal Communications Commission] was looking at trying to silence talk radio, which was obviously a realm of conservatism," said Drew Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit group "Protect Internet Freedom." He was referring...

The United Methodist Church General Conference convenes once every four years to make policy decisions and set the direction for the denomination. Beginning Tuesday (May 10), 864 delegates, half of them clergy, will converge on the Oregon Convention Center in Portland for 10 days for the General Conference. More than 40 percent of those delegates will come from outside the U.S. They’ll consider 1,043 proposals listed in the conference’s legislation tracking system. Here are six of the most talked-about issues: 1. LGBT inclusion The United Methodist News Service tallied up more than 100 petitions alone on sexuality. Several plans have...

“What the hell is “conservative” about uncontrolled immigration and corporate trade pacts?” Donald Trump’s electoral rampage through the Northeastern states and then his stunning Indiana victory – taking all but five counties statewide and walking away with 57 delegates – did a lot more than drive Ted Cruz and John Kasich out of the race. It has driven a stake in the heart of the post-1988 Republican Party. It’s dead. The “professional” party has been in death throes for years, for a variety of reasons, but none as lethal as the absence of a defining and unifying rationale for its...

President Obama’s hometown is a war zone. The horrendous violence on the streets there has escalated. With warm summer-like weather, gang bangers were especially active, easily surpassing 2015’s Mothers Day carnage (3 killed, 25 wounded) and 2014’s (5 killed, 19 wounded). Meanwhile, the President of the United States ignores the battlefield conditions in the hometown he adopted as his political base. Nearly all of the violence is among young black males, making the rate of death in that particular demographic segment comparable to a serous war zone. A map of the violence this year to date from heyjackss.com shows where...

You may not have heard of Julian Castro, currently Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but you will. Hillary Clinton has him very near the top of her list for the veep slot on her ticket. It makes sense: he’s Hispanic, hard left, and the product of an elite education (Stanford, Harvard Law). So serious is the possibility that Page Six reports of him (and his brother Joaquin): “Surprisingly, they don’t speak Spanish,” one insider told me. “They are cramming with Rosetta Stone.” (A spokesman for Julián denies he is studying Spanish.) Julian was Mayor of San Antonio before he...

Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users. Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant...

New Haven, Conn., May 7, 2016 / 05:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The future of Christianity in the Middle East remains uncertain, and it is critical that the international community remain engaged, said a Melkite Catholic archbishop from Syria. Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo delivered these comments during a two-day visit to Connecticut that culminated with meetings at the international headquarters of the Knights of Columbus in New Haven. The visit began Sunday night with a talk by the archbishop at St. Mary’s Church, where he recounted Syria’s deep Christian history, including as the place where St. Paul was transformed from...

A warehouse worker has survived eight hours buried underneath tons of cheese after a series of 18 feet high shelves fell on top of his forklift truck. The shelves were holding 20kg of blocks of the Cheddar and Red Leicester cheese when they knocked into each other in a "domino effect". Tomasz Wisniewski was feared dead after the incident took place at the food distribution centre in Hinstock, Shropshire. Mr Wisniewski was safely removed from the wreckage and taken to Princess Royal Hospital as a precaution. Specialist urban search and rescue teams from the West Midlands, Merseyside, and Leicestershire, including...

Illegal immigrant households receive an average of $5,692 in federal welfare benefits every year, far more than the average "native" American household, at $4,431, according to a new report on the cost of immigration released Monday. The Center for Immigration Studies, in an analysis of federal cost figures, found that all immigrant-headed households — legal and illegal — receive an average of $6,241 in welfare, 41 percent more than native households. As with Americans receiving benefits such as food stamps and cash, much of the welfare to immigrants supplements their low wage jobs. The total cost is over $103 billion...

The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh said Friday that House Bill 2 should be reconsidered and replaced by either new legislation or some other measure. Bishop Michael Burbidge said he opposed the Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance that HB2 was initially drafted to undo. Among other things, that ordinance would have allowed people in the city to use public restrooms according to their gender identity rather than the gender of their birth. But speaking to reporters Friday, Burbidge says that by going beyond the Charlotte ordinance, HB2 became too complex and too divisive. Among the law’s provisions are ones that...

At least eight Catholic colleges across the country are hosting “lavender graduations” this spring — many of them as part of an annual campus tradition — to celebrate and honor students with same-sex attraction (SSA) or who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ). Lavender graduations and similar ceremonies for seniors have been announced at the College of St. Rose, DePaul University, Georgetown University, Loyola Marymount University, St. Mary’s College of California, Santa Clara University, Seattle University and the University of San Francisco. Although intended as a compassionate gesture to students, the ceremonies reinforce harmful ideologies about sexuality...

Donald Trump assailed the media on Monday for what he said was a misrepresentation of his comments on debt, rejecting the notion that he would have the United States default on his debt. "I said if we can buy back government debt as a discount. In other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back as a discount, if we are liquid enough as a country we should do that. In other words, we can buy back debt as a discount," the presumptive Republican nominee said in a telephone interview on CNN's "New Day." Those who...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Peter (The Gospel according to Luke) 24 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men...

35 years after his assassination attempt, the catechesis and two important announcements JPII never made that fateful dayVATICAN CITY — Thirty-five years ago, on May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot as he made his way through St. Peter’s Square in the pope-mobile, responding to the warm greetings of the faithful and pilgrims before the general audience. At 5:19pm, the pope was the victim of an assassination attempt perpetrated by a young Turkish man named Mehmet Ali Agca. During the general audience, the Holy Father had intended to speak to the faithful about a theme very dear to...

That’s 7.2 million more votes than Barack Obama carried in 2008, and almost 13 million more than Mitt Romney carried in 2012. That’s YUGE ! That’s the Monster Vote. That’s also a landslide victory for Donald Trump. Another way of looking at it – that Monster Vote increase is simply adding 10% of the approximately 120 million voters who never vote in elections. And those new voters are exactly what you see showing up at Donald Trump primary campaign rallies.

It’s no shocker that Hillary Clinton isn’t popular in West Virginia. In fact, no one from national Democratic circles, like President Obama, Nancy Pelosi etc., is popular here. Obama didn’t win a single county in the Mountain State in 2012, and the last time West Virginia went Democratic was 1996. Clinton’s remarks that she was going to put coal miners out of business did not sit well with the residents of Logan County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans. In fact, CNN was hard pressed to find really any Democrat who supported Clinton—they’re all voting for Trump.