Free Republic

Bookshops across Italy are refusing to stock a new book written by the son of one of the country's most notorious Mafia bosses. Signs have appeared in store windows from Sicily to Milan advising customers that the book - called Riina Family Life - won't be found on the shelves and can't be ordered either. It's written by Giuseppe Salvatore Riina, whose father, Toto, is serving multiple life sentences for murder. On Wednesday, state broadcaster Rai provoked outrage by airing an interview with the younger Riina, himself a convicted mobster. The first sign was posted in the Sicilian city of...

The US has released a travel warning for Turkey, a day after Israel advised its citizens to "immediately" leave the country. While the US's statement does not instruct tourists to get out of Turkey as soon as possible, it urges US citizens to take "extreme caution" around possible terror targets. "The U.S. Mission in Turkey would like to inform U.S. citizens that there are credible threats to tourist areas, in particular to public squares and docks in Istanbul and Antalya," it reads. "Please exercise extreme caution if you are in the vicinity of such areas. For your personal safety, we...

It has been a tough week for the hard left in Canada, and the lessons apply throughout the West. Green parties are not going anywhere in the polls. The public has caught on to the toxic individuals that run the parties and the movement in general, and they are not buying in. Snake oil sales are down. Nowhere was that more evident that in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan's election this past Monday. The resident Green Party received just 1.8% of the votes, its lowest share in nearly 15 years. Perhaps even more telling was the repudiation of the far...

Last week, under heavy pressure from powerful corporations, Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal vetoed legislation that would have protected religious institutions from being required to approve same-sex marriages or to hire openly homosexual employees. In his veto statement the governor implicitly adopted the rhetoric of the homosexual lobby, suggesting that any resistance to same-sex unions is intolerable. "I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia," he said. With that veto and that public statement, Governor Deal implicitly accepted the argument that any group which refuses to endorse homosexuality is engaged in...

JACQUELINE ALEMANY CBS NEWS April 8, 2016 "Kosher" Trump Vodka Lands In Hot Water Well, apparently neither does the kosher liquor company that Donald Trump rented his name to. Trump Vodka, the product of yet another licensing deal under Trump's name, was founded in 2006 and distributed by a company called Drinks Americas, the Jerusalem Post reports. Despite the Trumpian catchphrase "Success Distilled," distribution of the drink came to an end in 2011. But when an independent importer saw an opportunity for the drink to enjoy a fruitful afterlife in Israel, Trump agreed to a new deal allowing H. Pixel...

Full Title... "Hillary’s world collapsing around her: Wisconsin, Bernie’s surge and FBI probe poised to derail her White House bid" Wisconsin represents more than just Bernie’s sixth straight win, or the likelihood of seven straight wins after Wyoming, right before New York. This political revolution, ignited by Bernie Sanders and fought for by people of all races, faiths, and ethnic backgrounds across the U.S. has been bolstered by political momentum. It’s not current delegate count or prior poll numbers, it’s unprecedented political momentum that will win Sanders the Democratic nomination. It’s the fact Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be interviewed...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- On the International Space Station there's a place, while filled with robotic equipment, where astronauts like to hang out. Called the Cupola, the small module has seven large bay windows that give crew members a panoramic view of Earth. On his first -- and thus far only -- mission into space in September 2013, astronaut Mike Hopkins was eager to find the Cupola. What he saw he found amazing. "When you see the Earth from that vantage point and see all the natural beauty that exists, it's hard not to sit there and realize there has to...

Some of the most disturbing aspects of the times in which we are living include the utter corruption of the mass print and broadcast media and the lack of awareness of this fact by a large portion of the public. It seems that most Americans operate on the assumption that the media is making a good-faith, if imperfect, effort at objectively informing its audience. That so few are genuinely aware of the outrageous manipulation of public opinion now taking place is the single greatest threat to the republic, to the extent that we can even say that our republic still...

The search, off the coast near 1308 Palos Verdes Drive West, began about 8:20 p.m. Friday, when the owner of a boat the diver was using called the county fire department to report it, according to L.A. County Lifeguard Capt. Kenichi Haskett. “The boat was docked in King Harbor in Redondo Beach and he called our Hermosa Beach lifeguard station to report it being overdue,” Haskett said. “He told us he had given it to a man on Thursday, who wanted to do some diving off shore,” he said Kenichi said the county lifeguards then notified the U.S. Coast Guard...

Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of California, is an example of the new jackbooted fascists pretending to be responsible public officials. Democrat politicians like Harris and Jerry Brown demonstrate their disgust with the Constitution by placing their own political beliefs above the will of the people, when Brown refused to defend Californians votes for Prop 8, and free speech, when Harris tries to criminalize speech she doesn’t like. While some will reject such strong language, there is really no other way to describe an attorney general who uses the full power of her office to attack a reporter who is...

Andrew Moore lived alone and died alone. He was raised in an orphanage, never married and outlived his friends. For his last 40 years, the World War II veteran slept on a couch in a rent-­controlled efficiency apartment in the nation’s capital. The 89-year-old pensioner died in December with no will, no instructions and no next of kin. He lay in a cold room at the D.C. medical examiner’s office, where the unclaimed dead are usually destined for a nameless pauper’s grave. Instead, on Friday, Moore was given a hero’s sendoff at Arlington National Cemetery. A uniformed honor guard escorted Moore’s...

The Young Messiah (TYM) is a film at once entertaining and endearing. An admittedly fictionalized imagining of Jesus as a seven year-old boy, this movie’s treatment of its subject matter is eminently respectful. Not everyone feels this way, however. Dave Armstrong, a “professional Catholic apologist,” concedes in Pathos that “there are several aspects of [the] development of the human knowledge of Jesus…that are legitimate and perfectly orthodox [.]” It is, though, unorthodox and, hence, illegitimate to depict Christ as “growing into… awareness” of His identity, for the Church has affirmed for centuries that, from conception, Jesus knew that He was God (italics...

REGIONAL BREAKDOWNS: SoCal is head over heels for Trump (Trump 49 percent; Cruz 34, Kasich 13) , Central Valley leans Trump (Trump 39, Cruz 26, Kasich 18), and Inland Empire for Cruz (Cruz, 43, Trump 30, Kasich, 9). Silicon Valley and the Bay Area? Kasich trounces Trump 43-36, with Cruz at 14.

Attending the School of God from R.C. Sproul Apr 09, 2016 Category: Articles We live in a culture that is a quick and dirty culture. We want to become mature Christians in five easy lessons. We want to become saints by fifteen minutes a day. We want to have flat stomachs and strong abs by three workouts a week. That may work over a given period of time for your abs, but it’s not going to work for your soul. Attending the school of God takes time and labor and energy and deeply committing oneself to prayer, to the study of...

Why does the United States honor Winston Churchill on April 9? Why not, for example, May 10? That was the day in 1940 when, with liberty in retreat, he became Britain’s prime minister, sure that he knew a good deal about it all, certain he would not fail, impatient for the morning…. But April 9 has its own significance for Americans. That was the day, in 1963, when President Kennedy proclaimed Sir Winston an honorary citizen of the United States. Churchill was too infirm to attend in person. But it is always worth recalling what he thought about it all,...

the U.S. Supreme Court .. issued an injunction blocking the EPA from implementing its Clean Power Plan, which would end America’s use of coal, its cheapest and most abundant source of electricity. ... Western Colorado’s economy is so dependent on coal. It employs more than 2,000 people and generates $58 million in federal and state royalties, $28 million in private landowner royalties, $4.5 million in reclamation funds, and pays $28 million in property, severance, and sales taxes — all of it on the Western Slope. EPA has never tried anything so unpopular in its 45-year history, and that is saying...

The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Congress Supports Judicial Watch Taxpayer Lawsuit against DC Government What Does the FBI Have on the Obama Gang? The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Too often, politicians at every level will ignore the clear language of a law if it doesn’t let them do as they wish. This is evident on two fronts this week: in California and here in the District of Columbia. First California. You will recall that we filed a taxpayer lawsuit in August 2014 challenging a decision by the University of...

Leaders of Donald Trump's new campaign team said they have revised targets that would make the real estate mogul the presumptive Republican presidential nominee by mid-May and that would win him the delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the party's convention this summer. To do so, Trump would have to go on a month-long hot streak, starting in New York on April 19, that would deliver a sizable haul of delegates — including increased commitments from those who are unbound — and quiet widespread talk that his unpopularity and his campaign's sloppy execution have made it nearly impossible to...

On Tuesday Donald Trump announced he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by immigrants living in the United States. Later that day Barack Obama took time to scold Donald Trump on his plan to cut off remittances to Mexico until they fork over the funds to pay for a border wall. Of course, Barack Obama is wrong about this, too. The US already cuts off remittance payments to Somalia. "Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Congress passed stricter money-laundering regulations, which caused several large U.S. banks...

Washington (AFP) - Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today's scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet's surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of fossil fuel burning -- they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit). But these models...