Free Republic

Israel is mulling over a large, multi-billion dollar defense spending boost for the Israeli Air Force, or IAF, which could include money for fighter jets, transport helicopters, cargo planes, and six new aerial refueling tankers. This last tender was already set to be highly competitive and now there are reports that Boeing has blocked Israel Aerospace Industries, also known as IAI, from offering second-hand 767 airliners converted into tanker-transports, which would be a direct threat to its own troublesome 767-based KC-46 Pegasus. The Israeli business daily Globes was the first to report the developments on Aug. 6, 2018. According to...

First Lady Melania Trump’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs took the oath to become U.S. citizens on Thursday but NBC Nightly News was not having it. The broadcast network speculated that they received special treatment in the process and possibly used chain migration, a program the President opposes, even though the process still exists and still legal. “Now to new questions tonight about a possible double standard when it comes to the first family,” declared a seemingly offended Lester Holt. “First lady Melania Trump's parents becoming brand new U.S. citizens today apparently through a process that President Trump has repeatedly...

<p>A suspicious package that fell from the sky over New Jersey caused some alarm because it contained a note that mentioned President Donald Trump.</p> <p>South Brunswick police say the package, attached to a parachute, was making a hissing sound and included a note that said: “NASA Atmospheric Research Instrument NOT A BOMB!” If this lands near the President, we at NASA wish him a great round of golf.”</p>

Liz Wheeler Verified account @Liz_Wheeler It's not a compound in New Mexico. It's a jihadist compound. It's not a religious extremist. It's a Muslim extremist. It's not "some man." It's the son of an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. There. Fixed it for you, liberals. 3:51 PM - 8 Aug 2018

igh above one of the most hotly contested regions in the world, CNN was given a rare look Friday at the Chinese government's rapidly expanding militarization of the South China Sea Aboard a US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane, CNN got a view from 16,500 feet of low-lying coral reefs turned into garrisons with five-story buildings, large radar installations, power plants and runways sturdy enough to carry large military aircraft. During the flight the crew received six separate warnings from the Chinese military, telling them they were inside Chinese territory and urging them to leave. "Leave immediately and keep out...

Within minutes of CNN highlighting several specific tweets and videos by Alex Jones, Twitter had removed that very content from his account. According to The Hill, more than a dozen articles or videos were removed after having been mentioned in a Thursday afternoon CNN report accusing the Infowars host of violating Twitter’s terms. Some of the tweets compared gun-control activist David Hogg to the Nazis and suggested conspiracy theories that other school-shooting survivors were paid actors. “The Nazis did wear armbands, David Hogg wears one. The Nazis were a youth movement, they didn’t want the guns. And so if the...

A majority of Americans have fallen into “Russia fatigue,” and want the probe into Moscow’s influence in the 2016 ended, according to a new survey provided to Secrets. The latest Zogby Analytics online survey found that 52 percent of voters believe that “it is time” for investigator Robert Mueller to wrap up his probe. Some 30 percent do not want it ended. The poll also found that a third of Democrats also want the investigation ended. The poll analysis said it was “shocking” that 32 percent of Democrats want Mueller to deliver his results. “Voters might have Russia fatigue,” said...

The problem of the wet Sahara by Michael Oard This article is from Journal of Creation 31(1):3–4 April 2017 Both creation and secular geologists agree the earth’s deserts and semi-arid areas were once well watered.1 Creation scientists attribute this to the ponding of water in enclosed basins during the run-off stage of the Flood and greater Ice Age precipitation. During this time the Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA, was about 12 times its current area and about 330 m deeper.2 Measuring the ancient shorelines in Death Valley, California, USA (figure 1), shows a lake once filled Death Valley 170...

And so it begins: YouTube is now adding “fact checks” to videos which question the man-made global warming scare narrative. According to Buzzfeed News: YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change, BuzzFeed News has confirmed, as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform. On July 9, the company added a blurb of text underneath some videos about climate change, which provided a scientifically accurate explainer. The text comes from the Wikipedia entry for global warming and states that “multiple lines of scientific evidence show that...

The leftist media is no stranger in attacking President Trump. Often, they will find a big name to interview hoping that the interviewee will verbally attack the president the left hates so much. Usually, the person talking obliges. The media will run the interview for a day or so to create a story. Last weekend, Don Lemon interviewed basketball star LeBron James about the opening of the I Promise School he started for at-risk and underprivileged children in Akron, Ohio. During the interview, Lemon naturally moved the questioning towards the president. It is no secret that James doesn’t like the...

The IRS has reportedly recognized the Pussy Church of Modern Witchcraft as a legitimate church. The Maryland-based group is dedicated exclusively to lesbian feminists. Peter Reilly, a CPA for over 30 years focusing on taxation, first reported the new designation in a blog post for Forbes. "The IRS recognized it as a 501(c)(3) organization and went the extra step of recognizing PCMW as a church, the most enviable of all tax statuses exempt not only from income tax but also from the transparency that filing Form 990 creates," Reilly wrote. "A church does not have to apply for exempt status,...

A sorority at Harvard University has decided to close rather than admit men who claim to be women into their group amid the university's sanctions against single-gender social organizations. In May, Zeta Phi-Cambridge — the Delta Gamma chapter at Harvard — voted to relinquish their charter and thereby shut down, Campus Reform reported Monday. Sanctions from the university came about in December 2017 when new rules were adopted which established that members of single-sex organizations like Zeta Phi were not allowed to hold leadership posts in officially recognized student organizations or be captains of sports teams. The new rules also...

Even as the overall population of Christians in the United States declines, evangelicals have become an energetic right-wing voting base, helping President Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016. In Brazil, where Pentecostal and other charismatic Christian churches are rapidly gaining members, evangelical voters are only beginning to flex their electoral muscle. In 1970, 90 percent of Brazil’s population identified as Roman Catholic. By 2017 just under 65 percent did. Evangelicals now make up an estimated 27 percent of Brazil’s 208 million people. As their numbers have grown, so has the evangelical influence over Brazilian politics. My demographic research in...

During an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday night, Kanye West defended his decision to support Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, and said he would not be “bullied” by those on the left. “Just as a musician, African-American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me,” the Chicago rapper told Kimmel. "And then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over; I’d get kicked out of the black community because blacks --...

We tend to think of the Amish as shutting themselves off from the outside world, but one Amish man in Michigan is embracing a modern trend in his own innovative way.Timothy Hochstedler of Colon, Michigan, has added his own spin on the fairly newfangled concept of ride sharing with what he calls "Amish Uber." For $5, Hochstedler will take you where you need to go in his horse and buggy and provide stories and conversation along the way.WMMT reports that Hochstedler received his inspiration from Uber's immense popularity. "Uber is a cool thing, every single year something new comes in and Uber...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Shared Meal 
 (New Testament) Revelation 19 The Marriage Supper of the Lamb 6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God     the Almighty reigns. 7 Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready; 8 it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the...

A “descriptivist” is someone who studies how language is used. A “prescriptivist” is someone who tells other people how to use language correctly. And while these are often framed as opposing camps, they need not be: A thoughtful descriptivist realizes that strongly established usage patterns should generally be treated as rules by someone who wants to communicate effectively; a thoughtful prescriptivist realizes that the rules emerge from constantly evolving usage patterns. There’s a certain strain of prescriptivism, though, that merely seeks to impose rules on other people’s language, often on nothing more than one’s own say-so. Overwhelmingly, these folks are...

"A decision made by a police officer in a split second can determine whether someone lives or dies." "The video shot from the dashboard of a state police cruiser shows Seiple trying to arrest Clary for driving under the influence. Clary breaks away and the troopers spend about a minute trying to subdue him until Clary dashes for his car and pulls out a gun."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) will have its annual meeting in Baltimore November 12-15, 2018. The Silence Stops Now Coalition is committed to ending the culture of clerical silence that has enabled the sexual predation and destruction of lives for decades. To this end, we will be organizing the Silence Stops Now rally in Baltimore to demand an end to the silence, to insist on the resignation of those responsible, the prosecution of any criminal activity, and an independent investigation of the leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Crony capitalism – the close alliance of big business with government – leads not to free enterprise, but to its opposite, in which government, not the market, chooses winners and losers, through subsidies and other forms of largesse.  Adam Smith, the great philosopher of capitalism, understood that businessmen want to maximize profits, and how it is done is of secondary interest.  Indeed, he once said that when two businessmen get together, the subject of discussion is how to keep the third out of the market.  Adam Smith and more recent philosophers of the free market such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises,...