Free Republic

CHICAGO (CBS) — He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November. It’s still not known if the guns that were found in November were discovered at Burke’s ward office or at City Hall, but it’s hard to miss the irony of a staunch gun control advocate having to turn over 23 guns as a condition of his bond. From outlawing cell phone cases shaped like guns to bans on concealed weapons...

Project 401, "Son of Ares" Some speculate this testbed aircraft might be a more modern, low-cost, stealthy option for a ground-attack platform similar to the A-10. No one knows the reason for the extreme dihedral of the wings, a feature not made clear by the photo at left, maybe some freepers can do some meaningful speculation. The video at link shows this feature in quite some detail. .. Sometimes called "Son of Ares", this aircraft is built around the GAU-12 25 x 137 mm (see photo at right), so this round is not nearly the monster carried by the Warthog....

Saturday was another day, with another meeting between the Trump administration and Congress, and still no breakthrough on the shutdown. So it’s back to the drawing board on Sunday. The two sides met for over two hours just like they met on Friday with the same results: nothing, nada, zip. But Donald Trump befuddled Nancy Pelosi with some questions that left her mind reeling. During one of the meetings, Trump asked Pelosi: “Why does everyone want to impeach me, Nancy?” To which Pelosi replied that no one wanted to impeach him, and tried to move back to border security. But...

Beth Moore. | (Photo: Facebook)Popular Bible teacher and author Beth Moore has sparked a fiery debate online about whether spending time reading the Bible is the same thing as spending time with God.“Spending time with God and spending time with the Bible are not the same thing. The Bible is the Word of God, crucial to knowing Him, but it’s not God. We can study our Bibles till the 2nd coming & leave God completely out of it. We can grow in facts & never grow a whit in faith,” Moore declared in an initial tweet on the subject...

Chinese communist authorities forced a church in China’s Henan Province to take down the first of the Ten Commandments given to Moses, as it was deemed offensive.Bitter Winter Magazine, which reports on religious freedom violations in China, said that the incident occurred in November, when 30 officials conducted an inspection of a government-approved Three-Self church in Henan’s Luoning county.Inside the church, they saw the Ten Commandments displayed on the wall, and declared that the first commandment must be removed and proceeded to wipe it off.The Ten Commandments, given by God to the Jewish people through Moses, became the bedrock of...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) have co-authored a commentary piece for USA Today that promises that the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives will bring “fiscal sanity” back to the federal government. “After Republicans’ deficit-exploding, trillion dollar handouts to the wealthiest 1 percent and big corporations, Democrats will restore budget rules to ensure that Congress returns to fiscal sanity,” Pelosi and McGovern wrote. “No longer will devious loopholes be used to balloon the deficit with more giveaways to the ultrawealthy at the expense of working families,” they said.

Boeing is set to debut its biggest plane ever next month, and the 777X has finally been paired with the gargantuan GE9X engine that will propel its flight. The plane is currently housed in Boeing's Everett, Washington, assembly plant, where pictures show it looming over workers as they prepare it for its maiden flight. The GE9X engine is the biggest turbine engine in the world. At roughly the size of an entire Boeing 737's fuselage, it was subjected to test flights last March when a single turbine was hitched to a 747 testbed. The engine includes a composite fan more...

BANGKOK — The head of Thailand’s immigration police said Monday that an 18-year-old Saudi woman who was stopped in Bangkok as she was trying to travel to Australia for asylum to escape alleged abuse by her family will not be sent anywhere against her wishes. The woman, Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, was allowed to temporarily enter Thailand under the protection of the U.N. refugee agency, which was expected to take at least five to seven days to evaluate her case and claims for asylum status. Thai immigration police released photos of Alqunun after she left the room at a Bangkok airport...

Have You Ever Really Seen the Stars? Msgr. Charles Pope • January 6, 2019 • One of the central elements in the Epiphany story is the star. There are numerous theories as to what exactly it was. It may not have been a star at all, but Jupiter or Saturn, which are said to have come quite close to Earth around the year 6 B.C. I thought of that the other day because Jupiter is currently bright in the southeastern sky a couple of hours before sunrise along the East Coast of the U.S. With high-powered binoculars one can...

A new survey found that just 7 percent of Americans don’t think that illegal immigration is a problem following a summer of immigration crises, caravans at our border, and images of migrants rushing Border Patrol agents in an attempt to storm the country. A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov survey analyzed the level of concern Americans have on the issue, finding that a fraction of respondents believe illegal immigration is “not a problem.”

Investigators are massing. Lawsuits are mounting. The death toll in Butte County’s historic Camp Fire stands at 88, so far. Another year, another megafire, another calamity in which faulty Pacific Gas and Electric equipment is a prime suspect. And once again, Californians face a familiar question: What’s going to happen to the behemoth power company in the thick of the fire zone? It’s a concern not just for PG&E—one of the largest utilities in the nation—but also for utilities and their customers throughout California. State laws make power companies especially liable for fires sparked by and around their equipment, and...

At the midpoint of Donald Trump's presidency, those in his party who seemingly should be supporting him are as critical as ever.  Now it's the issue of his character. NeverTrump Jonah Goldberg recently penned an article, "Character is Destiny," proclaiming that "Trump's character will be his downfall." Evidence of this poor character is "[t]he president's style, specifically his insults and Twitter addiction."  Goldberg goes farther, saying, "They are the product of astonishing levels of narcissism, insecurity, and intellectual incuriosity." He cites examples of how Trump fires Cabinet members or other officials, not face to face to face, but through surrogates, and his...

Today's Cryptogram: DYK QKRWKD LJ SKDDZAS GYKGX ZQ SKDDZAS QDGWDKX. NGWB DFGZA No hint as I think today's might be a bit easier than the past few. Look for the three letter suffix and try to locate the "T" and "E" and you'll be off to the races. Anything under 6 minutes is good, but I think we'll have some people breaking 4 minutes today. Please, post your times, but do not post the answers in "comments," but you can private reply the answer to me. Also, please share any tips on how you solve this or any other cryptograms....

Actor Robert De Niro once again railed against President Donald Trump, describing him as a “real racist” and admitting that his belief that he is a “fascist” and “white supremacist.” In an interview with The Guardian’s David Smith, De Niro claimed that he initially gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, but that his actions since his rise to power prove that he is a “real racist.” “When you see someone like [Trump] becoming president, I thought, well, OK, let’s see what he does – maybe he’ll change,” De Niro explained. “But he just got worse. It showed me that...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Acts of the Apostles 
 (New Testament) Acts 27 The Storm 13 When a gentle south wind began to blow, they saw their opportunity; so they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete. 14 Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the Northeaster, swept down from the island. 15 The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along. 16 As we passed to the lee of a small island called Cauda, we were hardly able to make...

Nancy Pelosi said it looks as if Trump just wants to abolish Congress and that a border wall is immoral. Elizabeth Warren says the Republican Party is corrupt and caters to the rich and powerful .... Here is just a small sample of what Pelosi, Warren, Obama, the Clintons, and other Democrats have done over the years where the media and other Democrats not only didn't care, but supported the moves wholeheartedly. Obama, the authoritarian, couldn't get DACA through Congress, so he dictatorially and unconstitutionally implemented it. Pelosi didn't care about Obama usurping congressional authority. ... The immoral and corrupt...

Convert to Creation. Margaret Wieland interviews bird expert and former renowned evolutionist Dr Jon Ahlquist Dr Jon Ahlquist is a molecular biologist, ornithologist and artist who before his retirement specialized in molecular phylogenetics. With a B.S. from Cornell University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Yale University (all in biology) he subsequently taught and researched at Yale. He then held professorships at Ohio University, the University of Louisville (Kentucky), and several South Carolina universities.

The left wing of the Democrats is playing with fire, advocating revenge against those who have succeeded in making a lot of money by taking almost all of it away.  Yesterday, a probable candidate for president (and a former Obama Cabinet member) one-upped even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who broke the ice on public discussion of stratospheric income tax rates by suggesting a marginal 70% federal rate on incomes of ten million and up.  That would yield an effective rate over 80% for residents of New York and California, the states that produce the highest number of super-earners. Julián Castro, the former mayor of San...

Is the Vatican under Pope Francis now so enamored of socialism that it's tweeting celebratory praise for the Castroites and the hellhole they made of Cuba? Well, it's apparently trying.  Get a load of this: The Vatican News website recently paid tribute to Cuba on the 60th anniversary of the Communist revolution in a post that was quickly deleted, according to reports. The Communist island nation marked the occasion with celebrations on News [sic] Year's Day, while several leftist Latin American leaders tweeted their best wishes. Here is the supposedly deleted tweet: La página DEL VATICANO publicó un homenaje a los 60 años de...

Acquiring space launch company Orbital ATK in an all-cash $7.8 billion merger, Northrop took possession of Orbital's Minotaur and Antares medium-lift rocket families. It acquired Orbital's ongoing project to build a new "OmegA" class heavy lift rocket as well, with which to compete against the likes of United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for large commercial and military satellite launches. Northrop Grumman also inherited Orbital's ongoing NASA contract to resupply crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with needed consumables under the agency's CRS-1 and CRS-2 "Commercial Resupply Services" contracts -- missions valued at as much as $14 billion across the...