Free Republic

We need to understand that all the persecution and prosecution we’re seeing now is intended to elicit a violent response. The brilliant Julie Kelly has a great essay summarizing the Biden administration’s accelerating persecution and prosecution of Republicans who dared question a bizarre presidential election that broke with all norms going back more than two centuries. Kelly believes, as I do, that this is going to end with Donald Trump’s indictment. My guess is the indictment will take place before the election because Democrats want to trigger a violent response that will justify halting the elections and, possibly, imposing some...

Charles and Hannah Scarbrough sentenced in OcalaA married couple has pleaded guilty to using doughnuts and pastries to lure black bears in rural Florida, allowing packs of dogs to attack them and then posting the gruesome videos on social media. Charles Scarbrough entered guilty pleas of conspiracy to commit racketeering, animal baiting and fighting, unlawful use of a two-way communicating device and unlawful taking of a black bear, the Ocala Star Banner reports. He has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Because of that, sentencing was deferred, though he faces anywhere from five years of probation to more than two years...

You’ve also might have heard a lot of inaccurate statements, like the coronavirus came about because Chinese people eat food that Americans consider strange, like bats or civet cats. You’ve might have heard the coronavirus started in one of the so-called “wet markets” in China where live animals are kept in close proximity and sold outright or slaughtered on-site. You’ve could have heard Trump imposed a travel ban to China: foreign nationals who’ve been in China within the last 14 days won’t be allowed to enter the US. And you’ve heard jokes, seen memes, or made comments about the Chinese...

Washingtonians will be able to begin salvaging roadkilled deer and elk in most of the state starting later this year, and they won’t be able to use as many apples to lure in the live ones during hunting seasons. Earlier this month the Fish & Wildlife Commission approved both new regulations by wide margins. The citizen panel voted unanimously to allow the collection of muleys, blacktails and whitetails accidentally run down on roads in all but three of the state’s 39 counties, and elk statewide. The three exceptions are Clark, Cowlitz and Wahkiakum Counties, where ESA-listed Columbian whitetail deer roam....

President Barack Obama will deliver a eulogy on Friday for the pastor gunned down last week along with eight of his parishioners in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the White House said Monday. Obama will travel to Charleston for the funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, who the president considered a friend and who was a well known leader in South Carolina, where he also served as a state senator. “Michelle and I know several members of Emanuel AME Church. We knew their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight...

RNC: Obama playing on 'class warfare and race'April 28, 2010 The Republican National Committee Tuesday night accused President Obama of making "an appeal based on class warfare and race" after Obama outlined his party's midterm strategy of returning people who voted for the first time in 2008 to the polls in November.Obama, in a video released this week, spoke in the demographic terms more commonly -- though very commonly -- used by political consultants, saying Democrats must appeal to "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again." The Wall Street Journal...

Imagine if one black individual is beaten by two whites while a crowd of whites cheer on the attack. Would anybody question if this attack was racially motivated? “OBVIOUSLY, it was about race,” Right? What if the situation was reversed? We don’t have to imagine because this is exactly what happened when a white Belleville West High School student (Belleville, IL) was beaten aboard a bus on the way to school last Monday...

An honest disagreement is one thing, but there is a phenomenon going around the internet, mostly at the expense of conservative bloggers like me, known as baiting. These are liberals who get some kind of perverse pleasure by visiting conservative blogs and trying to harass them or tie them in knots. Their favorite technique is to seize on some trivial point or side issue and argue with it, completely disregarding the main point of the article. Another technique is to hunt for some reference that disputes something you have said – easy to do in a world where the liberal...

Spec. Jorge Sandoval lay face down in the foot-high grass, staring through his sniper rifle scope at the Iraqi man holding a rusted sickle. The man had crouched down, only his head was visible. Sandoval's spotter, Staff. Sgt. Michael Hensley, relayed the order to kill. On April 27, in dangerous terrain south of Baghdad, Sandoval pulled the trigger to fire a bullet hundreds of yards into the man's skull, killing him instantly. Moments earlier, the man, according to testimony and court documents, had been fleeing an attack on U.S. soldiers and was holding the sickle to masquerade as a farmer....

This past Sunday, thanks to Mayor David Cohen, the city of Newton paid special tribute to Father Robert Drinan, who was our Congressman for ten years until the Pope asked him to retire from Congress and Barney Frank replaced him. He had been the Dean of the Boston College Law School and a well-known theologian, author and educator. Since his retirement from Congress, he had been teaching at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, and he passed away on January 28. He was a frequent visitor to his sister-in-law and nieces, who currently live in Newton. At the remembrance,...

James and Kathleen Pfeiffer were devoted to their parish and pastor, attending Mass every Sunday and helping pay for new bells at their church in southwestern Virginia. So when their priest was charged in January with stealing $600,000 from the church, the couple was devastated. "I would feel better about all this if he wasn't a priest and was just some con man who conned us," Kathleen Pfeiffer said. "He was loved by us. He knew everybody would do anything for him." The past year saw several cases where clerics were accused of stealing from their faithful. Some churchgoers say...

Homosexual rights campaigners have gained permission from the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to hold Mass for gay parishioners. While the Church has allowed celibate gays to receive holy communion, traditionalist Catholics believe that practising homosexuals should be barred from the sacramental rite because their way of life defies Church teaching. Now, however, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has taken the controversial step of allowing fortnightly Masses in his Westminster diocese specifically for homosexuals. A statement from the diocese stressed that the move did not represent a shift in Church teaching, which says that homosexual practice is a...

We hear it from some religious pulpits, and we think it’s the ‘gospel’ truth. But the real truth is you never really know what a Catholic believes, unless you are one. Unfortunately the majority religion of Congress is Catholic, but you’d never know by the legislation delivered. Currently, well over 100 members of Congress claim to be Catholic. Catholicism has five “non-negotiables” which are inherently evil. Those include abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research(not adult stem cell research). Those few tend to eliminate a number of congress people from the practice of Catholicism. A few of...

SAN DIEGO -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said in a letter to parishioners this weekend that it is considering declaring bankruptcy to avoid going to trial on more than 140 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests. The pastoral statement, signed by Bishop Robert Brom, said if fair settlements can't be reached with abuse victims, "the diocese may be forced to file a Chapter 11 reorganization in bankruptcy court." The diocese is concerned "that settlements not cripple the ability of the Church to accomplish its mission and ministries," the letter said. The letter was included in the regular...

The Vatican's official newspaper on Tuesday decried media images of Saddam Hussein's hanging as a "spectacle" violating human rights and harming efforts to promote reconciliation in Iraq. The Vatican, which opposes the death penalty, was among the first voices abroad to denounce Saddam's execution Saturday, saying then that it was "tragic news," even in the case of someone guilty of grave crimes, and expressing worry that it could fuel revenge and fresh violence. Also Tuesday, the Italian government said it will take "formal steps" in a renewed push for a U.N. call for a moratorium on the death penalty. The...

Kenneth Briggs, former religion editor of The New York Times and author of Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church's Betrayal of American Nuns, shares the fruits of an eight-year study which brings to light possible reasons for the diminishing numbers of American sisters in our time. Tracing a detailed history of events from the 1950s until the present, Briggs provides specific examples of typical religious communities and interviews with individual sisters. Well documented and fairly presented, the book describes the struggles and misunderstandings between the church's hierarchy and the sisters who took seriously the mandate for renewal directed to religious...

MILWAUKEE - Bishop Raymond Burke's recent announcement that Wisconsin lawmakers who support abortion rights can no longer receive communion ignited a firestorm in the American Roman Catholic Church, especially among those U.S. bishops who wished they'd thought of the idea first. Burke cited Vatican doctrine and canon law when he instructed diocesan priests to withhold communion from all Catholic senators and congressmen until they "publicly renounce" their support of abortion rights. Burke's decision left other American bishops scrambling to regain the moral high ground in a church torn by scandals. In Burlington, Vt., the Most Rev. Kenneth A. Angell threatened...

web] Every now and then, you get to see a reporter gently suggest that a major religious leader - take Pope Benedict XVI, example - has tried to pull a fast one. That may be what's happening in this story earlier this week by New York Times reporter Ian Fisher about the pope's complicated address on faith and reason, which included a highly significant illustration linked to Islam. Actually, I think that Fisher did a good job of getting at the heart of this one. Let's face it: Popes are not sound-bite-friendly speakers. They have been known to float a...

Until two years ago, the Roman Catholic diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., ran audits of its parishes only when they changed pastors. It was a risky, even foolhardy policy when you consider that a parish like St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, in Delray Beach, hadn't changed pastors in 40 years. In September 2003, upon the retirement of St. Vincent's pastor, the Rev. John Skehan, diocesan accountant Denis Hamel dutifully showed up to inspect the books and the procedures for counting Sunday collections. The new pastor, the Rev. Francis Guinan--a close buddy of Skehan's--told him to beat it. But the new...

He hardly seems the obvious candidate for Catholic approval, but the Irish author who was once a byword for decadent behaviour is quoted in a new book by a Roman priest as an example to 21st-century Christians. "I can resist everything except temptation," Oscar Wilde once famously said. He was speaking for us all. Even for the Church of Rome, it turns out. For that very remark is quoted, with approbation, by a leading Vatican writer, Fr Leonardo Sapienza - a member of the protocol department of the Pontifical Household of Pope Benedict XVI - in a book out yesterday....