Free Republic

“So you’re voting for Du-taxus?” a woman said to me in 1988. I was a lowly receptionist at a gym called “Women Only,” which was probably later sued out of business. I had to answer the phone with, “We have the way, Women Only, this is Sasha, may I help you?” I was undoubtedly blurting out this mouthful when the client noticed my Dukakis pin, because why wouldn’t she? I told her yes, I was, though I wasn’t “political” back then, and I had no idea why I was voting for Dukakis. He was a Democrat. Being a Democrat wasn’t...

In China, we are seeing forced televised confessions, a mass surveillance state, the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, and what many are calling a genocide of the Uyghur people. 83 global brands, including major U.S. companies, are tied to Uyghur forced labor in China. Over in Hong Kong, 53 pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and lawyers were arrested on Jan. 6 under the draconian national security law. Despite all this, the EU recently announced a major trade deal with China. American Thought Leaders interviews human rights activist and writer Benedict Rogers, founder of Hong Kong Watch and deputy...

Mercy! So Great a Gift – Why Many Parishes Need to Reconsider When They Offer the Sacrament of Confession By: Msgr. Charles PopeAt tonight’s Chrism Mass, the Cardinal chose to focus his remarks to the more than 300 priests in attendance on the beauty of the Sacrament of Confession and the power of mercy. What a magnificent gift the Lord gave His Church through the ministry of priests, that we can hear His blessed words, I absolve you from your sins … go in peace.My mind goes back to a beautiful story of St. John Paul II and a certain bishop (not of...

New York State’s highest court heard arguments in two murder cases on Tuesday that plumbed the question of how far the police can go in lying to suspects during interrogations — even to the point of telling suspects a dead victim is still alive, but might survive if they confess to precise details of the crime. The question being considered by the Court of Appeals focused on when a police officer’s lies in an interview room cross a line and become coercion. It is a question that has gained attention in legal circles recently, as more false convictions based on...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah admits how much his youth matched that of Barack Obama I have a confession to make. It might help explain why I fear a second term of Barack Obama so much. I understand what Obama is and what he is doing because I was once like him: I am a former communist. As a youth growing up during the Vietnam War, I was influenced by some of the more extreme, anti-American opposition to that conflict and began to identify with the enemy. I became convinced the U.S. epitomized all that was evil in the world. During high...

Today, PJ Media breaks a bombshell that an employee in the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) Voting Section, where I used to work, has admitted to lying three times under penalty of perjury during a DOJ Inspector General’s investigation. The revelation may well affect congressional redistricting, because of the key role Voting Section staff play in approving state legislative plans, including the staffer in question. For example, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott might use these allegations of perjury involving Texas redistricting to fight the ongoing redistricting litigation. Impeachment of a different sort–that of a testifying witness–is his for the taking....

In a rare public challenge to the Iranian regime, the country’s highest-ranking cleric has warned that prisoners’ confessions are invalid, signalling a deepening gulf between the political establishment in Tehran and clerical establishment in the holy city of Qom. “Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified,” Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week, according to domestic websites including Parlemannews, which is run by reformist parliamentarians. His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country’s...

ITHACA, NY--Somewhere, the late great Charles Schulz is rolling over in his grave. Schulz, the creator of the much-loved Peanuts comic strip (and a devout Christian), probably never envisioned a day when his characters would be appropriated for a “satirical story” about teenaged homosexuals. But that’s exactly what happens in the new play, “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead," which the Ithaca Journal describes as “a satirical story that ... features characters from the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip gang in their volatile teenage years” It all begins with CB, Charlie Brown, who contemplates the death of his loyal dog,...

Israel's internal security agency admits that, in order to extract confessions from Palestinian suspects, it has arrested prisoner's relatives on false charges. A senior official of Shin Bet says the security agency should have used different methods, but he contends there was only one occasion when Israeli interrogators broke the rules set for them. He was reacting to a report about Shin Bet's interrogation techniques, prepared by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. The anti-torture group says the security agency has arrested Palestinian suspects' family members, or pretended to arrest them, on a number of occasions to break down...

Asked by a British member of Parliament if he is one of those atheists who wants to get rid of Christian symbols especially during the Christmas season, atheist Richard Dawkins replied that he is not. Dawkins said that he himself sings Christmas carols and that he considers himself a "cultural Christian." Just as many Jews regard themselves as Jewish, defend Jewish interests and cherish Jewish culture while not participating in Jewish religious rituals, Dawkins says that he respects the fact that the history and traditions of the West are shaped by Christianity. Dawkins says he's not one of those who...

ROYAL MARINE BASE CHIVENOR, England (AP) -- British sailors and marines freed by Iran said Friday they were blindfolded, isolated in cold stone cells and tricked into fearing execution while being coerced into falsely saying they had entered Iranian waters. They said there was no doubt the 15 crew members were in Iraq's territorial waters when they were seized by heavily armed boats of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. They also said their jailers had singled out the only woman among the captives for use in propaganda. Iran, which has been celebrating the incident as a victory, quickly rejected the charges, dismissing...

Mohammed's 31 terror plots from Big Ben to BangkokMurderous trail of the one-time playboy who turned to terrorKey al-Qa'eda figures: where are they now?Mohammed's statement in fullProfile: Khalid Sheikh MohammedLeader: Guilt and GuantánamoUS military tribunals: Q&ADamian Thompson's blog: Just don't call him a 'terrorist'Ben Fenton's blog: The enemy studies historyThe mastermind of the September 11 attacks boasted that he beheaded an American journalist and devised several attacks against key British targets in a shocking confession to a US military panel.The statement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which includes a rambling justification for al-Qa'eda's confrontation with the West and violence against...

Alleged confessions appear to form the crux of the government's case against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman charged with murder, kidnapping and other crimes in an Iraqi man's slaying last April. Defense attorneys challenge the validity of the statements and say without them the government's case is baseless. Details about the prosecution's case emerged Wednesday during preliminary hearings for two of eight men accused in the shooting death of 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in the village of Hamdania. At Marine Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda's hearing, prosecutors submitted a thick packet of evidence and pointed to three documents they say...

Barney Frank, the Democratic Representative to Congress from Newton, Massachusetts keeps it gay in Philadelphia where he got to the bottom of things with rising political star Mike Evans. You might say that Barney is a "hands on" politician. Frank, who is openly homosexual, got caught blatantly fondling an up-and-coming politician's buttocks at a public event. According to gay weekly the Washington Blade, the frisky Frank was escorting rising gay politico Mike Evans into the VIP section at Philadelphia's Equality Forum when he boldly seized the opportunity to cop a feel from the younger man. The tush-grabbery was caught by...

A FRIEND OF MINE, an ex-radical who became a conservative and Deputy Sheriff of a Vermont town -- has a bumper sticker on his pickup truck that reads "Hanoi Jane Not Welcome Here." I admit to always having felt uncomfortable reading it, since it seemed to me to be an unnecessary reminder of the terrible, polarized atmosphere surrounding the war in Vietnam. It was a time when ultra-conservative supporters of the war showed their anger by what I thought was an unjustified demand that she be tried for "treason," because of what she had said in her trip to North...

Terrorists' Unprecedented Confessions! Al-Fayha Iraqi TV satellite channel showed for the last few days terrorists who were captured after they escaped the war in Falluja in their way to Basrah. They were from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Libya, and other Arab countries. Their confession comes in line with the previous indications and facts as follows: First: Syria was the point from which the terrorists enter Iraq and in which they gather and organize themselves. Second: They used Syrian telecommunication while inside Iraq and they used various hotels, hostels, houses and apartments in Damascus. They met inside these places and in the...

Iran: Torture Used to Obtain ‘Confessions’ Judiciary’s Secret Squads Whitewash Repression, Incriminate Political Detainees HumanRightsWatch (New York, December 7, 2004) Secret squads operating under the authority of the Iranian judiciary have used torture to force detained Internet journalists and civil society activists to write self-incriminatory “confession letters,” Human Rights Watch said today. Evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch confirms that secret squads of interrogators—primarily former intelligence officers purged in the late-1990s by President Mohammed Khatami but now employed by the judiciary—forced the detainees to write these “confession letters” under extreme pressure as a condition for their release on bail. In...

(Kersten, The Heidelberg Catechism in 52 Sermons, Vol.2, Part 12) Keeping the Lord's Day Holy Lord's Day 38 Psalter No. 420 st. 1 Read Matthew 11:11-30 Psalter No. 348 st. 1, 2, 3 Psalter No. 227 st. 1 Psalter No. 250 st. 1 & 5 Beloved, In the passage of Scripture which was read to you, the Lord invites those who labor and are heavy laden, saying, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." The Lord did not mean those who labor physically, or those who are laden with external difficulties. This is very clear from the sharp...

For much of my life I have grappled with my identity, who I am. As a young child, I wasn’t at all ambivalent about myself, and this lack of ambivalence left me confused.Thinking that I was doing the right thing, I have not spoken about this subject. I imposed the politically correct reality unto myself, a reality which is layered with all the “good things” and “right things”, including not saying down at the pub that you fancy a gorgeous woman seated across the room and question the law of gravity in reference to her bodacious tatas. These include not...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Al-Qaida plotted bombings and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan, two conspirators said in a confession aired Monday on Jordanian state television. Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of the Jordanian cell of al-Qaida, appeared Monday in a 20-minute taped program and described meeting Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in neighboring Iraq to plan the foiled plot. A commentator said the plotters wanted to kill "80,000" Jordanians and had targeted the prime minister's office, intelligence headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Another Jordanian suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, was shown saying...