Free Republic

Ted Cruz is getting hammered by his Republican rivals over what they call a pattern of unethical campaign tactics and inaccurate statements by the Texas senator who has shaped his White House bid around trust. Cruz has had some trouble getting all his facts straight in debates, has used campaign tactics that some find suspicious and had an ad by an outside group temporarily pulled for questions about its accuracy. His opponents are blunter, calling him simply a liar.

Four days after winning the Iowa caucuses, Cruz's team is still struggling to answer questions about whether it relied on trickery to pad its lead by convincing Iowans that Carson - a rival for evangelical votes - was dropping out of the race. What the Cruz campaign initially called a knee-jerk response to ambiguous news reports has been revealed to be a more coordinated effort to steer Carson voters to the Cruz camp amid the chaotic caucus atmosphere. A campaign of tweets, emails and calls to Cruz precinct captains encouraged the rapid spread of the news that Carson would be...

Latakia, January 19, Interfax - Russian servicemen deployed at the Hmeimim airbase in Syria's Latakia celebrated the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, one of the oldest Orthodox holidays, overnight into Tuesday. "Today, the entire group will take part in the Epiphany blessing of the waters because for a person wearing army shoulder boards, especially not on Russian soil, faith is not an idle word. The Feast of the Baptism of Christ has always been celebrated very warmly," Armed Forces Priest Ilya has said. An ordinary army tent is housing the Russian airbase's field church, where the blessing of the...

Submission, American~StyleMatthew Bracken sends this graphic as a commentary on yesterday's news from the Persian Gulf: image "I could not be and I know the president could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform," Kerry said. "I also want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response."Additional commentary by Mr. Bracken was posted yesterday at WRSA: "I rarely pull out my dusty old trident, but in this case, here goes. I was a Navy SEAL officer in the 1980s, and this kind of operation (transiting small boats in foreign waters) was our bread and...

Pope Francis I is poised to be more than a very popular pontiff graced with humility and an approach of love and gentleness, two words he often uses. He could rise to become a symbol of holiness beyond the Catholic Church, as the Dalai Lama is a symbol of enlightenment beyond Tibetan Buddhism. Pope Francis has designated 2016 a Holy Year of Mercy, beginning on December 8 of last year. The specifically Catholic aspect of this announcement is that the Church will be "a witness of mercy," but for those of us who aren't Catholic, there's a universal message voiced...

Biblical Teaching on the Problem of Deception Msgr. Charles Pope January 5, 2016 One of the more troublesome and damaging human traits is our susceptibility to deception. Scripture speaks often of this problem and we do well to examine some of those texts and consider what they teach us.Perhaps it is good to look first to the Latin and Greek roots of the word deceive.Latin: The Latin root of deceive is decipere, meaning to ensnare (de (of or up) + capere (to seize or take)). And thus the Latin emphasizes our tendency to be easily caught up or carried...

Dear friends, As we know, today there is less prayer in the world and in the Church than every before, and more sin than ever before, even worse indifference, and thus what Saint Paul warned us about is even more true today: “Satan DISGUISES himself as an angel of light” (2Cor 11:14). This means that the great number of followers and collaborators of Satan in the world and in the Church today will lead us to destruction in such a way that all seems OK and the right thing to do. Thus it is more important than ever to seek...

<p>Among the Christian Right, and most Republican presidential candidates, it’s now an article of faith that the United States is persecuting Christians and Christian-owned businesses—that religion itself is under attack.</p> <p>Why has this bizarre myth that Christianity is under assault in the most religious developed country on Earth been so successful? Because, in a way, it’s true. American Christianity is in decline—not because of a “war on faith” but because of a host of demographic and social trends. The gays and liberals are just scapegoats.</p>

Imagine being assigned to create a massive trompe l’oeil, and not just a painting, but a complex, 3-D, multimedia installation spread out over many kilometres. Imagine that it must convince an attentive and discerning audience to believe in and interact with something that is not really there. Further imagine that your workspace is in the middle of a war zone, and that thousands of lives depend on your success. Also, imagine that next week you will be asked to do it again. That, in a nutshell, was the mission given to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, also known as the...

Vladimir Putin's holy war by Robert Wargas posted Thursday, 10 Dec 2015 Some traditionalist websites praise Putin as the chief enemy of a Satanic new world order In St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's home town, there is a bust depicting him as a Roman emperor. More revealing, however, are the icons which, apparently seriously, depict the Russian president as a saint. The Russian Orthodox Church sometimes treats him like one. Russian documentaries extol Putin as the man who resuscitated Russian spirituality. Kirill I, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has described his leadership as a"miracle from God"....

Oversight: A federal agency keeps stonewalling congressional efforts to access its internal communications. What's the problem here? If the agency's global warming claim was honestly arrived at, just turn over the documents.

Food hunger in America: More Hype than Reality. Why?He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness deceit. (Proverbs 12:17)We see often such claims in the media such as that "millions in people here in American could be staring at an empty plate," "49 million people [approx. 1 out of 6 in American]...face hunger," "millions of Americans go to bed hungry," "1 in 7 people struggles with hunger in the US," (Feeding America) or "1 in 6 people in America faces hunger every day," (https://www.dosomething.org) or "50 million Americans—including 1 out of every 4 children—do not know where...

Analysis Nov. 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - A Dominican friar, Fr. Adriano Oliva, has celebrated the 800th anniversary of his religious order with a book about “the Church, the divorced and remarried, and homosexual couples.” Amours (“Loves”) is a study of St Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love and aims to show that the “Angelic Doctor” recognized the “natural” character of homosexuality. In the wake of the Synod on the family, Oliva pleads for new ways of welcoming divorced and remarried and homosexual couples into the Church and of recognizing their unions in civil law. His editor, the “editions du Cerf” publishing...

Sophie Cruz's encounter with the pope during a parade in Washington this week looked to be one of those spontaneous, once-in-a-lifetime-moments Francis has become known for. But for 5-year-old Sophie, the chance to wrap her arm around the pope's neck as he offered a hug, kiss and a blessing unfolded as perfectly as it was scripted by members of a coalition of Los Angeles-based immigration rights groups. For nearly a year the group had been preparing the young girl from suburban Los Angeles to make a dash for the popemobile to deliver a message about the plight of immigrant parents...

ISLAM'S DOCTRINES OF DECEPTION by Raymond Ibrahim Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst October 2008 To better understand Islam, one must appreciate the thoroughly legalistic nature of the religion. According to sharia (Islamic law) every conceivable human act is categorised as being either forbidden, discouraged, permissible, recommended, or obligatory. "Common sense" or "universal opinion" has little to do with Islam's notions of right and wrong. Only what Allah (through the Quran) and his prophet Muhammad (through the Hadith) have to say about any given issue matters; and how Islam's greatest theologians and jurists – collectively known as the ulema, literally, "they who...

The False Pope, In Great Need For the Church, Will Fall Silent! “In This Supreme Moment Of Need For The Church, The One Who Should Speak Will Fall Silent”! (Our Lady of Good Success in Quito, Ecuador, on January 20, 1610). Dear friends, As we know, it is very important to struggle everyday to seek the Truth in a world filled with confusion, sown by “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), more than ever before. As I wrote at the beginning of my main blog site (http://josephdwight.blogspot.com): “I do not think it was by chance that when Pope John Paul...

Koran teaches the concept of "Tiqqiya," strategic lying As the debate concerning the merits of the Obama Iran deal becomes ever more animated, may I suggest that we consider the moral basis upon which the Iranian negotiators predicated their every statement When I was a child attending the New York City public school system in an America that believed in the theory of the “melting pot,” I recall reading a book about a genteel, well mannered, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family living in a white frame house surrounded by a beautiful garden edged with a white picket fence. The family consisted...

A Brief Biblical Manual on the Problem of Deception Msgr. Charles Pope • August 13, 2015 • 0 Comments A great clarion call goes up quite often in Scripture: “Do not be deceived!” And indeed, this call must go up as never before, for we live in times of great deception. So many have been deceived about marriage, sexuality, life, the existence of God, and what our life is really all about. And while our current times show widespread deception, it must also be noted that deceiving and being deceived are common human tendencies, especially in our fallen condition. Scripture...

The latest video from the Center for Medical Progress delves further into Planned Parenthood’s grisly business of selling the body parts of aborted babies. This video was actually shot inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, which will of course make it even harder for Cecile Richards and the abortion lobby to spin this as being fake or “deceptively edited.” The Vice President and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Dr. Savita Ginde, can be seen dissecting a baby aborted in the first trimester while discussing receiving payment for each organ. Aside from the obvious exploitation of innocent lives...

By lying and withholding information about the agreement, he gives aid and comfort to America’s enemy. The president “must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” One can imagine hearing such counsel from a contemporary United States senator on the receiving end of President Obama’s “full disclosure” of the nuclear deal with Iran. But the admonition actually came from James Iredell, a champion of the Constitution’s ratification, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington. Iredell was addressing the obligations the new Constitution imposed on the president in the arena of international affairs....