Free Republic

Republican Sen. John McCain took a veiled swipe at President Donald Trump's attacks on the media, cautioning that suppressing the press "is how dictators get started." McCain, who has broken with Trump on several issues, made the comments in an exclusive interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, after being asked about the president's condemnation of several media outlets as "fake news" and "an enemy of the American people." "I hate the press. I hate you especially," McCain joked. "But the fact is we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital."

Pope Francis’ reform of the Knights of Malta could gut the very “heart” of the Order and up-end its 900-year-old constitution. Members of the Order who spoke to LifeSiteNews under condition of anonymity say such drastic fears have been stoked by the Pope’s unprecedented intervention in the Order in the last month. Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu as his special delegate to the Knights of Malta and entrusted him the task of reforming the lay Order’s religious branch of professed Knights, called the “First Class,” who take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Members of the Order...

No Reasons Given: According to Marco Tosatti, there is still a very strong resistanceamong the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate against the commissioners Pope Francis has imposed on them. Tosatti points out that to this very day the Vatican has not explained the reasons why it cracked down on the order almost four years ago. Pressure: Tosatti writes that Fr Manelli received last week a Vatican decree which writes: "Father Stefano Manelli is required to issue a statement in which he declares to accept and comply with all provisions of the Holy See and to urge the Franciscan...

Against the evidence there is little to argue. The outstretched hand of Pope Bergoglio to the Society of St. Pius X is the same, which has recently dealt blows to the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate. The story of the Order of Malta ended with the unconditional surrender of the Grand Master and the return of power to Albrecht von Boeselager along with the powerful German group he represents. The story was summarized in these terms by Riccardo Cascioli of La Nuova Bussola quotidiana: “the one responsible for the moral drift of the Order has been...

I am not an expert on Hitler. But my father is. He toured post-war Germany extensively in 1957 and ’58 as a child performer. And he often recounts the stories. He befriended teenage Lebensborn children (if you don’t know what Lebensborn children are …well …before you post anymore about Hitler you should read about them). He visited an SS widow and got a peek at her husband’s uniform and Luger (that he’d committed suicide with), she had stored in an old trunk, in the attic. These and other intense experiences in Germany sent my father on a life-long quest to...

The “Sovereign” Military Order of the Knights of Malta, whose almost millennium-long history includes its critical role in the defeat of Islam at the Battle of Lepanto, has submitted like a whimpering puppy to a naked abuse of power it had every right to resist, and did resist for a few weeks. The effective demise of the Order’s sovereignty is a shocking and disheartening demonstration of the extent to which the Church is now being governed from the top in the manner of a banana republic, wherein the only law is the will of the leader. First, as Edward Pentin...

The Sovereign Council, the government of the Sovereign Order of Malta, met this afternoon in the Magistral Palace in Rome. On the agenda was the resignation from Office of Grand Master presented by Fra’ Matthew Festing, in accordance with article 16 of the Constitution of the Order of Malta. The Sovereign Council accepted his resignation from office. Conforming to the Constitution, the Pope has been notified of the resignation of Fra’ Matthew Festing, which will be communicated to the 106 Heads of State with whom the Order has diplomatic relations. In accordance with Article 17 of the Constitution, the Grand...

The details of the naked and unconstitutional (absolutely contrary to the Constitutional Charter of the Sovereign Order) intervention of the Holy See in another Sovereign Entity (the Sovereign Order of Malta), revealed this evening by Edward Pentin, are nothing short of astonishing. Excerpt: The Pope summoned Fra’ Festing to the Vatican on Jan. 24 on the strict instruction not to let anyone know about the audience — a modus operandi that has been used frequently during this pontificate, the Register has learned. During the meeting, Francis asked Fra’ Festing to resign immediately, to which the Grand Master agreed. The Pope...

The Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Order of Malta, in response to the activities being carried out by a Group appointed by the Secretary of State of the Vatican, considers it appropriate to reiterate that the replacement of the former Grand Chancellor was an internal act of the government of the Order. Thus, considering the legal irrelevance of this Group and of its findings relating to the legal structure of the Order of Malta, the Order has decided that it should not cooperate with it. This is to protect its sovereignty against initiatives which claim to be directed at objectively...

Cardinal Raymond Burke and the Knights of Malta’s leader defied the wishes of Pope Francis and the Holy See when they sacked a senior figure in a row about the distribution of condoms. Letters seen by The Tablet reveal that Francis specifically requested no one be dismissed in a dispute that saw Albrecht von Boeselager thrown out as Grand Chancellor and then suspended from the Order. The respected German Knight was last month sacked by the Knights’ Grand Master, Matthew Festing, in the presence of the Order’s patron and prominent conservative critic of Francis, Cardinal Burke. Both of them had...

Scathing criticism of President Obama’s decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats is pouring in, with the perhaps curious exception of the leaders of the Republican establishment. A senior congressional staff member told WND, “What’s amazing to me is how the Obama administration is pursuing a scorched earth policy and attempting to destroy our international relationships across the spectrum from Russia to Israel on their way out the door.” The aide noted the U.K. and Australia “are openly at odds with them.” “It’s a mess – and what’s worse, it’s an unnecessary one,” the top staffer concluded. Rep. Dave Brat,...

And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate "Russian Propaganda" with "fake news" (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially "fake"), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also "fake news" and thus falls under the "Russian propaganda" umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be "foreign propaganda." Just like that,...

Barack Obama on Thursday said the United States would retaliate against Russian hacking after the White House accused Vladimir Putin of direct involvement in cyberattacks designed to influence the US election. The outgoing US president's remarks dramatically upped the stakes in a dispute between the world's leading nuclear powers over interference that may have swayed last month's tight election in which Republican billionaire Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham vows to lead a congressional investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, Georgia officials have their eye on tampering a little closer to home. According to state officials, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tried to gain access to Georgia’s voting systems in the week following the presidential election. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp sent a letter to Homeland chief Jeh Johnson this week asking why his agency tried, unsuccessfully, to blast past the state’s firewall software days after Donald Trump was elected president. “At no time has my office agreed to or permitted...

Who knows when Fidel Castro actually kicked the bucket? But this weekend his brother decided to let us in on the secret. His presidential term lasted, gosh, an awfully long time, as The New York Times reminded us: Fidel Castro had held on to power longer than any other living national leader except Queen Elizabeth II. That's one way of putting it. But in the end, when it comes to ruthlessly holding on to power, no one can compete with Her Majesty, and so that piker Castro got relegated to second place, while millions of English, Canadians, Jamaicans, Bahamians, Barbadians,...

Green Party perennial presidential hopeful Jill Stein praised former Cuban strongman Fidel Castro on Saturday, as encomiums by many left-of-center politicians continued to roll in following his death. "Fidel Castro was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire. Presente!" Stein wrote on Twitter Saturday afternoon. The verb form of the word literally means "present." The way Stein used it was something like a military salute ("present arms!") but for Latin American leftist radicals.

Although the death of a human being is rarely cause for celebration, it is the symbolic death of the destructive ideologies that he espoused that, I believe, is filling the Cuban exile community with renewed hope and a relief that has been long in coming. And although the grip of Castro's regime will not loosen overnight, the demise of a leader that oversaw the annihilation of those with an opposing view, the indiscriminate jailing of innocents, the separation of families, the censure of his people's freedom to speak, state sanctioned terrorism and the economic destruction of a once thriving &...

You can tell a lot about a news organization by the moniker they place on Castro on the day he died. With all this talk about fake news, why are so many afraid to call a violent, murderous dictator a Dictator? Organization Word Used BBC President US News President Daily Mail President Bloomberg President CNN Leader PBS Leader Chicago Tribune Leader SF Chronicle Leader Yahoo News Leader AOL News Leader ABC News Revolutionary Leader LA Times Revolutionary Icon NY Times Revolutionary Seattle Pi Icon Google News Dictator NBC Dictator FOX Dictator Washington Post Dictator Herald Sun Dictator This table give...

The evil Fidel Castro, longtime dictator of Communist Cuba, dies at 90. Oppressor and torturer of millions, murderer of thousands, and billionaire thief Fidel Castro is finally dead. This death of this evil Communist and avowed enemy of the United States who took a wealthy, relatively free country and transformed into a poverty-stricken totalitarian hellhole was reported on Cuban television about an hour ago. Castro reportedly died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He was 90. Fidel handed his wee baby brother Raul the Cuban presidency in 2008.

As the Civil War seesawed and the Union scored one of its rare early successes, a man met a somber-looking Lincoln at the White House. Trying to cheer the president up, he suggested that the president should be pleased by the latest news from the battle front. Lincoln agreed but then sighed that "nothing touches the tired spot." And he should have had a tired spot. Abraham Lincoln's administration had to deal with the Civil War and its raft of incompetent Union generals; Indian uprisings; an ongoing monetary crisis of epic proportions; and a dozen major foreign issues, including the...