Free Republic

SANTO DOMINGO, March 1, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Tomorrow, the Dominican Republic's LGBT Chamber of Commerce will be inaugurated at a luxury hotel in downtown Santo Domingo, and it is being pushed almost singlehandedly by the United States government and its taxpayers.  The following press announcement was sent to all major news outlets in the staunchly pro-family Caribbean nation by the United States Embassy. The Embassy of the United States of America, the LGBT Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic (CCLGBTRD) and the United States Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce  (NGLCC), under the auspices of the United States Agency...

Former Major League Baseball player Yamaico Navarro has been arrested in Japan for concealing a bullet in his luggage. [...] The 28-year-old Navarro told police the bullet was from his home in the Dominican Republic but that he was not aware it was in his bag. ...

Researchers today announced in the journal Nature Plants the discovery of the first-ever fossil specimens of an "asterid" - a family of flowering plants that gave us everything from the potato to tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee. But these two 20-30 million-year-old fossil flowers, found perfectly preserved in a piece of amber, came from the dark side of the asterid family - they belong to the genus Strychnos, which ultimately gave rise to some of the world's most famous poisons, including strychnine and curare. Poisons that would later find their way into blow-gun weapons, rat control,...

A 60-year-old illegal immigrant wanted for killing a police officer in the Dominican Republic is behind bars after Lowell cops took him in at gunpoint, police said. Ramon Aguasviva-Mejia, who had recently lived in Lawrence, also has warrants out of Suffolk Superior Court for drug distribution. He is also wanted by Quincy District Court for felony assault, police said. Detectives from the Lowell Police Department’s Special Investigations Section had Aguasviva-Mejia under surveillance Sunday afternoon in Central Plaza on Church Street, but he spotted the tail and bolted, narrowly avoiding hitting the cops as he fled, police said.

The State Department weighed in Tuesday on an escalating war of words between the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic and a cardinal who has leveled gay slurs against him -- telling FoxNews.com the fight "does underscore" the importance of pushing human rights causes. U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James "Wally" Brewster, who is openly gay and married, has been mocked over his sexual orientation by Cardinal Archbishop Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez for more than two years. It got so heated that earlier this month, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sent a letter to Pope Francis asking him to...

Christopher Columbus, the man credited with discovering the Americas, was a greedy and vindictive tyrant who saved some of his most violent punishments for his own followers, according to a document uncovered by Spanish historians. As governor and viceroy of the Indies, Columbus imposed iron discipline on the first Spanish colony in the Americas, in what is now the Caribbean country of Dominican Republic. Punishments included cutting off people's ears and noses, parading women naked through the streets and selling them into slavery. "Columbus' government was characterised by a form of tyranny," Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian who has seen...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A Dominican cardinal upset over comments that the U.S. ambassador made about corruption in his country has said the openly gay diplomat should focus on homemaking. Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez spoke out against U.S. ambassador James "Wally" Brewster in a meeting with reporters late Tuesday following a Mass. "That man needs to go back to his embassy," he said. "Let him focus on housework, since he's the wife to a man." Lopez also accused Brewster of promoting a gay rights agenda on Dominican soil.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — A Dominican cardinal upset over comments that the U.S. ambassador made about corruption in his country has said the openly gay diplomat should focus on homemaking. Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez spoke out against U.S. ambassador James "Wally" Brewster in a meeting with reporters late Tuesday following a Mass. "That man needs to go back to his embassy," he said. "Let him focus on housework, since he's the wife to a man." Lopez also accused Brewster of promoting a gay rights agenda on Dominican soil.

Organization of delight is here this day, The Body of Christ coming together to form The Bride, lock in and stay, Fear and Doubt is not part of this wardrobe, The Tailor of Virtue has bought this design of Virtue and this dress is sold, Bringing it together with the thread of Unity, Every part of The Body, All in agreement to walk down the isle and meet The Groom, A picture of Delight and The Bride is swooned, So in love with her Boaz and King! She begins to sing ~ ~ ~ The Song of The Lamb and...

Last night as we entered into worship as one heart and one Bride, The 7 candlesticks were lit on the communion table with a Star of David illuminated by the candle light . We entered into a flowing free worship and praise and then the spirit began to speak through many of us throughout the night I am going to share the words I captured to help understand all that blossomed. . . Do you see my children I AM wooing "you" for you are more than just my sheep, you are my heart's desire and (as you come together...

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is asking the FBI to confirm a tip the panel received that the State Department inspector general has probed Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin for criminal misconduct. On Wednesday, the Iowa Republican sent a letter to FBI director James Comey, obtained by POLITICO, asking him to confirm any investigation of Abedin, who’s currently helping run Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “The Judiciary Committee has learned that the Office of Inspector General for the Department of State (State OIG) opened an investigation involving potential criminal conduct by Ms. Huma Abedin while she worked for the Department of State...

Mayor de Blasio was booed at Sunday’s Dominican Day Parade by people angry he slammed the country’s government for wanting to expel ethnic Haitians. “He talks too much,” said heckler Francisco Bens, 53, of Brooklyn, who greeted de Blasio with scattered boos along the Sixth Ave. parade route. “He doesn’t like the Dominican Republic. ... He says Dominicans don’t like black people. That’s not true.” De Blasio hosted a press conference in June to condemn the looming deportations of thousands of people of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic. “It is clearly an illegal act. It is an immoral act....

Colin Cowherd had been a lame duck at ESPN anyway, but today the sports giant said he’s done there for good. Eight days after the company said its popular radio host and sometimes TV guy was leaving its ranks, ESPN has yanked him off its airwaves over remarks he made questioning the intellect of Dominicans. On his radio show The Herd on Thursday, Cowherd was talking about how baseball is no more of a “thinking-man’s game” than other sports. “I’ve never bought into that whole ‘baseball is too complex,'” he said. “Really? A third of the sport is from the...

Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is taking rhetorical sniper fire for large contributions to The Clinton Foundation taken from dirt-poor foreign nations while she was Secy of State. The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others have hinted at impropriety on two levels… 1) A potential presidential candidate becomes beholden to certain foreign nations. 2) A Secretary of State whose private foundation grows in prestige from foreign donations, while those same nations lobby the State Department for special treatment (b/c of abysmal human rights violations). Both questions merit vigorous exploration, but for two of the Clinton Foundation’s...

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants in the Dominican Republic -- the vast majority Haitians -- face deportation as a deadline to apply for legal status looms. The problem of what to do with thousands of workers who entered illegally from a neighboring country is not an unfamiliar one in the hemisphere. The plight of undocumented immigrants in the United States and lawmakers' failed attempts at reform come to mind. The Dominican government tackled the issue with a "regularization plan" that offered a path to legal status for the undocumented. But critics say it was designed to fail the migrant...

Columbus mystery nearly solved 500 years after death By Phil Stewart Fri Mar 10, 11:30 AM ET ROME (Reuters) - Nearly 500 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, a team of genetic researchers are using DNA to solve two nagging mysteries: Where was the explorer really born? And where the devil are his bones? Debate about origins and final resting place of Columbus has raged for over a century, with historians questioning the traditional theory that he hails from Genoa, Italy. Some say he was a Spanish Jew, a Greek, a Basque or Portuguese. Even the location of his...

It's been nearly two years since Spanish scientists asked to examine the contents of this Caribbean nation's most celebrated tomb to determine whether the centuries-old bones are actually those of Christopher Columbus. They've been told yes, no and maybe. The protracted deliberation through two Dominican administrations has deepened suspicions that authorities here don't really want a definitive answer for fear that the mammoth lighthouse mausoleum they've built into a tourist draw isn't the bona fide resting place of the explorer. Even those who favor letting modern science settle the matter are loath to concede that they might have invested millions...

Young bones lay Columbus myth to rest Giles Tremlett in Madrid Wednesday August 11, 2004 The Guardian (UK) A centuries-old historical row over the whereabouts of the body of Christopher Columbus appeared to have been solved yesterday when scientists in Spain conceded that the corpse buried at Seville's gothic Santa Maria cathedral was not that of the famous explorer. Instead, the bones they studied were probably those of his lesser known son, Diego, who was a small and weedy man, unlike his father. Christopher Columbus's body, the experts say, almost certainly lies back in the "new world" he sailed to...

Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world. The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart...

Alternate headline via Dave Weigel: “DOJ confirms that Bob Menendez is a New Jersey politician.”There’s no louder Democratic critic of Obama’s Iran deal than Menendez and now here he is, about to be indicted. Hmmm. Maybe I spoke too soon in questioning Lee Smith’s theory that the White House has decided to start destroying the Iran-deal skeptics on its own side. People briefed on the case say Attorney General Eric Holder has signed off on prosecutors’ request to proceed with charges, CNN has learned exclusively. An announcement could come within weeks. Prosecutors are under pressure in part because of...