Free Republic

full title:. Those who shy away from explaining and defending the faith may have good reasons to do so It troubles me that members of the Church cannot defend the faith without referring me to a priest,” wrote Cordi. “I love Catholicism,” she said in a comment on my last article, “and I wish I could convert, but there are some real hurdles to the doctrine that I can’t overcome.” She wasn’t happy with Catholics who couldn’t answer her questions and palmed her off on a priest. Protestant and Catholic apologists jump on stories like this, for different reasons. They...

Donald J. Trump won the white working-class vote over Hillary Clinton by a larger margin than any major-party nominee since World War II. Instead of this considerable achievement inspiring introspection, figures from the heights of journalism, entertainment, literature and the Clinton campaign continue to suggest that Mr. Trump won the presidency by appealing to the bigotry of his supporters. As Bill Clinton recently said, the one thing Mr. Trump knows “is how to get angry white men to vote for him.” This stereotyping of Trump voters is not only illiberal, it falsely presumes Mr. Trump won because of his worst...

This year saw a major, unexpected political upheaval in both the United States and Europe. ... . . . there are some issues that this year’s events led me to change my mind about. Here are three of the most important. I. The Perils of Polarization. ... II. Should We Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Rooms? ... III. Rethinking the Unitary Executive.

The Democrat is still favored to win, but much will depend on whether her touted organizational advantages produce results A month after the traditional Labor Day kickoff to the campaign season, Hillary Clinton’s position in the Electoral College has eroded significantly, but The Party Crasher still rates her a solid favorite to become the nation’s 45th president in a month’s time. After examining 19 states, as well as two congressional districts that each possess a single electoral vote, this columnist has issued 16 ratings changes since the September holiday, and every one of these changes reflects a downgrading of Clinton’s...

NEW YORK—If you study Method acting at one of the great New York studios that grew out of the Stanislavsky system, the first thing they teach you is that acting is not about speaking, it’s about reacting. “Always watch the actor who is not speaking,” the great Freddie Kareman used to tell his classes at Carnegie Hall. “If he’s engaged and focused and concentrated, that’s when you’ll see his craft.” Or as Martin Scorsese once told me, “Pay no attention to the words. We’ll change the words. We’re looking for what’s underneath the words.” The great thing about watching a...

MATEEN: "I shot up the Pulse Club because I am a member of ISIS." LYNCH: "No you're not." MATEEN:"Wait, what? Yes I am..." LYNCH: "No, this has nothing to do with Muslim terrorism. I have no idea why you did this, but it wasn't radical Islam." MATEEN: "WHAT!? Did you even read what I told the 911 operator? I gave explicit Quranic justification. This is jihad, a holy crusade against pagans, blasphemers, and homosexuals." LYNCH: "No, this is definitely not a Muslim thing. You are not a true Muslim, and you defame a great religion by saying so." MATEEN: "Huh!?...

BURLINGAME, Calif. — Donald J. Trump got a taste on Friday of what his next month of campaigning in California could be like. He was forced to exit his motorcade and walk through a field, climbing an embankment with Secret Service agents helping him, to avoid angry demonstrators on the street. “We went under a fence and through a fence, and oh, boy, it felt like I was crossing the border, actually,” Mr. Trump said when he finally made it to a ballroom to speak at California’s Republican Party convention. For the next 25 minutes, though, Mr. Trump spoke little...

Most people want to know: Have I turned into a "Jesus nut" after leaving Connecticut for Texas five years ago? Not really - but I have some keener observations about US culture, sharpened by living in Texas. Skip the rest if you don't have an open mind. Most of the comments on this forum about refugees going home out of disgust with the West are amusing, esp from my perspective of being an American with a college education, successful career & loving, stable family. All of these things are granted by God through his means and a lifetime of hard...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's Sarah in Billings, Montana, Sarah, I'm glad you waited. Happy to welcome you to the program. Hi. CALLER: I'm a conservative. My family members are conservatives. Several family members said they will not vote if Donald Trump gets the nomination. I'm concerned the same thing will happen like the last election. Just wondering what your thoughts are. RUSH: Well, my thoughts are I need to ask you some questions. Let's see. You won't vote Trump if he gets the nomination, and that a lot of Republicans won't show up if he does. And that we'll just...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slammed The Washington Post on Tuesday after the paper depicted his two young daughters as monkeys in an editorial cartoon. In an article accompanying her drawing, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes wrote that while it is an "unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician’s children are off-limits," she felt that Cruz's daughters, Caroline and Catherine, were "fair game" because the Republican presidential candidate used them in a Christmas parody video Ted Cruz uses his kids as political props https://t.co/gKT8Jhjm17 pic.twitter.com/GNfoP4batF — Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) December 22, 2015 Cruz responded, urging Telnaes to attack him...

G.K. Chesterton wrote that “the modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.” His observation seems applicable to the current debate about taking in Syrian refugees. The “modern world” in this case is made up of the European elites, the Obama administration and Christian clerics who follow their lead. The virtue gone mad is compassion. What Chesterton probably had in mind when he wrote about “mad” virtues was Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean (which was later adopted by Aquinas). According...

People observe a minute of silence at the Trocadero in Paris Nov. 16. (CNS photo/Philippe Wojazer, Reuters) Of all the commentaries on the Paris massacres I’ve read, the one that seems most perceptive is a piece by Judith Bergman for the Gatestone Institute titled “How Can Anyone Be Shocked?” Indeed. The attacks had all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy: they were entirely predictable. Nevertheless many reacted with “shock,” including Angela Merkel, David Cameron, and the Vatican. As Bergman writes: After 9/11 in the United States; the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed nearly 200 and wounded 2,000; and...

If you thought Ted Cruz was going away anytime soon, I’ve got some bad news. The singularly annoying obstructionist has real staying power, and he’s as well-positioned as any of the candidates moving forward. The more Cruz irks his opponents, the more he grandstands, the more entrenched and profitable his campaign becomes. Even Cruz’s Republican colleagues appear resigned to this fact. “Ted Cruz has been branded a ‘wacko bird’ by a Senate colleague,” write Katie Zezima and David Weigel in the Washington Post. “A GOP consultant labeled him a show horse, and a strategist for a rival presidential campaign call...

On Monday, Lindsey Graham announced his presidential candidacy in a speech devoted mostly to foreign policy. He mentioned variations of the word “Islam” six times. He said “the nuclear ambitions of the radical Islamists who control Iran” constitute the “biggest threat” to the United States. He twice emphasized his devotion to Israel. And once, about halfway through his remarks, he mentioned China. In American politics today, especially in the GOP, Graham’s priorities are typical. Two years ago, during Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel’s contentious seven-and-a-half-hour grilling by the Armed Services Committee, senators mentioned Israel 178 times and Iran 171...

This week, Rachel Dolezal, the former local head of the Spokane NAACP, a lecturer in Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, and a proud black woman, was revealed to be a non-proud white woman. She lied about her personal history: She said her parents whipped her when they lived in South Africa, that she underwent rape and physical abuse, that the KKK targeted her with swastikas and nooses. No evidence exists to support any of this. Her parents point out that Dolezal has no black ancestry, and grew up in a Montana home as the child of two white parents....

This month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim...

Ratter, a fledgling media company that sought to turn local tabloid-style reporting into viral national news, laid off its entire editorial staff Wednesday. The startup, which hired staffers in the Bay Area and Los Angeles since its launch last November, let go “every single byline that was on that site,” founder A.J. Daulerio said. But “It’s not shutting down,” according to Daulerio. Despite its small size — before the lay-offs Ratter only had four full-time writers — the company had garnered media attention. That’s mainly because of the pedigree of its founder, A.J. Daulerio, a Gawker Media veteran best known...

I once had a boss who gave me some great advice, not just for managing people but for judging politicians: You forgive mistakes; you punish patterns. Everybody screws up. But if someone won't learn from his mistakes and try to correct his behavior, then he either doesn't think it was a mistake, he just doesn't care or he thinks you're a fool. The one indisputable takeaway from Peter Schweizer's new book, "Clinton Cash," is that Bill and Hillary Clinton fit one or all of those descriptions. Let us recall Marc Rich, a shady billionaire indicted for tax evasion and defying...

I haven't posted in a while because I started doing projects that are more time intensive. I decided to stop doing graphics/memes for the most part, in favor of going back to my first love, illustration.I still plan to do the occasional graphic like this one I created recently... But I missed drawing and illustrating, and I essentially gave it up to create all of the graphics I've created over the years because I don't have time to do both. Anyway, here are a couple of pieces I was fairly happy with, and I wanted to share them here. :-)...

For high-profile politicians who are indicted by federal prosecutors, there’s something akin to stages of grief. First comes shock, then anger, defiance and, sometimes, after juries convict and judges are ready to impose a sentence, a bit of contrition.Having been on notice for months that his mutually beneficial friendship with a wealthy Florida doctor was the subject of a corruption probe, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey blew right past the state of shock on Wednesday, after authorities unveiled a 68-page indictment.“For nearly three years I’ve lived under a Justice Department cloud and today I am outraged that this cloud...