Free Republic

A murdered Ecuadorian cartel boss known as “El Fatal” was buried with hundreds of pistols, shotguns and rifles in his coffin so he could be “armed to the teeth in the afterlife.” Julian Sevillano, the 39-year-old reputed leader of “Los Fatales,” was with his 20-year-old daughter getting a regular car wash in Moroche last Wednesday when they were suddenly ambushed by gunmen, according to La Nacion. Both were killed in a hail of more than a dozen shots blamed on members of a rival gang, the outlet said. Sevillano’s relatives refused to leave the bodies for local police, however, instead...

Vice President Kamala Harris dropped in at the Capitol Pride Walk And Rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The state of play: Harris and second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, joined the crowd, who welcomed them with cheers, according to press reports. The visit had not been on the vice president's public schedule. The big picture: Pride celebrations are taking place across the country this weekend, a year after many similar events were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What they're saying: “We need to make sure that our transgender community and our youth are all protected. We need, still, protections around...

In the wake of the death of renowned evangelist Billy Graham, controversial faith-healing televangelist Benny Hinn, who has often been criticized for his endorsement of the prosperity gospel, said in a stunning confession Wednesday that sometimes he has taken the erroneous gospel too far. "We get attacked for preaching prosperity, well it's in the Bible, but I think some have gone to the extreme with it sadly, and it's not God's word what is taught and I think I'm as guilty as others. Sometimes you go a little farther than you really need to go and then God brings you...

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of American was founded in 1988 with 5,288,230 members. By 2016, less than twenty years later, the ELCA had shrunk to 3,563,842 members. With that kind of "growth," the ELCA has less than forty years before the final member throws her hands up and quits. Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, N.C., believes that they've found the answer to stopping the mass exodus of tithing members. They've stopped preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and have embraced progressive theology and social justice.Writing for Religion News Service, Yonat Shimron tells the story of Christ the King Lutheran...

(RNS) Lighten up, Ash Wednesday.A New York-based advocacy group called Parity is asking Christians who favor LGBT equality  — “queer positive Christians,” in their parlance — to show their support by wearing “glitter ash” on their foreheads to mark Ash Wednesday (March 1).Ash Wednesday kicks off the six-week somber season called Lent that leads to Easter, and is usually marked in churches with the color purple. Traditionally, plain gray ashes, blessed by a minister or priest, are smeared on the foreheads of Christians to symbolize repentance.“This is a way for queer Christians and queer-positive persons of faith to say ‘We are here,'”...

President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered flags to fly at half-staff at the White House and public buildings, with the US in mourning over the death of “close friend” and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. Obama’s proclamation, which also extended to the White House, US foreign missions, military posts, naval stations and military vessels, was valid through sunset on Monday. …

When the Founding Fathers declared America’s independence from Great Britain, they founded the United States with a declaration that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, according to a new Gallup poll, the vast majority of Americans continue to believe in God. But self-identified liberals, Democrats, Independents, people with post-graduate educations, and Easterners are less likely to say the believe in God than conservatives, Republicans, people without post-graduate educations and Americans from the South, West and Midwest. Young adults between the ages of 18-29 are also less likely to say...

Nearly everyone with a television can make jokes about TV awards shows, especially the speech-making. How many times have people made the hoariest jokes about thanking the "little people," or mimicking Sally Field's Oscar speech: "You like me! You really like me!" But Kathy Griffin, the comedienne with the self-satirizing "My Life on the D-List" show on that D-list network Bravo, took the ritual to a new low when she won an Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program. She mocked Jesus Christ. "A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award," she declared. "I want you to...

Chalk it up as another quirk of the 2008 GOP presidential field: The top-tier Repubican who entered the race as the supposed godsend for socially conservative voters in the Bible Belt who are dissatisfied with the other candidates is someone who does not attend church on a regular basis. Asked about his religious beliefs during an appearance before about 500 Republicans in South Carolina yesterday, Fred Thompson said he attends church when he visits his mother in Tennessee but does not belong to a church or attend regularly at his home in McLean, Va., just outside Washington. The actor and...

Baghdad, Sept 7, (VOI) – Three of the six defendants in the Anfal case will be executed by hanging on Saturday, a Saudi newspaper quoted the lawyer of former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz as saying. "The Iraqi Criminal Court notified Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias Chemical Ali, former defense minister Sultan Hashim and former chief of staff Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti that they will be executed tomorrow," lawyer Badie Aref Ezzat told Saudi newspaper al-Watan, published on Friday. The lawyer said he was told by the three convicts that they only wanted to meet their families before the executions. Ezzat said...

'Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too.' With that five-second submission to YouTube, a 24-year-old who uses the name "menotsimple" has either condemned herself to an eternity of punishment in the afterlife or struck a courageous blow against superstition. She's one of more than 400 mostly young people who have joined a campaign by the Web site BlasphemyChallenge.com to stake their souls against the existence of God. That, of course, is the ultimate no-win wager, as the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal calculated—it can't be settled until you're dead,...

A 60-year-old child murderer on death row at San Quentin State Prison has died of an apparent heart attack after being incarcerated for almost 17 years, a lieutenant said today. Robert Jackson Thompson was taken to Marin General Hospital around 8 a.m. Saturday, Lt. Eric Messick said. He had earlier complained of chest pains, and was pronounced dead by an attending physician at the hospital, the lieutenant said. An Orange County jury convicted Thompson of sodomizing and strangling to death 12-year-old Benjamin Brenneman in a 1981 case in Anaheim. He has been at San Quentin since December 1983.

by Mark Finkelstein May 17, 2006 If the Da Vinci Code was already feeding the flames of controversy with its challenge to the basic tenets of Christianity, actor Ian McKellen managed to throw a refinery tank's worth of gasoline on the fire on this morning's Today show, asserting that the Bible should carry a disclaimer saying that it is "fiction." Matt Lauer, on his second day "On The Road With The Code," was in Cannes for the film festival, where the Code will have its debut. It has already been screened to some critics, who have given it decidedly mixed...

CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigned yesterday amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman.

<p>Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell at the U.N. detention center near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. He was 65.</p>

An ACLU lawsuit on behalf of an agnostic, lesbian couple seeking to nullify the Boy Scouts’ long-standing lease with a San Diego park will be heard in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, widely regarded as the nation’s most liberal. The city of San Diego is appealing a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling in 2003, which determined the agreement violates the First Amendment’s ban on state-sponsored religion. Oral arguments will begin Tuesday morning in Pasadena, Calif. A decision is expected later this year. Judge Napoleon Jones said in his 2003 ruling the Boy Scouts are a religious organization with a...

Stern weighed in yesterday with the confession that he had a nose job nine years ago — right after the filming of his movie, "Private Parts" — and liposuction not long after to suck out the waddle of fat under his chin. He explained that, while he'd always hated his nose, doctor after doctor told him not to touch it. Finally, he said, one sketched out a simple fix that would pare away his speed bump, so he decided to have the surgery.

A convicted murderer who practices the Wiccan religion won the right Thursday to receive religious books and items while behind bars. The state Department of Corrections settled a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey on behalf of Patrick Pantusco, who was convicted of murder, aggravated assault and other offenses in Bergen County in 1998, and sent to East Jersey State Prison at Avenel. He began practicing Wicca in 2002, while serving a 30- to 50-year prison term. Wiccans say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons....

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - A group of atheists at the University of Texas at San Antonio was asking students to exchange bibles for porn magazines Wednesday and that has made some religious leaders angry, according to a report by San Antonio TV station WOAI-TV. At a Wednesday night church service, The Bible is the bond between believers, but on the University of Texas at San Antonio campus a group of students were calling scripture - smut. “We consider The Bible to be a very negative force in the history of the world,” student Ryan Walker told WOAI-TV. He is part...

SALT LAKE CITY -- Gordon B. Hinckley never expected any of this. Not living to the age of 95, and certainly not becoming president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Oh, no. Never in my wildest dreams, of course, as a young man did I ever think ... no," Hinckley said during a rare conversation with reporters at church offices in Salt Lake City on Monday. "At one time I had the ambition to do what you're doing. What a wonderful thing it was that I escaped that," he joked. Hinckley instead went to work in church...