Free Republic

"For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way" (2 Thess. 2:7). The number of emails I receive from people who are discouraged, frustrated, even despondent, is steadily increasing. They point to current conditions in the world and wonder how much worse things can get. You no longer have to be an astute observer to notice how rapidly our world is changing. It wasn’t that long ago when the standard measure was a comparison between what was acceptable...

For decades, Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest, was treated with suspicion and even contempt by the Vatican’s hierarchy, which saw him as a dangerous Marxist firebrand who used faith as an instrument of revolution. Gutiérrez was the founder of a progressive movement within the Catholic church known as liberation theology, and while he was never censured in the manner that some of his philosophical compatriots were, there were often rumblings that Gutiérrez was being investigated by Pope John Paul II’s doctrinal czar, a German cardinal named Joseph Ratzinger who would later become Pope Benedict.

RUSH: There are rolling themes on this program. There are umbrella items under which fall a number of, oh, stories and sub-ideas, sub-topics, if you will. One of the themes of this program for its duration since we started, and actually predating this program going back to when I was in Sacramento, has been that the American left and the Democrat Party are engaged in an escalating -- and it has been escalating year after year after year -- attack on the institutions and traditions that have defined and made American greatness. Not just political institutions, but social institutions and...

This week a new gun safety campaign was launched by Everytown and Moms Demand Action called Be Smart, and you can usually judge the value of such efforts by the degree to which the pro-gun media weighs in on the other side. They weighed in right away with multiple blogs and, as always, the infantile Breitbart response. And one of the pro-gun bloggers got it right when she wrote that "allowing the anti-gun side to control the gun safety message is a big mistake."

Raymond Damadian, Inventor of the MRI by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. * Evidence for Creation Dr. Raymond Damadian is the “father of the MRI” (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). MRI is widely recognized as “one of the great medical breakthroughs of the 20th century” and has saved and enhanced countless lives.1 While studying violin at the world-famous Juilliard School of Music, Damadian competed with nearly 100,000 applicants and won a Ford Foundation Scholarship. He was only 15. This enabled him to complete a mathematics degree at the University of Wisconsin. He then earned his medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine...

The Metropolitan Council continues to struggle with a marketing problem that just won't go away. The projected cost of extending light rail from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie has ballooned to $2 billion, which would make it the largest public infrastructure project in state history. That certainly would be a lot of bridges repaired and lanes of freeway added. Mark Fuhrmann, the project director for Metro Transit, said the other day that delaying the project could jeopardize federal funding. In other words, if we don't act now, we could lose the government's contribution needed to build the line. The government's share?...

Occasionally, I wonder whether I'm alone in some of my wonderings. Look at the claim that conservatives or Republicans have launched a war on women as a part of their overall mean-spirited agenda. In the case of mistreatment of women — or of anyone else — assault, rape and murder are about as horrible as it gets. But I would be willing to bet a lot of money that most of the assaults, rapes and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals or Democrats, particularly in the cases of murderers. Most crime, except perhaps white-collar crime,...

Noting that he’s “perhaps the most progressive member of the United States Senate,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) described today how, as president, he would do socialism in America. “When we talk about Democratic socialism, I think it is important to realize that there are countries around the world, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, who have had social democratic governments on and off for many, many years. And we can learn a whole lot from some of those countries,” the 2016 Democratic presidential contender said on CBS this morning. “For example, the United States is the only major country on earth...

Dalrymple believes psychology has taught people to think of the world in terms of pathology rather than evil. Confronted with the “tragic dimension of human life,” as he terms it, we seek to explain behavior we don’t understand as illness, or as anything, really, other than human imperfection. The first issue of National Review in 1955 included the essay “Why They’ll Never Get Me on that Couch,” in which movie maven Morrie Ryskind declared himself a “non-conformist” for rejecting Hollywood’s latest craze, psychoanalysis. Five years later, in the same magazine, John Dos Passos put psychology on a level with communism...

By Susan Jones | April 27, 2015 | 10:24 AM EDT Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking during the sixth annual Women in the World Summit, Thursday, April 23, 2015, in New York. (CNSNews.com) - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton says women won't have full access to "reproductive health care" until "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases" are changed. She urged every woman to be a "champion for change" in the world around them. Clinton made the remarks last Thursday at the 2015 "Women in the World Summit," a three-day gathering in New York that examined the "struggles and triumphs...

hatever one might have thought about the Maryland Transportation Authority's decision to raise tolls four years ago, no one can say the two-phase proposal wasn't scrutinized from all angles or that the public wasn't given sufficient opportunity to ask questions or make comment. The same can't be said for the agency's decision to roll them back — in some cases below what they were before the last price increase. That secrecy and abrupt decision-making should give Marylanders pause about what's going on at the agency that owns and manages some of the state's most important — and costly — transportation...

The unnamed traffic cop who stood up to two offended killers did not follow Gandhi’s advice; he refused to lay down his arms or try to fight them with non-violent arms. His heroism reminds us that freedom is not defended with empty idealism easily perverted into appeasement of evil, but with the force of arms. Gandhi and his Western disciples were wrong. The soldiers who fought Hitler did far more to save humanity than Gandhi ever did. A single traffic cop with a gun has had more of a positive impact on freedom of speech in this country than all...

Congress is being urged to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade plan even though most have not read it, and a leading gun-rights activist says the plan could give President Obama the power to limit the importation of ammunition and implement his political agenda in many different ways. “Fast track authority in the context of this treaty means a blank check,” said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt. “By a majority vote, the Congress is preparing to give the president authorization to negotiate a treaty. When he brings it back, it would take two thirds of the Senate to...

LYNCHBURG, VA. — Looking to win over skeptical evangelical voters, Jeb Bush pushed back Saturday against what he said are modern intrusions on religion as he lauded graduates and their families at Liberty University, a Christian college popular on the path to the Republican presidential nomination. “Fashionable ideas and opinions – which these days can be a religion all by itself – have got a problem with Christians and their right of conscience,” Bush told an audience of 34,000 in the school’s football stadium. “That makes it our problem, and the proper response is a forthright defense of the first...

More secular confusion about the moon’s former magnetic field by D. Russell Humphreys A recent paper by Clèment Suavet et al.1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that uniformitarian scientists, who assume the world is billions of years old, are still very puzzled about the moon’s magnetic field. They don’t understand why it was formerly strong but now doesn’t exist, and how it could exist in the first place.2 The moon’s magnetic data fit creation science theories very well. Suavet and his colleagues have carefully analyzed the magnetism of two basalt samples brought from the moon...

While we are all justifiably proud of the Garland traffic officer who brought a Glock 21 to a fight against terrorists wearing body armor and carrying carbines and decisively won, let’s not kid ourselves. The assault in Garland was only a failure because the terrorists were dim-witted amateurs who didn’t realize that the school-owned target they drove more than a thousand miles to attack was well-protected with multi-layer defenses. If the same two amateur jihadis had attacked an average school, mall, concert, or church with the same firearms and “fools rush in” game plan, they might have succeeded in creating...

First Thanksgiving, now Mother’s Day. These gun-grabbing harpies will not be happy until they ruin every holiday with their idiot propaganda. USA Today writes, “Sonja Woods says she came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday because her daughter was fatally shot by a man who flunked multiple background checks to buy a gun due to mental problems. So he bought the weapon at a hardware store that did not require a background check.”

On May 5, two firefighters with concealed carry permits stopped a man allegedly attempting to shoot kids and firemen at the fire station. According to Fox Carolina, “Children and firefighters” were in the station parking lot when, at about 6:30 p.m. at New Holland, Wisconsin’s Fire Station 2, Chad Barker allegedly pulled up, got out of his car, and opened fire. He allegedly fired in the air and at his own vehicle and “pointed the firearm at individual firefighters for lengthy periods of time.”

On Thursday night's All In with Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host continued the discussion about Pamela Geller's “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas, as much of America has done all week. As part of the discussion, Chris Hayes said something that might seem surprising coming from someone of his particular political bent and certainly from someone at his particular network. Hayes offered one of the best summaries of exactly why it was so important not only that Geller be permitted to hold the event, as she was, but that the reason for the necessity of such an event...

Ugandan Runners Fear Widespread HIV Outbreak Ex-coach revealed as positive, infected at least three By: The Editors Peter Wemali, the former coach of the Ugandan national junior running team, was arrested on April 15 and is now standing trial for defiling, or having sexual relations with, three girls whose ages range between 15 and 17, according to Uganda’s Daily Monitor. He is accused of forcing young runners to have sex with him in exchange for preferential treatment. It was revealed in court on April 30 that Wemali is HIV-positive and has infected at least three other women, the Daily Monitor...