Free Republic

The leader of Islamic State has declared 'Islam is the religion of fighting' in a rare audio message which called on all Muslims to 'fight for the caliphate'. Islamic State released the message yesterday claiming it was from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the extremist group executed 26 civilians before reaching the gates of an ancient Syrian city amid fears they could destroy it. The audio message posted on militant websites features a voice that sounds like al-Baghdadi's exhorting all Muslims to take up arms and fight on behalf of the group's self-styled caliphate. In it the leader, who...

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and one of the Republican Party’s most prominent national security hawks, has confirmed that he will not run for president. In a media conference call and separate video to supporters, Bolton said he would work through his political action committees and PACs to influence the 2016 elections by pushing candidates to promote aggressive foreign and military policies...

Not only did The Ed Show hit a new low of 30K viewers in the 25-54 demo on Wednesday, but MSNBC had its lowest total day ratings in close to 10 years with 49K average viewers in the demo over the course of the day. The last time MSNBC saw demo ratings this low was on July 20, 2005 when it had 45K in total day. In primetime, MSNBC also came in third place with just 76K in the demo compared to 337K for Fox News and 196K for CNN.

Art Barrios is city planning commissioner for the town of El Monte in California. For now. The former city councilman and mayor candidate is under fire from CAIR, a Muslim “civil liberties advocacy organization”(yeah, right), and the local media for sharing an article from THIS website regarding China’s policy toward Islam. Now he is paying a steep price. For this posting, Barrios is now under fire and his job is in question, thanks to pressure from, and demands by, CAIR: “While Mr. Barrios has the right to his bigoted views, it is unacceptable for a person who holds such views...

Snip My StoryI grew up in a household living with not only my mother and father, but also my half-brother and his mother. My father had two kids: one with my mom (me) and one with another woman (my half-brother, who was three months older than I). When my mother was not there, I would see my father and my half-brother’s mother kiss and cuddle. When my half-brother’s mom wasn’t there, I would see my mother and my father kiss and cuddle. Although I was very young, these images still remain with me.My mother and the mother of my half-brother...

Do individual human beings matter? They do to Pope Francis, who recently had 150 of Rome’s homeless persons receive a tour of the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. Particular men and women, so some folks tell us, aren’t that important, because if you really want to “change the world” and help people, you must turn your gaze from the people you see in front of you and contemplate instead social structures/societal forces/the root causes of poverty. This kind of thinking is common in places like the New York Times editorial pages, which seem to think Pope Francis shares their...

Gun control proponents Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly will speak on Class Day at Harvard Law School on May 27, despite their string of epic defeats. Giffords–a former congresswoman from Arizona’s 2nd District–was shot on January 8, 2011, after Jared Loughner passed a background check to acquire his handgun. She and Kelly have since founded the gun control PAC “Americans for Responsible Solutions” to push Congress to expand background checks so that every gun purchaser in the country is forced to pass the same background Loughner passed.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, drowning is the leading cause of death for kids 1-4 years old and is the second-leading cause of unintentional deaths for kids 1-14 years old. As many as 5,000 kids 14 years old and younger are hospitalized each year due to drowning-related incidents, 20 percent of whom suffer lifelong neurological disabilities. Wow. And Mr. Obama has worked overtime to convince Americans that kids are being slaughtered with guns.

Everyone knows that the self-styled progressives and others on the Left are inveterate liars. Not a day goes by that some left-wing activist or talking head won't be found on our television screens or in our newspapers uttering some falsehood designed to make the leftist agenda more palatable to the masses or to cover up the disasters being caused by it. They lie to us, and they lie to each other as well. The lower ranking "progressives," the "foot soldiers" out there spreading the disinformation at a demotic level, typically do so without even understanding that the news they're spreading...

Do you want actual racial equality? Do you desire actual racial harmony? I have news for you: you’re in the minority. It seems even the most ardent champions fighting against racism are often avowed racists. Case in point: Dr. Saida Grundy, a black professor set to start teaching at Boston University on July 1. She decided it was a good idea to get on Twitter and pontificate in a most scholarly fashion concerning the obstacles that need to be destroyed in order to achieve racial equality. Unfortunately, one of those obstacles is apparently the entire white male population. Below are...

When you lose awareness of sin and start thinking that, deep down, human beings are pretty wonderful, you lose the struggle of character building. Building character is not like being better than someone else at a career. It’s conquering your own weakness. But you won’t make that effort if you lose a sense of what your weakness is and where it comes from.

I heard on television this weekend that there is a very real possibility that Russia and China are both closing the gap in regards to their air power and could even surpass the U.S. in a few years, which is a most frightening prospect to say the very least. America has maintained global air superiority since World War II. We have been the unquestioned champion of the skies, with aircraft that so far exceeded those of any other nation, war planes with the capability to outmaneuver, outgun, out-bomb and outrun anything in the skies.

EVERY day, millions of Americans rely on a remarkable network of roads, bridges, subways, trains and buses to connect us to work, school and opportunity. But our transportation system, once the envy of the world, is in jeopardy. In New York City, subways and buses are overcrowded and often unreliable, and roadways and bridges are in dire need of repair and rehabilitation. From the next phase of the Second Avenue subway to plans to connect the Metro-North Railroad to Pennsylvania Station, to the proposed new subway line under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, there isn’t a short- or long-term expansion project...

What is the political back-story to the Pacific Free Trade Agreement? I was not following this story, and I see that it is tearing Congressional Democrats away from Obama. Specifically: 1. Why is the Pacific Free Trade Agreement such a high priority for Obama's Second Term? 2. Why did so many Democrats oppose Obama on this bill? 3. Why did so many Republicans support Obama on this bill?

photo credit: TripAdvisor.com In January of 2012, Megan Fowler of byFaith, the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America, interviewed Pastor Tullian about his then-new book Jesus + Nothing = Everything. Here’s their conversation:In 2009, the Rev. Tullian Tchividjian transitioned from pastor of a church plant in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, a church whose only other pastor had been Dr . D. James Kennedy. The task proved challenging. Not long after his arrival, Tchividjian encountered opposition. After a petition for his removal gathered enough signatures, Tchividjian and the church’s session were forced to...

Ah, the beauty of our nation’s college campuses, the traditional hotbeds of free speech and open debate. I wonder what ever happened to those? Out in Washington State, some students at Western Washington University have come up with interesting new techniques in the field of debate. For example, one of their state senators, Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) was found by the upset underclassmen to be a heretical non-believer when it comes to the issue of global warming. Ericksen, as it turns out, is an alumnus of WWU, so rather than debating him on the hot topic, they have issued demands...

The New York Times has a breathless report on the decline of Christianity in America. Much of the lefty twitterverse is celebrating the decline. The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007. But that...

Christianity is in sharp decline in America, according to new research from the Pew Research Center, making for a significantly less Christian country than that of just seven years ago. The number of Christians dropped by almost 8 percentage points in seven years to 71 percent, and the trend holds across race, gender, education, and geographic dimensions, though Christianity still dominates American religious identity at 70 percent, USA Today said. "It's remarkably widespread," Alan Cooperman, director of religion research for the Pew Research Center, said, according to The Washington Post. "The country is becoming less religious as a whole, and...

Apparently, the answer is ‘yes’: "Cuba has eased its persecution of religion in the last 23 years, but there have been few overtures suggesting the country’s executive office might be finding its faith. "That changed Sunday when President Raul Castro said the teachings of Pope Francis had persuaded him not only to take a softer line on religion, but perhaps to return to the Catholic Church and begin worshipping again as he once did, growing up in Jesuit schools." Now, you could interpret that to mean that Raul Castro has suddenly seen the light and decided that marxism is not...

******************************************************************************************This is a much abridged version of a full academic treatment of the subject -- which can be found here... AUTHORITARIANISM IS LEFTIST, NOT RIGHTIST *****************************************************************************************"Revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon" (Friedrich Engels -- from his controversy with the Anarchists). HISTORYThe rather obvious insight from Karl Marx's collaborator quoted above -- which associates authoritarianism with Leftism -- seems to have been totally overlooked by psychologists who purport to study "authoritarianism". This is rather...