Free Republic

Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared in my recent book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I was writing many years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports. It was those U.S. reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months ago. “You paint a picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,” he wrote...

Pfizer Inc said on Monday it has started a large study testing its investigational oral antiviral drug for the prevention of COVID-19 infection among those who have been exposed to the virus. The drugmaker and its rivals, including U.S.-based Merck & Co Inc and Swiss pharmaceutical Roche Holding AG , have been racing to develop an easy-to-administer antiviral pill for COVID-19. The mid-to-late-stage study will test Pfizer's drug, PF-07321332, in up to 2,660 healthy adult participants aged 18 and older who live in the same household as an individual with a confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 infection. In the trial, PF-07321332, designed...

Terrible News About the Horrible Arthur Roche – VoicesDamian Thompson, Twitter.com: “Terrible news that the horrible Arthur Roche will be prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. One of the most ambitious, pompous and ruthless operators in the Catholic Church. Yuk.”“I've loathed Roche since I caught him playing all manner of tricks to kill off Summorum Pontificum in Leeds diocese. (Also, he's never forgiven me for revealing that in his youth he was a champion figure skater – surprising in view of his girth.)“Rocco Palmo, Twitter.com: “Given the eternal fury of the ‘Liturgy Wars’ in the English-speaking world, the naming...

New Leadership Team at Congregation for Divine Worship Shares Pope’s Perspectives on LiturgyVATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has overhauled the leadership of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, appointing a new prefect and secretary who share his determination to press ahead with post-conciliar liturgical reforms. ... A key reason for this and for Archbishop Roche’s appointment as the Congregation for Divine Worship’s prefect, according to many observers, is that both he and Pope Francis share the same liturgical vision, one that Francis sees as an “irreversible” process of reform, consistent with the liturgical reforms...

Pope Francis appoints UK bishop known for criticizing traditional liturgy as head of the Congregation for Divine WorshipCommenting on Twitter earlier today, Deacon Nick Donnelly described the appointment as posing a 'real and present danger' to Summorum Pontificum.VATICAN CITY, May 27, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has today appointed Archbishop Arthur Roche as the new Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW), replacing Cardinal Robert Sarah and potentially ushering in a new era of active opposition to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Commenting on Twitter earlier today, Deacon Nick Donnelly described the...

Congresswoman Renee Ellmers has shown her true colors this week in regard to amnesty for illegal aliens. Jim Duncan, chairman of the Chatham County GOP in Ellmers’s district, has stepped forward via Facebook to call out his member of Congress:

She’s been all over the country and all over the media talking up the subject. “Comprehensive immigration reform.” “A pathway to citizenship.” Some may see those terms as code that tap-dances around its true meaning: amnesty for illegal aliens. Ellmers has positioned herself with Latino groups as an ally on immigration reform.

Early voting is underway. We’ve got a GOP leadership in Washington looking to sell us out on amnesty and ObamaCare. In Raleigh, we have a state party leadership reportedly looking to toss out opposition to toll roads and ObamaCare, and water down the official stance on amnesty. You can grumble all you want. But the only way to send a message to these people is at the polling place. You’ve got the opportunity, from now until May 6, to do a little RINO-hunting.

As those of you who follow my hate mail know, I am opposed to running untested candidates against perfectly good incumbent Republican senators this election cycle. It will be a long time before Republicans have as good a year as this to win a Senate majority. Unfortunately, we have idiots doing the idiot thing, pretending to be “tea partiers,” while challenging sitting Republican senators over fairly minor ideological differences.

The GOP primary challenger to incumbent Renee Ellmers picked up a big in-district endorsement today. Former Moore County GOP chairman Bob Levy — the immediate predecessor to current chairman John Rowderdink — has publicly endorsed the candidacy of Republican Frank Roche for North Carolina’s Second congressional district seat: “Based upon the position of Congress Member Ellmers endorsing amnesty for illegal immigrants, I am proud to endorse the candidacy of Frank Roche for Congress.

Outmanned and outgunned, local law enforcement officers are alarmed by the drug and human trafficking, prostitution, kidnapping and money laundering that Mexican drug cartels are conducting in the U.S. far from the border. U.S. sheriffs say that securing the border is a growing concern to law enforcement agencies throughout the country, not just those near the U.S.-Mexico boundary.

Clinical trial results are being routinely withheld from doctors, undermining their ability to make informed decisions about how to treat patients, an influential parliamentary committee has claimed. MPs have expressed "extreme concern" that drug manufacturers appear to only publish around 50% of completed trial results and warned that the practice has "ramifications for the whole of medicine". Their conclusions have emerged in a public accounts committee report which examined the Department of Health's decision to spend £424m on stockpiling the flu drug Tamiflu, before writing off £74m because of poor record keeping. … A review by the non-profit Cochrane Collaboration...

This morning, Roche announced that it was stopping all clinical trials of an experimental diabetes drug called aleglitazar because it was not preventing heart attacks and strokes as the company expected, but was causing side effects that reportedly included heart failure, kidney problems, and an increase in fractures....

A top Obama campaign bundler living in Shanghai, China, is an international businessman with ties to the Cayman Islands. Robert W. Roche has lived in China and Japan for the past 27 years, although he maintains a residence in Chicago. He has used his extensive connections to raise money for the Obama campaign, and has pledged to raise $500,000 for the Obama campaign this year, an upgrade from the $100,000-200,000 he agreed to raise four years ago. He donated the maximum $50,000 allowable to Obama’s inauguration fund in 2009. Roche’s wife, Ritsuko Hattori-Roche, along with Roche’s business partner Don Yang,...

Most Republicans recall the Doodad Pro controversy from almost exactly four years ago, where Team Obama campaign websites turned off credit card security checks that allowed fraudulent and foreign donations to flow into the campaign. Could that be happening again? According to a new independent report from the Government Accountability Institute and reported by Breitbart, not only is it actually happening again — it’s actually gotten worse. A bundler for Barack Obama has set up a shady website operation to collect donations to the campaign, but it’s based in Shanghai, and the bundler has ties to the Chinese government: In...

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has been soliciting foreigners for donations, an explosive report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) shows. Those foreign donors are allegedly visiting the Obama campaign’s donation solicitation Web pages through a social media website the campaign controls, and through an outside website that serves mostly Internet users from outside the United States. About 20 percent of visitors to the “my.barackobama.com” social media website “originated from foreign locations,” the report found. That Web address is owned and controlled by the Obama re-election campaign. “At no point during the [website's] subscription process is a visitor asked...

-- Obama Campaign Lacks the Industry-Standard Level Of Credit Card Security For Donations, But Uses It For Merchandise Purchases: To purchase Obama campaign merchandise, the campaign requires buyers to enter their credit card CVV security code, but does not require the credit card security code to be entered when making an online campaign donation. By GAI's estimates, the Obama campaign's failure to utilize industry-standard protections potentially costs the campaign millions in extra processing fees.

The Government Accountability Institute released a blockbuster study today on the issue of foreign donations in American politics, and in particular, the Obama campaign. The study determined three key findings: The absence of the industry-standard CVV and unknown use of AVS anti-fraud security for online credit card donations. The presence of a branded, major third-party owned website (Obama.com) redirects its 68% foreign traffic to a campaign donation page. Active foreign solicition using indiscriminate email solicitations and exposure to social media. The branded site, Obama.com, was created in Shanghai, China, by an Obama bundler, but its present registration information is hidden....

In an explosive report set to send shockwaves through official Washington, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections

A newly developed pair of drugs has been shown to be successful in the treatment of the deadly skin cancer melanoma. Designed by Bristol-Myers and Roche, to work in different ways, the drugs vemurafenib and Yervoy have successfully treated late-stage patients who, according to WebMD had precious few options in the past. Dr. James Larkin worked on the trials of both drugs and said this is the first advancement in melanoma treatment since the 1970s. This makes these the first drugs to prolong survival from a type of cancer that claims the lives of more than one in 10 of...