Free Republic

The Pope and Dogs in Heaven By Julio Severo Some news services interpreted that Pope Francis reportedly said that dogs also go to Heaven. If he was really misinterpreted, so do these dogs have nothing to do with animals? Is another kind of dog? Should he be interpreted, in his precariously disguisable socialism, that Fidel Castro and his gang also have a chance to the heavenly Paradise? Speaking about Fidel, why has no pope ever condemned communism in his visit to Cuba? If any other world leader visited Cuba without condemning communism, he would be branded in the least...

The Senate on Saturday night approved a sweeping $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund most of the federal government through the next fiscal year, turning back a conservative rebellion against President Obama's immigration policy.

I just received a prescription from my local hospital which required government issued photo ID to pick a controlled substance. This is a 365 day a year photo ID requirement. (Imagine that you vote once every two to four years and as if by magic disenfranchisement becomes a legitimate issue). The Affordable Care Act, e.g., government involvement in health care is not being questioned, nor have there been any issues with the photo ID requirement which states Government Issued ID.... The main point is that there is no problem with Photo ID for voting based on our experience with the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)It's not something you see every day, a horse in a wedding dress standing outside the federal courthouse. "I thought it was laughable and I believe he was going for a ridiculous protest and he certainly got one," says Eddie Outlaw, LGBT advocate. Reverend Edward James of Bertha Chapel Missionary Baptist Church dressed his horse, Charlotte, in a makeshift wedding dress to protest same-sex marriage. "The horse is to show the ridiculous idea of two men getting married," says James. James says after a federal decision was made in November to lift the ban on same-sex marriage in the state,...

December 14, 2014Third Sunday of Advent    Reading 1 Is 61:1-2a, 10-11 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,because the LORD has anointed me;he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,to heal the brokenhearted,to proclaim liberty to the captivesand release to the prisoners,to announce a year of favor from the LORDand a day of vindication by our God. I rejoice heartily in the LORD,in my God is the joy of my soul;for he has clothed me with a robe of salvationand wrapped me in a mantle of justice,like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,like...

Since 2008, the Democratic Party has increasingly become the home of minorities, while the Republican Party draws its support from whites.One of my fondest memories was spending four days in February 1977 as a staffer sitting on the Senate floor, mostly wedged between Gaylord Nelson and Russell Long as the Senate debated a resolution to reform its committee system. They were good friends, lovely people, and great storytellers, and I mostly sat there taking their conversation in, occasionally earning my pay by letting them know what a particular provision of the resolution did or what an amendment would do. At...

Christian bakeries that refuse to make pro-homosexual marriage cakes are persecuted throughout America. They get sued, they get fined, they get death threats, and they lose their businesses. So we at Shoebat.com called some 13 prominent bakers who are either gay or pro-gay and requested that they make a pro-traditional marriage cake with the words “Gay marriage is wrong” placed on the cake. Each one denied us service, and even used deviant insults and obscenities against us. One baker even said that she would make me a cookie with a large phallus on it. We recorded all of this in...

A fisherman stumbled upon a rock carving that appears to show a legendary battle in Quileute mythology... An old petroglyph found by a fisherman in the Calawah River was celebrated with a ceremony by a group of Quileute tribal members before it was moved to the tribal headquarters in La Push. State archaeologists authenticated the carving and think it may date to around or before the mid-1700s... The rock they stumbled upon appears to be a carving that depicts a legendary battle in Quileute mythology, according to tribal and state officials... The rock -- which could weigh up to 1,000...

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE~ DECEMBER 13, 2014 4:00 AM What Exodus: Gods and Kings Gets Right Ridley Scott offers some fresh perspectives without straying unforgivably far from Biblical orthodoxy. By Josh CraddockJoel Edgerton (left) and Christian Bale in Exodus: Gods and KingsBringing familiar Bible stories to the silver screen is a risky enterprise. A director must avoid mere rehash of previous tellings (think Cecil B. DeMille’s opus The Ten Commandments) but without allowing artistic license to veer off into offensive parody. That’s a difficult task when some 3.8 billion people believe the source matter is sacred revelation from God himself. In...

A prehistoric water well hinting at the existence of a thriving Neolithic settlement has been excavated under water at Israel's East Mediterranean coast. The 7,500-year-old water well, currently under five metres of water, was submerged following prehistoric rise in sea level. Maritime archaeologist Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority led the excavation at Kfar Samir site in collaboration with experts at Flinders University in South Australia and University of Haifa in Israel. Archaeologists said that the well which was a source of fresh water for the village dwellers was abandoned as the sea level rose. "Water wells are valuable...

I went down to Al Sharpton March at Freedom Plaza today, which featured the Mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner with a crowd of mostly out of towners that numbered between 8,000 to 10,000 at the height of it all. The march and rally pretty much ended with around 3pm with Sharpton making a very brief appearance and mostly White Leftwingers hijacking the march afterwards as the out of towners headed for their buses. The signage held up by these Leftists radical included environmental messages, the overthrow of the capitalist system. One sign proclaimed that, "Capitalism was the disease...

In layers older than roughly 350,000 years, almost none of the flints are burned. But in every layer after that, many flints show signs of exposure to fire: red or black coloration, cracking, and small round depressions where fragments known as pot lids flaked off from the stone. Wildfires are rare in caves, so the fires that burned the Tabun flints were probably controlled by ancestral humans, according to the authors. The scientists argue that the jump in the frequency of burnt flints represents the time when ancestral humans learned to control fire, either by kindling it or by keeping...

Sen. Kelly Ayotte returned home to New Hampshire Friday, planning to see “The Nutcracker” with her daughter this weekend. But there was an unexpected conflict: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz, along with Utah Sen. Mike Lee, took to the floor Friday night to demand Republicans stop President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration and scuttled a bipartisan agreement to push back votes until Monday, effectively forcing the Senate to return for a rare weekend session and cast a marathon series of procedural votes. Senior Republicans say there’s a problem with Cruz’s strategy: The GOP lacks the votes to stop Obama...

.... Di-Natale provided coverage of the [Osama bin Laden] raid's aftermath, including an exclusive interview with Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped U.S. agents verify Bin Laden's presence, and who remains imprisoned in Pakistan to this day. Di-Natale notably reported from Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound in the aftermath of the US raid, and is known for chiseling out a brick from the compound: Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when I heard about Di-Natale's death, the first thing that popped into my mind was this: Who killed him? It isn't that far-fetched to suspect foul play when a journalist...

Vote on legality of executive action scheduled for 9:00 p.m. EST.

Of all the numerals, "0" -- alone in green on the roulette wheel -- is most significant. Unique in representing absolute nothingness, its role as a placeholder gives our number system its power. It enables the numerals to cycle, acquiring different meanings in different locations (compare 3,000,000 and 30). With the exception of the Mayan system, whose zero glyph never left the Americas, ours is the only one known to have a numeral for zero. Babylonians had a mark for nothingness, say some accounts, but treated it primarily as punctuation. Romans and Egyptians had no such numeral either... Found on...

Mark Levin 25 mins · Levin Surge!If your senators aren't answering their phones tweet them! Let's go! Tell them you want them to vote for the Cruz-Lee constitutional point of order.

Tia and pistols near Yuma, AZ In Alaska, a couple is not content with teen age girls learning how to shoot .22 rifles and pellet guns.   Not that their is anything wrong with that.  Air rifles and .22 rifles are excellent tools for teaching beginners to shoot, and for target practice and hunting small game.   But this course goes further and involves a wider variety of firearms.   From peninsularclarion.com: In addition to safety, the course includes trigger technique, accuracy practice, shooting from a full range of positions, and a chance to gain experience with a variety of guns. Ted...

What the Individual Mandate means for you and your family:: By: Larry Walker II ::Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning in 2014, State governments, insurers, employers, and selected individuals are supposed to share in the responsibility of providing health insurance coverage. The Act’s shared responsibility provision, also known as the individual mandate, requires you and each member of your family to either: Have minimum essential coverage; or An exemption from the responsibility to have minimum essential coverage; or Pay an Excise Tax. You will report minimum essential coverage, claim an exemption therefrom, or make an excise tax payment when...

Smart agricultural practices and an extensive grain-trade network enabled the Romans to thrive in the water-limited environment of the Mediterranean, a new study shows. But the stable food supply brought about by these measures promoted population growth and urbanisation, pushing the Empire closer to the limits of its food resources... Brian Dermody, an environmental scientist from Utrecht University, teamed up with hydrologists from the Netherlands and classicists at Stanford University in the US. The researchers wanted to know how the way Romans managed water for agriculture and traded crops contributed to the longevity of their civilisation. They were also curious...