Free Republic

I'm warning you right now, if you read the full text of the article I'm about to give you the scoop on, you WILL BE DUMBER for it. I know I am, and I feel like all of you clever and competent readers deserve to save yourselves. So if you continue to read this post or worse yet - the article that it's about - don't say I didn't warn you. I'm serious. Now's your chance to bail. Still with me? Ok. Then just sit back, and behold the twisted, psychotic, completely mental freakshow that is the radical feminist mind....

Celibacy in the First Two Centuriesby Fr. Michael E. Giesler It is a fact that virginity and continence (restraint from sexual activity) were highly regarded in ancient times. Many non-Christian peoples valued these practices for their ascetical example as well as for their religious significance.1 Hebrew priests were asked to abstain from intercourse in order to prepare themselves for certain rituals, the Roman vestal virgins were considered sacred guardians of the city, and many tribal religions considered sexual abstinence, at least for a time, as a way to win favor from God. Closer to the time of Christ, a religious...

Terror in Sydney As Gunman Takes At Least 13 Hostages At Lindt Cafe, forces crying women to hold black Islamic flag against the window and 'demands to speak to Tony Abbott' By EMILY CRANE and SARAH DEAN and LOUISE CHEER and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and CANDACE SUTTON 14 December 2014 | UPDATED: 21:56 EST, 14 December 2014 Witnesses described how a man wearing a headband covered in Arabic walked into the Lindt cafe in Martin Place and produced a shotgun from a blue bag at around 9.45am. Shortly afterwards hostages were seen with their hands pressed against the windows holding up...

WASHINGTON -- One person was killed in a crash involving a stolen ambulance in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Sunday. Mark Brady, a spokesman with the Prince George's County Fire Department, says that an ambulance from the Branchville Volunteer Fire Station was coming back after dropping a patient off at a hospital in Montgomery County when they saw a vehicle run off the Capital Beltway near Interstate 95 at about 5:30 p.m. When they stopped to help, Brady says, the driver of the vehicle attacked two of the ambulance crew, kicked them out and stole the ambulance. The thief drove the ambulance...

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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has banned two American lawmakers from his country after they helped push through legislation last week to ban Venezuelan officials from the United States. “Just like they [U.S. officials] have their lists, we can make our own lists in Latin America of those who shouldn’t enter our country,” Ortega told Costa Rica’s Tico Times. Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen laughed off Ortega’s ban, The Miami Herald reported. …

And who hasn't seen Jeb Bush over the last few months speaking to the media on either his views on current events or a possible run for President? He just comes off as rather dull. And a candidate's charisma/personality is generally the first aspect we look for in choosing a candidate. Jeb Bush would be the Vanilla Candidate if he chooses to run. We have not had a very entertaining President since Bill Clinton. And we also have not had anyone that would compare to Reagan as well.This time around we definitely have several candidates with intriguing personalities and would...

Conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP), co-founded by principals of Koch Industries, sued in federal court to prevent ultra-liberal California Attorney General Kamala Harris from using her office to disclose the names and addresses of their 90,000 donors. Harris may have a problem with AFP being a major force behind the Tea Party movement and its support of free markets, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and limited government spending and regulation. As a federally registered 501(c)(4), not-for-profit educational organization, Americans for Prosperity is allowed under federal law to raise and spend money educating the public regarding issues associated with political campaigns...

The Affordable Care Act is spelling the demise of free healthcare clinics across the country, The Wall Street Journal reports. Of clinics across 28 states, almost a dozen in the past two years have cited Obamacare as their reason for shutting their doors. Both The Good Samaritan Free Clinic in Rock Island, Illinois, and the Ninth Street Ministries Free Medical Clinic in Polk County, Arkansas, shut their doors this year saying their missions were complete. Now that most of their former clients have medical insurance, many through expanded Medicaid, they are no longer needed, they say. …

Their sons -- Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner -- have become symbols of a raging national conversation about police brutality and racial injustice. The mothers of these four unarmed black men and boys felled by bullets or excessive police force have no doubt their sons would still be alive if they were white. No question, they say. "I think absolutely my son's race and the color of his skin had a lot to do with why he was shot and killed," Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday. "In all of these cases,...

Last week’s furore over the US senate’s report into the CIA’s torture of detainees was a reminder that since 9/11, America’s decision-makers have been a little like Darren Wilson, the Missouri policeman who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August. By his own account, Mr Wilson had been mortally afraid. Brown, he said, “looked like a demon”, and he feared the young man might punch him to death. In his own mind therefore, he had acted in self-defence when he shot Brown dead. The 2001 terror attacks left US leaders making decisions in a climate of...

The New York City Police are asking Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty.This comes after the Democratic mayor smeared the police after the Eric Garner grand jury decision. The New York Post reported: Not over their dead bodies. ​ Cops are warning Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa ​Mark-​Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be ​killed in the line of duty.The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — At the start of every month, the same image of a pistol points from the same place on the front page of the New Pittsburgh Courier, above the same caption: Under Attack By Us! The only thing that changes is the number of the dead. “75 of 91 homicides Black lives,” read a recent headline in the renowned Black newspaper’s crusade against Black-on-Black violence. It was accompanied, as always, by a literal body count: The name, race and manner of death for every homicide in Pittsburgh in 2014 — with victims being overwhelmingly Black, as the headline...

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A last-minute deal that salvaged U.N. climate talks from collapse early Sunday sends a signal the rich-poor divide that long held up progress can be overcome with a year to go before a landmark pact is supposed to be adopted in Paris.

Chippewa Falls, WI — Dashcam video has been released that shows the disturbing last moments of a man’s life as he’s detained by a Chippewa Falls police officer on the way to the hospital. 29-year-old Casey Kressin died after suffering a severe asthma attack when the vehicle that was rushing him to the hospital was pulled over by a Chippewa Falls police officer. After they were stopped, Kressin’s girlfriend immediately starts to beg the officer to take him to the hospital. The officer instead calls for an ambulance. The couple was just 3 miles from the hospital when they were...

Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) is shelving a proposed pipeline that would have transported crude from North Dakota to Oklahoma, the company announced on Friday. The news came in the midst of a brutal slide in global oil prices that have raised concerns about whether U.S. companies will continue to build on the expansion of oil production. Middle East oil producers have yet to announce a cut in production to offset the drop in crude, in what some analysts say is a slow-bleed strategy designed to make pumping crude as uneconomic as possible for the world's fastest growing non-OPEC oil producer....

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices sank more than two percent to 5 1/2-year lows early on Monday on concerns about a supply glut and slower global growth, feeding fears for energy and commodities producers and exporters. Investors were nervous after U.S. shares posted their biggest weekly fall in 2 1/2-years last week on losses led by energy sector, and as they expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to hint this week it is getting closer to raising interest rates. U.S. crude futures fell more than 2.5 percent at one point to as low as $56.25 per barrel (CLc1) in quiet early...

[I had originally posted this as a comment to an news article about an absurd "Hand Up, Don't Shoot" protest at my alma mater, East Carolina University, covered by WITN. The good little progressive censors at WITN didn't appreciate my polite if forceful views, and deleted it. It's replicated here for my edification.] Black lives don’t matter. If they did, people would be rioting to burn down Planned Parenthood locations, which have been intentionally located in minority neighborhoods since the group’s racist founder Margaret Sanger decided that it was the easiest way to exterminate them. In 1922 she said: “We...

It’s a question that will prove crucial next year when Mitch McConnell takes the reins of a new Senate: Just how big is the Ted Cruz caucus? Three votes on the “cromnibus” late Saturday night suggest it could be as large as 22 senators — a dangerously high number for McConnell — or as few as a handful. Let’s break down the three votes — on filibustering the $1.1 trillion package, on Cruz’s point of order aimed at targeting the president’s immigration action, and final passage. The high-water mark for the Texas Republican came on his point of order vote,...

I have been assured, over and over again, sometimes condescendingly and sometimes not, that the Kasper Proposal is a dead letter. First it was Cardinal Muller's letter in L'Osservatore Romano. Then it was some random papal comment affirming marital indissolubility (which ignored the fact Cardinal Kasper swearsies he's all about keeping marriages intact). Then, most recently, it was the supposed door-slamming vote at the end of the Synod, which asserted that the matter was--this time for sure, how could you ever doubt it?--done. Over. Locked into a safe, wrapped in chains and dumped square in into Challenger Deep, where it...