Free Republic

On Friday evening, the Senate's leaders, Mitch McConnell and and Harry Reid thought they had an agreement from their members to let the clock run over the weekend without actually being in session, and vote Monday on the $1.1 trillion spending bill needed to keep the government up and running. But Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah objected to the spending bill. This meant their colleagues in the Senate would have to hold a rare Saturday session to keep the spending bill moving. It also had the unintended benefit of helping the Democrats move forward with...

Although it is not always obvious, most games, particularly shooters, are politically charged. While the first-person games I grew up playing were mainly concerned with emulating the second world war (Medal Of Honour, Call Of Duty), over the past 10 years or so, new theatres of conflict have emerged: the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia. And in games such as Delta Force: Land Warrior, Full Spectrum Warrior, Counterstrike, as well as the modern versions of the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor franchises (which have switched to commonly Arab enemies), the heroes come with guns, grenades and American...

The young woman who introduced Jackie Coakley to journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely used Jackie’s story to push a federal law eroding due process for men on college campuses. Emily Renda, a 2011 sociology major who wrote on Title IX and the campus rape myth for her college thesis, testified before a U.S. senate panel earlier this year. Here’s what she said in June.

Sunday, December 14, 2014 Life in Post-Truth America Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Next month Americans will experience the fifteenth anniversary of the time that the President of the United States shook his finger at the country and informed it, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never.” Bill Clinton was lying. But the lie was more significant than the thing that he was lying about. When the lie came crashing down, Clinton and his defenders deconstructed the English language, questioning the...

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of HatePosted By Ari Lieberman On December 15, 2014 @ 12:09 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments A shockingly, disturbing video has recently surfaced exposing the true and pernicious face of Palestinian extremism and xenophobia. The video, made available by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows a bearded sheikh giving what appears to be an impromptu sermon on the Jews. (After all, what else is there to talk about?) The venue is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by those who practice the “religion of peace” to be their third holiest site after Mecca and...

Philippine government prosecutors charged a U.S. Marine with murder Monday in the killing of a Filipino, saying the suspect acknowledged attacking the victim after he found out she was a transgender. Prosecutor Emilie de los Santos said there was "probable cause" that Marine Pfc. Joseph Scott Pemberton, who has been detained since shortly after the October incident, killed Jennifer Laude, whose former name was Jeffrey, in the motel room where the victim's body was found in Olongapo city, northwest of Manila.

Knox was the leader of the Scottish reformation and the founder of the Scottish Presbyterian church. John Knox had a passion for God’s Word and a passion for Scotland. He was known for his stance against both political and religious tyranny. He did not want to see Scotland come under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church or a French monarch. Instead, he wanted to see it under the dominion of Christ and his Word. His famous prayer was, echoing Hanna’s prayer in the Old Testament, “Oh God, give me Scotland or I die!” Knox distrusted and worked against absolute...

CAMP VANCE, Afghanistan Michael Sullivan was training to join the Special Forces when he and his fellow soldiers had a real-world lesson to talk about in a food court on Fort Bragg. On Sept. 9, 2001, suicide attackers posing as journalists assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, a leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The Green Beret trainees were familiar with the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, Sullivan said. They knew Massoud was seen as a threat to the Taliban regime. Two days later, on Sept. 11, Sullivan - then a captain - was signing for textbooks for his language courses when...

Hillary Wants to be President, She Just Doesn’t Want to RunPosted By Daniel Greenfield On December 15, 2014 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments Ready for Hillary, the campaign before the campaign which has churned out some creepy t-shirts and a terrible country song, is $11 million in debt, and Hillary still isn’t ready.While Hillary was delivering six figure speeches at heavily indebted universities, Ready for Hillary was burning through a giant pile of money trying to stir up Obama level enthusiasm for their uncharismatic candidate by selling fifty dollar champagne glasses emblazoned with a giant H,...

Will, who once taught political philosophy at Michigan State, said he is “still a Spartan who takes equal pleasure from good MSU football seasons and dismal ones in Ann Arbor,” referring to the University of Michigan. Connie Rzemien, whose daughter, Katie, was among those graduating, told The Detroit News she thought Will was not the right choice. “I believe it is contradictory to what they are doing here to have somebody with such an insensitive view of rape to speak today,” she said. “I think it’s insulting to young women.” The U.S. Education Department this year revealed a list of...

The Army has disciplined a military chaplain for making references to the Bible during a suicide-prevention seminar last month.A serviceman brought the Judeo-Christian religious content to the attention of an atheist group, which complained about it. Now, the chaplain is fighting back, maintaining he did nothing wrong. The dispute has renewed a debate over the appropriate role of faith in the military.The chaplain, Capt. Joe Lawhorn, conducted the training session on suicide prevention Nov. 20 at the University of North Georgia. During the session, he shared his personal struggles with depression while an Army Ranger.What upset the atheist group is that...

In 2005, two congregations left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In 2006, three churches departed. But the floodgates have lifted since then as decades-old tensions between liberals and conservatives have reached breaking points. After a 2011 decision allowing gay ordinations, 270 congregations left in 2012 and 2013. And church analysts estimate upwards of another 100 churches may leave by the end of the year as presbyteries vote on a proposal to rewrite the church’s constitution to refer to marriage as being between “two people” instead of the union of “a man and a woman.” In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,...

New York has had firefighters since Dutch colonial days, first in the form of volunteers and then, beginning in 1865, a professional paid force.And in the days of horse-drawn engines and a less-sophisticated alarm system, firehouse dogs played an important role.Often a stray who found his way to the house or an unwanted pup given to the chief, many these canines served their companies heroically, explains 1897 New York Times piece.There was Jack (left), of Hook and Ladder Company 18, on Attorney Street. He’s described as a “large, sober-looking, brown-and-black shaggy full-bred shepherd dog” by the Times.“When the alarm rings,...

Word For The Day, Monday, 12/15/14 ; In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". quale; noun noun, plural qualia [kwah-lee-uh, kwey-] 1: a property (as redness) considered apart from things having the property : universal 2: a property as it is experienced as distinct from any source it might have in a physical object Qualia is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term derives from the Latin adverb quālis (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːlis])...

YORK — A York man was reportedly beaten with an aluminum baseball bat by his girlfriend's son after he told the woman he hadn't washed his hands after going to the bathroom. The 48-year-old man told police he came home to Pinckney Street around 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, and found his girlfriend's 32-year-old son, who also lives at the address, urinating on the side of the house. The older man said nothing until the younger man entered the house and put his unwashed hands into a bowl of turkey salad. At that point, the victim said he became angry...

I just ran across this video. Scott Hahn and Fr. Pacwa discuss Advent and Christmas as Hahn promotes his latest book. A good and informative conversation.

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Sarah New International Version (NIV) 15 God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” 17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at...

Around 1,300 people have been killed in Ukraine's separatist conflict since a September ceasefire, according to a U.N. report that said many living in the country's rebel-held east were struggling to survive. As of Dec. 12, 4,707 combatants and civilians had been killed since pro-Russian rebels seized eastern regions near the border with Russia in April. Of these deaths, 1,357, or nearly 30 percent, were recorded after the Sept. 5 truce, some of which may have occurred prior to that date, the report released on Monday said. While violence has abated in recent days, shelling has repeatedly punctured the truce...

During most times, the oil industry may operate in a dog-eat-dog world. Now it’s also in an ant-and-grasshopper world. You know the story of those two insects–they’re paired together in Aesop’s Fable of the same name. The ant toils hard to save and scrimp for a rainy day, while the grasshopper flits around, enjoying the moment with no thought for tomorrow. Then winter comes and the ant has stores of food to last him for months; the grasshopper dies. It’s hard to think, especially given the lavish times of several months back when Niagaras of oil revenues were pouring into...

I just heard a conversion, on the radio, between the show's host and a doctor concerning flu shots. The host asked, "What do you tell people who won't get a flu shot because they say it makes them sick?" The doctor replied, "Well, after you get the shot, you can't get the flu, but you might FEEL like you have the flu because of the reaction to the shot by your immune system". I don't know, but if I take something that makes me feel like I have the flu, I think I'd be safe in saying what Monica Lewinski's...