Free Republic

On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus' birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods - these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 become associated with Jesus' birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus' nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when the hear the news of Jesus' birth (Luke 2:8)...

What happens when all those milk and cookies catch up with Santa on his big night? He gets busted like never before… Should've used Poo~Pourri, Kringle!

With the hostage situation resolved — hopefully with no innocent lives lost (reports just coming in) — and the release of the name of the hostage taker, Iranian-born Islamic cleric Man Monis aka Shiekh Haron, this seems to be yet another case of what I termed here at PJ Media several weeks ago as “Known Wolf Syndrome.”In that article, following two separate terror attacks in Canada in which the suspects were already well-known to authorities, I noted that in the U.S. too, in many of the domestic terrorism cases the culprits have already been identified to law enforcement as...

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2014 is the Year of the Liberal Lie By Kyle Smith Bowe Bergdahl. The IRS’s missing e-mails. Lena Dunham. “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Jonathan Gruber. GM and that faulty ignition switch. Andrew Cuomo and that anti-corruption commission. The Secret Service and that White House intruder. Rachel Noerdlinger and her “disabled” son. Rolling Stone and gang rape. 2014 was the year when truth was optional. 2014 was the year when convenient fabrication was the weapon of choice for celebrities, activists, big business and politicians. 2014 was the Year of the Lie. In each case, the liars used their powerful positions to...

We have heard over and over again that America is still the world’s fountain of innovation, the home of fracking and Facebook. The two “F’s” of American innovation are about to become one: The collapse of oil prices portends a collapse of the shale boom. High-yield energy bond yields have soared from 5% to 12% in the past few months, and investors are fighting to get to the door. Most unconventional oil and gas projects are unprofitable at $60 a barrel, and that’s where oil will trade for the next year or two.Facebook is a clever gimmick, but it...

One of the reasons our friend Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) gets under the skin of his Republican colleagues is that, unlike them, he actually votes the way he talks. If he’s against some policy of President Obama’s, like say an unconstitutional attempt to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, he votes NO and does all he can to stop it. This annoys his hypocritical Senate Republican colleagues who prefer to campaign like conservatives at home while voting with President Obama when they are in Washington. After 20 Republicans opposed Cruz’s point of order declaring the “CRomnibus” to be unconstitutional...

Yesterday a friend and I were talking about some of the weird, perplexing things in the Bible, swapping quotes and links to try to make sense of a strange passage. I decided I’d throw it out there today and see what others thought.Genesis 9:18-27 describes how after Noah lands the ark and makes a covenant with God he plants an orchard, invents wine, and gets drunk. Then his son Ham “saw the nakedness of his father” and told his brothers, who then covered their eyes so they didn’t see him, but went in and covered him. Afterwards Noah curses Ham’s...

Upon closer inspection, you would find that this is no random collection of bones, but rather is a deliberately constructed roadway delineated by the towering rib bones (some in excess of five metres high and weighing 300 kg), and dotted with huge whale skulls and large square pits dug into the permafrost. It would be a perplexing sight indeed.

In Washington State, gun control activists are already vowing that the recently-passed anti-gun Initiative 594 is just their first step toward dismantling gun rights. In fact, they are promising to dump more anti-gun bills at the legislative session next month.

Of course, back home in the Blue America’s capital, New York City, President De Blasio was less charitable. “We are no longer held back by the reactionary, racist policies of the past,” he thundered. “Together, we will build a new dawn of progress that places people before profits and promotes peace instead of perpetual war!” Blue America – New England and the mid-Atlantic seaboard, back through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the West Coast and Hawaii, immediately set to drafting a new constitution. It featured 216 new affirmative rights, including “the right to a living wage,” “the right to abortion upon...

Campuses are becoming the haunts of the very wealthy and the poor, with little regard for any in-between — sort of like California.Let me explain. Lately lots of strange things have been in the news about college campuses — from the Rolling Stone’s mythography [1] of the University of Virginia fraternities to Lena Dunham’s invented charges [2] of rape against a supposed Oberlin College Republican to courses on “white privilege” to “hands up; don’t shoot” demonstrations protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown.Tuition and DebtBut there are lots of campus topics that garner little publicity. Take tuition costs. Aggregate...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is still using a strict present-tense “not running” as her answer to questions about her possible presidential ambitions. But that seems increasingly likely to change given the overwhelmingly positive (and generally overwhelming) coverage of her bid to harass the White House and Senate leaders over Wall Street carve outs stuffed in a fiscal-cliff spending bill. The Daily Beast called her the “most powerful Democrat in America.” The WaPo warned Warren’s moves may force 2016 frontrunner Hillary Clinton to alter her plans. And Warren got star treatment all up and down the major media corridor. Most remarkable...

Featured Term selected at random:KEYS The emblem of Christ's conferral of spiritual power on St. Peter: "I will give unto you, the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 16, 19). This distinctive power in the Church given to Peter is expressed by the two crossed keys, the first emblem to have been assigned to any saint, at the same time as the sword came to represent St. Paul. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

No one should take their health care interactions for granted any longer. Be careful what you say, who hears you say it, and what they write down. Not too far in the future, we will look back on the concept of medical trust and the sanctity of the exam room as a quaint anachronism. Your best long-term bet is to stay as healthy as you can and as far away from the medical care industry as you possibly can.

In light of the KNOWN Jihadist in Australia taking hostages and using a gun (guns are banned there) causing innocent people to be killed and wounded, we need a list of known Jihadists to be immediately set up and accessible to the public (including gun owners) just like the list of sex offenders. The American people have a right to know who all of these evil people are and where they live just like the right we have to know all of the sex offenders are and where they live. It is time to out all of these bastards so...

Yes, we know the 2008 presidential election is years in the past and will not come around again. The question is, does Sen. Ted Cruz know this? The question arises because the junior senator from Texas, in hot pursuit of the presidency, has chosen a trail blazed by Barack Obama six years ago. Obama was in the midst of his first Senate term when he barged into a field that featured Hillary Clinton, then a second-term senator from New York, and several other seasoned veterans of national politics. The word was audacity, and it was right there in the title...

Sub-Headlines: CPI no longer measures the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. CPI no longer measures full inflation for out-of-pocket expenditures. With the misused cover of academic theory, politicians forced significant underreporting of official inflation, so as to cut annual cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc. Politicians look to expand further the concept of artificially-suppressed cost-of-living adjustments in current budget-deficit negotiations [in 2013], through the use of the Chained-CPI (see Special C-CPI Supplement at end of this document). Use of the CPI to adjust retirement benefits, private income or to set investment goals impairs the ability of retirees,...

Following her much-publicized opposition to the omnibus spending bill last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to dampen any talk about her running for president in 2016 and challenging presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep Monday morning, Warren said on three separate occasions she will not be running to occupy the White House in 2016. Rather, the newest member of Senate leadership said her focus is fighting for “hard working families who just want a fighting chance.” “Would you tell these independent groups, ‘Give it up!,’ you’re just never going to run,” asked NPR’s Inskeep....

Vice President Joe Biden demonstrated that he is slipping deeper into senility this week when he gave a speech swearing that he once violently ambushed an unsuspecting kid who allegedly kicked his sister off of her bicycle. The tale told by Biden bore a remarkable resemblance to a scene in “The Godfather,” in which Sonny Corleone pummels Carlo Rizzi for abusing Corleone’s pregnant sister, Connie.