Free Republic

In an earlier column, I looked at the role the abortion issue would play in the 2016 election -- not very much, I concluded -- and promised another column on other cultural issues. Here goes. On anyone's list of cultural issues that have been debated over the last decade, same-sex marriage ranks just behind abortion. And unlike abortion, opinion on same-sex marriage has changed dramatically in recent years. Not long ago, it wasn't a political issue at all. The gifted writers Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch were making an intellectually serious, and interestingly conservative, case for same-sex marriage. But the...

Liberalism is… 1) ….idiots who think the police can keep us safe from criminals without ever accidentally hurting thugs who are resisting them and think the CIA can get information out of terrorists by giving them lattes, fluffing their pillows, and hugging them until they give in. 2) ….encouraging sexually deviant behavior at every turn, teaching young children about fisting and graphic gay sex, laughing at people who encourage modesty, and then demanding that college kids give formal consent before they kiss each other. 3) …a bunch of morons "occupying" a public park for months or blocking traffic who can't...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Charlie Crist visited the White House this morning and plans to attend a holiday party there this evening.... Crist is in town with his wife Carole Crist and they were spotted by former Tampa Bay Times reporter Jennifer Liberto.

A brief rally in the rouble has ended, as an interest rate hike made in the dead of night has failed to restore investor faith in Russia's currency An overnight interest rate hike by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) led to a brief rally in the value of the rouble, but it hasn’t lasted long. Late on Monday the CBR announced that it was increasing its key rate by 6.5 percentage points to 17pc. The emergency move came as a monumental decline in oil prices and continued uncertainty over Ukraine has led the rouble to fall by more than...

Pope Francis has identified what he called “the sins of the media,” narrowing them down to three: “disinformation, slander, and defamation.” Of these, he said, “the most insidious is disinformation,” which he compared to telling half-truths.

Word For The Day, Tuesday December 16, 2014 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". doxing -nDoxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents),[1] alternatively spelled doxxing,[2][3] is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual. [The term dox derives from the slang “dropping dox,” which according to writer Matt Honan was "an old-school revenge tactic that emerged from hacker culture in 1990s." ] la ubicación [oo-bee-kahs-ee-OHN] -nlocation, position La ubicación exacta de la casa es desconocida. The...

1 2

Most everyone in the United States has at some point encountered Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. One short story, “Silver Blaze,” involves a dog that didn’t bark. Spoiler alert: Detective Sherlock Holmes solves the case by realizing a dog didn’t bark because the dog recognized the murderer.Holmes’s legwork is profoundly applicable to disgraced journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s whopper of a Rolling Stone story claiming at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia gang-raped — and punched in celebration — a freshman named Jackie at a party at their frat house on Sept. 28,...

How did this Alabama family handle it when they saw the people who broke into their house and stole their Christmas presents? On Sunday afternoon, Chris Wyatt and other family members were able to recognize the people who’d broken into their house on that Friday from home surveillance video. The burglars were apparently back in the neighborhood trying to ruin Christmas for a few more boys and girls. Once confronted, of course, the suspects had their own story. Chris Wyatt told WBRC TV: “They tried to say that they were lost and we corrected them where they were.” While they...

Less than two weeks after a federal court refused to temporarily block gay marriages from taking place, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intercede... Recent history suggests Bondi's application is headed for rejection. Her request will land on the desk of one of the court's most conservative members — Justice Clarence Thomas, who is responsible for overseeing federal courts in Florida. He could rule on her request for a stay (in which case, the full court could reverse his decision) or he could refer the matter to the entire court.

Democrats are the masters of deceptive persuasion, meaning they will take our attention off something they have really screwed up and put it on something that's not quite so bad. And chief among those masters is he who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. For example, let's look at the bumbling idiot Jonathan Gruber, who has repeatedly said that the key for passing Obamacare was the stupidity of the American people. When Gruber was called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to explain himself, he ducked and weaved questions, to the point that even Rep. Elijah...

Link only: Bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-16/ruble-snaps-six-day-loss-on-surprise-rate-increase-to-17-percent.html

A perfect storm brought into power Barack Obama, a previously little-known Illinois community organizer. He had at best a mediocre record as a state legislator and rookie senator. Yet he quickly dazzled the liberal establishment. Joe Biden and Harry Reid were wowed by his sounding and behaving like a white liberal, while retaining the ability to turn on his supposedly authentic black persona when needed. That he had no record of achievement was seen as an advantageous clean slate. Teleprompted glibness was preferred to ad hoc repartee, as if an entire presidency could be scripted and Photoshopped with backdrops of...

In a review of Michael S. Rose's book entitled, "Goodbye, Good Men," Rev. Robert J. Johansen noted that, "There is too much evidence of the abuse of authority in certain dioceses and seminaries to dismiss Rose’s claims as baseless. It is still the case, even in a seminary with a reputation for orthodoxy such as St. Charles, that seminarians would not openly admit to members of the formation committee that they attended a licit (under the Ecclesia Dei indult) Tridentine liturgy for fear of being branded a “reactionary” and hounded out. I know many priests and seminarians who were subjected...

Click on link.

Formerly the "Fans of Quinn and Rose Discussion" thread, our group been meeting here since 2008. We still hold out hope that our favorite talk show hosts will come back on the air but, whether they do or not, our friendly group will still meet to start the day. So if you are preparing to go to work, are getting home from work - or happily retired - stop in and say mornin' and share the latest news, discuss the weather, share a recipe, or whatever!

'I regret to say I am a terrorist': Wife of cafe gunman praised Bali bombings and 9/11 in online rant as row rages about why the accused murderer is free on bail •Amirah Droudis, 35, posted series of videos in 2009 •In the videos, she described herself as a terrorist and expressed happiness at the 9/11 attack and Bali bombings •The videos linked to a website of siege gunman Man Haron Monis •Droudis charged with murdering Monis' first wife, and Monis was charged with being an acessory •Outrage has spread that both Droudis and Monis were released on bail •Police...

Police have arrested a group of men who they allege sexually assaulted a South Florida teen and forced her to have sex with at least 16 men. ....on Dec. 4 the 16-year-old victim left school and willingly got into a car, but it is unknown if she knew any of the people in the vehicle. According to the arrest report, the high school student was taken throughout Northwest Miami-Dade and drugged with powdered cocaine, crack cocaine and molly pills, laced marijuana cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol. She was then forced into prostitution and given a financial quota of over $1,200. "The...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A top Pakistani official says that 84 students have been killed in a Taliban attack on a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Pervez Khattak, the chief minister of the province where the attack is underway, says that roughly the same number of students have been wounded. According to Khattak, the 84 killed in the Tuesday attack were all "children" but hospital officials earlier said at least one of the fatalities was a teacher and one security official were also among the dead. Khattak says the fighting is still unfolding at the school.