Free Republic

Six months after the military began an investigation into the disappearance of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his capture by the Taliban, which held him for five years, the results remain under wraps as senior Army officials determine what to do next. Bergdahl was recovered in Afghanistan by U.S. troops in a controversial swap for five Taliban officials on May 31. He had disappeared from his small patrol base on June 30, 2009, under a cloud of suspicion and fear as it became clear he been captured by militants. The Army in June launched a new investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance...

Via WaPo, it’s now officially a mixed-blessings news day for Jeb Bush fans. Two issues here. One: Does Obama enjoy more power to craft policy if Congress is deadlocked between the two parties? Ezra Klein says yes, I say no. Two: How far can Obama go in crafting policy in the name of “prosecutorial discretion”? No one disputes that he can prioritize one illegal immigrant’s deportation case over another’s. If he can do that for one person, why can’t he do it systematically for five million? At what point does “prosecutorial discretion” become unconstitutional legislation by presidential diktat?Judge Arthur Schwab’s...

The link above (not the picture) will take you to this somewhat prophetic song.

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle. Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was...

In Part 1 we saw that Mary is the woman from Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 who is at enmity with the devil. In Part 2, we saw that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant. Now I would like to examine the salutation of Gabriel, which I think provides some of the strongest evidence for the Immaculate Conception and the sinlessness of Mary.The Salutation of Gabriel With this section, I am attempting to synthesize information taken from the following articles: Lk 1:28 and the Immaculate Conception: Linguistic and Exegetical ConsiderationsDialogue on the Exegesis of Lk 1:28 and the...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow greeted last week's release of the so-called Senate torture report with her skewed telling of the tale of Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US and was subjected to years of harsh treatment and interrogation before the CIA concluded he was not a double agent. As you'd expect from the marquee host at America's version of Pravda, Maddow left out a significant and embarrassing detail in her December 9 report -- Well in 1964, Yuri Nosenko finally decided to defect to the United States and that is when things started going horribly wrong because...

Woman Who Was Arrested and Called “Teagbagger” by Deputy Awarded $1.12 Million For Illegal Arrest A federal jury has awarded Nancy Genovese an amount of $1.12 million for her inappropriate prosecution by Suffolk County law enforcement. It was an innocent enough day for Nancy Genovese of Long Island. After visiting a shooting range, the mother of three stopped to take a photo of a decorative helicopter in front of a National Guard base in the Hamptons for use on a website showing support for the troops. She was on public property the entire time. She was charged with trespassing and...

* Trump has kept his spotlight hot and raised smirks by speculating about a White House run, but now he's scheduling speeches in early primary states * 'A lot of people believe I'm having fun with it, and I enjoy the process,' he said during an Economic Club of Washington event, but 'the country's in serious trouble' * He lashed out at potential opponents including Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz * Couldn't come up with a 'single nice thing' to say about Hillary Clinton and insists Sen. Elizabeth Warren will give her serious competition * Trump has flirted with running...

In June, Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on the cover of People magazine for the first time in more than a decade. Real people, not the magazine, talked about what the article might mean for 2016. They talked about whether Clinton was using a walker (she wasn't). They talked about people talking about whether Clinton was using a walker (She still wasn't). What they didn't do was buy the magazine. According to a report from AdWeek on Monday, the June 16 issue of People featuring the former first lady and senator was the magazine's worst selling of 2014 with 503,890 copies...

This is a rush transcript from "The Kelly File," December 15, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Breaking tonight on a day marked by what looks like a lone wolf terror attack overseas and an ongoing debate about how America has waged the war on terror. We tonight get our first chance to interview the man singled out by a controversial Senate report produced by the Democrats alone, and then attacked by some in the media. The man who personally interrogated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks....

Earlier, we reported that various currency brokers such as FXCM and FxPro, would - as a result of the soaring liquidity in the USDRUB pair - suspend trading in the Russian Ruble (while other merely hiked margins to ridiculous levels). It appears things have escalated again, and as FXCM just reported, instead of just politely advising clients not to open new USDRUB position tomorrow, it has advised anyone long, or short, the USDRUB that their positions will be forcibly shut in moments. So for those curious why there appears to be a collapse in Ruble volatility in the past...

I have seen a video of PM Netanyahu lighting the first Hannukah candle with a group of IDF unit commanders. VIDEO HERE I have a question: why does he light the first candle and only then, somebody else (Yaalon?) lights the Shamash (servant) candle?

Finally. James O'Keefe interviews the gentleman that exposed Gruber and happens upon the true reason for ObamaCare. I've been thinking this for over a year. ObamaCare is nothing more than turning back the the provision of healthcare coverage paid for by employers that was brought about by FDR's wage & price controls implemented in the 1940s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_Act_of_1942 There you have it. It's just about the money coming out of your pocket.

Most Americans don’t watch C-SPAN and I cannot blame them. More often than not, it seems as though the Senate is in a quorum call or a lone senator is debating something totally irrelevant to the issues that are important to most Americans. That changed a little bit on Saturday when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee forced the Senate to debate President Obama’s executive amnesty. I’ll save you the boring back-and-forth that occurred in our nation’s capital over the procedural stuff and cut right to the chase: Ted and Mike were attempting to carry out the...

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura filed suit Monday against HarperCollins, the New York publisher of the book that a federal jury in St. Paul said had defamed him. In July Ventura won $1.8 million from the estate of Chris Kyle, the late Navy SEAL who wrote the bestselling memoir “American Sniper,” which included a subchapter about an alleged California bar fight between him and a man he called “Scruff Face” and later identified as Ventura. Ventura, who is also a former member of a SEAL unit, successfully argued that the bar fight and disparaging remarks he made against Navy SEALs attributed...

Explanation: How do stars form? Images of the star forming region W5 like those in the infrared by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite provide clear clues with indications that massive stars near the center of empty cavities are older than stars near the edges. A likely reason for this is that the older stars in the center are actually triggering the formation of the younger edge stars. The triggered star formation occurs when hot outflowing gas compresses cooler gas into knots dense enough to gravitationally contract into stars. In the featured scientifically-colored infrared image, spectacular pillars, left...

Atheism and Orthodoxy in Modern RussiaBy Metropolitan Hilarion AlfeyevMay 2001In this talk I propose to outline the history of atheism in Russia during the last hundred years. I will start by considering the kind of atheism present in Russia before the Revolution. Then I will say something about the development of atheism during the Soviet period. And finally I will conclude with some observations concerning the nature of Russian post-Soviet atheism.

I should like to begin with the following questions. How did it happen that the country known as ‘Holy Russia’, with such a long history of Orthodox Christianity, was in...

Gov. John Kasich’s Obamacare expansion has put 450,941 Ohioans on Medicaid, outpacing his administration’s projections by 24 percent. Instead of tempering leftist support for the expansion, budget-busting enrollment is portrayed as good news for Ohio; Obamacare sticks federal taxpayers with 100 percent of Medicaid expansion benefit costs through 2016. Kasich — who expanded Medicaid over the General Assembly’s express disapproval — told attendees at a Dec. 4 infant mortality summit to march in favor of more Obamacare expansion spending, but critics are encouraging legislative opponents to stand their ground. “Kasich is threatening to organize protests to ensure the state continues...

(Photo: CNS) The III Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops met for several weeks in October 2014 and issued the document, “Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization.” There has been much commentary about the ill-conceived interim report, Relatio post Disceptationem, which implied that homosexuality had inherent positive gifts and that divorced and remarried people who were in a state of perpetual adultery could somehow be accommodated to be able to receive communion. The scandalous nature of these ill-conceived paragraphs created great public confusion. Thankfully, in the final Relatio Synodi, the scandalous language was removed....

Ouch! Russian billionaires have lost more than $50 billion this year due to the country's unfolding economic nightmare. Western sanctions, low oil prices and the falling ruble have wiped billions off the wealth of Russia's 15 richest men, according to data from Bloomberg. The chairman of Russian gas producer Novatek has suffered the biggest losses, seeing his portfolio shrink by an estimated $8.7 billion. That's equivalent to a loss of nearly 50%.