Free Republic

Feeling trapped and miserable in the gay lifestyle, Joseph Sciambra found freedom in the love of Christ. Now he helps others to find it, too. Visit a street fair in San Francisco’s Castro district and you’re likely to meet Joseph Sciambra, 45, wearing a “Jesus loves you” t-shirt and handing out copies of his book, Swallowed by Satan. It tells the story of how, as a boy growing up in a lax Catholic family in Napa, California, he became addicted to pornography. Sexually confused at age 18, Sciambra made his way to the Castro, a “gay mecca,” and immersed himself...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/citi-economist-says-it-might-be-time-to-abolish-cash

We live in a constitutional republic in which our elected officials are bound by the constraints of the Constitution, which means they don't have a license to do whatever they please, even if they think it would be best for the country. That President Barack Obama so flagrantly violates this enshrined legal principle and much of his Democratic Party supports him in doing so is why so many other people are outraged and, at times, fear for their country. Under past presidents in my lifetime (I was born after FDR), Republican and Democratic, we have not had to live in...

<p>Interesting issue ... and here I'm referring to shotguns which were originally made with a rear pistol grip in place of a buttstock.</p> <p>Under the Gun Control Act, the issue seems simple: they are pistols. Very big pistols, but pistols. Thus they have been treated, and sold in large numbers over quite a few years.</p>

Shares of Angie's List (ANGI) were gaining 9.6% to $6.16 Wednesday after the online local business review company announced CEO William Oesterle will step down and raised its EBITDA guidance.

ISIS camps have now been discovered directly across the U.S. border with Mexico, ISIS operatives have been captured illegally entering the United States, and ISIS is threatening to conduct a massive campaign of terror against U.S. targets, and yet Barack Obama and his underlings continue to insist that “right-wing extremists” are the greatest terror threat that this nation is facing. One recent survey found that 84 percent of all Americans believe that ISIS is a “direct threat to the USA”, but Obama refuses to secure our borders and he is even allowing dozens of American citizens that fought for ISIS...

Smoke billows after a Saudi-led airstrike on the Yemeni capital Sanaa (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File) 'You are not alone,' Bishop Paul Hinder tells faithful who must remain 'invisible' in order to stay safe. The few Christians remaining in war-torn Yemen gather for liturgies and prayer meetings in the basement of a villa in the city of Sanaa where they remain “invisible” in order to stay safe, Bishop Paul Hinder has told Vatican Radio.Bishop Hinder, the apostolic vicar of southern Arabia, said that it is not specifically Christians who are at risk in the conflict, but foreigners who have been...

If either side in the battle over the Proposal 1 sale tax increase on the May 5 ballot is hoping for an unusually low voter turnout they're likely to be disappointed. A poll commissioned by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy shows that the number of Michigan voters aware of and planning to vote on the measure is substantial. “It’s clear that a lot of people are interested in the upcoming election, and very few of those who are interested have made a conscious decision not to participate,” said Mark Grebner, president of Practical Political Consulting, which conducted the poll....

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-16/marco-rubio-tries-to-find-the-middle-ground-on-same-sex-marriage

Mere Orthodoxy’s Matt Anderson explains why “an anti-liberal approach toward dissenting views is part of the DNA of the logic of the current gay rights argument”: Imagine, for a moment, that cultural conservatives are right that the family which begins within the union of a man and a woman is a morally unique institution, irreplacable in its role in society and inimitable in its shape by other voluntary associations of free adults, such as gay unions….Then grant this simple premise: that humans are fundamentally and inescapably truth-telling beings, and that falsehoods require an elaborate and complex support structure if they are to take...

Ted Cruz is raising money for his presidential campaign at a significantly faster rate than Mitt Romney did four years ago, eclipsing the early total raised by the former Massachusetts governor who went on to win the Republican nomination in 2012. The conservative Texas senator, who is seeking to unite the Republicans’ Tea Party wing behind his White House run, raised $4.3m during the final days of March – his first full week after declaring as a candidate for president. Cruz proved particularly popular with small donors, raising more in his first week from contributors giving $200 or less than...

As the security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the Hot Lotto, Eddie Raymond Tipton wasn’t supposed to be playing the lottery at all. That’s why the man in the video was wearing a hat and hood to conceal his identity but still not look out of place during a Midwestern winter. Prosecutors believe that Tipton was the person who bought the ticket, but a man from Texas has also been arrested and charged with fraud. That would also explain why the man tried to win without revealing his identity, but how do you rig the lottery? Hot...

Mona Lee Brock went into the office early that morning, as she always did, when she received a panicked phone call. The telephones in the crisis center were lighting up all over the place, as was common. This particular call was from a farmer’s wife. A day prior, the farmer had spoken to Brock and agreed not to hurt himself, but now his wife couldn’t find him. And she was afraid. Brock asked where the farmer kept his .410 shotgun. It was the height of the ’80s farm crisis, one of the greatest economic turmoils since the Great Depression. Drought...

Dogs are called "man's best friend" - women's, too - and scientists say the bond between people and their pooches may be deeper than you might think. Researchers in Japan said on Thursday oxytocin, a hormone that among other things helps reinforce bonds between parents and their babies, increases in humans and their dogs when they interact, particularly when looking into one another's eyes. They described a series of experiments that suggest that people and their canine companions have mutually developed this instinctual bonding mechanism in the thousands of years since dogs were first domesticated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngElkyQ6Rhs

“What’s a gyrocopter?” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he asked when he learned that one of those ultralight contraptions landed undetected by radar Wednesday on the West Lawn of the Capitol. ... Johnson, speaking briefly to a small group of reporters Thursday, declined to elaborate because “the facts are not in,” but noted that, unlike the movie “Independence Day,” “we don’t have heat shields around our airspace.”

Voiceover by Luke Skywalker? Cameo by gray-haired Han Solo? Another cameo by the black Stormtrooper? Not gonna lie. I plotzed.

Barack Obama paved the way, and now Hillary too has "evolved" on the position of redefining marriage to include two persons of the same sex. "Hillary Clinton supports marriage equality and hopes the Supreme Court will come down on the side of same-sex couples being guaranteed that constitutional right," Adrienne Elrod, a Clinton spokeswoman, said in a statement, CNN reported.  Clinton, like Obama, opposed same-sex "marriage" in 2008, the last time she made a run for the White House. She supported the idea of civil unions instead and did not proclaim her personal support for same-sex "marriage" until she retired as...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's argument that the Second Amendment provides the "ultimate check against government tyranny" is a bit too extreme for potential 2016 rival and fellow Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "Well, we tried that once in South Carolina. I wouldn't go down that road again," Graham said, in an apparent reference to the Civil War. "I think an informed electorate is probably a better check than, you know, guns in the streets." Speaking to a few reporters near the Senate floor Thursday, Graham was answering questions from TPM about the Texas firebrand and presidential candidate's argument made in...

The first major step in what will likely be a long, drawn-out legal process will begin today, April 16. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments from 16 states and a handful of energy companies. The two consolidated cases led by the state of West Virginia and the Ohio-based Murray Energy Corporation seek to prevent EPA from finalizing the already proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP). The two lawsuits contend that EPA cannot legally regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act since –...