Free Republic

The plentiful field of Republican presidential hopefuls may be both a blessing and a curse, according to conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats, who appeared Monday on "America’s Forum" with pollster John Zogby to discuss the weekend’s Faith and Freedom Summit in Iowa and the importance of a candidate doing well in the Hawkeye State. "The good news is a great field and a lot of full-spectrum conservatives," said Vander Plaats on Newsmax TV. "The bad news is it's a great field, which means it's going to divide our vote. If we have that kind of splintering, can we really unite...

Snip...It was with this trip, for instance, that the CEOs accompanying the Clintons saw their $100,000 donation to the DNC morph from a discreet expectation into the price of admission. With this trip, too, shadowy figures like Gene and Nora Lum, John Huang, Charlie Trie, and Thai citizen Pauline Kanchanalak began to operate in the open. All would later be charged in one scandal or another. In Jakarta, Bill Clinton quickly got down to business. He chided Democrats for their historic “adversarial” relationship with business and Republicans for their “inactive” one. Boasted Clinton, “We have unashamedly been an active partner...

My brother, who lives in Arizona, is finally starting to see the light about arming himself and learning how to use it. Because it's Arizona, there are gun stores every 100 feet. ;-) Question..... What's the best way for him to find out who to patronize? Is there a website that reviews gun shops (for service, quality, knowledgeable staff, etc.)? My current advice is for him to go to a range or gun club that lets new shooters rent different models and has qualified instructors -- and also to ask lots of questions. Thanks friends.

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson denounced the "epidemic of murders in the country." "We have become too violent, too full of hate," Jackson told reporters before the service. "We need training, employment, housing, access to health, a reconstruction project. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction." Tensions have been on the rise in Baltimore since Gray's death, which his family's lawyers say was caused when his spine was mostly severed following his arrest. Six officers have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of a police investigation that is to be submitted to state prosecutors by Friday. The US Justice...

Bumble Bee Foods and two employees were charged Monday with violating safety regulations in the death of a California worker who was cooked in an industrial oven with tons of tuna, prosecutors said.

Apple Watch Sport edition costs $349 and has an Ion-X glass screen. 'Durable' screen shattered when the watch's face hit the ground first Screen damage is not covered for free repairs in the Apple Watch warranty. It has been described as a durable and scratch resistant smartwatch and is a considerable investment, costing from $349. But the Apple Watch Sport model has been to shown to shatter easily after being dropped from a height of just under four feet (1.2 metres). Apple claims its watch, which has an Ion-X glass display, is 'protected by a lightweight aluminosilicate glass that's especially...

With massive violence spreading in Baltimore on Monday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is under fire for a statement she made over the weekend indicating that she ordered the city's police to give people the "space" to destroy property."I've made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech," Rawlings-Blake said in a press conference."It's a very delicate balancing act, because, while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other...

Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland and possible Democratic presidential candidate, is speaking out on the violence in Baltimore. O'Malley's rival, Hillary Clinton, is not. "I'm saddened that the City I love is in such pain this night. All of us share a profound feeling of grief for Freddie Gray & his family," O'Malley said on Twitter. "We must come together as one City to transform this moment of loss & pain into a safer & more just future for all of Baltimore's people."

They gathered for an early celebration of a centennial that may never arrive. Hundreds of parishioners of Our Lady of Peace strolled through Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Sunday clutching pictures of the ancestors who founded this Roman Catholic parish in 1918. They donned bright blue sashes with the names of those Irish and Italian founders: Scudellari, Iacovone, Tauriello, O’Keefe and many more. Young and old feasted on antipasti, pizza, tiramisu, Irish beer and Italian wine. This lovingly maintained Victorian Gothic church—with its colorful painting of Madonna and child, ornate Murano glass chandeliers, pews adorned with golden grape clusters and...

Turns out Ben Afflick(tion) is practically a slave owner, well at least a whole bunch of his relatives were. He also has made an incredible amount of money using his liberal white privilege, so it is only fitting he pay out a good chunk of his 75 Million Dollar($75,000,000) net worth to some of the relatives his Great Great Grandpa enslaved, just saying.

Justin Peters in Brazil: God Does Not Speak to You Today Through Prophecy and Revelation By Julio Severo There was a lot of confusion among some experts on Christian apologetics in Brazil early this year about whether Justin Peters preached or not cessationism when, as a VINACC guest speaker, he taught against prosperity theology preachers by calling them “heretics.” Actually, he wanted also to call believers in supernatural charismatic gifts of “heretics,” but he was hindered from doing so in his VINACC public meetings. He was prevented from teaching his cessationist gospel in VINACC. How did Peters become an...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Naval Base San Diego, California Naval Base San Diego is the largest base of the United States Navy on the west coast of the United States, in San Diego, California. Naval Base San Diego is the principal homeport of the Pacific Fleet, consisting of 60 ships and an additional 50 tenant commands. The base is comprised of 14 piers stretched over 977 acres of land and 326 acres of water. The total on base population is 35,000 military personnel and 7,000 civilians. A thoroughly modern, state-of-the-art naval facility, Naval Base San...

The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are asking lawmakers to put a new tool in their toolbox, so to speak: a parking surcharge that could eventually fund downtown amenities like pedestrian walkways and bike paths. Proposed legislation would allow the Twin Cities to impose a tax on non-metered parking, including stalls in public and private ramps and surface lots, within a defined area of their respective downtowns.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question...

LGBTQ icon Larry Kramer has spent the last 37 years warning of homosexuality's health hazards. He's director of ACT UP whose slogan is: "Silence=Death." Many gay marriage advocates wish Larry would shut his mouth. His message undercuts the image of being "gay and blissful." Folks are uncomfortable adding unsavory elements like this to the conversation. Do you think lawyers who presented arguments to the Supreme Court included the following? "Chief Justice Roberts and esteemed members of the Court, while you will hear our efforts to persuade you to legalize gay marriage today, we must be mindful of serious, elevated health...

Outside of America, Catholics are overwhelmingly liberal -- not conservative, and inside America, Hispanic Catholics are most certainly not conservative in their political views. To suggest otherwise would be ignoring decades of electoral data With Pope Francis’ “green encyclical” due this summer, the Catholic propaganda is out in full force—most notably at “conservative” websites. Some articles ask the question: “Pope Francis, Green Conservative?” There is a debate as to whether or not Pope Francis is Hispanic, but he clearly represents Hispanics—and Hispanic Catholics are dominantly not conservative (same with libertarians—if they were conservative, they would be conservatives, not liberatarians). Thus,...

Law, as a principle, should acts to affirm and support natural liberty, rather than oppose it In previous essays in this series, I have tried to emphasize that genuine constitutional republican government rests upon a foundation of the rule of law, which restrains government to fulfilling only certain, constitutionally-defined roles. Within legitimate governments, these roles are, in turn, defined by the principles of natural law and should serve to reinforce, rather than to undercut or overrule, the natural rights of the citizens. Our American Constitution was designed by our Founders to operate within this system of limits upon the power...

Paleontologists have unearthed a strange new species of dinosaur that is unlike anything they have seen before. The newly described Chilesaurus diegosuarezi was an ostrich-size dinosaur that walked upright like a Tyrannosaurus rex but had the teeth of a more primitive long-necked plant eater. "The interesting thing about this dinosaur is that different parts of it look very similar to unrelated dinosaurs," said Martin Ezcurra, a researcher at the University of Birmingham, England, who helped describe the animal Monday in the journal Nature. "It is like a combination of different dinosaurs in a single species."

<p>Baltimore literally exploded in violent protests last night as a few hundred #BlackLivesMatter goons shut down the city for some time. They managed to pen up 36,000 Baltimore Orioles fans within their stadium at Camden Yards as they rampaged through the streets, duking it out with bystanders. It’s being claimed that they originally meant for the protests to be peaceful… right. But people shouldn’t fret… President Barack Obama partied down at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner just 50 miles away while all hell was breaking loose. They must have been celebrating the chaos.</p>

April 15 was the deadline given to dioceses to return the questionnaire to the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops in preparation for the up-coming Synod. Then, beginning on April 15, Pope Francis dedicated his address in two consecutive general audiences to the complementarity between man and woman. In his speeches, Pope Francis defended the traditional family, and attacked gender ideology, emphasizing that “difference is the solution, it is not the problem.” Those who believed that Pope Francis’ pastoral revolution presaged a doctrinal change in terms of marriage and family heaved a sigh of relief upon hearing his...