Free Republic

There is ample evidence in the New Testament that Peter was first in authority among the apostles. Whenever they were named, Peter headed the list (Matt. 10:1-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:14-16, Acts 1:13); sometimes the apostles were referred to as "Peter and those who were with him" (Luke 9:32). Peter was the one who generally spoke for the apostles (Matt. 18:21, Mark 8:29, Luke 12:41, John 6:68-69), and he figured in many of the most dramatic scenes (Matt. 14:28-32, Matt. 17:24-27, Mark 10:23-28). On Pentecost it was Peter who first preached to the crowds (Acts 2:14-40), and he worked the...

Americans view the recent rioting in Baltimore as criminal behavior, not legitimate protest, and think it will only worsen the criminal justice situation in the city. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% of American Adults consider the mob violence in Baltimore that followed the funeral of a black man who died in police custody to be primarily legitimate outrage. Sixty-three percent (63%) instead characterize it as mostly criminals taking advantage of the situation. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure. By comparison, when rioting flared up in Ferguson, Missouri last August following the shooting of a...

Michael Davey, an Attorney with the Fraternal Order of Police declared, “these officers did nothing wrong” and that charges brought against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray are driven by “the publicity in this case” and “politics” at a press conference on Friday.

Father Paul Nicholson—the Canadian 'missionary priest of the New Evangelization'—has done a lot of unpriestly things, but this tops the list and of course does precisely nothing to minimize the perverse, predatory image of the modern Catholic priest in the eyes of so many scandalized Catholics. One priest savaging another, just moments after his sudden death? Who behaves this way!

The congressman who tried silencing federal law enforcement sources from exposing terrorist camps in Ciudad Juárez is contradicting the U.S. government’s assessment of the famously crime-infested Mexican city by proclaiming that it’s “far safer” than it was years ago. It appears to be a frantic effort on the part of Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who represents El Paso Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives, to counter reports of Islamic terrorists operating in the area and joining forces with the sophisticated drug cartels that have long controlled the region. Judicial Watch broke that story last fall after receiving detailed...

May Day "Black Lives Matter" Protesters Expand Immigration, Labor Marches to Police Brutality, Race After Freddie Gray's Death The annual rallies for immigration and labor rights, on the international workers' day, come just days after Baltimore erupted in riots and, more recently, peaceful protests over the death of Freddie Gray after his arrest.May Day activists who traditionally marched for labor and immigrant rights in U.S. cities on Friday broadened their message this year to lash out against police brutality and the "tech elite," where in Silicon Valley, many are being forced out of high-priced, gentrified neighborhoods. That includes Black Lives...

“We don’t have enough women in either the Navy or the Marine Corps, and we’ve got to do a better job of recruiting and we’ve got to do a better job of retaining those women,” Navy Secretary Raymond Mabus Jr. said on Thursday. He told a gathering at the National Press Club that he’s in the process of changing the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps uniforms—“so that when you look out, you see American sailors and Marines, not particularly female sailors or male sailors…And this is symbolic in terms of not segregating women, of making sure that they are substantively...

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee opposes amendments it would “ordinarily support” to a bill mandating congressional review of an Iran nuclear deal. An AIPAC official confirmed Friday that the group had earlier in the week sent a letter to all Senate offices urging them to “refrain from supporting provisions that could harm” bipartisan support for the bill. Noah Pollak, the director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which backs some of the amendments, posted a copy of the letter on Twitter on Thursday. “We know that senators will offer amendments on a wide range of initiatives, many of which...

The new policy is phrased neutrally, as a ban on donations for anyone formally accused of “discriminatory acts,” but it’s obvious who the target is. Last week they shut down fundraising pages for Sweet Cakes by Melissa and Arlene’s Flowers, two Christian-owned businesses facing discrimination charges for declining to provide services to same-sex weddings, and caught hell for it from conservatives online. With good reason. Until this week, GoFundMe banned fundraising “in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts,” but Sweet Cakes and Arlene’s Flowers weren’t accused of crimes. They were accused of...

A Baltimore police sergeant informed his Eastern District superiors Friday afternoon that officers “are now being challenged on the street.” [Snip] “I have been to five calls today and three of those five calls for service; I have been challenged to a fight. Some of them I blew off but one of them almost got ugly. I don’t want anybody to say that I did not tell them what is going on. This is no intel this is really what’s going on the street. This is my formal notification. It is about to get ugly.”

When Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was in his first year in the Senate, he took to the floor to oppose a bill on a program to manage federal helium that was about to expire and that all sides had agreed on. The bill passed 97-2, with Cruz voting against it. What was striking was that the Federal Helium Reserve is based in Texas. He objected because all the proceeds from the sale of the lighter-than-air gas stored in Amarillo did not go to the U.S. Treasury. Cruz, a candidate for president in 2016, has stuck to ideology ever since, even...

[VIDEO at source] Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer praised Florida Sen Marco Rubio at the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit Friday, saying he is “a very strong candidate.” Ahead of presumed 2016 announcements by Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee, Krauthammer told National Review’s Rich Lowry that Rubio is “the perfect antithesis” to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He said Rubio is the candidate Democrats “fear the most.” “Marco is a very strong candidate,” Krauthammer started. “You can see a route for him, and he’s the perfect antithesis to Hillary. If you ask Democrats who they fear the most, I...

The ZuckerBorg has assimilated yet more humans from academia and industry into its Facebook Artificial-Intelligence Research Team (FART). Facebook claims their work will focus on several aspects of machine learning, with applications to image, speech and natural language understanding. The free global ad platform announced that it had "bolstered" the team eam with some of the world's leading researchers from Microsoft and academia. Among those assimilated is the award-winning Leon Bottou, whose long-term goal "is to understand how to build human-level intelligence". Also on board are Laurens van de Maaten and Anitha Kannan, who will continue their research into deep...

A multi-ethnic, interdenominational delegation from Iraq is expected to visit Washington to plead the case of religious minorities being persecuted by the Islamic State group. But because the visa for an Iraqi nun was denied, there will be no Christian in the group.  Unless the US State Department changes its mind, Dominican Sister Diana Momeka, who has worked among the internally displaced persons in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil since tens of thousands of Christians were forced to take refuge there last summer, will be sitting out the mid-May trip. She was invited to join the delegation, which will be testifying...

At this point, Brian Williams knows he’s dead: He’s simply negotiating the terms of his burial. For a brief moment earlier this week, it looked as though Williams might have found a champion in Andrew Lack, the newly returned chief of NBC News. According to a blind-sourced story in the Daily News, Lack was hoping to reseat his old friend Williams in the network’s anchor chair. But whoever launched that trial balloon—presumably a Williams loyalist—must have been ducking for cover the next day when the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Post sent high-velocity rounds through the Daily News item...

City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby says Freddie Gray received his critical injuries in Baltimore police custody and has charged all six officers involved in his death...“Lt. Rice, Officer Nero and Officer Miller failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest, as no crime had been committed by Mr. Gray,” Mosby said...They found a knife clipped inside his pants packet — the knife was not a switchblade and is lawful under Maryland law, she said.

Build 2015 Engineers from Microsoft's Windows Server team took the stage at the Build developer conference in San Francisco this week to share more details on Nano Server, the upcoming micro-sized version of the OS aimed at cloud deployments. "Nano Server is by far the most important, most significant change we've made in Server since Windows NT," proclaimed Jeffrey Snover, a Microsoft distinguished engineer. We first heard about this new iteration of Redmond's server OS earlier this month, although it's not due to hit general availability until the next version of Windows Server ships sometime in 2016. Taking a page...

Columba Bush, the press-shy wife of presumed presidential candidate Jeb Bush, will make a co-star appearance at a Miami fundraiser for her husband next month. An invitation sent to donors Friday shows that Columba Bush and her husband will appear at the event the evening of May 18. The fundraiser will be held at a youth center in the couple's hometown of Miami, with a minimum entrance fee of $25, a notably modest sum for a Bush fundraiser.

An Arizona State University student tied a chain around her neck today, stripped to her underwear, and protested black oppression. Another student posted a picture he took online, and mentioned that this scene took place at Arizona State, before deleting that particular comment: The scene shows a young lady stipped down to her underwear with a sign that reads, "Am I not human because IM [sic] black?" Next to the young lady claiming to be oppressed, in the corner of the picture, her iPhone is docked in a set of speakers. The scene took take place underneath Arizona State's solar...

Eighty-four percent of campaign contributions made by a group of 614 Harvard faculty, instructors, and researchers between 2011 and the third quarter of 2014 went to federal Democratic campaigns and political action committees, according to a Crimson analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. During the three years, the Harvard affiliates represented in analyzed public filings gave nearly $3 million to federal campaigns and candidates. Each of Harvard’s schools leaned to the left in the contributions made by their affiliates, many by wide margins. Ninety-six percent of donations in the data set from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes...