Free Republic

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible David New International Version (NIV) The Ark Brought to Jerusalem 6 David again brought together all the able young men of Israel—thirty thousand. 2 He and all his men went to Baalah[a] in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name,[b] the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio,...

The New York Times has announced that it is scrapping the paid subscription model for its mobile app NYT Now, after it failed to convert a substantial number of mobile users to subscribers. The app, which was previously priced at 7.99 dollars per month, was introduced last year as part of a larger effort at the Times to grow its subscription base by introducing new mobile products, reported TechCrunch. The NYT Now app was particularly aimed at attracting a younger, more digital crowd, by offering news summaries that allowed users to quickly catch up on the top NYT stories while...

Big surprises in Thursday's British election. For weeks, the pre-election polls showed a statistical tie in popular votes between Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party and the Labour opposition led by Ed Miliband. It was universally agreed that neither party could reach a 326-vote majority in the House of Commons. A prominent British political website projected that Conservatives would get 280 seats and Labour 274. But the exit poll, released when voting ended at 10 p.m., projected Conservatives with 316 seats and Labour with only 239. It showed the Scottish Nationalist Party sweeping 58 of Scotland's 59 seats and the...

HAKA (Reuters) - A blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in Bangladesh on Tuesday, the third killing of a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months. Ananta Bijoy Das, a blogger who advocated secularism, was attacked by four masked assailants in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Tuesday morning, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters. Rahamatullah said Das was a 33-year-old banker. He was also editor of science magazine "Jukti", which means "logic", and on the advisory board of "Mukto Mona" (Free Mind), a website propagating rationalism and opposing fundamentalism that...

1) After being accused of racism every time they disagree with the President, Americans will enjoy the change of pace by being accused of sexism every time they disagree with the President. 2) America’s military would be unstoppable because of three little words that Hillary would bring to the White House, “Flying Monkey Legions!” 3) It would be terrible for our first black President to be the worst POTUS of all time and Hillary can take care of that problem. 4) Americans LOVE dynasties! Next it’s Jeb Bush’s turn. Then Chelsea Clinton. THEN Michelle Obama. Then Jenna Bush. Then Malia...

A police chief’s encounter with three teenage boys led to a serious allegation. It began as a warning over trespassing but ended in a physical confrontation.... Surveillance video, released to CBS4 shows three teenage boys with skateboards speaking with Chief.... What it doesn’t show, is what happened in between.... Matthew Carrillo says while ordering them to leave the property Chief Casas choked him, unprovoked. He says when the chief let him go, he recorded the rest of the encounter on his phone. “Once I started taking the video, his tone immediately changed” said Carrillo. Chief Casas appears very calm in...

Hands-free car entry systems, which typically unlock car doors without requiring the pushing of any buttons when owners are close to their vehicles, provide great convenience. Unfortunately, however, people have begun marketing for sale devices that allow criminals to exploit a technological vulnerability in these systems, and crooks have been seen using “mystery devices” to open cars equipped with hands-free car entry systems. Once in a car, crooks can steal whatever is in it, and, while most of the recent issue has been just that, they can also potentially connect a device to the vehicle’s diagnostic port in an effort...

American Eagle Energy became the fourth U.S. energy producer to file for bankruptcy protection in the aftermath of the big drop in crude oil prices. The Colorado-based company that buys and develops oil wells in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and Montana filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday in Denver’s bankruptcy court. American Eagle Energy, which recently missed an interest payment on its debt, listed assets of $222 million and liabilities of $215 million. Shares of American Eagle Energy traded for as much as $7.05 less than a year ago, reflecting the stunningly fast collapse of...

Video only. Something weird abut Apperson, watch his face and body language.

Congress engaged in outright fraud to escape a requirement that everyone on Capitol Hill buy individual health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and the White House played along, says a government watchdog who calls the congressional Obamacare dodge an under-reported scandal. The Obama administration let Congress, which employs thousands of people, classify itself as a small business so that lawmakers and hill employees could keep heavily subsidized, federally funded coverage that would not have been available to them as individuals, Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV on Monday. "This is quite...

Oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays look like they’ve peaked and other shale plays may not be far behind. Oil production from seven major U.S. shale plays is expected to fall by a total of 86,000 barrels a day in June, according to a monthly report from the Energy Information Administration released Monday. The previous report released a month ago also showed a forecast for a fall of 57,000 barrels a day in May. Oil output at the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas is forecast to see the biggest decline, down 47,000 barrels a...

On Monday, Mitch Bates, the Garland police chief, clarified details of this shootout between the gunmen and five of his force’s officers. Bates said that the officer and the security guard who were confronted by the armed gunmen were not in a police car, as was initially believed, but were standing by it when the gunmen drove up to a barricade and got out of their car. In addition, Bates said that the Garland police officer, who has not been identified, shot the gunmen and wounded, rather than killed, both of them. Four SWAT members armed with assault rifles and...

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Social science was never going to save marriage’s male-female infrastructure. What it can do—if the narrative the data reveals isn’t manipulated—is reveal what is really going on.Now that the Supreme Court’s oral arguments are behind us, and the justices have already privately cast their votes about the future (and the history) of marriage, perhaps it’s possible that the social science of marriage, sexuality, and child outcomes can catch its breath. Better yet, perhaps it can operate without the pressure-cooker of politically acceptable narratives. But after three years, and two separate inquisitions by my own university, I’ve come to conclude that...

An event this Friday night could be “the biggest blowout” the local Republican Party will have had in years, if not ever, according to its chairman. That’s because Donald Trump is coming to town. “He’s not just a politician, he’s an icon,” said Jeff Jorgensen.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries doesn’t see oil prices consistently trading at $100 a barrel again in the next decade, a pessimistic assessment that has the group considering the return of production limits to influence the market, according to people familiar with a recent strategy report. The report predicted that oil prices will be about $76 a barrel in 2025 in OPEC’s most optimistic scenario, the people said, a reflection of the cartel’s worries that American competitors will be able to cope with low prices and keep pumping out supplies. It also contemplated situations where crude oil costs...

Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved movies like The Sound of Music. The First Amendment to the Constitution instead was designed to protect the obnoxious, the provocative, the uncouth, and the creepy — on the principle that if the foulmouths can say or express what they wish and the public can put up with it, then everyone else...

Despite the narrative that many have tried to develop over the past two decades, the voting data is clear: moderates, independents, and even Democrats prefer to vote for more conservative Republican presidential candidates. The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut contains a useful database of how various groups voted in presidential elections since 1976. For moderates and independents, it is clear that Ronald Reagan was the only GOP candidate they really liked. The results are stunning. Reagan -- easily the most conservative anti-establishment GOP candidate over this period -- took nearly twice as much of the independent vote as...

A Californian start-up is seeking funding to make a computer that will cost $9 (£6) in its most basic form. Next Thing wants $50,000 to finish development of the credit-card sized Chip computer. The first versions will have a 1Ghz processor, 512MB of Ram and 4GB of onboard storage. The gadget, due to go on general release in early 2016, could become yet another rival to the popular Raspberry Pi barebones computer.