Free Republic

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, responded to the new Pew Study survey documenting the decline of Christians and rise of religiously unaffiliated, by calling the "increasing strangeness" of Christianity "good news" for the church. "Christianity isn't normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it's good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline...

Following a Monday court hearing, a Kentucky couple living what they call a “simple, back-to-basics life” in a rural, off-the-grid shack has lost custody, at least temporarily, of their 10 children. Joe and Nicole Naugler — who are expecting an 11th child in October — will remain under investigation by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS), while their kids, ranging in age from 3 months to 15 years old, will stay in the agency’s custody.

After using most of $1 billion in federal start-up money, California's Obamacare exchange is preparing to go on a diet. That financial reality is reflected in Covered California's proposed budget, to be released Wednesday, as well as a reduced forecast calling for 2016 enrollment of fewer than 1.5 million people. A number of factors contributed to the shortfall, but health policy experts said that some uninsured folks still find health insurance unaffordable despite the health law's premium subsidies.

On 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police moved in to arrest four members of a radical black liberation group called Move – but a bungled raid left 11 people dead. Alan Yuhas revisits the only aerial bombing carried out by police on US soil. Sodden from the spray of fire hoses, terrified by the thousands of bullets fired above and the teargas floating into the cellar below, 13-year-old Michael Ward was hiding under a blanket when a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the roof of his west Philadelphia home. The raid killed six adults and five children, destroyed more than...

Jeb Bush's confident affirmative answer this week that he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq "knowing what we know now"? All a misinterpretation, he says. On The Sean Hannity Show Tuesday, the former Florida governor said that he thought the question, asked by Fox News' Megyn Kelly during an interview that aired Monday night, was under the stipulation "given what you knew then." "I don't know what that decision would have been. That's a hypothetical," he said. "The simple fact is mistakes were made." The all-but-official presidential contender took a beating Tuesday from both the Left and Right over...

Dear Senator McCain: As you know better than anyone, the Department of Defense and the U.S. military are at greater risk today perhaps than at any time since September 11th. The principal threat is not al Qaeda, Da'esh or a resurgent China or Russia -- although a good part of the world remains dangerously unstable. Nor is sequestration, despite its irrationality and mindlessness, the mortal danger although it will harm the forces

The Obama administration has worked for years to lure states into accepting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion under the false promise of “flexibility.” Despite its best efforts, 21 states have rejected the expansion. And at least two states that previously expanded Medicaid under Obamacare are looking to turn back the clock and draw down their Medicaid expansions in 2016. The Obama administration is desperate for a national leader like Florida to expand Obamacare, hoping it will set off a chain reaction to convince leaders in other states to fall in line. So, frustrated with its lack of success in convincing conservatives to...

IT starts with a warble, a little like a creature calling out in the jungle. Then it turns to a rumble, like a train approaching from afar, or the sound of someone revving a single-cylinder motorbike in the distance. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Er… no. It’s Merlin, the world’s loudest moggy. With a growl that can drown out the noise of a dishwasher, he has just secured a Guinness World Record for the domestic cat with the highest decibel-rated purr. It officially peaked at an impressive 67.8dB – about the same as the sound of a...

A Misericordia University nursing student has filed a federal lawsuit after failing the same class twice. The course is Functional Health Patterns of Adults IV, which is required for nursing students at Misericordia. Jennifer Burbella took action after she did not pass her final exam, claiming the professor did not help her enough. According to Burbella, during the course of the final exam, she cried “more than once” because she was not being helped by the professor. She was allowed extra time, however, in a “distraction-free environment.” But, according to Burbella, that was not sufficient. During the course of the...

If Eric Voegelin (1901-85) were alive today, I think that he would see the homosexual movement as a form of Gnosticism—a spiritually pathological, magical reconstruction of reality, or of a “second reality.” Voegelin wrote that, “All gnostic movements are involved in the project of abolishing the constitution of being, with its origin in divine, transcendent being…”i Does this seem too extreme a charge to bring against the homosexual movement? As I will attempt to show, this is not about some sexual peccadillo that we can wink at and push off into a corner—it is a lie about humanity itself. Lesbian...

The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000--or 37 percent--since employment in manufacturing peaked in the United States in 1979, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The real median household income of Americans who have completed high school--but have not attained a higher degree--also peaked in the 1970s and has declined since then. In fact, according to the Census Bureau (Tables H-13 and H-14), the real median household income of an American householder who has completed four years of high school peaked in 1973 at $56,395 in constant 2013 dollars. By 2013, it was...

Jeb Bush is taking extreme fire for answering, in response to a question that set the predicate of “knowing what he knows now,” that yes,he would still have gone into Iraq in 2003, as his brother did when president. (Now he says he did not hear the “knowing what I know now” part of the question.) Far be it from me to defend Governor Bush, of whom I have a not-very-high opinion that continues to sink, but on the merits, the case must still be made that the original eviction of Saddam was in many respects a good call. (Okay,...

photo credit: TripAdvisor.com In January of 2012, Megan Fowler of byFaith, the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America, interviewed Pastor Tullian about his then-new book Jesus + Nothing = Everything. Here’s their conversation:In 2009, the Rev. Tullian Tchividjian transitioned from pastor of a church plant in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, a church whose only other pastor had been Dr . D. James Kennedy. The task proved challenging. Not long after his arrival, Tchividjian encountered opposition. After a petition for his removal gathered enough signatures, Tchividjian and the church’s session were forced to...

We recently published a study in Scientific Reports titled Comparing the model-simulated global warming signal to observations using empirical estimates of unforced noise. Our study seemed to generated a lot of interest and we have received many inquires regarding its findings. We were pleased with some of coverage of our study but we were disappointed that some outlets published particularly misleading articles. In our study, we created an alternative statistical estimate of unforced variability that was derived from reconstructed and instrumental surface temperature records corrected for external forced changes. We then used this new estimate of unforced variability to aid...

On May 7, Tom Friedman published an op-ed in the New York Times filled with praise for Germany’s green-power program. “What the Germans have done in converting almost 30 percent of their electric grid to solar and wind energy from near zero in about 15 years has been a great contribution to the stability of our planet and its climate,” gushed Friedman. “ . . . This is a world-saving achievement.” Friedman is not alone in his admiration for the German energy program. President Obama has hailed it too, saying that the world should “look to Berlin” as the model...

The vehicle was carrying men, women and children from the Ismaili Muslim community, said Ahmed Chinoy, chairman of the Citizen Police Liaison Committee in Karachi, Pakistan's largest and most populous city. A violent extremist group that persecutes Pakistan's Shiite Muslim minority claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to carry out more. Ismailism is a Shiite sect. Unlike some other Shiite groups, Ismailis hadn't been heavily targeted by militants in Pakistan previously. "This is the first such incident of its kind towards the Ismaili community," said Zohra Yusuf, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "Nothing on this...

She’s baaaaaaaack. And she’s maaaaaad. First lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address at Tuskegee University last weekend. She’ll do it again next week at Ohio’s Oberlin College — the UC Berkeley of the Midwest, Ground Zero for racial grievance-mongering and fake hate crimes. Commencement FLOTUS is not the same first lady who shows up on Ellen or The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon wearing her pastel cardigan, Chuck Taylors, and a megawatt grin. No, this frowny-faced Michelle Obama talks and squawks like Al Sharpton in Jimmy Choo kitten heels. At Tuskegee, FLOTUS traded her affable TV persona for...

Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported. Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela's Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks. HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that "Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal." Telesur picked up the report last week. The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, "15 of them...

There are millions of low-wage immigrant workers across the United States who make life easier for professionals in various ways. These immigrants prepare and serve meals, clean homes and offices, care for children and aging parents and grandparents, drive passengers to and fro, and, among many other things, clean, trim, and paint nails. Over the past few days, Sarah Maslin Nir’s two-part report in the New York Times on labor conditions in America’s burgeoning manicure industry has attracted a great deal of attention, and for good reason. Nir’s work is a powerful reminder that low-wage immigrant workers aren’t always treated...