Free Republic

August 2, 2017 Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Ex 34:29-35As Moses came down from Mount Sinaiwith the two tablets of the commandments in his hands,he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiantwhile he conversed with the LORD.When Aaron, then, and the other children of Israel saw Mosesand noticed how radiant the skin of his face had become,they were afraid to come near him.Only after Moses called to them did Aaronand all the rulers of the community come back to him.Moses then spoke to them.Later on, all the children of...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday met with a delegation of Hamas officials in his offices in Ramallah, Yediot Aharonot reported. Heading the Hamas delegation was former minister Nasser al-Din al-Shaer, the report said. The rare meeting dealt with inter-Palestinian reconciliation efforts. Hamas officials also congratulated Abbas on his handling of the Temple Mount crisis. The meeting is surprising given the longstanding feud between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah, which began in 2007, when Hamas violently took control of Gaza in a bloody coup. …

Southern Methodist University officials on Tuesday revised a policy that aimed to protect students from "harmful or triggering" messages after a dispute erupted over an annual 9/11 installation that students had planned for the heart of campus. Nearly 3,000 flags have been placed on Southern Methodist University's Dallas Hall Lawn every year since 2010, but the group responsible for the display, Young Americans for Freedom, was recently told it must be moved. University officials told Grant Wolf, who leads SMU's Young Americans chapter, that the display can be placed only on Morrison-McGinnis Park, a less prominent campus location informally known...

“Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it. Only then will you prosper in your undertakings and only then will you be successful.” Joshua 1:8 (The Israel Bible™) The Trump Cabinet’s weekly Bible study meetings, composed of the most influential lawmakers in the country, may be the first such gathering in 100 years, Ralph Drollinger, founder of Capitol Ministries and leader of the study sessions, told Breaking Christian News (BCN), bringing the Bible back to the White House in...

Boeing Co. is offering voluntary buyouts to some workers on the flight line at its 787 Dreamliner campus in North Charleston, but the aerospace giant says it's too early to say whether more layoffs are in the offing. Those affected by this latest round of cost-cutting include flight readiness technicians and flight readiness inspectors. The buyout offers represent the first time workers who were eligible to vote for union representation have been asked if they'd like to voluntarily leave the company. Those workers have until Aug. 4 to decide whether to take the buyout offers. "There is still time remaining...

Recording of Hersch stating what happened. This is also up at GP and other sites. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F00FvWP3wUU

“Moshe called Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aharon, and said to them, “Come forward and carry your kinsmen away from the front of the sanctuary to a place outside the camp.” Leviticus 10:4 (The Israel Bible™) For the first time in 2,000 years, a group of Kohanim (men of the Jewish priestly caste) living close to Jerusalem’s Old City are studying the relevant Jewish laws to be able to ascend the Temple Mount and enter the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence is said to dwell.

Aaron Rich, who had reportedly been blocking his family’s private investigator from looking into whether or not his brother Seth was a WikiLeaks source, works for an influential defense contractor that provides cyber security. According to a source close to the Rich family, Aaron works for Northrup Grumman, which was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015. The source did not provide what his specific role is at the company. “It’s not just hacking and defending, there’s a lot more to it,” a cyber software engineer at Northrup Grumman says in a video on the company’s...

HILLSBORO, Ohio - The most gratifying responses I receive via email, telephone and old-fashioned letters are not from readers who agree with me, although those are appreciated. The ones I like most are from readers who do not support President Donald Trump but say I've helped them better understand those who do. "I read your column on the Washington Post's op-ed page today, and I have been yearning to understand some things about support for Trump." "This liberal continues to want to better understand the perspective of the other side, in hope that the gulf in the American political landscape...

Every so often, given the proper conditions, a small and roughly spherical piece of the atmosphere around us will briefly catch fire. As they are best viewed late into the night and have no obvious natural explanation, it’s perhaps no wonder they’ve inspired a rich mythology. Names for balls of fire include ignis fatuus, will-o’-the-wisp, ghost lights, and ball lightning. They’ve been said to hover above graves, dance along the banks of rivers, signal the imminent arrival of an earthquake, and stalk the aisles of airplanes. Even today, we don’t have a crystal-clear understanding of how they form and do...

DULUTH, Minn.—Northern Minnesota's crop of wild rice appears to be in good shape as the annual harvest season approaches. That was the report Tuesday from Ducks Unlimited, the wetland conservation group that monitors and manages wild-rice stands for waterfowl habitat. Wild rice requires optimal water conditions: Too much rain and deep water floods the crop; not enough rain and shallow waters can dry rice plants out. This year, barring any big windstorms between now and the harvest season, the crop looks good across much of region, said Rod Ustipak, Ducks Unlimited’s wild-rice lake management coordinator. A few areas of far...

Startup Day Across America Panel – with Congressman Jared Polis This event was held on August 1 at the “Rayback Collective” in Boulder Colorado. About 40 people attended in person and an unknown number followed the discussion over streaming video. The event format was a six person panel of local entrepreneurs who have started small businesses. The “Collective” is a restaurant-bar located on the site of the former “Rayback Plumbing and Heating Company”. It is a very large industrial space with enough remodeling to be a pleasant hangout for local residents. One of the owners remarked “You would not believe...

A British government program designed to discourage religious extremism could affect Christians, the Catholic bishop of Shrewsbury warns. “Britons now regard the claims of Christianity and even the person of Jesus Christ as representing extremism,” says Bishop Mark Davies. He cautions that Christianity itself “might become a focus of the government’s counter-extremism agenda.” Citing polls that show a large minority of the country’s population look upon Christian faith as a form of extremism, Bishop Davies called for careful reflection on what extremism really means. He said: There is a destructive extremism we ought to fear, one which seeks not only...

Bill Shine, former co-president of Fox News, is in talks with the White House about a post in President Donald Trump’s communications team, according to the New York Times. Shine, 54, resigned from Fox News in May amidst pressure when he was named in sexual harassment lawsuits related to founder Roger Ailes. Trump fired his communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, July 31, after 10 days on the job. Scaramucci and Shine know each other from Scaramucci’s days as a Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network host. Press secretary Sean Spicer left the White House communications corps last month. An email...

Hackers have figured out how to turn an Amazon Echo into a live microphone. First reported by Wired, the attack requires physical access to the device, is limited to pre-2017 Echoes, and would be difficult to deploy at scale. But when successful, it would allow hackers to pull a live feed of all audio within range of the device, even if the wake word hasn’t been said. The method could also allow hackers to remotely retrieve authentication tokens and other sensitive data from the device. Researcher Mark Barnes laid out the attack in a blog post earlier today. In simple...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force, which has been looking for ways to lower the cost of new planes for Air Force One, is talking to Boeing about buying two jumbo jets that were ordered but never delivered to a now-defunct Russian airline. The Air Force and Boeing confirmed Tuesday that they are working on a deal involving Boeing 747s but declined to disclose further details.

Astronomers thought that all Type Ia supernovas shine with the same brightness, making them incredibly useful cosmic yardsticks. But uncertainty over what causes these explosions has led researchers to reconsider their assumptions. The Type Ia supernova 1994D glows in the lower left of this Hubble Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4526. (photo at link) Of all the mysteries in astrophysics, supernova explosions may seem to be the best-understood, at least to a lay person. A star runs out of fuel and goes boom. But most of what we know is based on guesswork. My recent article on...

Ivanka and Melania Trump might've been the final nail in the coffin for Anthony Scaramucci. The first lady and presidential adviser were reportedly disgusted and offended by the former White House communications director's language that was featured in the New Yorker. During the New Yorker interview, Scaramucci called former Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus a "paranoid schizophrenic." And when comparing himself to Steve Bannon, the former Wall Street financier said he was nothing like Bannon because, quote, "I'm not trying to suck my own ****." Two sources close to President Trump told NBC News that Ivanka and Melania were...

Greg Andres is the 16th lawyer to be added to Mueller’s team. He worked under Eric ‘Fast N’ Furious’ Holder from 2010 to 2012. Via Reuters: A former U.S. Justice Department official has become the latest lawyer to join special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a spokesman for the team confirmed. Greg Andres started on Tuesday, becoming the 16th lawyer on the team, said Josh Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel. Most recently a white-collar criminal defense lawyer with New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, Andres, 50, served at the...

There’s one thing you gotta give Hollywood actors: they don’t give up, especially when they’re peddling their “agree with me or else” rhetoric. Actor Mark Ruffalo caught up with TMZ over the weekend outside an airport terminal, and the perpetually sleepy thespian couldn’t resist — see what I did there? — to continue to be outspokenly critical of the Trump administration. Ruffalo’s main focus on this occasion was former White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus. For some reason, since Ruffalo and Preibus are both from the same hometown of Kenosha, Wis., Ruffalo believes that despite Preibus being a Republican, he might...