Free Republic

Beth Genslinger doesn’t fit the stereotype of a victim of a drug epidemic. She thoughtfully sets out glasses of water for her guests before they arrive and wears a teacher’s warm, open smile: She retired from Valley View Junior High right before her granddaughter was born, after 33 years of teaching. Her husband was an insurance agent and, to his children’s friends, a formidable breakfast chef. Their son, Andy, died of a heroin overdose in October 2015. The same thing happened to his cousin Daniel Weidle less than three months later, the day after Christmas. A third cousin had died...

August 7, 2017 Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Nm 11:4b-15The children of Israel lamented,"Would that we had meat for food!We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt,and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks,the onions, and the garlic.But now we are famished;we see nothing before us but this manna." Manna was like coriander seed and had the color of resin.When they had gone about and gathered it up,the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar,then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves,which tasted...

The actor Robert Hardy, star of TV series All Creatures Great and Small, has died aged 91, his family has said. Hardy, they said, had a "tremendous life" and "a giant career in theatre, television and film spanning more than 70 years". He was also known for numerous portrayals of Winston Churchill. In more recent years, he appeared as Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, in four of the Harry Potter films.

The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut) has commissioned its first attack submarine in over three decades this week. The first out of three ordered Type 209/1400 Chang Bogo-class (a license-built variant of the German Type 209 sub) diesel-electric attack submarine was handed over by South Korean defense contractor Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) on August 2. The new boat was subsequently inducted into the Indonesian Navy in a commission ceremony at the Okpo shipyard shipyard in Geoje Island, in the southeastern part of South Korea attended by senior Indonesian officials including Indonesian Minister of Defense Ryamizard Ryacudu on...

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has been lobbying the Trump administration in an attempt to keep funding that the region stands to lose over its sanctuary city policies. McDonnell has made multiple trips to Washington, D.C. to ask the government not to withhold federal funds, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The Sheriff complained to the outlet that loss of the federal grant funds would “would have a negative impact on public safety in L.A. County and Southern California.” However, instead of working toward cooperation with federal immigration officials that could keep the funding intact, the Sheriff appears...

Scale Model Flight Test Prototypes Sunk in Lake May Provide Clues to Mystery. The Canadian-built CF-105 Avro Arrow is many things in aviation history, but more than anything else, it is an enigma. Aviation historians suggest the Avro Arrow was an aircraft well ahead of its time. A Canadian project from the start, the CF-105 was a large, delta-wing supersonic interceptor built to repel the bomber threat from the Soviet Union. During the 1950s at the height of the Cold War the Avro CF-105 Arrow project showcased many aviation firsts, including the first fly-by-wire flight control system and very impressive...

Officials in College Park are weighing a plan that would make their city the largest in Maryland to give undocumented immigrants a right to vote in local elections, a long-standing practice elsewhere in the state that has drawn new scrutiny amid the simmering national debate over immigration...

This month Iraq signed “a significant contract for a large batch” of Russian T-90 main battle tanks for its armoured forces. The manufacturer of the tank said 73 are going to be delivered to Iraq: which would give Baghdad a large number of formidable tanks to bolster its already sizable fleet of American-made M1 Abrams and T-72s, the T-90's older brother. Michael Knights, an Iraq analyst and the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute, is skeptical at this early stage about whether this deal will actually see the light of day. “The veteran journalist reaction to any Russian arms deal...

Ria – who was born Brad – She was given blockers to stop her going through puberty, followed by injections of female hormones Ria decided to transition back and live her life instead as a gay man. But five years on Ria is more certain than ever that is not the real her – She has paid £5,000 to get her dream 34EE breasts, and will have an op next year for her genital transformation. One of her biggest regrets is taking part in a Channel 4 documentary which revealed her job as a ladyboy called Lola.

Antonio Hickerson Warning shots may galvanize an opponent into the action you are attempting to deter. They may attack you. That is what seems to have happened in situations in Indiana and South Carolina.  From wave3.com in Indiana: “The victim was able to retrieve a handgun that he owned,” Mull said. “He was able to use that handgun to get Mr. Hickerson out of his residence.” The situation didn't end there. The homeowner, who didn’t want to go on camera, told police he fired two warning shots after Hickerson refused to leave. That's when a struggle started as the...

CHICAGO — Walk into Organizing for Action’s new hipster downtown hardwood space here, and there’s no big picture of Barack Obama, just a deep blue wall with a giant “OFA” painted in white. Look down the street from the front door, though, and Chicago’s Trump skyscraper looms directly in the line of sight, a perpetual reminder of the group’s new purpose. Fresh off a huge win for anti-Trump forces in the Obamacare repeal fight, the Democratic activist group is gearing up for its next showdown this fall — battling President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts with the same state- and...

Last week, the American Journal of Human Genetics published a study connecting the DNA of ancient Canaanites to modern-day people in Lebanon. Various news outlets immediately reported that this study proved the Bible wrong, when nothing could be further from the truth. Evolution News' David Klinghoffer compiled a helpful series of headlines: “Study disproves the Bible’s suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out” (The Telegraph) “Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon” (The Independent) “Bronze Age DNA disproves the Bible’s claim that the Canaanites were wiped out: Study says...

Derek Harvey was a man who saw things coming. He had warned of Al Qaeda when most chose to ignore it. He had seen the Sunni insurgency rising when most chose to deny it. The former Army colonel had made his reputation by learning the lay of the land. In Iraq that meant sleeping on mud floors and digging into documents to figure out where the threat was coming from. It was hard to imagine anyone better qualified to serve as President Trump’s top Middle East adviser at the National Security Council than a man who had been on the...

A previously deported illegal alien in Johnston County, North Carolina, is accused of attempting to rape an 89-year-old elderly woman in her home. Jose Campuzano-Ramirez, a 52-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, is being held on bail after being charged with breaking into the woman’s North Carolina home, assaulting, kidnapping, and attempting to rape her, according to the News-Observer. According to police, Ramirez allegedly broke into the 89-year-old’s home and tried to rape her, but eventually fled before authorities responded. K-9s chased Ramirez, catching him and arresting him for the incident. Police arrived at the scene and noticed that the elderly...

* In the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century. * The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was murdered by Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged the priests out by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated.* In France there are laws protecting old trees. But the state is free to flatten old Christian churches. The vacuums...

Internet giant Google has been accused by one of its own employees of “alienating conservatives” with its politically correct left-wing bias. A senior software engineer at the company claimed in a document that was distributed to colleagues that right-wing employees were forced to keep their views “in the closet” to avoid hostility. The unnamed employee’s outburst also triggered a gender row as he suggested “biological causes” and “neuroticism” were responsible for the lack of women in top tech jobs. His arguments that men have a higher drive for status and women are “more prone to anxiety” triggered an angry backlash...

China’s debt surpasses 300 percent of GDP, IIF says, raising doubts over Yellen’s crisis remarks Silvia Amaro Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017 Global debt has hit a record level in the first quarter of this year, mainly driven by emerging markets, raising questions of whether there will be another financial crisis in the near future. Data from the Institute of International Finance showed that global debt reached $217 trillion in the first quarter of this year, or 327 percent of gross domestic product. "The debt burden is not distributed evenly. Some countries/sectors have seen deleveraging while others have built up very...

Sweden is seeing an increasing number of families returning from fighting for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but the children of extremist couples are not automatically taken into custody by the authorities. Swedish social services worker Bettan Byvald said that even if the agency could prove that the returning Islamic State supporters had taken their children to Syria or Iraq, they would not automatically take the children into protective custody. The policies toward returning Islamic State fighters in Sweden have been controversial due to the fact that many municipalities have expressed a desire to reintegrate returning fighters. The...

High-priced government workers cost taxpayers in Illinois $10 billion a year, with municipal managers in areas surrounding Chicago reaping the most benefits. Illinoisans are struggling under the highest property taxes in the nation, a declining population and the nation’s worst income growth, but one group is still doing pretty well – government workers. According to OpenTheBooks.com, Illinois has 63,000 public employees making more than $100,000, costing taxpayers $10 billion. These government workers range from auto pound supervisors to corrections nurses to junior college presidents and more. One of the most lucrative government fields is that of village and city managers,...

Bishop Toal pointed out this was expected of all Catholics who are not marriedThe Bishop of Motherwell has asked his priests to encourage those experiencing same-sex attraction to “lead a chaste life”. Bishop Joseph Toal issued his statement after a diocesan priest published a Facebook post that was subsequently widely shared. The priest, Fr Paul Morton of St Bride’s Church in Cambuslang, wrote: “We must do everything we can to redress the harm that has been done in the past by the negative stance we seem to have taken up [about gay people].” Bishop Toal said he had been asked...