Free Republic

iOS 12.1.1 adds features and fixes bugs for your iPhone and iPad including: Notification preview using haptic touch on iPhone XR Dual SIM with eSIM for additional carriers on iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max One tap to flip between the rear and front-facing camera during a FaceTime call Live Photo capture during one-to-one FaceTime calls The option to hide the sidebar in News on iPad in landscape orientation For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: Here “Apple today released macOS Mojave 10.14.2, the second update to the macOS Mojave operating...

Been collecting Christmas music most of my life and I've accumulated several thousand holiday-themed tracks. I shy away from the tired standards and I'm always on the lookout for something fresh and unique. Especially alternative takes on the standard songs. Over this Christmas season, I'll share a few of them here starting with this one by a band called Faith & Disease - an ethereal goth band from the 1990s that I know little about. I think they do a very nice and dreamy arrangement of the Burl Ives song "Silver And Gold". This sounds really good late at night,...

Legal Scholars Tell Warren Olney Why Treason Is So Difficult to Commit in the United States ... Why is it so hard to commit treason in the United States? The short answer—offered at the debut of a Zócalo/KCRW event series, “Critical Thinking with Warren Olney”—amounted to this: America was founded by traitors. “The American Revolution was a massive act of treason against the British government,” said UC Davis legal scholar Carlton F.W. Larson, who is working on a book about treason. And even before the war, American colonists had been accused of treason under English law for acts of protest...

If you’re looking to nail someone for treason these days, don’t talk to a lawyer. The answer you’ll get will be short and likely disappointing: It’s hard to convict someone of treason and chances are the actions you’re describing won’t qualify for the charge. But if what you’re really trying to express is an emotional response, you’re better off turning to 14th-century Italian literature, not the law. Legally speaking, treason—at least in the United States—is a narrowly defined crime, and for good reason. Under the British crown, treason could include a wide range of acts, some ambiguous enough to allow...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Demonstrators booed outgoing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, a sign of tumult as Republicans in the Legislature met to push through measures to gut the powers of his Democratic successor. The Legislature met deep into the night Tuesday to pass a series of bills, first unveiled Friday, that would weaken the governor’s office and transfer power away from the Democratic-elect attorney general and give it to the Legislature. The Legislature wasn’t expected to complete its work until early Wednesday morning. Walker has signaled support, but he couldn’t escape anger over...

Full title: California Doctor Declares In “Study” That Murdering A Child’s Younger Siblings Is Good For His “Developmental Milestones” Among women who seek an abortion but are denied it, more than 90 percent choose to keep and raise the child rather than place it for adoption. What is life like for these children? We compared children born after their mothers were denied abortions to the next children born to women who received abortions. Writing in JAMA Pediatrics, we showed that children born to women who were denied abortions fared worse. They were more likely to live in households where there...

President Andrew Jackson took a keen interest in the construction of the federal mint in Philadelphia, a grand, columned edifice, inspired by the temples of ancient Greece, that opened in 1833. Jackson was not a man known for his appreciation of cultural and artistic pursuits. A populist who famously railed against the elites, he had initially wanted to construct a simple building for minting money quickly, because there was a severe shortage of specie—coins—in the country at the time. Gradually, though, he came around to the idea of a grander mint, and became personally involved in many aspects of the...

Since her husband was murdered in 1996, Mary Franklin has been devoted to helping others who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s why she’s proposing Trauma Spa, or T Spa, to give women access to mental health treatment who otherwise couldn’t afford it. Franklin met with Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday, seeking a $400,000 grant to fund T Spa, a 12-week pilot program that would collect data by treating up to 300 women who suffer from PTSD due to a loved one’s murder.

The press in America is even worse than we imagine. We sense that they're biased and stunningly incompetent. They are those things, but so much more. Our media's version of the news is mathematically and precisely the opposite of the truth. The death and burial of George H.W. Bush is only the latest example. In the puffery and revisionism that accompany funerals, the man who gave us David Souter, an unnecessary war, tax hikes he promised not to impose and the Americans With Disabilities Act (aka The Destruction of Small Libraries Throughout New England Act) has been elevated to saintlike...

Ketchup is arguably the United States’ most ubiquitous condiment. Ninety-seven percent of Americans have a ketchup bottle in the fridge, usually Heinz, and we buy some 10 billion ounces of the red stuff annually—almost three bottles per person per year. We purportedly spend more money on salsa, but in terms of sheer volume ketchup comes out on top. Bright red in color, tangy, sweet, salty, and replete with a “meaty,” tomato-ey umami hit, ketchup provides accents of color and flavoring, as well as a smell and texture that is familiar and comforting. It’s the perfect complement to the American diet:...

Franciscan Media Image: Relics of St. Sabbas the Sanctified in the Catholicon (main church) of the Eastern Orthodox Mar Saba monastery in Palestine | photo by adriatikus Saint Sabas Saint of the Day for December 5 (439 – December 5, 532)  Saint Sabas’ Story Born in Cappadocia, Sabas is one of the most highly regarded patriarchs among the monks of Palestine, and is considered one of the founders of Eastern monasticism.After an unhappy childhood in which he was abused and ran away several times, Sabas finally sought refuge in a monastery. While family members tried to persuade him to...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP BUTLER, Okinawa, Japan – Search and rescue operations were underway for U.S. Marine aircraft that were involved in a ‘mishap’ off of the coast of Japan around 2:00 a.m. Dec. 6, military officials say. The aircraft involved in the mishap had launched from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni and were conducting regularly scheduled training when the mishap occurred — reportedly a refueling exercise.

So far, half of the events scheduled for the stadium tour of Bill and Hillary Clinton have been canceled. Even worse, both of the two out of four events canceled were in the United States, and the two conversations delivered to audiences were both in Canada. Advance ticket sales for last night's scheduled event in Sugarland, Texas, a suburb of Houston, were so dismal that prices were slashed by 90% for the cheapest seats. But even that level of discounting apparently didn't prevent another prospective sea of empty seats, such as the 83% empty arena in Toronto that had to...

Fake News: Since the passing of former President George H. W. Bush, the so-called “mainstream media” has come out in praise of the man and his leadership, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush were in office, the Leftist mainstream media was vicious, accusatory, and lacking in any praise whatsoever — just like they are today when it comes to POTUS Donald Trump. The reason? Republican presidents don’t get a pass like Democrat presidents do. And talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh called them out for their “phony”...

Tuesday on SiriusXM’s “The Dan Abrams Show,” Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said he thinks Donald Trump, Jr. will be indicted as a result of special counsel Robert Muller’s investigation. In discussing the sentencing document filed yesterday by Mueller’s office on Michael Flynn, Napolitano said, “The President himself should be extremely uncomfortable about this. Not for his son or son-in-law as much as for himself.” When Abrams asked if he thinks Trump’s “inner circle” will be indicted, Napolitano said, “Yes.”

Frank Vickers was sitting on his couch watching "Jeopardy!" when he heard a knock at the door one evening in late September. Before he could stand up, a Bastrop County Sheriff’s deputy was standing in his living room. Vickers said the deputy told him to gather his belongings and get out of the house. The property was sold to a new owner.

Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list. Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years. The email exchanges included then-FBI...

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said George H.W. Bush called Donald Trump a curse word and threw his shoe at the television when Trump was on. Dowd said, “I think, you know, that Donald Trump would be incomprehensible to him literally. And even that was 2011, so in our wildest imagination we couldn’t imagine that Trump would be the nominee and that he would, you know, eviscerate H.W.’s dream of Jeb in the White House with two words, ‘low energy.’ All of that was unimaginable.”

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is leaving, but not quietly. The immensely unpopular Republicanhas decided to totally trashhis party’s judicial agenda. Flake is the key 11thvote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he’s not budging until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell holds a binding vote on a billprotecting Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice’s Russia investigation. It’s frustrating. It’s deplorable. And it just comes to show you why Flake would never have won re-election if he decided to execute a suicidal banzai charge concerning that effort. He would have been knocked off in a primary, but I digress....

The scale of the deceit of Theresa May’s so-called “worst deal in history” deal has been dramatically revealed after the government was forced to publish a key legal document by a vote in Parliament. Members of Parliament received the document Wednesday morning, and it was due to the published to the public around 11:30. Yet scanned pages of the paper quickly spread on social media as opposition politicians shared what they had received. Controversially, the legal advice reveals that with Theresa May’s Brexit deal there would be regulatory and customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland — in effect...