Free Republic

Pope Francis railed against unjust employers Friday, saying it is hypocritical to go to church on Sunday and then exploit one’s workers. “Many Christians, even Catholics, who say they are practicing Catholics exploit people! They exploit their workers!” the pope said during his daily homily at Mass in the Casa Santa Marta Friday. They send them home at the beginning of summer to avoid having to pay benefits and then take them back again at the end, he explained. “And so many of these call themselves Catholics. They go to Mass on Sundays and then they do this. This is...

Are rich people fleeing California to escape astronomical state income taxes? That’s the word. But it’s fake news. In fact, more wealthy people are moving to California than leaving, research indicates. It’s the poor and middle class who are departing. It makes sense. If you’re getting rich in California and can afford to live comfortably here in this balmy climate, there’s little incentive to leave — except to stick it to the tax collector in Sacramento. “If you’ve got your business here and you’re making money, it’s hard to leave,” says Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce....

This particular corridor carries three 765 kV (kilovolts) power lines, which are the largest and most important lines of the country. One of these lines, apparently the one between San Geronimo B and Malena, went out and overloaded the other two, so all three died. When all of a sudden the lines went off and power wasn’t getting through, not only all those TVs, blenders and lights went off: the water wheels started to spin out of control (in the industry we call this scenario a “load rejection”). Protections systems kicked in and the turbines shut themselves off, hopefully with...

Stunning video shows a man in London narrowly escape being crushed by falling bricks as a howling wind caused a café's roof to collapse Sunday. CCTV footage shows the passerby strolling past Stokey Vintage Café on Stoke Newington High Street just moments before a mass of bricks and rubble tumbled to the ground. “While the boys were fundraising this happened across the road,” the Hackney Wick FC soccer club shared on Twitter with the CCTV video. “A reminder that you can be taken at any time so be thankful for surviving another day.” Petulia Mattioli, who had walked past the...

The Treasury Department announced Monday..“The United States will take action against foreign financial institutions that sustain the illegitimate Maduro regime and contribute to the economic collapse and humanitarian crisis plaguing the people of Venezuela,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Mnuchin’s team blacklisted Evrofinance Mosnarbank, a Moscow-based bank established by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2011 in coordination with two major state-owned Russian banks. Those institutions — VTB Bank and Gazprombank — have been sanctioned since 2014 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They have partnered with the Maduro regime to help Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA,...

A new report finds that, contrary to the predictions of many scientists, polar bars are actually thriving. “Numbers are so high that Inuit leaders have been pleading with the Canadian government for more polar bear population control as violent attacks against native populations have dramatically risen in recent years,” pointed out Marc Morano at the Climate Depot website, which presents evidence countering the claim that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming. A decade ago, many scientists predicted the population of polar bears would be down by 67 percent about now. But the report by zoologist Susan Crockford, writing for the...

LONDON (AP) – British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says he is looking for ways to help the children of British citizens who joined the Islamic State group in Syria. Hunt told the BBC on Sunday that he and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt are studying how the children could be brought to Britain without putting government officials at risk by sending them to Syria. He spoke after the newborn son of 19-year-old Shamima Begum, who at age 15 ran away with two friends to join IS, died Friday in a refugee camp. Begum’s passport was revoked after she asked to...

Lent is a time for fortifying our soul and working to increase our piety. As always, our behavior reflects our thoughts; and our thoughts reflect our behavior. Thinking pious thoughts, and doing pious things brings us nearer to God. Behavioral scientists tell us we are what we think about the most. Therefore, thinking about being more pious will make us more pious. Here are three simple things we can do to grow in piety 1) say Grace before every meal and strive to not miss once – if you do just start again; 2) use a holy water to bless...

... Under a bill now making its way through the California State Legislature, millions of people in the state who have misdemeanor or lower-level felony records could be spared those problems: their criminal records would automatically be sealed from public view once they completed prison or jail sentences. The legislation would not apply to people convicted of committing the most serious crimes, like murder or rape. “There are so many of us who just want to be better, but are constantly turned down, turned away,” said Mr. Jordan, who is now project director for Time Done, an Oakland nonprofit that...

Donald Trump Jr. defended Tucker Carlson on Monday, saying he was standing up against the "outrage mob," after the Fox News host sparked controversy for comments he made from 2006-2011 to a shock jock radio host. The support from the president's son comes as Carlson faces calls for a boycott of his show, with #BoycottTuckerCarlson trending on Twitter. The controversy was sparked after Media Matters released audio clips of Carlson on Sunday featuring some of his appearances on a radio program hosted by "Bubba the Love Sponge," whose real name is Todd Clem. The comments include joking that women as...

Shortened title. Full title: BREAKING: New Evidence Reveals Comey Exonerated Clinton Without Knowingly Obtaining KEY Evidence Proving Her Innocence In a press conference in early July 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI was not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton as a result of the FBI’s investigation into her emails. Unfortunately, new evidence proves Comey knowingly exonerated Clinton and closed the FBI’s investigation without the key evidence to do so! According to Time on July 5th, 2016 [emphasis added] – FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case against Hillary Clinton...

A private school teacher is being investigated, accused of holding “racist lessons” involving a mock “slave auction” where white students were urged to bid on their black classmates. The teacher reportedly acted as the auctioneer in the Bronxville New York school’s Year 5 social studies class exercise where three black “slaves” were auctioned off as part of a US history lesson. A mother of one of the students “auctioned” off at The Chapel School said her African-American son told her the teacher, Rebecca Antinozzi, placed “imaginary chains on our necks, our wrists and shackles on our ankles”. “I was in...

In the first two months of this year, only 262 seaborne migrants reached Italy, compared with more than 13,000 during the same period in 2017 ... hard-line tactics, including in one case keeping 177 migrants docked on a ship for five days, have prompted prosecutors to investigate him for allegedly kidnapping migrants. Mr. Salvini helped deliver the coup de grace. Last summer, he repeatedly closed Italian ports to aid groups’ vessels ferrying rescued migrants. Nongovernmental organizations mostly stopped their rescue missions at sea. Some had already ceased operations after refusing to abide by obligations imposed by the previous Italian government....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday asked Congress in his fiscal 2020 budget to slash spending for foreign aid while increasing spending on the military and for the wall he wants to build on the U.S.-Mexico border, a senior administration official told reporters. The budget would raise defense spending by 4 percent to $750 billion, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, while cutting foreign aid by $13 billion. Over a decade, the blueprint would cut $1.9 trillion from mandatory spending through proposed reforms, the official said.

While the Left made "peace" with the Oslo Accords, and a meaningless paper was signed on the White House lawn, every day a bus or restaurant exploded here and Jews were murdered. While the Left says today there's no hope for peace, and it's true there's been no ceremony with a signature on a piece of paper, but the security situation is the calmest since the establishment of the State, the economy is flourishing, there's a record number of tourists arriving in Israel, Israel's at the height of its international status since King Solomon's reign, and our relations with most...

..... programs the White House calls useless and bloated including the popular Legal Services Corporation that uses federal money to provide free legal help to the poor that the administration believes is 'a local issue'....The White House said the program is “not an appropriate role for the federal government” because it “provides grant funding for legal assistance in local civil matters.” Of 10 targeted programs, 4 would be eliminated, fulfilling a 2016 Trump campaign promise to kill wasteful agencies. Many of programs and agencies have been sharply criticized for years for 'misusing American tax dollars', including for Netflix subscriptions. One,...

Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu apologized Friday for a snarky tweet that mocked President Donald Trump’s trip to storm-ravaged Alabama to meet with tornado victims.

Defeated but unrepentant, some jihadists limping out of their besieged final bastion in eastern Syria still praise the Islamic State and promise bloody vengeance against its enemies. The skeletal and dishevelled figures shuffling out of the smouldering ashes of the "caliphate" may look like a procession of zombies, but their devotion seems intact. At an outpost for US-backed forces outside the besieged village of Baghouz, 10 women stand in front of journalists, pointing their index fingers to the sky in a gesture used by IS supporters to proclaim the oneness of God. They shout in unison: "The Islamic State is...

Vikki L. Pryor paid $757,000 for a four-bedroom, four-bath home at 1001 N. Euclid Ave. in northeast Oak Park in August 2005, or $975,657 in today’s dollars. The home sold on Feb. 26 for $590,000, or 40 percent less than what she paid for it. Pryor’s property taxes rose over the same period. They were $9,249 when she bought the home in 2005, an effective tax rate of 0.9 percent. Last year, they were twice that -- $20,652, or 3.5 percent of her sale price. All told, Pryor paid $207,132 in property taxes over 13 years of ownership. Pryor's story...

In a few weeks, Jews all over the world will sit down to a Passover seder. We will eat matzah—unleavened bread that was not baked with the blood of Christian children. The claim that matzah is baked with the blood of Christian innocents is, of course, a famous anti-Semitic libel; it’s a libel that’s anti-Semitic because, first and foremost, it’s false (and ugly). If it were true, it wouldn’t be anti-Semitic to say such a thing. Telling ugly lies about the Jewish people is anti-Semitic, and it’s anti-Semitic, first and foremost, because it’s a lie. Subscribe to The JNS Daily...