Free Republic

In the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” there is a courtroom scene where the prosecuting attorney (played by Tom Cruise) tells the defendant Marine officer Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) that he wants the truth. To that, Jessup shouts back, “You can’t handle the truth.” What brings that to mind is the recent revelation that the College Board (CB) has begun calculating an “adversity score” for each student who takes its aptitude test, the SAT. Apparently, the people running the CB don’t believe that we can handle the truth that individual students vary in their academic abilities, and...

Heavy security surrounded Montreal’s Jewish Public Library recently, for an address by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The former Muslim Brotherhood member, who abandoned her youthful embrace of militant Islamism and became an advocate for Muslim women’s rights, told those gathered something they didn’t particularly want to hear but that hardly surprised them. While acknowledging the threat to Jews posed by the white supremacy movement, she insisted that “Islamist-driven anti-Semitism [is] the reigning anti-Semitism of the day.” It is, she said, “the most zealous, most potent Jew hatred” in the world today. Having grown up being told that Jews were evil subhuman...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded Tuesday to a Memorial Day tribute video shown by the Fresno Grizzlies that equated her with Kim Jong-un and Fidel Castro – a video that team representatives say was shown by mistake.

'You have to have a reason to stay alive': WWII veteran, 97, refuses to stop working and bags groceries at a New Jersey store twice a week A 97-year-old New Jersey man's indomitable work ethic is earning him praise and admiration from peers in his town. Second World War veteran Bartolomeo 'Bennie' Ficeto of Edison, New Jersey, has been working a regular job virtually his entire life and refuses to stop doing so now, even though he's nearing 100 years old. Ficeto currently bags groceries at the Stop & Shop grocery store in his community, doing four-hour shifts two days...

In an interview over the Memorial Day weekend, former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova told a D.C. radio station that a “battle royale” is taking place within the Justice Department between Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, as well as other elements of the intelligence community. At issue, said diGenova, are efforts by Barr and the Trump administration to restore “accountable government” to federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies who have long been free to operate virtually independently of any real congressional and Executive Branch oversight — to the point where they have become excessively corrupt. DiGenova, who...

In a major breakthrough in what could be the most fascinating story of our time, five U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet crewmen have recounted a number of incredibly strange encounters with unidentified flying objects off the East Coast of the United States. Two of the pilots went on the record. The surreal craft they encountered had performance that defies known propulsion and aerodynamic capabilities, and are described as looking like something akin to special effects you would have seen in a sci-fi movie circa the late 1980s. The pilots' accounts also point to a major sensor upgrade on their aircraft...

German government backtracks on Jewish skullcap warning, urges everyone to wear it ahead of anti-Israel protest The German government urged people to wear the Jewish kippa in the wake of an upcoming anti-Israel protest, backtracking on the warning that Jewish people should conceal their religious identity and avoid wearing the religious skullcap. Felix Klein, the government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, sparked international controversy after saying in an interview with a regional press group that he “cannot recommend to Jews that they wear the skullcap at all times everywhere in Germany.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin promptly called out the German government, saying it...

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” (Proverbs 29:18).

The God of Christianity is not a frivolous God. He is not given to caprice or arbitrary acts of violence. His actions are not irrational expressions or whims. We do not know why at a given place or a given time natural catastrophes take place. Easy equations of guilt and disaster are ruled out by statements in the book of Job and the ninth chapter of John’s gospel. When inexplicable disasters occur, we must say with Luther, “Let God be God.” When Job cried out, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the...

As anti-Semitism czar advises Jews not to wear skullcaps in certain areas, tabloid editor launches protest Julian Reichelt ✔ @jreichelt Wenn auch nur einer in unserem Land nicht Kippa tragen kann, ohne sich in Gefahr zu bringen, kann die Antwort nur lauten, dass wir alle Kippa tragen. Die Kippa gehört zu Deutschland! Deswegen druckt @BILD morgen die Kippa zum Ausschneiden auf Seite 1. 1,502 12:19 PM - May 26, 2019 728 people are talking about this The editor of Bild, Germany’s largest newspaper, on Sunday said he will print a Jewish skullcap on the front page of the Monday paper...

...Trump inherited a superficially stable world from Barack Obama that, in fact, was quite volatile. There had been no tense standoffs with North Korea, but also apparent intercontinental ballistic missiles with possible nuclear warheads now pointed at the United States. Obama more or less punted on North Korea, by declaring it a problem — and hoping that Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear testing did not get too out of hand before 2017. Then there was the “Iran deal.” It was an appeasing agreement that almost surely guaranteed that Iran would soon have nuclear weapons, along with a revived economy liberated from...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Apology accepted, you giant a**hole! – Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, and no Democrat candidates are more desperate these days than Eric “Otter” Swalwell and Irish Bob “Beto” O’Rourke. This week, both campaigns decided it would be best for their failing candidates to apologize for being exactly who they are. So, Swalwell went out on Monday and, in on of the most stilted, palpably insincere moments of 2019, made a video in which he apologized to a woman for being a white man, saying “I may be another...

Oh, they’re out there all right. Raj and I saw one with our own eyes at dusk one summer day over 40 years ago. And no, there were no chemicals involved. “Our sovereignty is being violated by vehicles of unknown origin.” – Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations The U.S. military has seen them.    The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast....

During the walk-up to Memorial Day, with its evocations of respect for fallen warriors, hypercharged Dallas, found time to stick out a very official tongue at, you see, the wrong kind of fallen warriors: the Confederate kind. The business of establishment America, on the urging of the political left, has become that of saying, "Oh, 'scuse us for not living up to ideals we didn't know were ideals till you kind progressives kindly wised us up. " Dallas city government -- once fairly accused of patient commitment to reasoned dialogue -- bellied up enthusiastically, voting to sell and bar (unconstitutionally)...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Old Testament) 1 Kings 5 Preparations for Building the Temple 5 [a]When Hiram king of Tyre heard that Solomon had been anointed king to succeed his father David, he sent his envoys to Solomon, because he had always been on friendly terms with David. 2 Solomon sent back this message to Hiram: 3 “You know that because of the wars waged against my father David from all sides, he could not build a temple for the Name of the Lord his God until the Lord put his enemies under his feet. 4 But now the Lord my...

As my Let Africa Sink essay from 2002(!) is going to feature in my Monday post, I thought I’d take the opportunity to re-publish it below, pretty much un-edited except for a few typos which somehow survived to the present day. Let Africa Sink May 26, 2002 11:40 AM CDT When it comes to any analysis of the problems facing Africa, Western society, and particularly people from the United States, encounter a logical disconnect that makes clear analysis impossible. That disconnect is the way life is regarded in the West (it’s precious, must be protected at all costs etc.), compared...

Please send up a prayer and send a shout out to Doogle who just got out of the hospital for a collapsed lung from pneumonia.

House Democrats are jubilant because last week, they won two court victories in their ongoing battle to get President Donald Trump's tax returns and decades of his personal and business banking records. But their glee won't last long. These federal district court rulings are likely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump will prevail, along with taxpayer privacy and political fair play. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's history as a defender of taxpayer privacy adds to the favorable odds that Trump will win in the high court. In 1986, as an appeals court judge, Ginsburg expressed her appreciation that...

Monday on CNN's "Outfront," Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, said that (snip) Inside the Democratic caucus "there is a lot of momentum towards an impeachment inquiry, even as people go home over this break, they are hearing more from their constituents about it and more people are signing on to it. But I think we should be very clear about what they’re signing on to. I think that whatever divisions are in the caucus have really been overstated. I think that there’s a convergence of view that we need everything on the...

YouTuber PowerModz shows just how scary a runaway machine gun can actually be. This Thompson submachine gun takes off expectantly for this shooter. A runaway machine gun can ruin your day or others quickly. While firing short bursts the machine gun just kept on going without putting a finger on the trigger. Though text book states – Uncontrolled fire (the weapon continues to fire after the trigger is released) is usually caused by the firer not pulling and holding the trigger all the way to the rear. This results in the sear not clearing the sear notch, which causes wear...