Free Republic

On 18 August 1976, a team of U.S. Army and South Korean soldiers headed out to trim a tree on the South Korean side of the De-militarized Zone. The men were unarmed, only carrying axes they would use to trim a tree that obstructed their view. Soon, they were confronted by a belligerent North Korean officer they had nicknamed Lt. “Bulldog” who advised them that N. Korean dictator Kim Il Sung had personally planted the tree and cared for it. Capt. Arthur G. Bonifas ignored the officer’s protests, which sent the offended officer back across the Bridge of No Return...

Last year, I spoke on the issue of abortion at Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California. During the Q&A, a young woman asked a question about rape and abortion. In the process of explaining my opposition to a rape exception to an abortion ban, I said that I believe we live in a world of trade-offs, rather than a world of problems and solutions. Upon seeing the exchange in a video posted on YouTube, Bob submitted the following question:“We live in a world of trade-offs.” Indeed we do. So answer me this. There’s a science lab that’s burning down, and...

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the classics of literature are rewritten into Newspeak, a revision and reduction of the language meant to make bad thoughts literally unthinkable. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” one true believer exults. Now some of the writer’s own words are getting reworked in Amazon’s vast virtual bookstore, a place where copyright laws hold remarkably little sway. Orwell’s reputation may be secure, but his sentences are not. Over the last few weeks I got a close-up view of this process when I bought a dozen fake and illegitimate Orwell books from Amazon. Some of them...

Can I retire on $500K? Soon to be ex-wife and I had the last of all our blow-outs. 25 years married, no kids, own the house outright, $1.7 MM (maybe 2), zero debt, 60-something. Reached out to Cordell Cordell the only law firm I know of that will take care of the man side of things. soon to be ex-wife does not work.

Posted on August 18, 2019August 18, 2019 by Msgr. Charles Pope Beware the Hypocrisy of the “Spiritual but Not Religious” We live in the age of the designer God, when many claim the right to imagine and craft their own version of god. Some of them refer to it as “the god within.” Others call it “the god of my understanding.” Still others speak of “the Jesus I know.” A consistent feature of these manufactured gods is that they just so happen to agree with the “believer” on almost everything. Another common characteristic is that they differ in significant...

Elizabeth Novak packed up her salon and moved out of Sacramento due to the mounting problems from homelessness in the California capital, and told Fox News Monday the issue is “disheartening.” “I am angry about it as well. I wouldn’t be relocating if it wasn’t for this issue,” Novak told “Fox & Friends.” In a viral post, Novak blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom via Twitter, complaining that government inaction leaves residents and business owners like her having to clean up after homeless people who sleep on the streets and sidewalks.

[Catholic Caucus] John Paul II Institute. The Revolt of the Professors Has a Leader, Ratzinger By now it is evident. The point of no return was marked on August 1 by the meeting between Benedict XVI and Livio Melina, made pblic four days later by Catholic News Agency and ACI Stampa, complete with an official photo and with these words calibrated one by one at the residence of the pope emeritus:“[Benedict XVI] wanted to receive Prof. Mons. Livio Melina at a private audience. After a long discussion of the recent events at the Pontifical Institute John Paul II, he granted...

Scientists, including from The Australian National University (ANU), say they have detected a black hole swallowing a neutron star for the first time. Neutron stars and black holes are the super-dense remains of dead stars. On Wednesday 14 August 2019, gravitational-wave discovery machines in the United States and Italy detected ripples in space and time from a cataclysmic event that happened about 8,550 million trillion kilometres away from Earth.

Good Morning/Afternoon,MEGARushReadyForAnotherWeekOfEIBExcellenceDITTOS!

This should be a national scandal. To the extent that I care at all about Israel blocking entry to two U.S. congresswomen who partner with anti-Semites who seek its destruction, I agree with critics who argue that Bibi Netanyahu should not appear to bow to Donald TrumpÂ’s tweeted demands and that blocking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting Israel handed them a short-term propaganda victory. But thatÂ’s not the most important part of the story. The most important element of the story is the fact that two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel to go on...

Presidential primary candidate Beto O’Rourke has an unusual message for Democrat voters. America was founded on racism and America is still a racist country today, 243 years later. How’s that for an inspiring message? Beto’s re-launch of his presidential campaign is off to a rocky start, just like the previous re-launches. This time around he’s gone to a dark place and now insists that racism in America is his primary concern. He went off on a tangent Saturday night as the speaker at the third annual Arkansas Democratic Party Clinton Dinner in Little Rock.

Prayers up for continuing progress and success. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to speak plainly...

Should a country ban people who oppose its policies from entering? The vehemently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have been banned from entering Israel, and Leftists are furious. Surely Israel, and its ally in the Oval Office, have made a major blunder, no? Not necessarily. Rep. Justin Amash fumed: “Israel should stand up to President Trump and allow our colleagues to visit. Nobody has to agree with their opinions, but it will inevitably harm U.S.-Israel relations if members of Congress are banned from the country. We must find ways to come together; there’s enough division.” Sure,...

Polls increasingly show they have improved dramatically in key voter blocs. mounting number of voter polls show that, despite shrill denunciations of the President by the Democrats for his alleged racism, Trump is enjoying a dramatic increase in his approval ratings among minorities. This isn’t, as some liberal news outlets and pundits have suggested, wishful thinking based on outlier polls. The trend began showing up in surveys early this year and appears to be gaining momentum. Some polls now show his approval numbers at 25 percent among African-American voters and 50 percent among Hispanic voters. If those figures hold for...

As the crisis in Hong Kong deepens, many Americans are asking: Should the United States intervene and stand by Hong Kong protesters? How can the United States effectively intervene without committing its military and resources to another long, expensive, and futile nation-building effort?Before answering these questions, we should establish several key understandings about Hong Kong. Since the 1997 handover, Beijing exercises sovereignty over Hong Kong. But Hong Kong is different from every other Chinese city. “The One Country, Two Systems” agreement signed by both the U.K. and China when the former stopped ruling Hong Kong stated that while China...

Iran sanctions threaten the lives of young ca... In the battle over sanctions between the United States and Iran, the losers are Iranian cancer patients seeking life-saving drugs. Correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports from a children's hospital in Tehran where vital drugs are running out

Their jihad advocacy is far worse than that. It is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone except the most blinkered Leftist ideologue that Ilhan Omar’s response to being banned from entering Israel, along with her fellow antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, was outstandingly disingenuous. But she knows, when she retails her outrageous falsehoods, that the establishment media will never call her on them or reveal the true depths of her alliance with jihadis and agitation against Israel. “The irony of the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East making such a decision,” said Omar, “is that it is both an...

Let us not let the left-wing media talk us into a recession. Make no mistake: they are eager to do so. For months the liberal press has echoed Democrats’ hand-wringing on the campaign trail, repeating Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s unwarranted warnings about debt levels for instance, or former Vice President Joe Biden’s alarms about how President Trump’s trade confrontation with China is hurting consumers. After all, it’s hard to call for a revolution if the people are happy. Less enthusiastically reported have been record lows in unemployment and accelerating wage increases – news that might buoy consumer sentiment, and, not unimportantly,...

A new rule adopted by the Trump administration that is expected to deprive the abortionists at industry leader Planned Parenthood hits Monday. That’s the rule that Title X funds cannot go to clinics that conduct abortions or refer them. The pending change has been upheld by a numerous court decisions. But now Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice says the first deadline has come for the abortion industry to prove it is complying in order to continue getting funds. “HHS has announced the first date for Planned Parenthood and other Title X recipients to provide ‘assurance’...

Why the “enlightened” Left so ferociously hates both Trump and Israel. Golda Meir is credited with saying, “Israel is the Jew among nations.” In the speeches of global leaders and the pronouncements of the UN–– the so-called global “community” that strains out the besieged, liberal-democratic Israel gnat while swallowing whole herds of murderous tyrannical camels–– this international form of anti-Semitism is blatantly obvious behind the thread-bare veil of “anti-Zionism.” The frenzy of progressive commentary blaming Donald Trump for the recent mass shootings is just the latest hysterical outburst of hatred, one suggesting that for the left the president has become...