Free Republic

On August 18, 2019, on the eve of the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill served the all-night vigil in the Kazan Cathedral of St. Petersburg. (brief scenes appx 4 mins)

The Justice Department is investigating how a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, came to exert so much influence over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s erroneous Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Let’s hope the department is also investigating an even more influential man who had even less business manipulating the government: Glenn Simpson, the head of opposition-research firm Fusion GPS. That’s a pressing question in light of new documents from high-ranking Justice official Bruce Ohr, obtained recently by Judicial Watch. The papers include, among other things, a dozen official FBI interviews (known as 302s) of Mr. Ohr that date from just after...

Politicians ignore felonies in their midst, preferring to hector the misdemeanors of the universe. ne of the weirdest characteristics of our global politicians and moral censors is their preference to voice cosmic justice rather than to address less abstract sin within their own purview or authority. These progressive virtue mongers see themselves as citizens of the world rather than of the United States and thus can impotently theorize about problems elsewhere when they cannot solve those in their own midst. Big-city mayors are especially culpable when it comes to ignoring felonies in their midst, preferring to hector the misdemeanors of...

Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director who has recently withdrawn his support for President Donald Trump, said Monday that he is putting together a coalition of former Trump Cabinet officials to denounce the President ahead of the 2020 election. "I'm in the process of putting together a team of people that feel the exact same way that I do. This is not a 'Never Trump' situation. This not just screeching rhetoric. This is -- OK, the guy is unstable. Everyone inside knows it, everyone outside knows it. Let's see if we can find a viable alternative," Scaramucci told...

Any majority population must be careful not to revert to pre-civilized tribalism and oppressing minority groups. The United States, like every other country that enjoys diverse populations has struggled from its beginning to ensure equality, sometimes unsuccessfully, and only at the cost of thousands of lives. While the United States was founded originally mostly by those of European ancestry and was plagued by the endemic racism of the age, especially in regard to African slaves and Native Americans, nonetheless its unique Constitution, embedded within a larger framework of the Western Enlightenment, institutionalized self-reflection and the chance for amendment. America’s founding...

Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and friends have seized the moment to hold a press conference in the Minnesota State Capitol peddling the PLO/Hamas line on the state of Israel and its “occupation” of the West Bank. Their reference to the “Palestine” that exists only in the genocidal imagination of their allies says it all. While they decry the impingement of the freedom of West Bank Arabs in various respects, they omit any mention of the works of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now approaching the fourteenth year of his four-year term in office. They omit any mention of the...

On Wednesday the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of child sexual abuse, Cardinal George Pell, will find out if his appeal has succeeded and if he will be released from custody. The 78-year-old has been in Melbourne assessment prison since being sentenced in March to six years in prison for sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in 1996 when he was the archbishop of Melbourne. He was ordered to serve a non-parole period of three years and eight months. The jurors heard Pell sexually assaulted the two boys after Sunday solemn mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in...

[Catholic Caucus] The Powerful Brown Scapular and Its Perennial Promises There’s a picture of a young Karol Wojtyla as a factory worker posing with a friend during a work break. He is wearing a big smile and a very visible Brown Scapular. As Pope John Paul II, he recalled how he wore his Scapular from about age 10.  When in May 1981 he was shot, he insisted doctors not remove his Scapular. Carmelite Father Mariano Cera told Inside the Vatican magazine: "Just before the Holy Father was operated on, he told the doctors 'Don't take off the Scapular.' And the...

The first thing Braiden Schirtzinger felt was the pop — like a bursting balloon. A doctor had said today could be the day, and a Google search said exercise could help speed up the process. So here Braiden was, under a warm late-April sun shaded by oak and willow trees, taking a third lap around a suburban Virginia neighborhood, determined to walk out a baby. Braiden stopped on the sidewalk, feeling the liquid trickling through baggy gray basketball shorts. “Mom, get in the car,” Braiden said over the phone. “My water just broke.” For nine exhausting months, Braiden had lived...

A political guerrilla warfare tactic used by the Left doesn’t get the media coverage it should.  While the complicit media sleeps, the anti-gun industry liberal shareholder activists are engaging in a form of domestic terror that has banks and credit card companies altering their policies about who to do business with.  Recall the code name Operation Choke Point.  This was described as “a plot by President Obama’s Department of Justice, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other government agencies to cut off banking and financial services for small businesses and industries that they deemed to...

The TAPS Act is not the solution to gun violence many members of Congress are professing it to be. The unlimited and arbitrary authority this Act bestows upon an unaccountable bureaucracy of 24 people, combined with the language of double-speak and contradictions creating loopholes allowing completely unsupervised and unchecked authority, is reminiscent of the Sedition Act of 1798. The TAPS act will create a brand new bureaucracy under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. A non-elected bureaucrat will be authorized by Congress to appoint 23 other non-elected bureaucrats to “identify individuals who are exhibiting patterns of concerning behavior”...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has denied Planned Parenthood's application to license an abortion facility in downtown Louisville. In a letter to Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Cabinet Secretary Adam Meier said the downtown facility reportedly performed 23 abortions from December 2015 to January 2016, stating the facility was not licensed to perform abortions during that time. A judge previously found Planned Parenthood had been following directions of state officials when it began operations in December 2015. Planned Parenthood issued a news release Friday accusing the administration of refusing to comply with a...

Add the ketogenic diet to the ever-growing list of monsters under the beds of those suffering from climate change hysteria. Apparently all of the bacon and butter we consume is going to KILL EARTH: Admittedly, I didn't even know I was a steward of the planet until I saw that. It has been humming along for well over four billion years without any stewardship from me so I am not sure what my function is here in this role. Should I be wearing a uniform? Is there a stewardship manual? Business Insider: The world cannot run on bacon and butter....

In the years 1926 through 1929, Mexico fought a war over the freedom of Roman Catholics to worship. As a result of the Mexican Revolution, the constitution of 1917 stripped great power from the church, along with half of its enormous land holdings. But it was not until the regime of President Plutarco Elias Calles, who began to strictly enforce the constitution, that an uprising ensued. Supporters of the Catholic Church, who called themselves Cristeros, began a campaign against federal troops and had surprising success after they hired Gen. Enrique Gorostieta Velarde to lead their forces.

ST. LOUIS — Presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand trumpeted her support of abortion access and reproductive choice for women during a town hall Sunday in Delmar Hall. The event was attended by hundreds of people, days before severe abortion restrictions are set to take effect in Missouri. “We need a next president who is unabashedly pro-choice,” Gillibrand told the crowd. “Someone who is going to see women’s reproductive freedom as the basic civil rights and human rights that they are. They should be our decisions to be made, no matter what.” Gillibrand is vying for the Democratic presidential...

New York City Mayor de Blasio’s wife has rejected the results of a public vote calling for a statue of Mother Cabrini (pictured), a Catholic saint, and instead opted to honor other “women,” including two drag queens. Chirlane McCray, the mayor’s wife, launched a “She Built NYC” program and invited the public to vote on the names of women they want the city to recognize with a statue. Mother Cabrini got more votes than any other woman (219), yet McCray’s panel rejected the public’s choice. Without explanation, McCray decided on a group of people that were nowhere near the top...

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for a Maryland man whose murder conviction was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial" are asking the Supreme Court to step into the case. Lawyers for defendant Adnan Syed say in court papers Monday that the justices should order a new trial for Syed and reverse a Maryland court ruling against him. Syed claims his trial lawyer violated his constitutional right to competent representation because she failed to investigate an alibi witness. Syed is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2000 of strangling 17-year-old Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a Baltimore...

At least 40 babies were born alive after botched abortions across three states since 2016, according to state health data that offers a glimpse into the extent of an issue that lawmakers have fiercely debated in recent months. The data on babies surviving abortions is compiled on a mandatory basis by only a handful of states. What is available reflects a scenario that is rare but frequent enough to prompt proposals at the state and federal level for born-alive infant protection laws – especially in the wake of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s controversial comments on the subject earlier this year....

RUSH: I mentioned this piece earlier. Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, a left-wing publication. “There Will Be no Justice for Trump’s Enablers.” Now, that headline’s a little confusing. This is actually a story of hatred, and it is written in the form of anti-Trump elitism. Now, this guy Paul Waldman is a hate-filled leftist guy, but he is having to come to grips with the facts, and the facts are that the Never Trumpers have failed. The Never Trumpers haven’t succeeded. They haven’t moved their ball an inch! The Never Trumpers haven’t even been a sore spot with Trump,...

Does anyone have a picture of an AR-15 that is decorated like a standard rifle? I am talking about a wooden stock, forearm grip and anything that would make it ease to believe that it is not an AR. Not looking for "pink rifles". I am expecting the usual confrontation from coworkers about "assault rifles" and I want to show them a picture of an AR with gingerbread and ask them if "this type of rifle is ok"?