Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Why Satan Hates the Brown Scapular Is the Brown Scapular simply a lucky “charm” that bestows salvation on those who wear it? While there are many “promises” to the wearers of this scapular, we must always keep in mind that the Brown Scapular does not grant someone access to eternal life no matter what kind of life they live. In fact, it soon becomes an irritant to those straying away from the Faith and is one of the first items to be taken off. The Brown Scapular is an amazing channel of graces from Heaven, but we must learn to...

KETTERING — The Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the Dayton area’s lone abortion clinic in its fight to stay open. Supporters of the Women’s Med Center in Kettering vowed to fight on, and anti-abortion forces looked forward to the clinic’s closure. NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland called Wednesday’s ruling a defeat for women, but she said the fight to get a transfer agreement required to keep the clinic open will continue. “This clinic is still open, and abortion is available in Dayton for those who need it,” Copeland said. How long, however, is unclear....

"Seeing the pictures appear on the computer screen was the best day at work I've ever had," says Simen Ådnøy Ellingsen, an associate professor at NTNU's Department of Energy and Process Engineering. 39 degrees It has long been assumed that the angle of the v-shaped wake behind a boat should always be just below 39 degrees, as long as the water isn't too shallow. Regardless whether it's behind a supertanker or a duck, this should always be true. Or not. For like so many accepted facts, this turns out to be wrong, or at least not always the case. Ellingsen...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order cancelling student loan debt for permanently disabled veterans. According to President Trump, 25,000 disabled veterans will benefit from this move.“The debt of these disabled veterans will be completely erased,” Trump said during a speech at the American Veterans National Convention in Louisville. “That’s hundreds of millions of dollars of student loans debt for our disabled veterans that will be completely erased.” It was my honor to sign a Presidential Memorandum facilitating the cancellation of student loan debt for 25K of our most severely disabled Veterans. With today’s order, we express the everlasting...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Opponents to a Tennessee law requiring women to wait 48 hours before getting an abortion argue that such restrictions help perpetuate negative stereotypes about gender. The argument is part of a lengthy lawsuit challenging the legality of the waiting period rule, which Tennessee's GOP-controlled Statehouse passed in 2015. "The act thus violates the Equal Protection Clause by restricting women's ability to make autonomous, voluntary decisions concerning their reproductive lives and their medical care, while no such restrictions are imposed on medical decision-making by men," attorneys wrote on behalf of Planned Parenthood and other women's health clinics in...

Vulnerable spadefoot tadpoles eat their smaller competitors to speed towards toadhood as quickly as possible. Gulls and pelicans are among bird species that eat hatchlings for food or to prevent the spread of disease. In insect species such as the praying mantis or the Australian redback spider, males offer their bodies as a final gift to females after mating. It's more common than you'd think in mammals too. Many rodent mothers may eat some of their young if they're sick, dead, or too numerous to feed. Bears and lions kill and eat the offspring of adult females to make them...

Thursday on CNN’s “Right Now,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said President Donald Trump criticizes his predecessor former President Barack Obama because it “eats away” at Trump that Obama “added luster to the presidency.” Keilar asked, “The president referenced former President Obama several times yesterday when he had this extended Q & A session on the south lawn with reporters. He blamed him on a variety of topics. He does this a lot, but there seemed to be this uptick of it yesterday. Why do you think he does that? Connolly said, “Well, I think the contrast bothers him. President Obama...

[Catholic Caucus] Why Pope Francis Hasn’t Visited Argentina My principal purpose in visiting Buenos Aires is to learn about its not-so-favorite son, Jorge Bergoglio, who still hasn’t visited Argentina since becoming Pope Francis. During my first few days here, I asked every Catholic I met to explain that anomaly. I got some blunt and brutal answers.“We all know he is a son of a bitch,” said a former prosecutor to me. “We are ashamed of him. He represents our worst qualities.” His friend chipped in that Catholics consider Francis “to be a fake, a make-believe pope,” not to mention, he...

This spring, visiting professor Ryszard Legutko was prevented from speaking at Vermont's prestigious Middlebury College due to strident opposition by extremist and intolerant students. This was the second such embarrassment for the college: writer Charles Murray and a Middlebury professor were insulted and assaulted there in 2016. Professor Legutko recently related his perspective on the experience, revealing that the college not only caved to the disruptive and disrespectful students, but legitimized their conduct! Further, the students have set out to proscribe future discourse that might again ignite their sociopathic anarchy. Last year, our nation's children walked out of high schools...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, suggesting the labor market was holding firm despite a manufacturing slowdown and concerns the economy is on a path toward recession. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 209,000 for the week ended Aug. 17, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The decline was sharper than expected. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims would drop to 216,000 in the latest week. U.S. stock index futures held onto gains following the data's publication. The four-week moving average of initial...

On Wednesday morning, ABC rewarded former White House press secretary Sean Spicer with a spot on the new season of “Dancing with the Stars.” Making the announcement on ABC’s flagship program, “Good Morning America,” Spicer waved to the live studio audience from behind a prop podium. The dancing competition has long been a popular place for washed up celebrities looking to rehabilitate or pump up their image. But Spicer shouldn’t get that chance — and he certainly doesn’t deserve it. More than halfway into this White House’s train wreck of a tenure, flagrant lying and attacks on the free press...

Rather than admit that despite its Orwellian name Planned Parenthood’s main business is promoting and profiting from abortions, the poster child for the culture of death on Monday pulled the plug on its participation in the Title 10 federal family planning program. Wrapping its withdrawal in the mantle of free speech, the group withdrew rather than submit to a Trump administration rule saying that groups in the program and receiving federal funds could not make abortion referrals. As Politico reported: "We will not be bullied into withholding abortion information from our patients," said acting President Alexis McGill Johnson on a...

A Colorado woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole earlier this week for poisoning her father with an animal tranquilizer and then covering his remains in concrete in a crawl space in their home. Dayna Jennings, 45, was found guilty of first-degree murder and tampering with a human body in July for the poisoning death of her 69-year-old father William Mussack. Mussack had been missing for a month before law enforcement discovered his decomposing body encased in a layer of concrete in the basement of their Federal Heights home in January 2018. His body was also covered with...

They established the acronym CHANGE to represent their agenda: Change the standards of gun ownership. Halve the rate of gun deaths in 10 years. Accountability for the gun lobby and industry. Name a Director of Gun Violence Prevention. Generate community-based solutions. Empower the next generation. Specifically the group wants: • a national licensing and registry system. Specifically, gun owners would have to go through in-person interviews with law enforcement, provide personal references, obtain firearm safety training and wait 10 days for each firearm purchase. Licenses would expire every year and requirements would have to be fulfilled again. • to require...

The shootings happened on Cañón Uníon street near the corner of Prolongación Calle Segunda. Díaz worked as a shift leader at the KFC on Third Avenue in Chula Vista and had a 16-year-old son named Adrian, according to Corral. Employees at the restaurant said Diaz had worked there for eight years. "She was a cheerful, dedicated and hard working mother," Corral said.

Sunday could be a bittersweet first Mother's Day for Casey Greenfield. Greenfield is a pretty, ginger-haired, Yale-educated lawyer and writer who last March gave birth to a love child. The baby's father is married CNN star and best-selling New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin. (Casey's father is esteemed political pundit Jeff Greenfield.) Ever since we broke the news of her pregnancy, Casey has remained silent about the baby drama. But now some of her friends are fed up with what they claim is less-than-gallant behavior on Toobin's part. ... In 2008, when Greenfield became pregnant, and when she told Toobin the...

Former Gov. John Hickenlooper has a 13 percentage point lead over U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner in a hypothetical 2020 contest for Colorado's U.S. Senate seat, according to a new poll of the state's registered voters. The poll, released Tuesday by Emerson College, comes as Democrat Hickenlooper is expected to announce within days whether he will run in the Democratic primary for Senate.

It sure pays to be a DC grifter. The Obamas are reportedly purchasing a 29-acre, 7,000 square foot $14.85 million mansion in Martha’s Vineyard. The home is currently owned by Boston Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck. The Martha’s Vineyard estate (pictured below) was previously listed for $22 million, but the Obamas are paying less than the current listing price according to “multiple island sources.”

Social media helped increase coverage of the wildfires, but it's also contributing to misinformation. There's no question that several parts of the Amazon rainforest are on fire, and humans are likely the cause of the blazes. In Brazil alone, there are 80% more fires in 2019 than there were last year, according to the country's space research center. More than half of the fires in Brazil are in its Amazon region. Satellite images are helping show just how many fires there are, and how much of their smoke has spread across the country. But photos on social media are conflating...

There’s a battle brewing in Brooklyn and it’s shaping up to be yet another fight between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Big Apple Mayor (and presidential candidate, for some reason) Bill de Blasio. Seeing these two mixing it up is nothing new, as the friction between them is pretty much legendary. But this dustup is a bit unusual because it involves the fate of one of New York City’s legendary pizza joints. The taxman came and shut down the Di Fara pizzeria this week, kicking everyone out and padlocking the doors. A sign was posted saying that the...