Free Republic

Former vice president of Walt Disney Pictures and Television, Michael Laney, 73, has been sentenced to more than 6 years in prison following a child sex abuse investigation. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said Laney was sentenced on Friday to 81 months in prison after being found guilty for four counts of first-degree sexual abuse on May 7. In addition to Laney’s prison sentence, the former VP also has to register as a sex offender. According to WTKR, the evidence presented during Laney’s trial showed that in March 2018, a young girl disclosed she had been sexually abused by...

Fr Joshtrom Kureethadam said “we need to care for creation because poor people are all being affected by [changes in climate]”. “And it is really Catholic tradition, Christian tradition, that in the poor we see Christ. Matthew 25:35 onwards [says]: I was hungry, I was naked, I was in prison, I was a foreigner and you welcomed me,” he said. Fr Kureethadam has been coordinator of the “ecology and creation” sector at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development since 2017. He is a university professor and the author of multiple books on creation and theology. He said that in...

The new Romanian passport that started being issued from January 2019 has a unique design that features important touristic attractions including three Orthodox monasteries: Curtea de Arges, Barsana and Tismana. Romania’s simple electronic and temporary passports are among the most difficult to falsify travel documents, stated the police chief Mirel Toanca, the head of the Passport Directorate of the Romanian Police, earlier this year. In addition to the security elements that make it almost impossible to forge, the new generation of passports has a modern design with details inspired by the history and geography of Romania. Each page contains a...

[Editor’s Note: In a message for the September 1 World Day of Prayer for the Care for Creation, Pope Francis urged governments to show the “political will” to take drastic steps to deal with climate change and says it’s time to abandon dependence on fossil fuels. Jason Adkins has served as the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference since 2011. Charles Camosy spoke to Adkins about the ecological projects taking place with the Minnesota bishops in light of the pope’s call to do better in taking care of our “common home.”]Camosy: September 1st was the World Day of Prayer...

Asteroid 6478...Gault was discovered last December and labelled as an active asteroid that left not one, but two trails behind it, just like a comet. Now, the same asteroid has been caught switching colours, from red to blue in near-infrared spectrum by astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States. This is the first time in the history of extraterrestrial materials that that astronomers have seen any shift in colours in an asteroid. Gault now glows in a blue tinge as a result of a less irradiated layer of the asteroid coming to light. According to the study’s...

AOC, Texas Rep. Crenshaw duel over background checks: 'Why are you "lending" guns to people unsupervised?' Dylan Stableford 9 hours ago Reactions Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email Scroll back up to restore default view. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Wednesday called out a Republican congressman who complained that implementing stricter gun laws would prevent him from letting friends borrow his handgun. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, shared on Twitter a local news report about a woman who police say shot and wounded a suspected robber who reached for her purse. “Situations like this story are why we protect the 2nd...

Boris Johnson’s bid to trigger a general election next month has been blocked by MPs following a string of heavy defeats for the government in both houses of parliament. The prime minister was thwarted three times in the House of Commons: an attempt by opposition parties and Tory rebels to block a no-deal Brexit easily cleared its second and third readings, and Johnson later failed in his attempt to force a snap general election. Immediately afterwards, the prime minister called Jeremy Corbyn, “the first leader of the opposition in the democratic history of our country to refuse the invitation to...

A recent study, published in the Astrophysical Journal, offers potential explanations for the appearance of a green blob near the galaxy's center, which appeared and disappeared within weeks. The main goal of the NuSTAR observations was to examine a supernova -- a huge star explosion. The green blob, known as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX...didn't appear during the first observation, but showed up during a second one 10 days later. Another space telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, then looked again and found the object, ULX-4, had quickly disappeared. "Ten days is a really short amount of time for such a...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, said on Monday that she wouldn't dye a gray streak in her hair because she wanted to keep it in remembrance of soldiers who died in Iraq. Gabbard, who previously deployed as part of the Hawaii National Guard, said she started getting that streak during her first deployment. “I started going gray in that one spot during and after my first deployment to Iraq,” the 2020 hopeful said during an Instagram Live broadcast. Gabbard said that her hair helps commemorate those "who we lost there and the cost of war and why we fight so hard...

Former Vice President Joe Biden's left eye appeared to have a blood vessel burst while he was participating in CNN's town hall on climate change. Biden has long been plagued by health issues. In 1988, he suffered an aneurysm that burst and required him to undergo emergency surgery. The then-senator was so close to death that a Catholic priest began preparing to administer the sacrament of last rites. Months later, surgeons clipped a second aneurysm before it burst. Biden then took a seven-month leave from the Senate following the surgery. He’s described the operation as “they literally had to take...

The most amazing thing about Theodore White’s "The Making of the President 1972" is his explanation of the emerging hostility of the elite news media and its evolution into an adversarial anti-president propaganda system for left-wing values. Everything we are used to seeing in what President Trump calls “Fake News” existed by 1972. The parallels are amazing – and are part of why I decided to spend so much time analyzing 1972 and 2020 as similar patterns of conflict. The current New York Times overt shift from smearing President Trump with Russian collusion (which collapsed) to smearing President Trump with...

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pro-lifers holding vigil at a Detroit-area abortion mill see a faith-based homeless shelter bringing a young girl to an abortion mill. On Friday, at least four pro-life sidewalk counselors were shocked to see a Covenant House transport van pull up directly in front of them while they were holding vigil at Summit Medical Centers, an abortion mill in Detroit. Once a Catholic organization, Covenant House claims to help homeless young people escape from human trafficking. Church Militant spoke with two of the pro-lifers present at Summit. Both wanted to remain anonymous out of fear the abortion mill...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ NATIONAL STRIPES Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Scott Farrell folds the U.S. flag aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the South China Sea, July 9, 2016. The Chancellorsville is patrolling in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility supporting security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Schneider Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. NIGHT-VISION VIEW Soldiers look through their night-vision...

MSNBC contributor and former congresswoman Donna Edwards said on Wednesday that shooters are killing thousands of people with "automatic" weapons with "high-capacity ammunition." "It's ridiculous putting the death penalty on the table," the former Democratic lawmaker said in reference to the Trump administration's proposal to execute mass shooters faster. "I mean, people who are committing mass shootings aren't saying, ‘Well, I might get the death penalty so I won't do it.' No, they're getting these automatic rifles, they're using high capacity ammunition, and they're killing, they're mowing down hundreds, thousands of people every single year." Edwards made several inaccurate statements...

Since President Trump is being slammed in the mainstream media tonight for "doctoring" a cone-of-uncertainty National Hurricane Center map regarding Hurricane Dorian -- even though he's redeemed himself by actually posting on his social media an official data map of the 'spaghetti straps' starting in Puerto Rico to the US East Coast on 8/28/19 by SFWMD.GOV (South Florida Water Management District), does anyone have an actual NWS data map or NOAA map detailing the same spaghetti straps? I want to send it to my peeps at WMAL. I also want to have as many maps with spaghetti straps indicating the...

The media should stop using absurdly lazy phrases like “mandatory gun buybacks.” Unless the politician they’re talking about is in the business of selling firearms, it’s impossible for him to “buy back” anything. No government official—not Joe Biden, not Beto O’Rourke, not any of the candidates who now support “buyback” programs—has ever sold firearms. What Democrats propose can be more accurately described as “the first American gun confiscation effort since Lexington and Concord,” or some variation on that theme. Although tax dollars will be meted out in an effort to incentivize volunteers, the policy is to confiscate AR-15s, the vast...

Executive Summary The political Left often criticizes—and the mainstream media frequently report on—the network of center-right nonprofits funded by billionaire entrepreneurs Charles and David Koch. But few politicos know of a left-wing leviathan in Washington, D.C., with a reach rivaling that of the Koch network. This study by the Capital Research Center documents a shadowy web into which nearly $600 million flowed in 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. Operating under the aegis of “philanthropy,” this network is housed in and staffed by a for-profit, privately held consultancy called Arabella Advisors, LLC. Arabella manages four nonprofit...

DOKKEN guitar legend George Lynch has slammed President Donald Trump, calling the billionaire real estate mogul an "idiotic monster" and an "egotistical, self-aggrandizing, complete piece of shit" who "doesn't know anything." The iconic musician, who has previously called himself a "very progressive person" and "liberal in [his] politics," made his latest comments during an interview with Australia's "Scars And Guitars" podcast. Speaking about the state of American politics, Lynch said (hear audio below): "I'm honestly just so fatigued, and most of the people that I surround myself with that are political animals are equally fatigued. We're living through the American...

St. Paul, MN – Two women within three days were transported by ambulance from the Planned Parenthood abortion facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, according Brian Gibson, Executive Director of the Pro-Life Action Ministries, who reported the incidents on Facebook. Radio dispatch recordings noted that both hospitalized women suffered from hemorrhaging, a common abortion complication that Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are not equipped to control. The first emergency took place on August 14, 2019. St. Paul Fire Engine 14 and Medic 5 were dispatched to Planned Parenthood on Vandalia Street at 9:59 a.m. On the video that Gibson posted to Facebook,...

A protest is planned against the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain which is opening a location in the heart of Toronto on Friday. The U.S.-based company has made international headlines since 2012 for its anti-LGBTQ stances and promotion of conservative Christian beliefs. The company believes in “biblical definition” of marriage between a man and a woman and groups have uncovered tax filings where Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm made millions in donations to organizations opposed to gay rights. Some of the organizations that have received charitable donations from Chick-fil-A have been labelled as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an Alabama-based legal...