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Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden's campaign said Monday that the former vice president misspoke when he said that he immediately opposed the Iraq War. "Vice President Biden misspoke by saying that he declared his opposition to the war immediately," senior campaign adviser Antony Blinken told The Washington Post for a fact-checking piece on Biden's Iraq stance. "He opposed the way we went to war and the way the war was being carried out. He has for many years called his vote a mistake and takes full responsibility for it." Biden in 2002 voted to give then-President George W. Bush...

Woo hoo! And now less than $11.3k to go. Less than $2.5k to the YELLOW! Go, FReepers, go! We can do this, If you love using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please click the link and make a donation today. Make it a monthly if you can. We have some very generous FReeper sponsors kicking in an extra ten bucks for every new monthly signed up. And we have signed up 29 new monthly donors so far this quarter, and we have also received 157 "300 Club" donations of $100 or more! Way to go, FReepers!! Thank you...

Posted on September 8, 2019September 8, 2019 by Msgr. Charles Pope Reimagining the Beatitudes This week at daily Mass we touch briefly on the Beatitudes from Luke’s Gospel. This is one of the most famous texts of Scripture. Despite their familiarity, though, they are poorly understood by many people.Let’s begin by exploring the word “beatitude.” Sometimes it is defined as happiness, but happiness is too transitory and dependent upon external factors to fully convey its meaning. In Latin, the word is beatus, and it signifies a long-lasting, abiding happiness. It refers to a deep, serene, stable, and confident joy...

Pope’s Inaction on Nicaragua Deemed ‘Shameful’ While Catholics suffer persecution, Francis remains silent Pope Francis' relative silence and apparent inaction in the face of mounting persecution of the Church by the government of Nicaragua has recently been characterized by a Miami Herald article as "shameful," "inexplicable" and "anemic." Anemic? Of course. Shameful? Certainly. Inexplicable? More like business as usual.  Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has held a central place in his country's politics since the 1970s, when he was a leading figure within the communist Sandinista rebellion that (with Soviet Union backing) was waging a guerilla war and terror campaign against the country's more or less conservative government. When the government collapsed in 1979, Ortega...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s Queen Elizabeth on Monday gave final approval to a piece of legislation which seeks to prevent Prime Minister Boris Johnson from taking the country out of the European Union without an exit deal on Oct. 31.

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Zalmay Khalilzad, the Trump administration’s chief negotiator with the Taliban, has endured a lot of pressure in the last week. Former U.S. ambassadors, Fox News pundits, and think tank analysts alike have denounced his draft agreement in full without knowing what is in the final document.Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s advisers have already expressed that the terms of the accord “need serious debate and revision.” Words such as “surrender,” “defeat,” and “abandonment” are being tossed in the air as if the United States has an obligation to serve as the Afghan government’s defenders in perpetuity.Khalilzad and his boss, President Trump,...

On Saturday, Yang was captured on video crowd surfing across a wave of supporters at the AAPI Democratic Presidential Forum in California. Yang joined Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and billionaire Tom Steyer at the event. While Yang was surfing the crowd, they chanted “Andrew Yang!”

[Catholic Caucus] ‘The term ‘life’ must be redefined,’ new head of Vatican Life Academy declares LOS ANGELES, California, September 5, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) ― The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has declared that the academy must broaden its scope and welcome non-Christian “experts.”  Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, 74, presented the speech at Loyola Marymount, a private Jesuit university in Los Angeles, yesterday. After introducing the pontiff’s January 6 letter Humana Communitas, the prelate explained that Francis wishes both the Academy for Life and the John Paul II Institute, of which Paglia is grand chancellor, to work “more broadly.” “The...

I have Windows 7. The Microsoft Office Starter 2010 stopped working last night with a pop up window - "This version of Microsoft Application Virtualization is incompatible with this version of Microsoft Office lick-to-Run. For more information, contact your system administrator."

Over the last week or so, Gen. James Mattis has been running around hawking his new book, but it was revealed on Sunday that he's planning to cash in on his government service in a much more swampy way.

It is Swingin' Monday. Ocie Stockard & His Wanderers are featured today, with Bass Man Jive (1941). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

For years now, Christians defending the biblical definition of marriage have dealt with a particularly frustrating retort: “Well, Christians used to be against interracial marriage, too,” people will say. Not only is this assertion meant to equate Christian morality with racism, it implies an historical inevitability—that, in a generation or two, Christians will join the march of progress and affirm same-sex relationships, just as they affirm relationships between men and women of different skin colors. America’s very real and shameful history of racial prejudice and violence—and especially the sinful co-option of Christians, clergy, churches, and entire denominations in that history—gives...

A glimmer of hope emerged in Hong Kong last week after the formal withdrawal of the extradition bill by Chief Executive Carrie Lam. Demonstrations have been ongoing since June when protestors took to the streets in opposition to the bill, which they claim erodes the legal system. As of now, it appears the withdrawal of the bill has done nothing to placate demonstrators.Another round of violence between protesters and police broke out on Sunday night which ended with a volunteer aid worker shot by police with a bean bag round or rubber bullet. Riot officers lobbed multiple tear gas...

The Venice Film Festival just wrapped up in Palazzo del Cinema, Lido, Italy, and the big winners were all smiles. This is apparently considered something of a big deal because winners of this festival frequently go on to win at the Oscars, as was the case with The Shape of Water. The top prize (the Golden Lion award) went to a Joaquin Phoenix film called Joker. (This one sounds pretty good and I might even go see it.)That wasn’t the big news for me, however. The second-place winner, given the Grand Jury Prize, was a film called An Officer...

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are calling on their Democratic colleagues to provide more details about a series of trips taken to Mexico while staff were touring border detention facilities, amid reports that at least one Democrat has been involved in “coaching” migrants there on how to exploit U.S. immigration law. In a letter to Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., obtained by Fox News, ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said there were at least two committee staff trips into Mexico in August — one of which required Border Patrol agents to provide a special escort back into the U.S. “Although...

We haven’t even made it to the Democratic debates in Houston this week but the candidates are already jockeying for position in the October debates to be held in Ohio. And for reasons that remain a total mystery to me, billionaire liberal activist Tom Steyer has somehow qualified for that round. (Steyer won’t be on the stage in Houston this week as he didn’t manage to score well enough in four approved polls.) So where is this support coming from? (Boston Globe) Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former hedge fund investor turned impeachment activist, became the 11th Democratic presidential...

United States President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, Monday, "I know nothing about an Air Force plane landing at an airport (which I do not own and have nothing to do with) near Turnberry Resort (which I do own) in Scotland, and filling up with fuel, with the crew staying overnight at Turnberry (they have good taste!). NOTHING TO DO WITH ME." He was responding to reports about where Vice President Mike Pence stayed during a recent trip to the United Kingdom. Trump followed up, "I had nothing to do with the decision of our great Vice President Mike Pence...

Pious Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has a brother-in-law who seems to have had it up to here with his wearing his religion on his sleeve and scolding others. According to an exclusive interview in the Washington Examiner, which found the man out in the wilds of a small town in probably rural Michigan: "What we see is a modern-day Pharisee," said [Pastro Rhyan] Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God's favor. "Buttigieg is a person who's making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if...