Free Republic

A team quarterbacked by Ryan Tannehill beat Tom Brady’s Patriots in the playoffs in Foxborough. It was the second straight shocking loss for the Patriots, and it ended a season that started with so much promise and hope behind a historically good defense. The Titans rode the NFL rushing champion, Derrick Henry, to the win. His 178 yards on the ground were the most for a player in the playoffs since Colin Kaepernick had 181 as the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback in 2013. This home loss in the wild-card is uncharacteristic for the Patriots. It prompts questions about the continued...

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates rejected the idea of voluntarily donating to the U.S. Treasury after calling for the U.S. government to raise taxes on the wealthy. "When I say the government needs to raise more money, some people ask why Melinda and I don’t voluntarily pay more in taxes than the law requires," Gates, the second-richest person in the world, wrote in a recent blog post. "The answer is that simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution. People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not...

A high-ranking Revolutionary Guard commander says that Iran has identified 35 targets it can strike in the region in retaliation for the killing of Qasem Suleiamani.Iranian General Gholamali Abuhamzeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard in the southern province of Kerman, says most of the targets are U.S. warships in the region. But he also mentioned the Israeli city of Tel Aviv as a target for Iran's revenge. Fox News: The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there,” Abuhamzeh said according to a  Reuters report, citing...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Farmers, Sanctity of Life, Health Care and the Media. Religion Forum threads labeled “Prayer” are closed to debate of any kind. Now therefore, our God, we give You thanks, and we praise Your glorious name. 1 Chronicles 29:13

Our First Amendment means that, even though the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same sex marriage, that new right applies only to the government's relationship with citizens. From Obergefell forward, to the extent states and the federal government recognize traditional marriage, they must also recognize same sex marriage. Thanks to the First  Amendment, though, religious institutions cannot be forced to change their doctrines to conform to the Supreme Court’s holding. In the case of the United Methodist Church, the church opted not to recognize (or officiate at) same sex marriages. It also has refused to ordain openly gay people...

NBC NEWS: 'Meet the Press' moderator Chuck Todd joins TODAY to look ahead at what’s to come in Washington in 2020..... (snip) "It's pretty simple campaign strategy, gin up the base and try to scare independents from the Democratic nominee," Todd said. "It doesn't matter who the nominee is," Todd said of the Democratic candidates. "It is a strategy that depends on a middle of the electorate overlooking the president’s personal character and somehow getting him to reelection. I think it' a very uphill battle for him."

Judge Sandee Marion, Chief Justice of the 4th Court of Appeals, denied Tinslee Lewis a temporary injunction today, allowing Cook Children’s Medical Center to turn off her life support and let the 11-month-old baby girl die. The family says they will appeal the decision. As previously reported by Live Action News, little Tinslee was born in February 2019 with medical concerns, and in July, was placed on life support at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. The hospital enacted the state’s 10-Day Rule, which gives family’s just ten days to find a new facility to care for their...

The start of a new decade is propelling Virginia into a new era of political control, a reality that will be on full display Wednesday when lawmakers return to Richmond for the start of a 60-day General Assembly session. Democrats who will take over the House and Senate are eager to move ahead on their agenda, as Republicans work to push back while exploring how they might chart a return to power. It will be the most racially and ethnically diverse legislature in Virginia’s history, and for the first time, a woman will be at the helm of its...

The pro-life position is simple and straightforward. It goes like this: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being; abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being; therefore, abortion is wrong. An article in the abortion sympathizing Mary Sue claimed pro-life people who oppose late-term abortions are the ones who actually cause late term abortions because they support restrictions on earlier abortions, when many women do not even know they are pregnant. It was claimed that women who find out they are pregnant later are “forced” to seek late term abortions due to restrictive pro-life policies. Like so many...

Pro-lifers in Birmingham rejoiced today as over 30 years of persistent prayer were answered. The Calthorpe Clinic abortion centre in Edgbaston closed its doors for the last time as their business came to a halt after performing terminations for 50 years. Originally run as an old people’s home, in 1969 the centre became the first in the UK to exist exclusively for abortions. ‘People have been praying there for decades’ said Stephanie Pyne who, along with many other dedicated Christians, has herself participated in peaceful vigils for nearly 30 years. For over 8 years the international prayer campaign 40 Days...

A Republican senator said he would vote to repeal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act following a scathing report that found serious problems in how the FBI sought to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a longtime critic of the FISA program, told One America News Network on Saturday that the audit released last month by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was a wake-up call to "stop allowing the American people to be subjected to this type of abuse and manipulation." "We should all be scared to death," Lee said. "We shouldn't rest until FISA is...

After four hours of testimony Friday in two separate lawsuits over the building of a private border wall along the banks of the Rio Grande in South Texas... parts of a temporary restraining order were removed... The hearing was held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in McAllen. The hearing was suspended after four hours of testimony on Friday and will continue on Thursday... Fisher said his crews were back in South Texas and ready to begin construction on Saturday. The 70-man team plans to build 3.5 miles of border wall. And with one section...

ANKARA (Reuters) - The chief of Iran’s elite military Quds force on Thursday warned President Donald Trump not to take military action against Iran, saying if Washington started a war, Tehran would be the one to end it, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine ... Come. We are ready. If you begin the war, we will end the war,” Qassem Soleimani said in a speech in the central city of Hamedan, Tasnim reported.

In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad. The Revolutionary Guards commander instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful Pro-Iran militia leaders to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters. The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq...

LifeNews.com recorded more than 100 reports of assault, vandalism, harassment and other incidents targeting pro-life advocates in 2019. Our news outlet began tracking these reports after pro-life organizations expressed alarm about an uptick in violence in recent years as they work to protect the rights of unborn babies. The list identifies 99 separate reports, though several include multiple incidents, such as Prolife Across America’s report of more than a dozen pro-life billboards being vandalized between January and August. That equates to almost 10 incidents each month or about one every four days in 2019. The reports come from local and...

Barack Obama took a break from being a menace to President Trump. He’s been vacationing in Hawaii since mid-December but hasn’t been seen much until now. A shirtless Obama was filmed falling off of a paddleboard in Hawaii after trying to stand and paddle in the choppy water. He hit the beach in his home state (are we sure about that?) where a photographer got some video and photos of a somewhat solo Obama trying his best to appear athletic. A Secret Service agent wearing a bulletproof vest was in a kayak closeby. Obama was wearing a ‘shark deterrent’ band...

See video at link. (two minutes) Will Witt exposes Michael Moore, a white leftist, who in a stunning and brave display of racism-veiled-as-righteousness, says we should be afraid of white people.

The American Dialect Society has named “they” as the word of the decade, recognizing the plural pronoun’s growing use as a singular form to refer to people with a non-binary gender identity.The winner was decided in a vote by the body’s 350 members at an annual gathering on Friday. “People want to choose something that stands the test of time and sums up the decade as a whole,” said linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer. […] Other words on the list for word of the decade included “meme,” which came in second place, followed by “climate,” “#BlackLivesMatter,” “woke” and “MeToo.” …

The handcuffed woman glowered as federal investigators swarmed the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, storage unit where her “combat materials” were stashed. But not even a hardened homegrown terrorist like 29-year-old Susan Rosenberg was ready to die this November night in 1984. “Put out the f–king cigarette,” she growled at an officer who had unwisely lit up. Rosenberg knew that the unit was stuffed with 740 pounds of leaking explosives. The nitroglycerine oozing from her poorly maintained cache of dynamite — stolen from a Texas construction firm four years earlier — was dangerous and highly unstable. Rosenberg and an accomplice, Tim...

The top of the photo shows three commonly owned AR-15 rifles (displayed at Albemarle County Firearms) which would be banned under proposed Virginia laws for having features such as a pistol grip, folding stock, and flash suppressor. If those features were removed, the weapon would be legal. By contrast, the gun at the bottom is a hunting rifle, which can deal two or three times the damage of the weapons above, but would not be banned under the proposed legislation because it is a bolt-action weapon instead of a semi-automatic. Photo: Lisa Martin. Following Governor Ralph Northam’s 2019 promise...