Free Republic

Michael White didn’t deny killing Sean Schellenger. He admitted to police and at his trial that he plunged a knife several times into Schellenger’s back during a July 2018 scuffle in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. Numerous witnesses and a cellphone video confirmed what happened. Yet in October 2019 a jury acquitted Mr. White, a 22-year-old college student, of voluntary manslaughter. Many, including the victim’s family, blame Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s soft-on-crime district attorney. Mr. Krasner is one of a new crop of “progressive prosecutors” who have won election in liberal cities. They include San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, who was raised by Weather...

Unidentified aircraft struck targets in Syria near the border with Iraq on Friday, killing eight Iran-backed Iraqi militiamen, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The rights group, which is based in the United Kingdom, obtains information through a network of activists on the ground in Syria, documenting the war in Syria over the past decade. The attack, carried out by “unknown drones,” targeted vehicles and armories, according to the organization. However, the head of the Syrian Observatory said it was “unidentified aircraft” that launched the attacks, without elaborating. “Unidentified aircraft targeted vehicles and arms depots in the Albu Kamal...

The Democratic charge that the Trump administration has no strategy for the Middle East is obviously false. It has elaborated a strategy that includes Russia and Turkey. The problem the administration has faced is that Russia as an issue has been so aggravated by Democratic myth-makers, with the (presumably) inadvertent cooperation of some congressional Republicans, that it has been difficult for Mr. Trump to deal with Russia sensibly without exciting partisan hysteria and crowding the Democratic television news networks with the tiresome faces and voices of President Obama’s now-discredited intelligence chiefs (James Clapper and John Brennan), beating the old tambourines...

Pope’s ‘Global Education’ Sparks Concern Focus is on environmentalism, interreligious dialogue TRANSCRIPT Faithful Catholics are increasingly troubled by a Vatican event coming up in May, where world leaders and young people will meet with Pope Francis to forge a so-called Global Education Alliance. In a recent interview, Cdl. Raymond Burke said the meeting seems bent toward making a one-world government, adding, "With the spread of Islam, especially in Europe but also in the United States, there is an effort to dull people's consciousness about the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ as it is proclaimed in the gospel." When the...

Elephants are believed to be exceptionally smart animals, and not just for their famously long memories. According to Science Focus, these large animals have complex mental maps and can solve problems like piling up blocks to reach food and using branches and rocks as tools. A video going viral online shows one elephant using his problem solving skills to cross an electric fence

Last month presiding FISA judge Rosemary Collyer announced she would be stepping down early due to ‘health issues.’ Chief Justice Roberts tapped Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee to replace Collyer. On Friday, Judge Boasberg announced in an order that he has appointed Obama-era national security leader at the DOJ David S. Kris as amicus counsel to review the reforms the FBI will be making to its FISA application process. This order was in response to the FBI abusing the FISA process after it obtained a total of four FISA warrants on Carter Page. The government had until Friday January...

Long before his fall from grace, Woody Allen made a very good movie called Annie Hall. And at the beginning of the movie, he told this joke: "Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountains resort, and one of them says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know. And such small portions!'" I'm reminded of this joke whenever a lib complains that the Trump administration isn't holding enough press briefings. They hate Trump and everything he does... and such small portions! And now these sad, broken people are even turning this...

The invasion of ISIS in 2014 triggered a mass exodus of the region’s Christians.Reporting on his December 2019 fact-finding mission to northern Iraq, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said that Qaraqosh, the largest Christian town on the Nineveh Plains, is “slowly returning” to what it was before the invasion of ISIS in the summer of 2014, which triggered a mass exodus of the region’s Christians to Kurdistan. The Patriarch celebrated Mass in Mosul’s rebuilt Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Annunciation. It was the first Mass said there in more than five years. More than 500...

Cdl Marx: Spreading ‘fear of hell’ undermines Gospel The German cardinal also said that 'sometimes one has to say: stop the religion!' January 10, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Reinhard Marx – the archbishop of Munich-Freising and the head of the German Bishops' Conference – just made a statement, in which he argued against spreading fear, saying: “wherever someone spreads fear – of hell or whatever else – the Gospel cannot have an effect.” He added with regard to the topic of religion and its relation to peace that “sometimes one has to say: stop the religion!” Marx spoke these...

Exclusive A database containing the personal details of 56.25m US residents – from names and home addresses to phone numbers and ages – has been found on the public internet, served from a computer with a Chinese IP address, bizarrely enough. The information silo appears to have been obtained somehow from Florida-based CheckPeople.com, which is a typical people-finder website: for a fee, you can enter someone's name, and it will look up their current and past addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, names of relatives, and even criminal records in some cases, all presumably gathered from public records. However, all of...

Court ruling a major step toward holding dioceses accountablePITTSBURGH (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a first-of-its-kind legal ruling, a Pennsylvania court has ruled that non-victims can move forward with lawsuits against the diocese of Pittsburgh. Allegheny County Judge Christine A. Ward handed down the court ruling on Tuesday, accepting the plaintiffs' argument that they have standing to sue the Pittsburgh diocese. The plaintiffs are claiming that the Pittsburgh diocese, along with seven over Pennsylvania dioceses, have created "a public nuisance" by failing to report every allegation of child abuse insofar as not doing so potentially endangers their children. Public nuisance refers to...

A new US government report says that human rights abuse in China has worsened in the last year, and specifically highlighted the escalating persecution of Chinese Catholics in the wake of the Vatican-China agreement of 2018. “During its 2019 reporting year, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that the human rights situation has worsened and the rule of law continued to deteriorate, as the Chinese government and Party increasingly used regulations and laws to assert social and political control,” stated the commission’s annual report, released on Wednesday. The report said that “After the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed an...

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Washington D.C., Jan 8, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Law enforcement officials have conducted interviews with several senior figures at the Papal Foundation, a U.S. based charity which supports the charitable works of the Holy Father. Officers from the FBI have spoken to at least three foundation staff members over last several months, with enquiries focused on the role of Theodore McCarrick, who served as a board member until his removal from the College of Cardinals in 2018, following charges of sexual abuse of minors. Last year, McCarrick was laicized following a Vatican investigation and his conviction by a canonical...

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Can you be vegan and Muslim? Sumaya and Mara think so, but often have to defend their beliefs."What?! You are vegan?….VEGAN?!… What's next… taking off your hijab?!" That's how Sumaya's mum reacted when she told her she was vegan. "I wish I recorded her! Her whole body language changed. It was like I'd murdered someone," says Sumaya, who's 18 and from west London. "I was like 'Mum, I haven't murdered anyone. If you think about it… I've done the complete opposite." Like many in Britain today, Sumaya proudly carries many identities. British. Hijab-wearing Muslim woman. Somalian. And most recently, vegan....

Does the world really need low-budget, right-leaning genre movies when high-budget right-leaning movies are already being made by people with exceptional talent? The elevator pitch for “Run Hide Fight,” a film currently in production, is simple: “a 17-year-old female ‘Die Hard’ in the middle of a school shooting.” Swap out cop Bruce Willis for student Isabel May, exchange the Nakatomi Plaza in “Die Hard” for Vernon Central High School in Texas, and you have the plot. It’s an offensive idea for a movie—and a dumb one. “Run Hide Fight,” written and directed by Kyle Rankin, is being produced by Rebeller,...

Two top English private schools have defended their decision not to accept a benefactor's offer of scholarships for disadvantaged white boys. Winchester and Dulwich colleges have declined the offer - reported to be worth over £1m - by a former pupil from both, Professor Sir Bryan Thwaites. The schools say they do not want to put ethnic restrictions on who can benefit from financial help. Sir Bryan says he is now looking for state schools to accept his offer. The philanthropist, who is 96 and plans to leave the funds in his will, attended Dulwich until the start of the...

World War III with Iran in retaliation for the killing of terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani failed to materialize. Instead, Iran fired about a dozen missiles at airfields hosting U.S. forces in Sunni and Kurdish areas of Iraq and despite deadly intent, failed to cause casualties. Content with that bootless result, the ayatollahs offered to end the cycle of retaliation, at least for now, citing their generous and forgiving nature. The abrupt de-escalation of military conflict caused by the actual impracticability of open war left inflamed political passions with nowhere to go. So they burst their channels in various ways. The...

In times past, the sight of cavorting knights fighting to the death would have been a familiar sight in the streets around the island over Christmas. Once a firm fixture of the island’s festive and folkloric calendar, this year a group of Manx cultural enthusiasts are planning to bring the traditional Whiteboys plays back, and will perform the play on a number of occasions throughout this coming Saturday (December 14). The plays themselves would always feature a central figure, who would be identified as a doctor, and he would narrate and oversee the performance, which would be based around a...