Free Republic

Billions of locusts, in swarms the size of cities, are eating "everything in sight" in East Africa, and experts fear the plague could get "500 times" worse. The ZeroHedge blog reported "ravenous locust swarms that are 'the size of cities' are consuming crops at a staggering pace, and this could potentially cause famine on the African continent that is unlike anything we have ever seen before." Al Jazeera previously reported locusts "dense clouds of the ravenous insects, each of which consumes its own weight in food every day" that have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya. "The U.N.'s Food...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) dog is campaigning for her in Iowa while the senator is stuck in Washington watching the impeachment trial. Warren’s golden retriever Bailey took to the campaign trail five days before the Democratic caucuses in the state, accompanied by Warren’s husband Bruce Mann. During a stop in Fort Dodge, Bailey posed for selfies, received pets and stuck her nose into a cake of peanut butter and oats made specifically for her, BuzzFeed News reported. Meanwhile, Mann spoke about his wife asking the crowd of volunteers to shout out single words that described the senator during her town...

A predatory child molester and an alleged rapist are among the illegal immigrants released under Mayor de Blasio’s sanctuary-city laws in the last six weeks. Why doesn’t the mayor look the victims in the eye and tell them how compassionate he is? Spare a thought for the child, younger than 11, who was the victim of Andres Peña Perez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia. Perez pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court last December to sexually assaulting the child and was released, pending sentencing. That’s when the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency should have picked him up and...

Efforts to bring wavering Republicans into line appeared to be working as President Trump’s lawyers argued that anything a president did to win re-election was “in the public interest.WASHINGTON — The White House and Senate Republicans worked aggressively on Wednesday to discount damaging revelations from John R. Bolton and line up the votes to block new witnesses from testifying in President Trump’s impeachment trial, in a push to bring the proceeding to a swift close.

Open Letter to Bp. Knestout Asks for Clarity on Catholic Teaching Your Excellency,I write to you on behalf of Catholic Virginians all across the Commonwealth to express our confusion over your recent actions and words pertaining to the event which was scheduled to take place at St. Bede Catholic Church in Williamsburg on 01 February 2020.I am writing to you in the spirit of Canon 212 of the Code of Canon Law, which affords the Faithful the right “to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their...

A Rice County Catholic priest apologized Wednesday for describing Islam as “the greatest threat in the world,” both to the United States and Christianity itself, in a recent sermon. “My homily on immigration contained words that were hurtful to Muslims,” the Rev. Nick VanDenBroeke said in a statement posted on the website of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. “I’m sorry for this. I realize now that my comments were not fully reflective of the Catholic Church’s teaching on Islam.” Earlier Wednesday, a Muslim organization called on Minnesota Catholic leaders to repudiate the sermon. VanDenBroeke, pastor of the 100-year-old...

The South Dakota House on Wednesday evening passed legislation that would ban physicians in the state from treating transgender children with hormones and sex reassignment surgery. The Republican-controlled chamber passed H.B. 1057 in a 46-23 vote. Under the proposed law, doctors would receive misdemeanor charges if they are caught giving transgender children under 16 years old hormone treatment. The bill also bans them from performing “castration” or vasectomies on children in that age range. State Rep. Fred Deutsch (R), the primary sponsor of the bill, tweeted that after “some of the heaviest lobbying,” the legislature finally passed a bill to...

Diamondback moths are migratory pests found in the Americas, Europe, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, but especially in areas where crops can be grown yearround. In these parts -- where it's not too hot nor too cold -- are where diamondback moths cause the greatest problems, including billions of dollars in damages to cruciferous crops such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and canola. They're one of the most damaging insects because of their high reproduction rate and resistance to most insecticides. To address these problems in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way, researchers have successfully genetically engineered (GE) male diamondback moths to...

(Skip) A scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama’s IRS helped him get reelected. (Skip) The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the...

Holes in the Seamless Garment Some issues are more important than others The image of Christ's seamless garment, the one made for him by his blessed Mother, has become an icon to modernists seeking to Protestantize the Catholic Church. For nearly 2,000 years, the Church taught that different moral actions had a different "weight," but now, bishops and priests who support sodomy and breaking U.S. law on immigration are claiming it's all the same thing — that they're all "life issues." The idea was developed in 1971 by Catholic pacifist Eileen Egan, who described it as a "consistent ethic of life." In 1983, suspected...

The Independence County circuit judge overseeing a paternity lawsuit involving Hunter Biden and an Arkansas woman on Monday accepted a temporary agreement on child support. Court documents show Biden has agreed to pay monthly support starting in February. He also will pay by March 1 retroactive support back to Nov. 1, 2018, and for plaintiff Lunden Alexis Roberts' legal fees. The amounts he will pay for each of these were redacted in online court documents. **SNIP** Monday's agreement does not dismiss the contempt motions, according to court documents. They will be dismissed if Biden provides all the documents the court...

Fox News’ 8 p.m. show Tucker Carlson Tonight dominated cable news ratings on Tuesday, bringing in 4,419,000 viewers– 861,000 of which were in the advertiser’s highly coveted 25-54 age demo. Sean Hannity’s 9 p.m. Fox News show came in second place with 4,120,000 viewers and 701,000 in the demo, followed by The Five at 5 p.m. with 3,692,000 viewers and 610,000 in the demo, and Laura Ingraham’s 10 p.m. show The Ingraham Angle at 3,605,000 viewers and 631,000 in the demo. Over at MSNBC, the clear winner was Rachel Maddow at 9 p.m. with 2,785,000 viewers and 461,000 in the...

... Carlos Pitones ... told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions. The National Weather Service reports that winds in the area gusted as high as 37 miles per hour Wednesday. Video from CNN affiliate KYMA shows the metal panels leaning against trees adjacent to a Mexicali, Mexico, street as the wind whips up dirt from the construction site on the other side of the border. The CBP...

Attorney General William Barr warned New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan of “an organized, militant secular effort” to suppress religion in “the marketplace of ideas” in an interview Wednesday. “The problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on non-religious people,” Barr told Dolan on his SiriusXM radio show Conversation with Cardinal Dolan. “It’s the opposite — it’s that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people, and they’re not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith.” Citing Democrats’ efforts to coerce religious employers to violate their conscience rights as well...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled "Prayer" are closed to debate of any kind.

A sick passenger was met by fire and emergency medical crews when a flight landed Wednesday at Logan International Airport in Boston, officials said. It has not been confirmed what symptoms the passenger was displaying or if the incident is related to the coronavirus. The passenger arrived on a Hainan Airlines flight from Beijing, the Boston Herald reported. A spokesperson for Massport, which runs Boston Logan Airport, would not confirm to the outlet if the passenger was displaying flu-like symptoms. In a statement obtained by Fox News, a spokesperson for Massport said: “We can confirm that Massport Fire Rescue and...

Nigel Farage was cut off as he delivered his final speech in the European Parliament this afternoon because he and his Brexit Party MEPs started to wave Union flags. Parliament vice-president Mairead McGuinness switched off Mr Farage's microphone as he was finishing his address as she told the party's MEPs to 'put your flags away, you are leaving'. The cheering Brexit Party contingent then proceeded to get up and walk out of the chamber. The stormy clash took place as MEPs rubberstamped the Brexit divorce deal - the final hurdle which needed to be cleared for the UK to leave...

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is being called to suspend her presidential campaign after an Associated Press story published Tuesday showed she may have mishandled a case while she was Hennepin County's District Attorney. As the county DA, Klobuchar led the case against Myon Burrell, who was a teenager at the time and was sentenced to life in prison for the 2002 murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards. The AP story revealed that Klobuchar prosecuted Burrell, now 33, despite there being little evidence and even though his co-defendant confessed to the crime and said Burrell wasn’t there. Though Klobuchar was not the...

Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) attempt to ask about the whistleblower whose report helped spark the impeachment inquiry is running into a roadblock in the form of Chief Justice John Roberts. A source confirmed that Roberts has indicated he would not read a question from Paul regarding the whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry. The question from Paul is expected to name the individual. Because Roberts is responsible for reading the questions that would put him in the position of publicly outing the person on the Senate floor. Paul indicated to reporters after a closed-door Republican dinner that...

His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, stressed that Christianity and the ideology of non-resistance are not the same thing. It is essential to resist evil, but in a way so that evil does not seize us, he said. “Christianity has nothing to do with the so-called ideology of pacifism. Christ talked about the virtues of forgiveness, love for enemies and of not repaying evil with evil as one’s personal achievement and one’s inner spiritual work,” noted the Patriarch on Monday, January 27 during the plenary meeting of the XXVIII Christmas Readings. The Primate of the Russian Orthodox...