Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Seminarians Fighting BackLonging for justiceFor decades, scores of victims brought forward complaints of clerical sexual abuse, only to find themselves revictimized by Church leaders. Victims, who had the courage to confront those who enabled their abuse as minors, found their voices hushed by threats of what might happen to them should they reveal their plights or even think of suing the Church. The Spotlight team of The Boston Globe took this challenge head-on in its 2002 exposé of the abuse crisis that has since proven to be of epic proportions. The Catholic Church in the United States alone...

President Donald Trump disliked renovations made to his Mar-a-Lago resort by his wife, Melania, so much that he had them ripped out, CNN reported.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., says he will raise objections next week when the Congress meets to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the election, forcing House and Senate votes that are likely to delay — but in no way alter — the final certification of Biden’s win. President Donald Trump has, without evidence, claimed there was widespread fraud in the election. He has pushed Republican senators to pursue his unfounded charges even though the Electoral College this month cemented Biden’s 306-232 victory and multiple legal efforts to challenge the results have failed. A group of Republicans in the Democratic-majority House...

The Trump administration says it’s on track to build 450-miles of its border wall by the end of the year. That’s the goal that the White House set last year. The Customs and Border Protection now says that 446-miles have been completed as of Monday (28 December 2020).

December's Ratings Collapse for Fox News continues to be an unmitigated disaster for the Murdochs and their paid and unpaid sycophants and apologists. Going from record ratings before their duplicitous Arizona call, to massive ratings collapse by Monday 12/28. Here are the current Fox News ratings losses according to Nielsen as of Monday 12/28: Ingraham -64% Hannity -61% Bream -60% Carlson -57% MacCallum -56% Baier -52% Fox and Friendless -51% Cavuto -49% Outnumbered -48% Hemmer -47% Sandra Smith -46% The Five -46% Perino -43%

As an adult who teaches, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty. Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation. However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors...

Southern California hospitals, already overwhelmed by coronavirus patients, are now facing a new problem — a shortage of oxygen, according to a report. Officials say they’re having trouble getting the necessary amount of oxygen to critically ill coronavirus patients, with supply issues causing at least five Los Angeles County hospitals to declare an “internal disaster” on Sunday, which included turning away ambulances.

"Since . . . the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives" (Heb. 2:14-15). Christ came to break the power of Satan which He did by conquering death. To be free to live with God and share in all His blessings, someone had to shatter Satan's death grip on us. Sin is what gives Satan his powerful hold on...

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Will the last person to flee from Bill de Blasio’s New York City please turn off the lights?Answer: We’re sorry for being so flip. The power will have been shut off long before that happens.Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap:- HuffPo senior politics reporter has difficulty counting to two - Antifa holds entire motel hostage, Tacoma government yawns - Joe Biden refers to Kamala Harris as “president-elect” And so much more.Shall we begin?toddstarnes @toddstarnes Americans don't want $600 or $2,000. We want our Constitutional rights back. We want...

The tone of Morning Joe has gone from wailing against Donald Trump to worrying out loud about poor Joe Biden. On today's show, substitute host Kasie Hunt and Al Sharpton both fretted that "the Biden administration is being set up to fail" by reason of the high expectations the Trump administration has set regarding vaccine distribution and related matters. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Normalcy doesn’t proceed naturally from the moral universe we’ve generated over the past several months. We much change our minds to change our circumstances.Amid the latest wave of COVID-19, those who believe in the necessity of lockdowns and masks are insisting the non-compliant minority is “the reason we can’t get back to normal.” That makes sense as long as you don’t take into account the history of COVID restrictions and their loose relationship with both the science and the metrics of the pandemic. Most of the statewide mask mandates went into effect in the summer, for instance, when cases were...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio death row inmate who survived an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2009 died Monday of possible complications of COVID-19, the state prisons system said. At the time of the 2009 procedure, condemned prisoner Romell Broom was only the second inmate nationally to survive an execution after they began in modern times. Broom, 64, has been placed on the "COVID probable list" maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, spokesperson Sara French said Tuesday. Inmates on that list are suspected to have died of COVID-19, pending a death certificate, she said.

Kentucky Fried Chicken founder and mascot Colonel Sanders is an American icon, but until recently, he wasn’t exactly known for his sex appeal. That changed in 2017. The sexualization of the Colonel has intensified in the past few years with an advertising campaign titled “The Return of the Colonel” that hits erotic highs not seen from corporate fast food since the boom times of Hooters, or the “slutburger” era of Carls Jr. From romance novels to this month’s Lifetime mini-movie, both marketers and KFC fans have been hard at work making a gentle old man possess the charm of early-2000s...

Dr. Anthony Fauci said the country is at a critical place during the pandemic, and that the worst is probably still ahead. Despite warnings about traveling and getting together with people outside a household, Fauci feared another surge on top of the current surge following the Christmas holiday. “We very well might see a post-seasonal — in the sense of Christmas, New Year’s — surge, and as I’ve described it, as a surge upon a surge,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Melatonin, a dietary supplement often used by insomnia sufferers, could be used to possibly help prevent or treat COVID-19, according to researchers at the Cleveland Clinic. The hormone — which regulates the sleep-wake cycle — was associated with an almost 30 percent reduced likelihood of contracting the disease, the scientists said in research published in the journal PLOS Biology, KIRO 7 reported. Additional studies are required about the over-the-counter supplement, the researchers said. “It is very important to note these findings do not suggest people should start to take melatonin without consulting their physician,” lead researcher Feixiong Cheng of the...

Under no scenario would a unified European Union aligned with China be in the interest of America. Indeed, a united EU might not be a friend but a foe.Joseph Borrell, a former Spanish socialist and current High Representative of the European Union, recently argued the EU needs to be strategically independent. “It is foreseen that in 20 years, we [the EU] will not represent more than 11 percent of world GNP, far behind China, which will represent double it, below 14 percent for the United States and at par with India,” Borrell wrote, adding the next two decades would be...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) introduced legislation to ban biological males from participating in women’s sports.Gabbard, a Democrat who ran for the 2020 presidential nomination for her party, is the sponsor of H.R. 8932, the “Protect Women’s Sports Act,” alongside Reps. Markwayne Mullin, (R-Okla.), Bill Flores (R-Texas), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), Rep. Alexander Mooney (R-W.V.), and Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.).The legislation aims “to provide that for purposes of determining compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in athletics, sex shall be determined on the basis of biological sex as determined at birth by a physician.”In a joint press release...

Members of Georgia’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to study Georgia’s Election Laws, and the numerous voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. The hearing comes after a Senate subcommittee held a hearing last week at the capitol to discuss perceived voting irregularities in November’s presidential election. During the hearing witness Jovan Pulitzer was invited to testify on the irregularities in the November 3rd election. On Tuesday Jovan Pulitzer revealed the differences between votes printed for Democrat counties versus Republican counties. The Republican counties had a barcode up in the...

Orsen Welles once caused a massive panic by airing a radio show depicting an alien invasion. The power of suggestion was strong enough to make some people commit suicide and it took days for the hysteria to subside. In the war room of the Chinese Communist Party, they had to find a way to attack the US without evoking an armed response, plausible deniability, an accident. The CCP holds the belief that they are destined to rule the world and that nations will submit to them (a “god” told them so, so they say). So a plan to take over...

Georgia's January 5th runoff for two US Senate Seats will decide whether Republicans keep the chamber, or cede power to Congressional Democrats - allowing the incoming Biden administration to swiftly execute their agenda.Democrats Jon Ossoff (right) and Raphael WarnockAnd thanks to a landslide of absentee voting amid near-record turnout, the special election between Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and incumbent GOP Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, will likely drag on for days, if not weeks, according to Bloomberg.In the Nov. 3 contest, the results were so close that it took 10 days before television networks projected that Democrat...