Free Republic

First Friday Devotion “Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify to its love! And in return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love. … “I feel this more than all that I suffered during My Passion. If only they would make Me some return for My Love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were...

Democrats moved to push through President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus plan with or without - most likely without - Republican support. Following an hours-long "vote-o-rama" (a sophisticated legislative procedure, for those who aren't familiar), VP Kamala Harris cast her first tie-breaking vote to approve the budget plan in the Senate.The deciding vote came early Friday morning, after about 15 hours of all-night debate, and votes on dozens of amendments. In the end, the Senate found itself in a 50-50 partisan deadlock, allowing Harris to break the tie in a 0530ET vote... Vice President Harris casts her first tie-breaking vote...

The Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski-inspired Traitorade key lime sour from Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Smug Brewing tastes like lime and spite. It’s a beautiful anti-love letter from New England to the former Patriots stars after they jumped ship to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. From a distance, it can look like a Gatorade. But for those who really know it, you can see a dry, sarcastic layer of affection. It’s like walking down a Boston street in February, staring at the ground and not talking to anyone. It’s bitter and abrasive. In a vacuum, it should be a miserable experience. But...

A new HBO Max documentary, “Transhood,” follows for five years the lives of four Kansas City, Mo. children who believe they are the opposite sex.I identified as a “transgender woman” for eight years. Today, watching this documentary, I marvel at how the events of my childhood groomed me into believing that identifying as the opposite sex was the solution to my gender confusion. My heart goes out to these children who also are being groomed into a transgender life.A Purple Dress Took My Boyhood AwayI can trace the onset of my gender confusion and wanting to be a female to...

President Joe Biden sounded a dark note on the future of the economy Friday, after a bleak jobs report came out. The United States economy added 49,000 jobs in December with only 6,000 jobs in the private sector, according to the latest report released Friday morning. “At that rate, it’s going to take ten years to get back to full employment,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.” The president spoke while meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats in the Oval Office to discuss his $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending plan.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson tore into Bank of America (BOFA) for allegedly searching and releasing private customer data to federal investigators following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Carlson said his show obtained “exclusively, evidence" that BOFA — which has more than 60 million customers — “is actively but secretly engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government.” Carlson said during the February 4 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight that the nation’s second-largest bank “is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies.” In effect, Bank of America...

Parler, the social media platform that was forced offline by Amazon following the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, could be up and running again early next week, co-owner Dan Bongino told "Hannity" Thursday. "We're shooting for Monday," said Bongino

The U.S. economy added 49,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate dipped to 6.3 percent, according to data released Friday. Economists surveyed by Econoday had forecast an addition of 50,000 jobs and a slight rise in the unemployment rate to 6.8 percent. The estimate for December was revised down significantly, from a loss of 140,000 to a loss of 227,000. This is the third straight month of sluggishness in the labor market. Job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health...

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) was one of just 11 Republicans to vote in favor of the successful resolution to remove the controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylore Greene (R-GA) from her assigned committees, including the House Education and Labor Committee, and the House Budget Committee. The final tally was 230-199.Colleagues voted to expel her because of past conspiratorial comments Greene has made about the September 11 terror attacks, anti-Semitic remarks, apparent support for violence against Democrats in Congress, and other controversial and inflammatory behavior."These were words of the past," Greene insisted on the House floor. "These things do not represent me." She...

Several shoppers and employees at a bustling Florida supermarket went maskless in defiance of a county mandate, alarming footage shows. A 15-second clip posted to Twitter Wednesday shows just a few shoppers and virtually no employees wearing face coverings at an Oakes Farms Market in Naples — where a sign outside says customers are exempt from Collier County’s mask mandate if they have a medical condition. One maskless female employee is seen laughing at a customer who also eschewed donning a mask, while two workers and another patron were all without personal protective equipment at another checkout aisle, the footage...

As we are now three months out from the elections and almost one month removed from the storming of the Capitol, we can step back, catch our breath, and reassess where we stand. Emotions are calming down, the news cycle is less intense, and fanatical voices are being separated from reasonable voices. Yet one thing remains constant: millions of fair-minded Americans still believe there was serious election fraud. This is an issue that simply will not disappear. These people are not wild-eyed white supremacists (or even non-wild-eyed white supremacists). To the contrary, they are as mortified as anyone over the...

Bank of America Gives Customer Data to Federal Authorities After Capitol ProtestsThe mega-bank Bank of America has been giving private information about its customers to the federal government following the mostly peaceful protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, as reported by Fox News.The report comes from Tucker Carlson’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight, which obtained exclusive documents showing that Bank of America went through the private data and transaction history of all of its more than 60 million customers. This was due to the bank coming to an agreement with the federal government to use this information to identify...

Since the January 6th riot at the Capitol, the talking heads in the media, political elites, and other progressive activists have been opining on the need to deprogram Trump supporters as they attempt to paint us all as craven conspiracy theorists with the potential for violence. You see this in their obsession with Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), a freshman member with no real political power. Yet, they take her past comments and extrapolate her insane assertions to half the population. Yes, dear readers, if you liked the foreign policy or domestic policy implemented by the Trump administration better than...

Joe Biden continues to lie about his past. This time, he brought back a debunked story of him allegedly being shot at while overseas. At a debate in 2007, Biden claimed he was targeted at the Green Zone in Baghdad. He had to retract those comments after getting backlash from veterans.

First Lady Jill Biden filmed a public service announcement released Thursday, urging Americans to keep wearing their masks during the coronavirus pandemic. The first lady appeared in the video with her family’s two dogs Champ and Major. The ad was titled “Puppy Bowl XVII” to coincide with this year’s Super Bowl on Sunday.

VIDEOJian Yang of Silicon Valley has an uncle in Beijing with a certain special characteristic. Could he be Cho Xiden?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday doubled down on her “terrifying” experience during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — saying she initially kept mum about it because “so many survivors fear being publicly doubted.” The Bronx-Queens congresswoman appeared on “CBS This Morning” after being accused of exaggerating details of Jan. 6, when a mob of protesters supporting former President Donald Trump protesters breached the Capitol building. “It’s unfortunately kind of the spring to deny and to politicize our accounts, was something that I sat with,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the show. “So many survivors fear being publicly doubted. But the fact of...

We should strive to play, sing and compose our best, but worship is not about us and what we like. It's a way of encountering and glorifying God.The old fogeys may have had a point about guitars in church. It’s not that there is anything profane about guitars; they are great instruments that can be used wonderfully in worship. And scripture testifies to the worth of using many instruments to praise God and includes calls for loud rejoicing in worship. But there have been downsides to the revolution in church worship over the last couple of generations. Fights over church...

Hunter Biden has moved his family to a stylish $5.4million canal-front home in Venice, California, DailyMail.com can reveal. The president's son moved into the three-story property with wife Melissa and their 10-month-old son Beau toward the end of last year and the family is now under 24-hour Secret Service protection. It's believed the father of five, who turned 51 on Thursday, is paying $25,000 a month to rent the property owned by Sweetgreen co-founder and CEO Jonathan Neman.

Shake the 2020 Blues and Look to 2022As I wrote in Thursday’s installment of my Morning Briefing, conservative Republicans are dreaming a lot about 2024 because it’s a coping mechanism that helps to ameliorate the pain of the daily slaps upside the head we’re getting from the new puppet president.There is also still a lot of justifiable anger over last November and the rather fantastical processes that followed.All of the above is understandable but potentially dangerous because attention is being diverted from the most important and attainable goal for the GOP: winning the House back in 2022.This column is going...