Free Republic

The Federal Reserve surprised the market Wednesday with projections that future interest rate hikes will come a bit sooner than expected. Gold bugs in particular were disappointed. The price of gold fell 4% Wednesday and was lower again Thursday, falling below $1,800 an ounce for the first time since early May. While it's true that gold often rises along with inflation fears, Wall Street may have already priced in this scenario. Investors appear to be selling gold now due to expectations that the Fed is taking the threat of inflation more seriously and may move more aggressively to tamp it...

Kafka trap The Kafka trap might also be called the SJW trap. Author Eric Raymond coined the term Kafkatrapping in his 2010 article in which he presented a style of argument that is common today with SJW’s, but has it’s origins in The Trial a book written in 1915 by Franz Kafka. In The Trial the protagonist is arrested and accused of serious crimes which are never specified. He receives no explanation or description of the charges, and his refusal to acknowledge that he must be guilty is what makes him guilty. The only way to stop his abuse is...

Shocking images show the moment Border Patrol agents thwarted a human smuggling operation in Texas, where they found 33 migrants crammed into a U-Haul in near-100-degree heat. The US Customs and Border Protection agents were alerted about 10 p.m. June 10 to suspicious activity related to a possible human-smuggling scheme near a McDonald’s restaurant in Van Horn, the agency said. They approached two vehicles, a Dodge Journey and the U-Haul box truck, and discovered “33 people who were close to perishing due to excessive heat and lack of fresh air in temperatures still hovering near 100 degrees.”

A decade-long series of retranslating and approving liturgical texts is nearing its end, but isn't quite there yet. These sets are on Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church; additional intercessions and psalter concluding prayers for the Liturgy of the Hours; and the Order of Penance. The votes on each set require two-thirds approval of the Latin-rite bishops. Following such approval, the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments needs to issue a "confirmatio" before the translations can be used. "We continue to make steady progress," said Archbishop Leonard P. Blair of Hartford, Connecticut, chairman of...

I drove through Uptown today to see the latest barricades. The pictures showed some purloined umbrellas from Buffalo Wild Wings, piled and painted with the usual slogans and abbreviations. Couldn’t see much, as they were on the other end of an alley. The neighborhood looked busy; lots of traffic, new apartments, more under construction. Fewer boarded-up stores and restaurants - that is, the boards are down, replaced by glass and FOR RENT signs. The great mast of the Uptown theater is still lording over the neighborhood, waiting for its zeppelin. The theater closed during the pandemic, and will not reopen....

Portland, Ore. — FM News 101 learned late Wednesday night that in response to the criminal indictment of Officer Corey Budworth, the bureaus entire Rapid Response Team resigned. Sources with the Police Bureau say the team voted unanimously to disband. The Rapid Response Team is a group of volunteer officers who respond to civil disobedience, demonstrations, and riots.

Michigan’s Republican-led Senate on June 16 passed several bills that, if signed into law, would implement more voter identification requirements for in-person voters and absentee voters, adding Michigan to a growing list of states pursuing more stringent election measures. All Senate Republicans voted in favor of the three bills, while every Senate Democrat opposed them. Current law stipulates that Michigan residents who don’t have photo identification when they vote in person can still cast their ballot if they sign an affidavit at their designated polling location. More than 11,000 individuals cast ballots this way during the Nov. 3 election, according...

@RepMTG Just moments ago I introduced legislation to ELIMINATE the ATF (H.R. 3960). The ATF's unconstitutional war on gun owners and our Second Amendment rights must end.

During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because he had access to assassins... Source URL: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/secret-recording-florida-republican-threat-hit-squad-494976

Frank Bonner, who played Herb Tarlek on the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” has died. He was 79. Bonner passed away “peacefully” Wednesday amid his battle with Lewy body dementia, his family told TMZ.. As Herb on “WKRP” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bonner was the quintessential salesman in a gaudy plaid suit and white loafers, despite struggling as a radio station sales manager who consistently failed to reel in the big accounts. The actor turned to directing in a few episodes of “WKRP,” and later reprised the role in the early ’90s spinoff, “The New WKRP in Cincinnati.”

ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 6:7–15 Friends, the Gospel for today is of great significance, for in it the Son of God teaches us to pray. We hear from not just a guru, a spiritual teacher, or a religious genius, but from the very Son of God. This is why the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, is the model of all prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer for the Christian journey, which has been offered up consistently for the past two thousand years. Think for a moment how this prayer links us to all of the great figures...

After being out of the limelight since the inauguration of President Biden, CNN's Jim Acosta confirms he is now working on a breaking story regarding the background of former President Trump. Said his spokesbirthingperson, "We know Jim hasn't been seen or heard from much since President Biden, the shining example of government competence, was inaugurated, but that doesn't mean he hasn't not been not busy. He just wants everyone to know he is continuing to dig into the former presidents past and has uncovered shocking information. "It appears from intensive interviews with his former kindergarten teacher, as well as his...

In Search of Facts, Ideas and Challenges, Volume 5, Issue 80. Volume 8, Issue 159Institute for the Study of Relevant Progressivism, 1976 https://books.google.com/books?id=k5eyAAAAIAAJ&q=%22shukairy%22 The P.L.O. - What Sort of Precendent? This Once Even the Right Could be Right professing its genocidal ambition openly, without hiding it in any disguise whatever. Its leader, Ahmed Shukairy, kept making a point of it that the Arabs were absolutely literal when speaking of pushing the Israelis into the sea. Following the military disaster Israel that year inflicted on the Arabs, they were internationally overheard discussing the public relations error of their past genocidal candor....

The U.S. House of Representatives moved Thursday to repeal a nearly two-decade-old war powers measure, marking what many lawmakers hope will be the beginning of the end of wide-ranging authorities given to the president after the 9/11 terror attacks. The vote was 268 to 161. The measure now heads to the Senate. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California — who in 2001 and 2002 voted against two war power measures passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — was the sponsor of the repeal bill. The plan would end the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or...

A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of COVID-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said on Thursday. The study, published this week by the U.S. National Institutes for Health (NIH), showed that at least seven people in five U.S. states were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, weeks before the United States reported its first official cases. Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told...

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the third time it has preserved the 2010 healthcare law. Texas and other Republican-leaning states, backed by the Trump administration, sought to strike down the law on technical arguments after Congress reduced to zero the tax penalty for failing to carry health insurance. Thursday’s 7-2 decision, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, found that none of the plaintiffs suffered any injury from zeroing out the penalty and thus they lacked legal standing to bring the lawsuit at all. “We do not reach these questions of the Act’s validity,”...

I was recently at an event for the International Women’s Forum. While talking with a small group of women at the event, the conversation turned to what we were doing or tried new lately. Two of the women excitedly told of their new venture into lifting heavy weights. Weight lifting for women? Interesting.One of the women, who is petite, proudly announced that she had lifted 250 pounds with her legs! Needless to say, we were all very impressed. We were even more curious when she told us she had lost a full inch around each thigh in just two months,...

Victoria’s Secret is undertaking a major brand makeover. The lingerie giant is ditching their legendary Victoria’s Secret Angels and replacing them with ‘trailblazing’ individuals like Megan Rapinoe, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, transgender models, and more. The iconic lingerie retailer is risking alienating its loyal customers to go full on woke. Victoria’s Secret is shifting focus to what they believe women want. And they believe these new models are what women want to be like rather than supermodels.

It was 50 years ago that Tricia Nixon, daughter of President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon, was married to Edward F. Cox in the White House Rose Garden with the nation enjoying the celebration through numerous television specials. On their anniversary Saturday, the couple, along with their son, Christopher Nixon Cox, attended an outdoor rose garden party at the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda with frontline workers, first responders and teachers as their guests. The couple posed for photographs in the library’s popular rose garden, standing in the same gazebo in which they were married...

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin told her co-hosts Thursday on ABC’s “The View” that President Joe Biden snapping at CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins during a press conference in Geneva was “conduct unbecoming of the office.” Hostin said, “In terms of Kaitlan Collins, she is I think 29, one of the youngest White House correspondents, chief White House correspondents in media history. I think that’s an important role. She’s broken some ceilings. She came from the Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s online website. That’s where she got her training as a White House correspondent and joined CNN from there. She’s had quite...