Free Republic

A former professional baseball player teared up on the Fourth of July, passionately describing what his U.S. citizenship means to him. “It’s special,” said retired Major League Baseball All-Star Ozzie Guillen during an interview on Pre Game Live with host Chuck Garfien. “People, they don’t know how hard that is. How many people die … How many people want to be American. It's [an] honor for me,” the teary-eyed Guillen continued. As the retired star was speaking, a video of him becoming a citizen in 2006 played in the background. Garfien pointed out how emotional his guest had become from...

Byrd, a native of Newport News, Va., was only four weeks out of boot camp on April 28, 2018, when he received his first off-base liberty from Parris Island, S.C. "It was my first time being off of the island," he said in the news release. He traveled to Savannah, Ga., got a motel room and slept late the next day. As Byrd was returning to his room from breakfast that morning and was crossing the lobby, he heard shrieks coming from a hallway behind the reception desk. "The next scream was just horrible," he said. "That scream was enough...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that President Joe Biden would “certainly support” states re-imposing coronavirus restrictions. A CBS News reporter asked Psaki if “the White House would reimpose” coronavirus “restrictions, as cases tick up, or is it up to the states?” “We certainly support their decisions to implement measures that will make their community safe,” Psaki explained. “States and local communities will have to make evaluations about what is in their interest.” “There are much higher rates of vaccination in some parts of the country versus others,” she continued. “We are at almost 70 percent vaccination rate...

Something happened recently that I believe may help some people. I have had many of these ocular migraines over the last two years. I kept a diary on their occurrences on my iPhone, because I wanted to have a trend line. Suddenly they stopped. Not one in the last eight months. The scare of actual migraine headaches (curse them!) has gone to near zero. I looked back at my medical records to see what happened. Please pass this information along to any person with this problem. The only thing that changed: I had a bad tooth extracted. It was on...

Why are our government leaders and the media so condescending to Christians? Why have so many young people written off Christianity as totally irrelevant to their lives? It’s because, for the most part, the church is no longer a light. Christ isn’t ruling in our society because he doesn’t reign in our lives. As I look around today, I see few in God’s house who are truly in union with Christ, and few ministers refuse worldly methods in order to trust God for their direction. Dear believers, we cannot blame the darkness of the world around us for the church’s...

The root cause of sterilizations is fear of the future and a lack of trust in God. Often, such a state of mind is the result of a deficient relationship with God, or because of various psychological wounds caused during the developmental period of a person’s life. (If the woman or man could not trust their own father growing up, they will find it difficult to trust God.) In this case, what we need to avoid is the cynical approach “it’s easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission.” Such a calculating posture is no way to deal with God....

The turnout for Trump's "Save America" rally in soggy Sarasota should remind everyone the former President will leave the stage when he is good and ready. And he's not ready. The “Save America” rally for former (repeat, former) President Donald Trump Saturday in Sarasota sent an unmistakable warning to Florida Democrats and, maybe, Gov. Ron DeSantis, too. Trump’s true believers still believe, and there’s no room in their hearts and minds for anyone else. That’s true, even if it means siding with Trump against a Governor they really like. Why else would thousands sit through buckets of rain to hear...

“The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:5-8). Salvation ushers believers into a love relationship with God that lasts throughout eternity. The eighteenth-century hymn writer William Cowper wrote in “There Is...

A University of Chicago student was killed in a freak tragedy when a stray bullet ripped through his subway-car window during the commute home from his summer internship, police and loved ones say. Max Solomon Lewis, a 20-year-old junior from Denver, Colo., succumbed Sunday morning to injuries he suffered from the slug that pierced a window of the train at the 51st Street Green Line station, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “It’s a senseless tragedy for so many reasons,” classmate Zach Cogan told the outlet. Lewis, who was pursuing a double major in economics and computer science, had snagged a competitive...

China has said it "will never allow" any country to intervene militarily in a Taiwan Strait conflict, one day after Japan's deputy prime minister posited a collective defense of the self-ruled island by Japanese and U.S. forces. Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, called recent remarks by senior Japanese official Taro Aso "extremely wrong and dangerous," saying they "undermine the political foundation of China-Japan relations." Aso, who is Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's deputy as well as the country's finance minister, told a political fundraiser in Tokyo on Monday that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be seen...

The Vatican has detailed laws, rituals and roles to ensure the transfer of power when a pope dies or resigns. But none of them apply when he is sick or even unconscious, and there are no specific norms governing what happens when a pope becomes incapacitated. As a result, even though Pope Francis remains hospitalized while he recovers from intestinal surgery Sunday at a Rome hospital, he is still pope and very much in charge. The Vatican said Tuesday Francis had eaten breakfast, read the newspapers and had a walk, and that his post-operative recovery was proceeding normally. Here's how...

Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the discredited “1619 Project,” has rejected a tenured position at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill. Instead, she will join Ta-Nehisi Coates, a former columnist at The Atlantic, at one of America’s most prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Howard University. Hannah-Jones argued that the controversy over her hiring and tenure had more to do with racism and sexism than her outright lies about American history. “It’s pretty clear that my tenure was not taken up because of political opposition, because of discriminatory views against my viewpoints and, I believe,...

“This is phase one, and I’m not going away.” A 73-year-old white woman has completed a 40-day hunger strike for slavery reparations to Foundational Black Americans (FBA). Rachelle Zola lost 23 pounds and drank only water, Pedialyte, and bone broth during the last two days of the fast, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. She documented the journey on her YouTube channel. Zola’s hunger strike was her way of supporting H.R. 40, a bill that would establish a federal commission to hold hearings on slavery and discrimination and recommend remedies. The bill was first introduced more than 30 years ago....

China seems to be moving in to fill the void left by America’s withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. military left its final base in the region on Friday. An anonymous source reported Kabul authorities are now working with China toward a deal, which would invest in Afghanistan’s infrastructure. The deal, through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is a trillion dollar program that has provided funding for a variety of infrastructure projects. Sources report the deal would also extend the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of BRI that involves constructing infrastructure that reaches to Afghanistan....

Under the reconciliation process, certain budgetary items can pass the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes. But all other issues require 60 votes to cut off Senate debate. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) says that should change. He spoke to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday:We need to get rid of the filibuster for constitutional issues, just as we have done for budget issues. If you want to argue about how high a wall ought to be, whether or not you ought to build a wall, those are issues that are political, and let’s have the...

NILES, Ohio (WKBN) – New devices purchased by the Niles Police Department proved their worth over the holiday weekend. Ashaja Reese, 41, of Youngstown, was stopped in her tracks after she drove away from a traffic stop, according to police. Officers pulled her over on Route 46 Friday because the license plate on the car she was driving returned an active warrant for the owner, police said. They found out that Reese was the person with the active warrant, but what she didn’t know is that the officer who pulled her over placed a Piranha pursuit intervention device under her...

The far left has been injecting Antisemitism into the American political discourse since the early 1970s when leftist African American leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Louis Farrakhan, and the beloved bigot, Al Sharpton, all went public with their Antisemitism. One would think that in today’s times of wokeism and cancel culture, the Jew-haters of the left would be exposed, shamed, and weeded out of the leftist movements. However, the opposite is happening. According to Melissa Langsam Braunstein of the National Examiner, fighting Antisemitism can get you canceled.Woke theology teaches that Jews are privileged oppressors. So, when Jews are...

Kyle Massey, an outspoken anti-Trump Hollywood actor, is the latest Disney star to be arrested and charged with attempting to rape a child. Massey, the former star of That’s So Raven on the Disney Channel, is now facing felony charges for allegedly luring and grooming a 13-year-old girl into having sex with him. Massey is the latest in a long line of Disney employees who have been accused of sex crimes against youngsters and convicted. Massey slammed Trump in 2016 shortly before he was elected president, tweeting, “You ain’t got the answers, trump…” In March 2020 he also slammed President...

Several Clarke County School District parents started a petition after they’d learned that CCSD had quietly rescinded the mask mandate for summer school, as previously reported in Flagpole. While communication on masks was sent out via a letter to parents, several parents complained that there was not enough of an effort to make sure that parents were notified of the change. “Masks are optional for fully vaccinated individuals during Summer School. Aligned with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, CCSD strongly urges anyone who is not fully vaccinated to wear a mask while indoors,” spokesman Donald Porter said in a...

Imagine a somewhat buffoonish, past-his-prime, cognitively challenged man entrusted with the survival of the free world who is surrounded by handlers who both take care of him and count on him to come through in the clutch. If you are thinking of Joe Biden, you are only half correct. More than half a century ago, Dean Martin perfected the role of the bumbling big cheese in his 1960s spy spoof movie series based on the Matt Helm novels. Martin, of course, was playing a self-absorbed, alcohol-drenched hedonist with a gun whereas Biden is the leader of the free world with...