Free Republic

Broke would be an improvement for Michael Avenatti.The jail-bound lawyer who once took on former President Donald Trump is so impoverished that he sleeps on an air mattress at a friend’s house and can’t get a dime from anyone in his family, a newly unsealed court filing reveals.With mountainous debt and restitution demands, the once-brash lawyer said in the financial document from July 2020 that he’s beyond broke.

Twenty miles south of Cairo, on the Nile's west bank, where riverfed crop fields give way to desert, the ancient site of Saqqara is marked by crumbling pyramids that emerge from the sand like dragon's teeth. Most striking is the famous Step Pyramid, built in the 27th century B.C. by Djoser, the Old Kingdom pharaoh who launched the tradition of constructing pyramids as monumental royal tombs. More than a dozen other pyramids are scattered along the five-mile strip of land, which is also dotted with the remains of temples, tombs and walkways that, together, span the entire history of ancient...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized thousands of falsified COVID-19 vaccine cards from China in Memphis, Tenn. Border Patrol agents have had 121 seizures of fake vaccination cards so far this fiscal year, amounting to 3,017 falsified cards confiscated, according to a statement from the agency on released Friday. One of the shipments described in the statement included was a package from Shenzhen, China, going to New Orleans labeled “PAPER CARD, PAPER.” The shipment contained 51 falsified vaccination cards. ...“These vaccinations are free and available everywhere,” Michael Neipert, Area Port Director of Memphis, said. “If you do not wish...

“No great movement designed to change the world can bear sarcasm or mockery, because they are a rust that corrodes everything it touches.” So wrote the Czech writer Milan Kundera in his novel The Joke. Humour has long been a magic ingredient in unlocking political change. In the medieval court, jesters had an almost unique privilege in being able to tell the monarch what he didn’t want to hear, and were often tasked with presenting bad news. In totalitarian regimes humour was a daily act of undermining the regime, to the extent that on Stalin’s death 200,000 of the Gulag’s...

Let’s ponder this feast in three stages.I. Explained – To be “assumed” means to be taken up by God bodily into Heaven. As far back as the Church can remember we have celebrated the fact that Mary was taken up into Heaven. We do not just acknowledge that her soul was taken to Heaven as is the case with all the rest of the faithful who are taken there (likely after purgation). Rather, Mary was taken up soul AND body into Heaven after her sojourn on this earth was complete. There is no earthly tomb containing her body; neither are...

August 15th , 2021The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary St. Francis of Assisi Church, Des Moines, Iowa Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: White These readings are for the Vigil Mass on the evening before the feastThese readings are for the day of the feast itselfThese readings are for the Vigil Mass on the evening before the feast:First reading1 Chronicles 15:3-4,15-16,16:1-2 ©They brought in the ark of God and put it inside the tent that David had pitched for itDavid gathered all Israel together to bring the ark of God up to the place he had prepared for it. David called...

The clip, obtained by the Daily Mail, shows Hunter Biden telling an unidentified sex worker in January 2019 about an incident the previous year: when he was passed out in a pool in Las Vegas and a computer was stolen from him by Russian drug dealers. In the lead-up to the 2020 election won by his father Joe Biden, a number of damaging stories emerged after Hunter Biden reportedly left a different laptop at a Delaware repair shop—an incident he has said he does not remember. The Mail reports that the January 2019 video was filmed on the Delaware laptop....

Highest-level rain warnings have been issued in a number of prefectures, including Fukuoka and Hiroshima. One woman has died and her husband and daughter are missing after a landslide destroyed two homes in Nagasaki prefecture. More than 150 troops, police and firefighters have been sent to help with rescue operations in the area. "They are carefully searching for the missing residents, while watching out for further mudslides as the heavy rain continues," a local official told the AFP news agency. The west of the country is worst affected but heavy downpours are expected across the country in coming days. In...

Insurgents tightened grip on Afghanistan by capturing Mazar-e-Sharif - a heavily defended city in the north Fighters were then filmed raiding the luxurious home of infamous warlord Army Marshal Rashid Dostum In a statement last night, US President Joe Biden blamed Donald Trump and the Afghan army for the carnage He said he 'will not pass this war onto a fifth president' and criticsed the Afghan Army for failing to fight Taliban fighters have invaded the palatial home of top Afghan warlord and US ally and videoed themselves lounging on his gold furniture and inspecting his golden tea set -...

AOC claimed cows do more damage to the environment than cars. A senator shouted from the back of the senate, "You spend tonight in a garage with a running car and I with a running cow and we'll vote tomorrow."

Just watch this video without reading the description, you'll want to watch it a few times! Via Turtleboy Sports' Aidan Kearney:

On this date last year, the Taliban carried out the public stoning of an adulterous couple who had attempted to elope in northern Afghanistan. “Even family members were involved,” the New York Times reported, “both in the stoning and in tricking the couple into returning after they had fled.”...

A North Texas fitness trainer, who nearly died from COVID-19, says he regrets putting off getting vaccinated. Antonio Rodriguez never thought he’d get COVID-19. The 44-year-old owns Toro Sports Performance gym in Weatherford. “I train athletes. I stay pretty active. I hardly ever get sick. I don’t get the flu or colds. I don’t even have allergies,” said Antonio Rodriguez. He finally decided to get vaccinated. But he tested positive for COVID-19 a few days before his appointment.

Video from Los Angeles shows a brawl breaking out between Antifa and people reported to be anti-mask protesters. At least one person appears to have been stabbed during the melee. It is not clear what side that person was on. A video tweeted by Los Angeles videographer Sean Carmitchel shows Antifa members dressed in black bloc violently attacking people who reportedly gathered on Saturday to protest mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports. Multiple fights lasted several minutes.

Federico De Romanis, "Comparative Perspectives on the Pepper Trade." ...compares quantitative data and other accounts of the pepper trade in Roman and Early Modern times and finds many broad similarities. Through his reading of both Roman and Early Modern European sources, De Romanis establishes that the Romans must have used both large and small ships carrying a very high proportion of pepper in their cargoes on the voyage from India. On the basis of recent readings of the Muziris papyrus, he argues that the Hermapollon, a large Roman ship, carried about 620 tons of pepper. De Romanis also considers the...

Scores of Australian defence personnel are set to depart for Afghanistan in a last-minute dash to evacuate hundreds of people from the war-torn capital Kabul, which is set to fall to the Taliban. Australia’s mission to Afghanistan follows similar moves by the US and the UK to fly hundreds of people out of the city including interpreters, contractors and others who worked with allied powers.

President Joe Biden issued a statement Saturday blaming former President Donald Trump after the Taliban rapidly took control of the majority of Afghanistan’s major cities. “When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor,” Biden wrote, complaining that Trump negotiated a deal “that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001.”

Rare evidence of ritual beheadings in ancient Roman-controlled London comes from three dozen human skulls bearing an array of serious wounds, scientists say.Decapitated heads were placed in closely spaced pits along Walbrook Stream, a tributary of the Thames River, say biological anthropologist Rebecca Redfern of the Museum of London and forensic anthropologist Heather Bonney of the Natural History Museum in London.Damage from clubs, knives and other weapons suggests that the skulls came from victims of head-hunting by Roman soldiers or from mortally wounded gladiators who fought in a nearby amphitheater, Redfern and Bonney report January 10 in the Journal of...

Even though the 30- to 40-year-old human was buried in a bog more than 2,400 years ago, the acidic peat has mummified his body to a remarkable degree, preserving his hair, brain, skin, nails, and intestines - even the leather noose around his neck...Roughly a day before the Tollund Man was hung and buried in the bog, researchers say he ate porridge, containing barley, flax, and seeds from plants and weeds.That's similar to what scientists found in the early 1950s, when the body was first unearthed in what is now modern Denmark. But unlike past analyses, this one has also...

Archaeologists conducting excavations at the prehistoric settlement of Son Catlar, on the Spanish Balearic Island of Menorca have discovered a deposit of Roman military equipment and weapons, complete with surgical tools.Occupation at Son Catlar dates from around 2000/1200 BC, and continued until the late Roman period. The site is the only Talayot settlement in Menorca that has a closed, preserved Cyclopean wall, measuring 870 metres in length, and enclosing a 2.4-acre stone settlement.These types of structures became an architectural feature of many Punic sites, also functioning as a defensive wall during the Roman conquest of Menorca.Excavations were conducted by the...