Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Old Liberal Midwife to Francis Pontificate Cardinal Angelo Sodano Deceased (Rome) Last Saturday the death of Angelo Cardinal Sodano was announced. The former Cardinal Secretary of State of Pope John Paul II died in Rome on Friday, May 27 at the age of 94. He made a particularly controversial statement about the Third Secret of Fatima. Above all, he was the door opener to the pontificate of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio.From farmer's son to chief diplomatThe Vatican diplomat from Piedmont was the son of a farmer and a Christian Democrat member of parliament. He was ordained a...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blame the government and the Fed for inflation. In Musk’s words, “The obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion more dollars than it has. This is not super complicated.” They and other luminaries subscribe to the inflation sophism: “too much money chasing too few goods.” Yes, we’ve had “too few goods,” due to a pandemic perfect storm — depressed U.S. oil production and manufacturing output, severe supply chain disruptions and war-like labor shortages — but that won’t endure. It was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of...

Gov. Tom Wolf is calling on policymakers to “be open to the things that work” to address gun violence “but we cannot ignore the elephant in the room and that is guns.” During an interview on Pittsburgh-based KDKA radio on Tuesday morning, Wolf reacted to last week’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and a weekend shooting that killed an 18-month-old Pittsburgh boy saying a combination of measures are what he sees as needed.

It was a Palestinian mob that tried to hijack the funeral so it would not be "as if a Christian died."

An NBC News profile of the Biden White House details the classic strategies any listing administration employs to avoid reckoning with its own shortcomings. The president, we’re told, inherited a historic mess from which no mere mortal could extricate the nation. On top of that, new and equally momentous challenges suddenly presented themselves. Biden has been ill-served by his unfit and meddling staffers. And Republicans in Congress, who stubbornly continue to exist, won’t just roll over and die. It’s all rather vexing, and the White House wants you to know it. Biden is reportedly “unhappy” with staffers who feel that...

It's the political deep dive du jour that's going viral. NBC News is out with a lengthy piece outlining the struggles of the Biden White House. You can read the whole thing here. It strikes me as something of an effort to spin things for the failing administration, while simultaneously delivering a devastating assessment. Let's walk through it together, passage by passage:(1) The story begins by relaying that the president is "rattled by" his low approval numbers and is casting about for a better messaging strategy. Messaging is not his problem, however. His problem is results. His problem is how...

Tuesday, May 31, 2022: Join RSBN's Brian Glenn LIVE from Phoenix, AZ at the Arizona State Senate as True the Vote hosts a presentation for Arizona State Senate and House Members relating to findings of ballot harvesting that occurred in both Maricopa and Yuma Counties during the 2020 General Election. Tune into RSBN's 24/7 live stream featuring archive content from events we've covered to give light on TRUTH and Patriotism in our great country! Third-Party streaming of this feed without permission is prohibited and violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

President Biden laid out a three-part plan on Tuesday for combating high inflation, which has been a major strain on his job approval rating. The first part of his plan was an acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve “has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” The second part involved making goods more affordable for families with a focus on high gas prices. His administration has blamed Russia’s invasion into Ukraine for the high price of gas and Biden touted the release from global oil reserves and called on Congress to pass clean energy tax credits. “and cracking down on the exorbitant...

[Catholic Caucus] The 'message' of McElroy's red hatPapal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro said Sunday morning that the pope’s appointment of San Diego’s Bishop Robert McElroy as a member of the College of Cardinals is “a strong and clear message for the Church in the United States.” The appointment came as a surprise, apparently even to McElroy, who said in a May 29 statement that he was “stunned” by the papal nod.Indeed, the cardinal-elect is not the metropolitan of a major archiepiscopal see, nor the prefect of a Vatican dicastery. Francis has previously appointed as cardinals the bishops of smaller sees,...

While the Uvalde, Texas police department and local school district police have cooperated with state Department of Public Safety investigators into the massacre that killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school and the law enforcement response, the chief of the school police has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview. The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police force have been talking to authorities, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman said. Local authorities have come under pressure since a Friday press conference in which Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas...

The trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is coming to an end [ZH: has now ended with Sussman’s acquittal] but rather than provide definitive answers to the origins of the Russiagate hoax, the trial has thrown up many new mysteries and unanswered questions.Special Counsel John Durham arrives at federal court in Washington on May 16, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)Durham’s overarching trial narrative was that the FBI was duped by Sussmann when he presented them with data purportedly tying Trump to the Kremlin via the Russian Alfa Bank. It may have been Durham’s only viable strategy given the fact he...

UVALDE, Tx. — Both parents and the grandma of the Texas school shooter Salvador Ramos had criminal records, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and trying to pass off a fake check, The Post has learned.

... It’s difficult to gauge how much comfort Putin takes in these signs of European distress and disunion. Russia has its own problems. Russian inflation runs at about 18% and consumer spending is expected to drop 13% for this year and 22% in 2023, according to US investment bank Morgan Stanley. The situation may be worse than the numbers suggest: Russian firms are currently not required to report earnings, leaving investors in the dark. Nonetheless, Putin appears unfazed. After his talk with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin released a statement about not sanctions but arms deliveries to Ukraine, which the...

First lady Jill and President Joe Biden argue over text messages to escape earshot of the Secret Service, Mrs. Biden told Harper’s Bazaar’s June/July issue. The couple has termed their arguments over text as “fexting” in which they regularly spend time “hashing out their occasional spats over text” to “avoid fighting in front of the Secret Service,” the first lady revealed.

I, for one, am shocked that a biological male competing on a women’s swim team has an unfair advantage. This is a true scientific breakthrough. Nothing has been this earth-shattering since the Manhattan Project. I’m being sarcastic of course—we all knew Lia Thomas and any transgender female athlete has an advantage in their competitions. They have testosterone coursing through their veins. This is especially apparent in weightlifting competitions and MMA/boxing matches. Medical experts have declared Thomas has an unfair advantage. This is the science, left-wingers. ‘Woke’ feelings about the matter are wholly irrelevant. They’re also not really tethered to reality...

A highly infectious and deadly strain of avian influenza virus has infected tens of millions of poultry birds across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. But scientists are particularly concerned about the unprecedented spread in wild birds — outbreaks pose a significant risk to vulnerable species, are hard to contain and increase the opportunity for the virus to spill over into people. Since October, the H5N1 strain has caused nearly 3,000 outbreaks in poultry in dozens of countries. More than 77 million birds have been culled to curb the spread of the virus, which almost always causes severe disease or...

The Biden administration is doubling down on the color-conscious policies that were the hallmark of its first year in office through a series of “action plans,” which it released through every executive bureaucracy last month. Only this time, in a bid to avert legal reversals, the administration is concealing its racial spoils system under bureaucratic euphemisms. As we explain in a new report, the administration’s 25 plans will implement discrimination as the official policy of the executive branch; make the government much less efficient; award contracts to uncompetitive bidders, thereby wasting taxpayer money, impair national defense, and further hamper the...

Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday that additional surveillance footage revealed that the teacher did actually close the door. "We did verify she closed the door. The door did not lock. We know that much and now investigators are looking into why it did not lock," Considine told the Associated Press.

The ruling classes of the globe are continuing to warn that the power grids all across the globe will be stretched thin this coming summer. There will not be electricity worldwide to meet the soaring demand for more energy, which is threatening more than one billion people with rolling blackouts. Power grids are already being stretched thin by fuel shortages, droughts and heatwaves, commodity disruptions, soaring prices due to the war in Ukraine, and the failed green energy transition where grid operators retired too many fossil fuel generation plants. Combine this all together, and a perfect storm of blackouts threatens...

"Our Omaha Fire Department has done a tremendous job at the 3-alarm fire at the Nox-Crete plant. Over the last 15 hours up to 75 firefighters have been on the scene. We are grateful no one has been injured and actions to protect the surrounding neighborhoods were successful. Thank you OFD!" Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert said in a statement addressing the fire. Nox Crete manufactures a variety of products, including form coating and deactivator, liquid floor hardeners, joint fillers, curing and sealing compounds and water repellents according to its website. Pottawattamie County Emergency Management advised the smoke posed no toxicity...