Free Republic

Pentecost is not supposed to mark a spiritual highpoint, from which we then regress and go back to being our slovenly selves. Rather, Pentecost should be a dramatic infusion of spiritual energy climaxing a period of formation that has been ongoing since the first week of Advent. Pentecost propels us, like a shot out of a cannon, into the “world” of Ordinary Time, in order to do effective combat with sin, death, and the Devil. This Sunday marks approximately the half-way point in the liturgical year, and at this temporal center, we pause to reflect on the central mystery of...

Julee Cruise, the alluring pop singer best known for her collaborations with avant garde director David Lynch, has died at age 65. The vocalist’s husband, Edward Grinnan, confirmed the news on Facebook on Thursday, writing, “I said goodby to my wife, Julee Cruise, today. She left this realm on her own terms. No regrets. She is at peace.” Grinnan said Cruise’s time as a touring member of the B-52’s from 1992-1999 as a fill-in for member Cindy Wilson was the “happiest time of her performing life. She will be forever grateful to them. When she first stepped up to the...

Former President Donald Trump could face his first charges for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election as early as this month. On Friday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told the Associated Press that she expects to come to a decision on whether her office will charge the former president by June 30 for allegedly attempting to overthrow the results in Georgia. "I certainly think that in the first half of the year that decision will be made," Willis said. Willis has been investigating Trump's efforts to intervene in Georgia's 2020 election for more than 16 months....

The National Park Service announced last week that Yellowstone National Park's Mount Doane would be renamed First Peoples Mountain. The agency said Thursday the change was taken to remove an "offensive name" from America's first national park. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted unanimously, 15-0, affirming the decision.

Biden’s latest end-run around Congress turns a scandalously compliant IRS into a political tool. An executive order and presumed behind-the-scenes White House lobbying have convinced the supposedly apolitical tax agency to issue a statute-defying regulation that creates a new government health care subsidies affordability test. The White House boasts that the plan could reduce the number of uninsured by 200,000, but the Congressional Budget Office and health experts estimate the tiny change will cost taxpayers $225,000 per person.

Seems to be true to history so far-but given it's PBS, I am skeptical.

Despite all the effusive praise the brave Ukrainian military has received in the western press, extolling all the humiliating defeats the Ukrainians have dealt the Russians, the reality on the ground appears to be entirely in Russia’s favor. And that reality was acknowledged on a recent Council of Foreign Relations Zoom call by retired lieutenant general and former deputy commander of United States European Command Stephen Twitty, who told the other neocons on the call that Ukraine simply cannot win this war and needs to sue for peace as soon as possible. ...

Tensions ran high between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at a press conference Friday evening where the two leaders disagreed not only over sanctions against Russia but also over the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. “It is our expectation … that these sanctions will also be supported by all those who [see] themselves as EU accession candidates,” Scholz told reporters. Later in the press conference, he added that Serbia should take a sanctions decision as soon as possible, arguing that “this is something that is best done not when [the war] is over, but...

New York is showering taxpayer funds on a group that sends drag queens into city schools — often without parental knowledge or consent — even as parents in other states protest increasingly aggressive efforts to expose kids to gender-bending performers

As Americans try out the newest Starlink dishes on their R.V.s, a space expert says Elon Musk’s Starlink makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “nervous” as the “only” player in the field now when it comes to the U.S.’s strategic space race with China.“It is important to understand that Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is the only thing keeping the U.S. in the Space Race with China,” Brandon Weichert, space expert and author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” told The Epoch Times in an interview in late-May. Countdown and launch of Falcon 9 into orbit at Cape Canaveral...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — NATO-member Norway terminated its two-decade-old contract with a France-based manufacturer for 14 maritime helicopters, citing delays, errors and time-consuming maintenance, the defense minister said Friday, calling the move “a serious decision.” The Norwegian government will return the NH90 helicopters it has received so far and expects a full refund of the nearly 5 billion kroner ($525 million) it paid, according to Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram.

Victim of brutal assault at Phoenix phone store speaks out

Another issue was the tactical teams were equipped with heavy, cylinder-shaped battering ram agents that are well-suited for breaking through the deadbolt locks on the doors of residential homes — but posed a problem with the classroom doors, according to a current and a former US Customs and Border Protection official who have been briefed on the shooting. Marcus “Sandy” Wall, a retired member of the Houston SWAT team, told the outlet that breaching the outward-opening doors with steel frames is not efficient because first responders need to pry them open instead of ram through them. Memorial for Robb elementary...

Sweetwater County Democratic Party chief Meghan Jensen is a concrete contractor, a former school cook and a soccer mom who views both leading Republican candidates for Congress as “elitists” who are out of touch with working class Wyoming. Fremont County Native American activist Lynnette Grey Bull is seeking a second straight run as the Democratic Party nominee but encourages her supporters to “cross over” and vote for Republican Liz Cheney in the Aug. 16 primary. Casper attorney Steve Helling supports former president Donald Trump but is running for Congress as a Democrat. He thinks Trump’s chosen candidate Harriet Hageman is...

CHARACTER A wise person once said, "You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing to him or for him." (author unknown) Columnist Ann Landers put it this way, "The best index of a person’s character is how he treats people who can do him absolutely no good." In the Christian Scriptures, the Apostle Paul talks about entertaining "angels unawares." (Hebrews 13:1) What these writers are talking about here is more than an act. It’s an attitude - about life, about people, and most importantly, about the dignity and worth...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Republican Party of Duval County organized a flotilla on the St. Johns River Saturday to honor Gov. Ron DeSantis. Boat after Boat paraded toward the Main Street Bridge, starting around noon, as some state party leaders watched from the deck of the USS Orleck. GOP leaders said it was the first big, organized flotilla for the governor and more than 1,300 boats registered for the event, which coincided with Jacksonville’s Bicentennial and a quarterly gathering of The Republican Party of Florida in the River City.

We haven’t talked about it much here, but The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has a fantastic new documentary out called, “What Is a Woman.” Walsh crosses the globe to get a definitive answer. Rolling Stone has a hit piece out on the documentary Saturday:The Daily Wire has bought ads on major social media platforms to promote their right-wing transphobic doc — even though it seems to violate TikTok and Meta’s policies against hate speech. https://t.co/y1yrVyqQfV— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) June 11, 2022“Seems to?” How so? Moises Mendez II writes:For years, right-wing commentator, Daily Wire host, and all-around shitty provocateur Matt Walsh...

Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi recently shared an experience he, his partner and their daughter had with a daycare. Kendi, who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the idea that all of America is racist, wrote an essay on June 7 in The Atlantic where he recounted what happened in 2017. At first, the couple “laughed off” and didn’t worry that their daughter Imani played with a “blue-eyed white doll” at the daycare. But then Kendi began to wonder if his daughter had “already breathed in what the psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum has called the ‘smog’ of white...

The original formula recall announced by the FDA in February did not include the brand we used for our daughter, which made me assume that we would not be affected. As a first-time mom already concerned about keeping her baby safe during the pandemic, I didn’t need another thing to worry about. I thought that the government would step in before families had to go out of their way to find food. We noticed the large empty spaces on shelves at every store but remained optimistic that help would arrive soon. Yet the shelves only grew emptier. My mother-in-law agreed...

By a vote of 339 to 249 Members of the European Parliament (MEP) voted to outlaw fossil-fueled vehicles by the year 2035. Netherlands MEP Jan Huitema characterized the decision as "our last best chance to save the planet." BMW CEO Oliver Zipse pointed out that "a focus on tailpipe emissions neglects to take into account the total pollution impact of switching to battery-powered vehicles. First of all, they are more expensive. Many of the components require rare minerals—some of them from unreliable sources of supply like China. Worn out batteries cannot be safely disposed of without creating environmental problems. The...