Free Republic

I am extremely happy to be alive. My wife and I have four beautiful children and four grandchildren. God has blessed me with a life that has been exceptional in many ways. From twenty years in commercial broadcasting, twelve years as a US Congressman, and thirteen years as VP of a firearms ballistic company helping build their technology into the leading ballistics identification methodology in the World, it has been a fantastic ride. My birth mother decided not to use abortion as birth control. Instead, she walked into the Florence Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers and gave me my life....

IPray For The Peace of JerusalemGenesis 28Jacob’s Dream at Bethel 10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it[c] stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the...

Donald Trump has said that pregnancy is “wonderful" – unless you’re an employer. In an October 2004 interview with NBC’s Dateline, Trump said pregnancy is “a wonderful thing for the woman, it’s a wonderful thing for the husband, it’s certainly an inconvenience for a business. And whether people want to say that or not, the fact is it is an inconvenience for a person that is running a business.” That interview, called “Blonde Ambition," highlighted then-Trump Golf Properties Executive Vice President and Apprentice boardroom mainstay Carolyn Kepcher and focused on all things Carolyn – her book, her career, and her...

A newly released transcript of a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reveals Putin prioritized a game of ice hockey ahead of scheduling peace negotiations with U.S. President Joe Biden.The transcript of the Feb. 20 phone call between Putin and Macron was obtained and jointly published by AFP and the French-language publication Le Temps. The transcript revealed that during the call between Macron and Putin, the French president asked Putin to agree to meet U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva, Switzerland for peace talks…

A Colorado man was gored by a bull bison near Giant Geyser at Old Faithful on Monday, June 27, 2022, according to Yellowstone National Park (YNP). YNP said in a media release the 34-year-old man from Colorado Springs was walking with his family on a boardwalk when the bull bison charged the group.

"As The New York Times reported in 2018, “the gap between the number of children that women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years.” So it’s true that the intentions of American women are being frustrated, and they are being denied control of their fertility. But they are having fewer children than they want, not more."

Cleveland Fed’s Mester is channeling The Carpenter’s song “We’ve only just begun … to raise rates.” Financial markets are anticipating what Mester is saying: rapidly rising interest rates. But as you can see from the following chart, gasoline prices (orange line) are driving rising US prices. So it is doubtful that monetary tightening will slow price increases. But Mester and company can only control monetary stimulus. Mortgage rates have soared as The Fed attempts to crush inflation. And mortgage purchase applications fell -21% WoW in the most recent Mortgage Bankers Association survey. The Refinance Index increased 2 percent from the...

Corrupt institutions could do nothing if there were no members of law enforcement, from the local police to FBI agents, willing to act as the brute enforcers of state dictates. In this moment of hope emerging from the almost unbelievable set of constitutionally informed Supreme Court rulings on freedom of religion, gun rights, and abortion, it’s easy to imagine the tide has turned. America is back! Alas, even rulings as monumental as those of the past week are no antidote to the generations of cultural poison that continues to be mainlined into American society. The best we can do is...

Wednesday 29 June 2022Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Solemnity Saint Peter's and Paul's ChurchMechelen, Netherlands Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Red.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 readingActs 3:1-10 ©I will give you what I have: in the name of Jesus, walk!Once, when Peter and John were going up to the Temple for the prayers at the ninth hour, it happened that there was a man being carried past. He was a cripple from...

SAN FRANCISCO - A man who shot and killed a passenger on a San Francisco subway commuter train will be charged with gun crimes but not homicide in what was "clearly" a case of self-defense after he was attacked with a knife, his attorney said Monday. Javon Green, 26, will face charges of having a concealed weapon in a public place and having a loaded gun in a public place, both felonies that possibly could be reduced to misdemeanors, attorney Randy Knox told the San Francisco Chronicle. Green was scheduled for a court appearance on Tuesday. The San Francisco District...

There is a certain amount of courage that goes along with our responsibilities as adults. There was a recent study that showed that many of the people who are attracted to gatekeeper jobs, like receptionists, are psychopaths. That seems a little extreme, but if it’s true, it means we have a lot of psychopaths walking around this country right now, and I’m not just talking about office workers. Many of us have built walls around our lives. I think it started with answering machines screening calls, then screening people through social media, and even screening out cashiers by going through...

“‘Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it’” (Matthew 7:13–14). Both the broad and narrow ways point to the good life, to salvation, heaven, God, the kingdom, and blessing—but only the narrow way actually leads there. The broad way doesn’t have a road sign on it with hell as the destination. Jesus’ point is that this way is marked “heaven”...

Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have started the war in Ukraine if he was a woman, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. "If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn't, but if he were, I really don't think he would've embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has," Johnson told German broadcaster ZDF on Tuesday evening. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is "a perfect example of toxic masculinity," he said, calling for better education for girls around the world and for "more women in positions of power."

Silenced, censored, and coerced—the fate of the pilots who are so desperately needed. Every night, I hear a report on the network news announcing the number of flights canceled. If it’s a slow news day, reporters might interview a couple of irritated, stranded travelers. Thousands of flights are axed on any given day. Many more are delayed. News readers just read the report, without any substantive questioning about why there’s suddenly a great shortage of pilots. The weather is the only excuse ever offered, and that doesn’t work when there are no storms slowing things down. What’s going on? We’ve...

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Today’s America is not a place for subtlety and nuance. Today’s youth seem especially incapable of handling fine distinctions. No interesting heterodox mix of positions will be tolerated; total conformity is required. Cleave to the party line in toto, lest ye be canceled. “Cancel Culture” is the new regime whereby one can lose one’s livelihood, one’s reputation, and even one’s friends for not hewing to every last tenet of the reigning orthodoxy. The gay journalist Chadwick Moore learned about the intolerance of left-wing cancelers when he came out as a conservative (italics added): "I began to realize that maybe my...

New York leads the way toward a new and ugly generation. Riding the New York City subway this afternoon, this deplorable saw a sign advertising the new City University of New York (CUNY) ASAP program. ASAP stands for Accelerated Study in Associate Programs. This program provides additional support and funding for students in two-year community college programs and is supplemented by another program for four-year students. These are giveaway programs to incentivize more students to go to college and stay in college and to participate in the leeching mindset that has attacked our culture. These programs are an extension of...

As soon as the draft opinion in Dobbs leaked, left-liberal commentators rushed to offer a parade of horribles: The traditionalist logic of the Glucksberg test would imperil a whole set of rights previously recognized under substantive due process, such as the rights to enter into a same-sex marriage, to engage in same-sex relations, even to use contraception. When the full set of opinions were released, the dissenters in Dobbs—Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonya Sotomayor, who wrote jointly—adopted exactly this line. On the opposite side, the court’s rightmost justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote in a concurrence that “in future cases,...

The US will significantly increase its military deployments in Europe with additional troops and weaponry, as part of the largest scaling up of Nato defences since the cold war in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US will establish a permanent headquarters for its 5th Army Corps in Poland, send 5,000 additional troops to Romania and increase rotational deployments in the Baltic states, Biden said, as part of efforts to stiffen Nato’s first line of defences against possible attack. Two squadrons of US F-35 fighter aircraft will be sent to the UK, Biden added, in addition to stationing air...

UPDATE: A Secret Service official familiar with the matter told CNN that Tony Ornato denies telling Cassidy Hutchinson that the former president grabbed the steering wheel or an agent on his detail.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) June 28, 2022