Free Republic

According to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, a Johnstown woman accused of raping a 13-year-old kid she was tutoring handed herself into authorities on Monday. After a lengthy investigation, Kristin M. Bellinger, 39, of Johnstown, was charged with second-degree rape, a class D felony. She is charged with having repeated sex with a young male in 2019. According to deputies, Bellinger was giving the youngster tutoring outside of her responsibilities as a special education instructor at the Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery BOCES at the time. The charges were initially brought up by the student with HFM BOCES administrators. The district said in a...

Nearly all Republicans feel the country and economy are headed in the wrong direction. Three-quarters of Democrats agree. Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the state of the country and the economy. A view that is reflected in President Joe Biden’s approval rating, which continues to hover around 39%. About 9 in 10 Republicans disapprove, along with nearly three in 10 Democrats. The national dissatisfaction is bipartisan. Most Americans, 85%, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. A majority of Republicans have been unhappy with the direction of the country since Biden’s election. Democrats had been positive about how...

Nadine Dorries has said she expects sporting bodies to reserve competitive women's sport "for people born of the female sex" after holding a meeting with a number of governing bodies. The culture secretary, whose department also covers sport, said on Twitter that "asking women and teenage girls to compete against someone who was biologically born a male is inherently unfair". It is the latest intervention in the debate over transgender rights in sport and follows the decision by FINA, the international swimming federation, to ban trans athletes from elite women's competitions. FINA's decision sparked outrage from the likes of Tom...

President Joe Biden is not the unifier-in-chief Americans are supposed to believe he is. Instead, he continues to divide the nation with his rhetoric, while pushing hard for progressive policies the average family couldn’t care less about. On Wednesday, just 5 days after SCOTUS overturned Roe, Biden plunged to his all-time low in the RealClearPolitics average, sinking below 38%. This is the lowest approval ever, marking a monumental dip for the first time in the Biden presidency. Moreover, Democrats thought that the recent SCOTUS decision would have energized its base, thus catalyzing a resurgence of support for the party. That...

Chinese agents pretending to be concerned Texans executed an online disinformation campaign against a company building a rare earth minerals facility in Texas for the Department of Defense, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant revealed on Tuesday. The Pentagon later released a statement confirming Mandiant’s findings. Mandiant found that agents for a pro-China disinformation campaign used fake social media accounts to cast doubt on Lynas Rare Earth Ltd. and other mining firms in an effort to weaken the rare earth minerals supply chain in the United States and elsewhere. Mandiant said Chinese actors lied about being local Texans online in order to...

The Federal Reserve under Berananke, Yellen and Powell kept monetary stimulus out there too long and rates too low, but Powell is now trying to reverse that trend to fight inflation. But how will that impact the housing market? (Bloomberg – Prashant Gopal) The housing slowdown is helping to solve one of the US real estate market’s most intractable problems: tight inventory. With fewer buyers competing, the number of active US listings jumped 18.7% in June from a year earlier, the largest annual increase in data going back to 2017, Realtor.com said in a report Thursday. And new sellers entered...

AP — JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later. A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Documents...

Russia’s Vladimir Putin took a swipe at Western leaders who mocked his bare-chested horse-riding, saying that they would look “disgusting” in the buff. The Kremlin strongman made the snarky comment during a visit to the Russia-friendly Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan Thursday when asked about G7 leaders poking fun at him earlier this week. -snip- Speaking to reporters in Turkmenistan Thursday, the Russian president clapped back at the G7 participants, suggesting that they could not emulate him because, unlike him, they lead unhealthy lifestyles. “I don’t know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist,” he said....

Success in God’s eyes is being totally fulfilled in ministering to him. Such servants aren’t striving to “make it” or seeking earthly security. They only want to know their Lord and to minister to him. Think about the 100 prophets hidden by Obadiah (see 1 Kings 18:4). They lived an isolated existence in caves during a severe famine for probably three to four years. These men had no outside ministry. They were completely out of the public’s view, likely forgotten by most people. They couldn’t even share in Elijah’s victory on Mount Carmel. No doubt, the world would call them...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said last week he would back a law banning the act of sodomy if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overrule a case deeming it unconstitutional. Paxton said during a Friday interview with NewsNation he would defend the law banning sodomy because the Supreme Court in the past has “stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional provision dealing with.” “They were legislative issues,” Paxton said. “This was one of those issues, and there may be more. It would depend on the issue and it would depend on the state law.”...

“‘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). “Many” and “few” describe two groups of people. Those who enter through the wide gate and travel the broad way, toward the destination of destruction, are many. They include pagans and nominal Christians, atheists and religionists, theists and humanists, Jews and Gentiles—every person from every age, background, persuasion, and circumstance...

Thinking Through the Ukraine Crisis — the Causes“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand NATO eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (p. 45). I wrote those words in 1994, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York City and Washington, D.C. I added that expansion “would constitute...

This would be hilarious if it were not so serious. From this blog, comes the map below of Omicron BA.5 incidence in Germany. The former East Germany is outlined in green and you will note that it has a lower infection rate than the former West Germany. Which reflects the different vaccination rates of the two former German republics: The former East Germany has a lower vaccination rate than the former West Germany and this has resulted in a lower incidence of the latest covid variant. It seems, though the Berlin Wall fell more than 30 years ago, the former...

30 June 2022Thursday of week 13 in Ordinary Time Nonnberg Abbey, Salzburg Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green.First readingAmos 7:10-17 ©The Lord took me from herding the flock and sent me to prophesyAmaziah the priest of Bethel sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel as follows. ‘Amos is plotting against you in the heart of the House of Israel; the country can no longer tolerate what he keeps saying. For this is what he says, “Jeroboam is going to die by the sword, and Israel go into exile far from its country.”’ To Amos, Amaziah said, ‘Go away, seer;’ get back...

We can debate whether this is more Maoist, or Stalinist, or Stasi, or something else but the one thing it isn’t is American. We’ve all been aware of the stories about the FBI arresting conservatives—and by that, I don’t mean the way the FBI has hunted down every grannie and veteran who, made ignorant by the systematic removal of “no trespassing” signs and fencing, and the Capitol police holding open doors, entered the Capitol and wandered around reverently. That’s bad enough. But the FBI is also going after high-level, high-profile political operatives (advisors, politicians, journalists) who have dared challenge Biden’s...

<p>MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has broken a hip in a fall at his home and was to undergo surgery to repair it, his office said Thursday.</p><p>The 82-year-old Democrat fell Wednesday night in McLean, Virginia, the statement said. Doctors determined the best course of action would be to have surgery to repair the hip as soon as possible.</p>

Michelle Obama launched a cover story for her intense political activity back in 2008. Soon, we'll see it come to fruition. It was the gasp heard round the world. "They could run Michelle Obama, and if they do ..." said Monica Crowley before the CPAC 2022 audience reeled audibly in shocked recognition, cutting her off in mid-sentence. Crowley had seen an early screener of my upcoming film and book of the same name, Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power, which will be released on July 11. Crowley was not trying to make waves at CPAC....

New York will ban people from carrying firearms into many places of business unless the owners put up a sign explicitly saying guns are welcome. 21% Thumbs UP 79% Thumbs DOWN https://www.audacy.com/wben#/questions/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is unlikely to take up the bold steps to protect women's right to have an abortion that Democratic lawmakers have called for in recent days, interviews with officials show. In a speech after the rollback of the Roe vs. Wade decision on Friday, President Joe Biden slammed the "extreme ideology" of the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, but said then there are few things he could do by executive order to protect women's reproductive rights. Since then, lawmakers including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have suggested Biden limit the Supreme Court's jurisdiction or expand...

A brawl that erupted between dozens of people onboard a cruise ship was caused by jealousy over a threesome between passengers, according to a witness. A travel agent who was witness to the fracas told Fox News that the punch-up began over allegations of cheating - in particular, an alleged threesome which then upset the participants' respective partners. Video of the fracas depicted a chaotic scene as between 40 and 60 passengers began punching and shoving one another.