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THE GIFT OF THE MAGI Those of you who are more "mature" Marines & Sailors will remember one of the pre-eminent TV series of the '50's, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. Many of these programs were quite scary, but they usually had a good moral and made the point in a rather unforgettable manner. On one episode, an astronaut is readying for his blast off on a fifty-year mission to outer space. He is to be placed in a state of suspended animation and will not age one day by the time he returns to Earth. As fate has it,...

The mastermind behind the murderous 1981 Brinks robbery in which two Nyack police officers and an armored car guard were killed was released for health reasons from federal prison on Friday after nearly 38 years behind bars. Mutulu Shakur, 72, known mostly as the stepfather of slain rapper Tupac Shakur and brother of fellow Black Liberation Army member Joanne Chesimard, had been denied parole since 2016 and earlier in 2022. He is terminally ill. Based on his health, the U.S. Parole Commission granted his early release from a 60-year sentence effective Friday after 442 months behind bars, according to a...

Archbishop Viganò: The Kingship of Christ is not limited to the Church, but extends to all nationsThe doctrine of the kingship of Christ constitutes a discrimen between the Catholic Church and the “conciliar Church;” indeed, it is the point of separation between Catholic orthodoxy and neomodernist heterodoxy, because the followers of laicism and liberal secularism cannot accept that the Lordship of Our Lord extends to the civil sphere, thereby removing it from being subject to the arbitrariness of the powerful or the will of the manipulable populace. Yet the very idea that authority has its foundation in a transcendent principle...

MIAMI, Florida — Former President Donald Trump declined to endorse either incumbent Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel or her challenger, RNC national committeewoman from California Harmeet Dhillon in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News here on Friday.“Harmeet is a lawyer for me you know,” Trump said when asked about the two candidates. “Harmeet is my lawyer.”When asked whether that means he favors her or McDaniel—the current chair whom Trump selected after his 2016 White House victory and backed again in her subsequent reelection as chair—he declined to pick a specific candidate.“I think they’re both good,” Trump said. “I...

Former MSNBC journalist Keith Olbermann resorted to tweeting from his dogs’ Twitter account after Twitter head Elon Musk temporarily suspended his main account from the platform.

I registered on FreeRepublic 21 years ago today. And in that 21 years, I have never been part of a better forum - a better family. Thank you JimRob and all my FReeper brothers and sisters!

18 December 20224th Sunday of Advent Cathedral Saint Gatianus of Tours Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(I).First readingIsaiah 7:10-14 ©The maiden is with childThe Lord spoke to Ahaz and said, ‘Ask the Lord your God for a sign for yourself coming either from the depths of Sheol or from the heights above.’ ‘No,’ Ahaz answered ‘I will not put the Lord to the test.’ Then Isaiah said:‘Listen now, House of David:are you not satisfied with trying the patience of menwithout trying the patience of my God, too?The Lord himself, therefore,will give you a sign.It is this: the maiden is...

Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday. The 30-year-old cryptocurrency mogul was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday and accused of engaging in a scheme to defraud FTX customers by using billions of dollars in stolen deposits to pay for expenses and debts and to make investments for his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC.

San Francisco's mayor is asking municipal departments to find significant savings as the embattled city braces for a $728 million budget deficit, predicted for the next two fiscal years. With some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country, thanks to the tech companies that make the city's lifeblood retreating to remote work, San Francisco has seen residents move to the suburbs - pushed also by rising crime. The city's income from property taxes and office rates has plummeted, causing sleepless nights in City Hall. London Breed, the mayor, on Thursday asked municipal departments to identify ways to reduce...

A Texas woman was tasered after telling a cop in Walmart to 'respect' her. The unidentified woman, wearing a light-colored tank top and black pants, demanded a cop 'respect' her as she stood just inside a Walmart store in Dallas. It is unclear what started the disagreement between the two, but the woman is standing next to an overturned product stand that appeared to hold freshly baked cookies. 'You're going to respect me whenever I f**king [unintelligible] in this place,' the woman said in the video. 'Yeah, you will.' The cop responds: 'Get down on your knees.' Moments later, he...

On this date in 1954, Eugen Turcanu and 16 other Romanian political prisoners were executed at Jilava prison. Turcanu et al were noted as the truncheon arm of one of 20th century’s more blood-chilling torture programs, the Pitesti experiment. (Named for the facility where it began, Pitesti prison.) As if taking Orwell’s 1984 as a paragon instead of a grim dystopian warning, the Pitesti experiment subjected several thousand political and religious dissidents to a savage course of ideological re-engineering. The object was to beat and brainwash undesirables into model Communists. “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation,” Orwell’s torturer-apparatchik O’Brien...

Archbishop Paglia: Financial Reform?On December 14, The Pillar reported the following: Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia diverted hundreds of thousands of euros allocated to support missionary and charitable works while he served as president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Paglia used much of the money to finance building projects in Rome, including the renovation of his personal apartment. . . .According to multiple independent sources with knowledge of the events, Archbishop Paglia confirmed in a 2015 memo to Holy See financial officials that hundreds of thousands of euros had been paid to an Italian construction contractor instead of going to...

Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Friday the FBI “needs to be dismantled” after the latest installment of the “Twitter files” revealed the bureau was in constant contact with Twitter before Elon Musk took over. The FBI exchanged more than 150 emails with former Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth between January 2020 and November 2022, journalist Matt Taibbi reported on Friday. Roth’s team worked to censor the New York Post‘s October 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Ronna McDaniel knows she is in trouble. She went on The War Room to discuss the race for RNC chair. She is being challenged by Mike Lindell and Attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon. Bannon asked her if she would be open to debating Lindell and Dhillon – she said she would only do it in front of the 168 members of the RNC.

THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT Matthew 1:1-17 Friends, today we read the opening lines of Matthew’s Gospel—the first words that one reads in the New Testament. They are a listing of the genealogy of Jesus, the forty-two generations that stretch from Abraham to Christ. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional—a mix of the good and bad. And this is such good news for us.Let me highlight just two figures from Jesus’ family. First, Ruth, who was not an Israelite but rather a Moabite, a foreigner. Some of...

A Damariscotta mom demanded the resignation of several public school officials at a school board meeting Wednesday following her discovery that a school social worker had begun secretly transitioning her 13-year-old daughter’s gender. In an emotionally charged address to the school board, Amber Lavigne said a Central Lincoln County School System (CLCSS) social worker at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta provided a chest binder to her daughter — a gender transitioning device the employee encouraged the young girl to keep secret from her parents. Lavigne said she’d never met the social worker — Samuel Roy — and had...

VIDEOTake a look at Good Morning Britain host Richard Madeley attempt to interview union leader Mick Lynch about rail strikes leading into Christmas. Actually it is pretty much a one sided interview since Madeley sounded like he was interviewing himself with Lynch only barely able to get a word in edgewise.This could go down as the WORST television interview disaster since Brock Linehan interviewed Bob Hope.

Early in the pandemic, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly praised President Donald Trump for the expedited development and rollout of a coronavirus vaccine. The governor’s office pushed for $480 million in pandemic resources, including media campaigns promoting the shots, according to state budget documents. And DeSantis, a Republican, even lauded the Biden administration for helping to expand access to vaccines. “We’re having more vaccine because of this, which is great,” DeSantis said of a federal program shipping shots to pharmacies in February 2021. But this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance...

Multiple property owners in one of San Francisco’s most fraught, historical neighborhoods have banded together to complain to local officials about the “deteriorating” state of the area. An unknown number of Tenderloin businesses are demanding the city of San Francisco refund about a year’s worth of taxes and remove alleged drug dealers from the neighborhood, they said in a December petition. The group, the Tenderloin Business Coalition, claims that “open air drug dealing” and weak law enforcement have directly impacted businesses and pushed the neighborhood to the brink of collapse. “Our streets are dominated by criminals who prey on the...

Friendliness and kindness are some of Golden Retriever dogs' characteristics. These eager-to-please family dogs are known for their joyous and playful approach to life, a puppyish behavior they maintain into adulthood. This was the case for an adult Golden Retriever named Tofu from Detroit, Michigan. The sweet pup looked surprised and reacted in the sweetest way possible after seeing a window cleaner outside his apartment building.