Free Republic

Lawmakers will be in session for one last week before the 118th Congress is seated on Jan. 3. With the clock winding down, current members are making an 11th-hour effort to push through a a roughly $1.7 trillion Fiscal 2023 spending bill that would expand domestic and Defense programs. If they can’t, Congress will have to pass another temporary spending bill to avert a partial shutdown before the upcoming holidays. On the sidelines, some Democrats are pushing for their own legislative priorities to be included in the broad “omnibus” spending bill, seeking to make use of the last few days...

Young families in a suburb of North Carolina started a church; and after two years, it was just exploding. They had to move into a bigger building, but after a bit, an adult bookstore bought the building across from them. So now this church was sharing a parking lot with an adult bookstore. They tried to fight it. They sent letters to the mayor, stood before the city council, petitioned for the bookstore to be moved. Nothing worked. The church called for 21 days of prayer and fasting. Isn’t it funny that we tend to pray last? As they prayed,...

Chinese video surveillance company Hikvision has been advertising ethnic recognition features as part of its new batch of security updates, reported The Hongkong Post. Many world leaders are thus questioning if the firm should be allowed to function within the domestic markets. Hikvision has since long faced criticism for its failure in upholding secure networks for international clients. The company faces several espionage allegations across different countries. The UK government as a result of the allegations put a blanket ban on Chinese cameras in governmental buildings. The government later called for an absolute ban on the sale and use of...

“He spoke another parable to them, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened’” (Matthew 13:33). In order for it to have the positive influence we referred to yesterday, the leaven of God’s kingdom must be hid. And that does not mean hiding to be invisible but hiding to penetrate deeply, completely permeating the world as leaven thoroughly permeates bread dough. Believers are not to be of the world, but they must be in the world to reach and change it with the gospel (cf....

VIDEOOf all the things to get over the top emotional over, the Twitter suspension of the notorious doxinator Taylor Lorenz should be towards the bottom of the list. However, that is exactly what Agenda Free TV's Steve Lookner did when he bizarrely went full Howard Beale over this as you can see.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden celebrated the adoption of a federal rule in August that cracked down on the online sale of untraceable components for weapons known as ghost guns as a major step in stemming gun violence. But the rule has done little to stop the sale of key parts used to make deadly homemade firearms, according to officials and gun control groups. The rule, among the most significant executive actions Biden has taken on a core campaign promise, clarified the definition of a firearm under federal law to better regulate modern semi-automatic weapons. That in turn paved the...

Facing the deadly threat of freezing temperatures and starvation at Valley Forge, George Washington famously wrote, “unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place in [the supply] line, this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things. Starve, dissolve, or disperse.” Today in Ukraine, winter has begun, and President Volodymyr Zelensky faces his own Valley Forge as millions of Ukrainians are confronting months without heat, electricity, or basic sustenance. To help meet this challenge, America must immediately act to cut through the bureaucracy and politics to deliver the billions in humanitarian aid that has...

A music video biography of my great grandfather, Brig. Gen. Henry L. Burnett, one of the special judge advocates at the Lincoln Assassination Trial. Trying to see if this approach will encourage the non-readers in my family to learn something about their history. You're my guinea pigs.

The media hailed Sam Brinton as the first transvestite to serve as the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy. The rest of us knew bald, mustachioed men in dresses should not be running the government because if they cannot govern themselves, how can they govern others? And Brinton cannot. As expected, he crashed and burned. He has been charged with stealing women's luggage at two airports. The Biden administration canned him. If the charges are true, they show a man who is a slave to his impulses. He needs a checkup...

What the Rhine case reveals is the danger that a partnership between an equally politicized federal government and Big Tech presents to disfavored groups. Google gave the feds the personal data of nearly 1,500 individuals based on cell phone location data indicating their presence near the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021. The Department of Justice sought substantially more information, as well, according to a recent court filing, including data on Jan. 6 cell phone users wholly outside the Capitol. These facts, coupled with Google’s apparent disregard for the privacy rights of its customers, expose the potential for the government...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was spotted volunteering at Arlington National Cemetery Saturday, honoring the nation’s veterans. Thomas was laying wreaths at the cemetery alongside Wreaths Across America, a nonprofit organization that organizes a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington each year. He was seen in a photo with D.C.-based journalist Emily Miller, which she later shared on Twitter.

Temecula, California school board members Dr. Joseph Komrosky and Jen Wiersma share their goals for improving their school district's curriculum after enacting a ban on critical race theory.

Father Frank Pavone, a well-known pro-life activist and national director of the organization Priests for Life, has been dismissed from the clerical state for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop,” CNA has learned. In a Dec. 13 letter to U.S. bishops obtained by CNA and confirmed by multiple sources as authentic, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, wrote that the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy issued the decision on Nov. 9, adding that there was “no possibility of appeal.” “Father Pavone was given ample...

LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) — Lionel Messi finally won the biggest prize in soccer as Argentina beat France 4-2 in a penalty shootout Sunday to claim a third World Cup title despite Kylian Mbappé scoring the first hat trick in a final in 56 years. Gonzalo Montiel scored the clinching penalty kick as Argentina won after a 3-3 draw.

Outgoing Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) should not try and relegate the COVID vaccine. Anchor Chuck Todd said, “You spent a lot of 2021 trying to get some skeptics to take the backseat in Arkansas, so I’m curious what you think of this.” Discussing requesting his state’s Supreme Court convene a grand jury to probe wrongdoing related to the coronavirus vaccine on Fox News, DeSantis said, “Like anything, you take an MRNA shot, the way to view it is what are the benefits and the drawbacks? It seems like...

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Part Six of the Twitter Files was released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Twitter Dec. 16, revealing just how closely the platform worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to censor Americans prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi tweeted.As PJ Media’s Chris Queen reported, most FBI emails to the platform “consisted of requests for Twitter to review and take action on” election content that supposedly qualified as “misinformation.” However, the FBI seems distinctly unrepentant about its “master-canine” relationship with Twitter, where...

There is a particularly American Hanukah story that occurred when Washington and his troops were at Valley Forge during Christmas of 1777. Dan Adler’s article “Hanukkah at the White House” recounts this tale of George Washington’s encounter with a Jewish soldier: “In December, 1778, General George Washington had supper at the home of Michael Hart, a Jewish merchant in Easton, Pennsylvania. It was during the Hanukkah celebration, and Hart began to explain the customs of the holiday to his guest. Washington replied that he already knew about Hanukkah. He told Hart and his family of meeting the Jewish soldier at...

I read an AT piece about Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and she was talking about illegal immigration coming into Europe. After cheering her, I paused and had to think. I and others in the U.S. have been very focused on the illegal migrant surge through the Mexican border into the U.S. I have not given much thought to the possibility that this is a global issue. The AT blog post (below) seems to demonstrate there is also an illegal immigration problem in Europe that parallels the problem in the U.S. There is an element I ask you to...

Despite my support for Elon Musk’s continuing efforts to reduce censorship and restore free speech protections on Twitter, I have been critical of some of his moves from his use of polls on restoring certain posters to the suspensions of media figures this week. However, this morning, I was struck by the European Union (EU) rushing into the controversy to threaten, again, sanctions against Musk. The EU is apparently aghast that Twitter could suspend media even temporarily after ignoring the bans on conservative media for years under the old management. I understand Musk’s view of such tracking as a form...