Free Republic

January 2023 marks the nineteenth annual National Stalking Awareness Month. As a victim of a very serious and violent case of stalking, I wanted to share my own experience and bring awareness to what stalking is, how it can lead to extreme violence that can have lifelong devastating effects on victims, and how to protect yourself. With one in three women, and one in six men potentially being stalked in their lifetime, this an important topic to cover. If you ever question whether you are being stalked, ask yourself if what is happening is scary/distressing, not the first incident, and...

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives got off to a bumpy start by attempting to repeal last year’s addition of of $71.5 billion to the IRS budget. It’s a political stunt with no chance of passing the U.S. Senate. Hamstringing the taxman doesn’t make taxes go away, but it does make it harder for taxpayers to pay them, the government to collect them and public agencies to function. Defunding the IRS would aggravate an already egregious problem: Billions of dollars of uncollected taxes, mostly from corporations and the wealthy. From 2014 to 2016, the IRS estimated $500 billion per year...

The Bible In Paintings ~ Encouragement for Appreciating and Applying God's Word ~ JESUS VISITS MARY & MARTHA ֎ Featuring 42 Paintings, 1 Relief and 4 Windows ֎ L U K E Chapter 10 Jesus and his disciples came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to...

A couple of days ago (January 11, apparently shortly after midnight) on Watts Up With That, Christopher Monckton published a piece that ran under the headline “The Final Nail in the Coffin Of ‘Renewable’ Energy.” The piece contained a short and apparently elegant mathematical proof — which Monckton attributes to a guy named Douglas Pollock — of a proposition that Monckton stated as follows: In plain English, the maximum possible fraction of total grid generation contributable by unreliables turns out to be equal to the average fraction of the nameplate capacity of those reliables [sic — should be “unreliables”?] that...

MISCONCEPTION: Upon leaving Egypt, the Jews crossed the Yam Suf, which is translated as the Red Sea. This translation, however, is an error. Red Sea is a corruption of the correct Old English (OE) translation, Reed (Rede) Sea. (Rede is a legitimate spelling of reed in OE.)FACT: The notion that the Yam Suf is the modern-day Red Sea predates any English translation of the Bible by well over a thousand years. In fact, it seems that until the late eighteenth century no one questioned the translation and identification of Yam Suf with the Red Sea...The Septuagint (second to third century...

A sign of the media times is how quickly our leading progressive organs rally to deny that Democrats are doing what Democrats really are doing. A classic example was this week’s flare up in the coming climate war over banning gas stoves. A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” We and others criticized the idea, and the media response was...

The 2020 Covid outbreak and the resulting government shutdowns and school closures begat a Washington DC spending spree and Federal Reserve monetary stimulus barrage unlike anything other time in history. Congress and Administrations love to spend other people’s money, but as Rahm Emanuel once said “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before” And wow, did they ever binge spend and expand the M2 Money supply. I call it “The Great Dislocation” of the economy and we never recovered. Or...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. While there’s no evidence of extraterrestrials, they still pose a threat, the government said in a declassified report summary released Thursday. Last year the Pentagon opened an office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, solely focused on receiving and analyzing all of those reports of unidentified phenomena, many of which have been reported by military pilots. It works with the intelligence agencies to further assess those incidents. The events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting...

A Texas elementary school teacher who was found dead in her backyard reportedly met her alleged killer on a dating app just a week before she was shot to death, it was revealed on Friday. Wendy Duan’s boyfriend Charvas Thompson was arrested Wednesday in Louisiana, over 260 miles from where he allegedly shot her multiple times in her Sugar Land backyard last week. The two had only been dating for a week before Thompson took Duan’s life, the victim’s mother, who did want to be identified, told KHOU 11. They had met on the “MeetMe” dating app, which made Duan’s...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed Jesus. Mark 2:14How do you know the will of God for your life? In his spiritual classic, The Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius of Loyola presented three ways in which we come to know the will of God. (See https://mycatholic.life/ignatius for more.) The first way is the clearest and most definitive way. It is a time in which the person experiences a “clarity beyond doubting” as a result of a...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide a property rights dispute on whether government entities violate the Constitution when they seize homes for failure to pay taxes and then keep all the proceeds or allow private investors to profit. The justices will decide whether such seizures violate the takings clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which requires that the government pay compensation when property is taken. They will also weigh whether government action could be viewed as an excessive fine under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. The justices will weigh a claim brought by Geraldine Tyler, a 93-year-old...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemMatthew 26Gethsemane 36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may...

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Scripture says of Israel, “Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:41 NKJV).Israel turned away from God in unbelief. Likewise, I believe we limit God today with our doubts and unbelief. We trust God in most areas of our lives, but our faith always has boundaries and limits. We all have at least one small area that we block off where we don’t really believe God will take care of us. For example, many people will pray for the healing of a well-known person who is a perfect stranger to them. But...

resident Joe Biden faces being squeezed on all sides as investigations ramp up both from the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Department of Justice (DOJ). House Republicans have long promised to probe the Biden administration on a variety of matters, including the business dealings of the president's son Hunter Biden. That investigation has already begun after Republican Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen seeking information about the Biden family's financial affairs. More House investigations are expected into matters including the...

"In all wisdom and insight [God] made known to us the mystery of His will" (Eph. 1:8-9). Even if you haven’t obtained academic degrees, you have wisdom that far surpasses the most educated unbeliever. When God redeemed you, He not only forgave your trespasses and removed the guilt and penalty of sin, but He also gave you spiritual wisdom and insight—two essential elements for godly living. Together they speak of the ability to understand God's will and apply it to your life in practical ways. As a believer you understand the most sublime truths of all. For example, you know...

CNET reporter Jackson Ryan published an article last month describing how ChatGPT, an AI that can generate human-sounding text, would affect journalists and the news industry: “ChatGPT Is a Stunning AI, but Human Jobs Are Safe (for Now).” “It definitely can’t do the job of a journalist,” Ryan wrote of ChatGPT. “To say so diminishes the act of journalism itself.” The article said ChatGPT isn’t coming for journalists’ jobs just yet, but the very publication that ran Ryan’s article has been quietly publishing articles written by AI since November, according to Futurism and online marketer Gael Breton. The AI-written CNET...

Hundreds of American politicians, businessmen and public figures plan to attend the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, next week, including the FBI director, as well as several sitting governors, senators, and representatives, according to two lists of attendees obtained by investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel (here and here). The forum, led by WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab, will take place January 16-23 to discuss “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.” The world today is at a critical inflection point. The sheer number of ongoing crises calls for bold collective action. The Annual Meeting will convene leaders from government, business,...

SPECIAL DISPATCH FROM NASHVILLE. NASHVILLE, Tuesday, Jan. 13. CHEATHAM's and MCCOUN's rebel Divisions are at Shelbyville, expecting to be reinforced by Longstreet's corps, 30,000 men, from Virginia. FORREST, WHEELER and STEARNS, with 4,000 men, and two full batteries, are marching toward Charlotte, forty miles west, their object being to destroy our transports with provisions for Gen. ROSECRANS' army. One boat was destroyed last night, 16 miles down the river, laden with Commissary and Quartermaster's stores. Twenty men were captured and paroled. The boat and freight were burnt. Eight regiments -- four cavalry and four infantry -- have been sent after...

While the Department of Defense has outlined China as its "pacing challenge" and Russia as an "acute threat," the threat from Iran is "increasing" as well, according to one DOD official. -excerpt- Stroul described four aspects of the threats from Iran... "continuing support, arming, training, equipping, and funding terrorists and proxy groups across the region," their aggression at sea, cyberattacks, and the proliferation of their UAVs not only to regional proxies, but to Russian forces as well. A day before the round table, U.S. Central Command announced that, days earlier, it "intercepted a stateless dhow in the Gulf of Oman...