Free Republic

Mark 6:14-29 Friends, today’s Gospel gives an account of Herod’s murder of John the Baptist. John is a proto-martyr, anticipating the martyrdom of many Christians.Martyrdom has always been an important chapter of the Christian story, from believers in the early Church who refused to sacrifice to Rome’s pagan gods, to great saints of the Middle Ages such as Thomas Becket and Thomas More who refused to compromise their beliefs for the sake of the state, to modern martyrs killed in what St. John Paul II called odium caritatis, “hatred of charity,” such as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.In the...

A Harvard Medical School committee voted last month to embed climate change into the school’s curriculum. The new climate change curriculum will examine the impact of climate change on health and health inequality, applications of these impacts to clinical care, and the role of physicians and health institutions in arriving at climate solutions. Climate change’s negative health effects include the increased spread of infectious diseases, “heat-related harm” during extreme weather events, and lung disease due to pollution, according to HMS student Julia R. Malits. The curriculum change aims to integrate climate change themes throughout students’ medical school education rather than...

Defense officials told reporters that military leaders refused to shoot the balloon down because a widespread debris field would pose a threat to civilian life in the rural state. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden was briefed on the issue on Wednesday. If the Pentagon knew the surveillance tool was on its way to the nuclear arsenal, however, why didn’t the president have it shot down when it was over Alaska? Was Biden’s Wednesday briefing his first? Why wasn’t he told sooner? Why didn’t officials inform the public when it crossed into U.S. airspace? Did our government...

Video at link.

President Joe Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board now includes a top climate scientist. Biden recently announced the appointment of Kim Cobb, an earth sciences professor at Brown University and a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2021, to the White House council that’s tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the nation’s intelligence community. For years, climate science has been an important consideration for the U.S. intelligence community, a sprawling collection of at least 19 agencies including the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and the Energy Department’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. “It’s...

A man is back in jail, charged with committing several armed robberies in three days. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said 33-year-old Branon Purcell was targeting convenience stores all across the city. JSO said Purcell faces 11 counts of armed robbery at 10 different businesses. “Purcell is no stranger to criminal activity as he had just been released from Florida State prison 21 days, 21 days before this arrest.” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. Action News Jax told you back in 2016 when Purcell admitted to 10 armed robberies in Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Neptune Beach, according to officers. He served...

WASHINGTON — There’s no Republican plan, let alone a bill, to resolve the debt ceiling problem. But some GOP lawmakers are floating one idea to include in a package: rescinding approved but unspent Covid relief funds. Taking back the unused pandemic response money “certainly could” be in a debt ceiling measure to avert default, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chair of the powerful Rules Committee, said. “I would hope we look at that,” Cole said. “It’s something that ought to be on the table.” Rep Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who sits on the Ways and Means Committee that oversees taxes and...

The Biden administration’s border policies have led to a mass influx of illegal immigrants, and ranchers are increasingly concerned that they will bring with them a highly contagious virus that could cost billions and decimate the livestock industry. Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is a highly contagious virus that affects cows, pigs, sheep and other animals with cloven hooves. Todd Wilkinson, a South Dakota rancher who also serves as president-elect of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told Fox News Digital it is only a matter of time before FMD makes its way across the southern border.

A List of the Communist Goals 60 Years Later By Mark Schwendau The most remarkable thing is happening on the Internet these days. Some 60 years after reading into the Congressional RECORD by Florida House Rep. Albert Sydney Herlong Jr., a Democrat, people are revisiting the words of his reading with fervor and drawing comparisons between then and now. Herlong was an attorney who served ten terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1969. On January 10, 1963, at the request of one of his constituents, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Florida, he read a...

Single women own and occupy more homes than single men in the United States, despite earning only about 83 cents for every dollar that men earn, according to a new study. The report, by the online lending marketplace LendingTree, analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2021 American Community Survey with one-year estimates. It found that 10.76 million U.S. homes were owned and occupied by single women, while 8.12 million were owned and occupied by single men. Single men were found to own and occupy a larger percentage of homes in only two states: North Dakota (about 13 percent, to...

A NOAA air current model shows the China spy balloon is expected to traverse the United States heartland through the Midwest and Southern states on Friday before heading out to the Atlantic Ocean passing over the U.S. Navy base at Newport News, Virginia. Joe Biden refused to shoot down the balloon, however Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled a planned trip to Beijing in protest. The NOAA HYSPLIT* model was used to reverse track the balloon from China. The balloon flew over the Aleutian Islands, then into Canada air space before crossing into U.S. airspace over Montana and a U.S....

A video of two students viciously beating a 9-year-old student on a Florida school bus has surfaced online, alarming the community and prompting a swift reaction from the girl’s parents. The disturbing footage shows two boys repeatedly striking the girl as she is folded over in a seat, barely defending herself with one hand as she tightly grips her backpack with the other. Many of the punches land on the girl’s head, neck and face. No fellow students or adults intervened to stop the brutal assault.

A Macon man who on Tuesday was charged with murder and aggravated assault for his alleged role in the Jan. 20 slaying of a liquor store worker and the wounding of two members of the worker’s family was released from prison last fall. The suspect, Terrell Ugean Mills, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter 20 years ago and has been in and out of prison three times since. He was last freed from prison in September after serving three years of a five-year term for shooting at his brother in an argument in early 2019. In recent days, Mills, 40, was...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — One of Indiana’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for grabs in 2024. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, a Republican, announced Friday that she will not run for reelection or political office of any kind next year. Spartz, a native of Ukraine who now lives in Noblesville, has represented Indiana’s 5th Congressional District since 2021. Spartz released the following statement Friday afternoon:

Listening to the West – Synodality according to Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed, Methodists and Old Catholics TraditionsFollowing the two conferences, “Listening to the East”, on synodality in the Orthodox Church and in the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the first conference “Listening to the West,” on synodality according to Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed, Methodists and Old Catholics, was held at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome. The initiative, organized by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies of the Angelicum, took place under the patronage of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the General Secretariat of the Synod.More than fourty theologians and...

Today marks the start of week four of the 2023 legislative session. Perhaps it is just because I am paying closer attention this year, but it really seems like the system is moving at a snail’s pace. Perhaps it is also because other states are leaving us in the dust when it comes to education reform. Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Spencer Cox of Utah signed legislation last week to make money follow students instead of systems. Meanwhile, our conservative legislators are struggling to get our own school choice bill heard before a committee. What’s the holdup? Why is...

Breaking news from President Biden: right on my yahoo front page

Is Donald Trump the clear favorite and front-runner to win the Republican nomination? Or is he badly weakened and even an underdog against Ron DeSantis?At the onset of the Republican campaign, the polls are exceptionally divided on Trump’s support among Republican primary voters.

Well, just when you thought you'd heard enough of this balloon story, there's always a little bit more. R A W S A L E R T S @rawsalerts · Follow 🚨#BREAKING: Canada’s defense ministry states it is tracking a second spy balloon 📌#Canada | #CA Currently Canada’s defense ministry states know as NORAD it is actively tracking second a high-altitude surveillance balloon was that was just detected this is developing From Fox News: Canadian national defense forces are monitoring the Chinese spy balloon detected over Montana and a "potential second incident..." The Canadian government has publicly affirmed their country's...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a softening of planned rules requiring companies to disclose the effects of extreme weather and other costs related to global warming when the regulator completes its climate-change proposals, people close to the agency said. The Wall Street regulator is looking again at the financial reporting aspect of the climate-disclosure plan it issued last year, following pushback from investors, companies and lawmakers, the people said. The final version of the SEC rules, expected this year, will likely still mandate some climate disclosures in financial statements, according to the people close to the agency. But...