Free Republic

Agnello, who's been catching snakes since he was a child, says he has been offering hi snake-wrangling services available for free to anyone who needs it. "I've been into snakes since I was little, grew up into a house where my brother and sister who were older than me had snakes, so I was catching snakes by the time I was 3," Agnello said in an interview with FOX TV Stations. He says his persona of snake-wrangling pastor happened by accident. When temperatures in his neighborhood soar into the 90s and even triple digits, Agnello says that's when the reptiles...

A Houston drug dealer who was found to be hiding meth in a speaker box was sentenced to prison Friday. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Texas, Martin Carreno, 32, initially pleaded guilty back in November 2022. This came after authorities discovered he was selling meth by the kilogram in the Houston-are in March 2022, when he was said to be expecting a large shipment. Law enforcement officials searched Carreno's home, where they found more than nine kilograms of meth inside a speaker box. Investigators said the meth had a 99% purity level, The street...

North Koreans are fighting starvation as the Hermit Kingdom continues its isolation from the rest of the world. Three residents of the totalitarian state secretly communicated with the BBC for months, detailing the horrors of watching their neighbors starve to death as they struggle to survive what may prove to be an even worse hunger crisis than North Korea’s famine in the 1990s, which killed three million people. “At first, I was afraid of dying from Covid,” one construction worker told the broadcaster, “but then I began to worry about starving to death.” Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic...

Jordan Isaiha Lopez’s ankle monitor had been a condition of his bond following an attempted home invasion six months earlierA Texas man was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for a murder he committed five years ago, after he removed his ankle monitor that was a condition of probation for a previous crime. Jordan Isaiha Lopez, 22, fatally shot Austin Balogun, 19, on July 5, 2018, during a robbery at Balogun’s home in Cypress, Texas, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said in a release. "We are already dealing with rampant gun crime, and the situation gets worse when...

WWII re-enactments draw dozens in Nazi uniforms — and one Jewish educator working to make sure the Holocaust is remembered (Can only be linked to, per FR rules)

Some of our posts like this one get reposted on Free Republic and now is the time to support FR during its quarterly fundraiser... "Before there was an Islamic State there was a Deep State" Let's go to the "Deep State Update" Shelia Walsh sings "Sleepwalking".... Why is Antony Blinken staging talks in China? Blinken is going to China for the sake of appearances the US requested this meeting to use it as a prop to claim the US is talking and wants peace while China is aggressive and belligerent... What you need to notice is that National Security Adviser...

Very interesting take on the Russian/Ukrainian war, in particular, and western corruption. Scott seems very knowledgeable, funny, and shrewd. You are getting a realpolitik view.

Jason Whitlock: “Why did you do this?” Stein: “Calling out woke athletes. This is so crazy about how insulated Brittney Griner is. She was literally the biggest political story for a year and not one journalist from any major outlet at ESPN, CNN, ABC, blah, blah, blah will ever ask her a hard-hitting question. And me, just asking that question was like considered assault, the Mercury statement even used the word ‘hate’. I don’t hate Brittney Griner, I think she’s a great college basketball player, and women’s college basketball is actually pretty interesting to me. I respect her as being...

The team of soldiers had been out of their Ukrainian armored personnel carrier for only a matter of minutes when the tree line in front of them erupted in Russian gunfire. The dozen or so soldiers, sent to reinforce a trench, found themselves pinned down for hours. “Never seen that much fire, from so many positions,” a soldier recounted in a mission report obtained by The New York Times. One soldier fighting for Ukraine was killed and nine were wounded in the battle, which took place in March near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Russian troops, the report said, showed...

Ibrahim al-Shanti - Ad Difa (Difa'a / Difae الدفاع⁩⁩) - 1930s Ad Difa'a together with Falastin is considered the most prominent and important Arabic newspaper in the Land of Israel-"Palestine" at the time, and in a relatively short time the newspaper managed to reach a wider circulation than the older Falastin. In addition, Al-Difaa managed to attract a number of senior journalists, who wrote about internal Palestinian politics, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic politics as well as on a variety of social issues. The Islamist Ibrahim al-Shanti, together with two other journalists, Sami al-Sarraj and Khair al-Din al-Zarkhli, left the newspaper al-Jama'a...

[Catholic Caucus] Catholic Church With ‘God Is Trans’ Exhibit to Host ‘Pride Mass’ at New York City Monumenthe Catholic church in New York City that hosted a controversial art display called “God Is Trans” is now hosting a “Pride Mass” at a monument commemorating a June 1969 LGBT uprising.The Church of St. Paul the Apostle announced that on June 22 it is celebrating a Mass outdoors at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, a national park associated with the June 28, 1969, uprising at The Stonewall Inn. The “Pride Mass” is set to take place in the month...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum threads labeled “Prayer” are closed to debate of any kind.

[Catholic Caucus] Bishops approve ERD review, after ‘broad consultation’ concernsThe U.S. bishops on Friday voted to move forward with reviewing and updating their directives for Catholic health care services, after several bishops emphasized that the process should include a “broad consultation,” including the voices of the transgender community.Bishop Daniel Flores addresses the USCCB plenary assembly June 16, 2023.The proposal to review Part Three of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services passed unanimously on a voice vote on the final day of the USCCB’s plenary assembly in Orlando.The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services...

Former President Donald Trump applauded a suburban New York prosecutor after she dropped a two-year criminal investigation into him and his company.Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah, a Democrat, said in a statement on June 15 that her office had closed the case against Trump after an investigation that was conducted “objectively, and independent of politics, party affiliation and personal or political beliefs.”Her office did not file charges against Trump or the Trump Organization.Trump applauded Rocah’s decision, writing on his Truth Social account that ending the investigation “WAS THE HONORABLE THING TO DO IN THAT I DID NOTHING WRONG.”“BUT WHERE...

MSNBC beat Fox News in prime time in both total viewers and in the key 25-54 age demographic for the prior week, ending a 120-week winning streak for Fox in prime time...MSNBC averaged 1.52 million total viewers across prime time, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 172,000 demo viewers, which was enough to beat Fox's 1.5 million total average viewers and 139,000 demo viewers...This was only the fourth time in MSNBC's 27-year history ending a week at number one in prime time in total viewers...

In this episode of “Shocked? Me, Neither”…The American Medical Association (AMA) has all but flushed the Hippocratic Oath down the toilet with its pledge to ramp up its support for (pick one, or more): “cross-sex medical interventions,” “gender-affirming care,” “sex-change operations,” or the irreversible mutilation of children’s bodies.The AMA’s House of Delegates passed a resolution on Monday in support of “gender-affirming care” for “youths with gender identity issues,” according to the Endocrine Society, the sponsor of the resolution. In a press release titled “AMA strengthens its policy on protecting access to gender-affirming care,” the organization said:As political attacks on gender-affirming...

We previously reported on Harvard Law Professor Emeritus, Alan Dershowitz sharing his thoughts on the politically-motivated prosecution of former President Donald Trump in Miami.Now Dershowitz, one of Trump’s attorneys during the first impeachment trial, is giving an insider view of what he says is intense pressure by one liberal group intent on keeping attorneys from working on Trump’s behalf.In Thursday’s edition of his Substack newsletter, entitled “Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer,” he lodges some damning accusations. After stating that the former president has been arraigned and pled not guilty to the classified documents charges, Dershowitz writes of...

Thousands of protestors gathered at the gates of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 16 amid backlashes from religious groups after the baseball team invited an anti-Catholic drag queen group to be honored at the venue for its annual LGBT “Pride Night.” The protest, which was co-sponsored by nonprofits Catholic Vote and Catholics for Catholics, lasted for four hours until Friday evening, during the height of which organizers said up to 10,000 protestors showed up outside the gates. Many demonstrators wore red and carried signs or symbols of their faith, decrying the antics of the drag group as mocking...

Jack Smith’s latest court filing hinted at “ongoing investigations” that could “identify uncharged individuals.” The New York Times reported: The federal prosecutors overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers on Friday that the evidence they are poised to give the defense as part of the normal process of discovery contained information about “ongoing investigations” that could “identify uncharged individuals.” Still, the reference to continuing investigations was the first overt suggestion — however vague — that other criminal cases could emerge from the work that the special counsel Jack Smith has done in...

On this date in 1660, in the Netherlands’ little settlement on the tip of Manhattan Island, New Amsterdam, Jan Quisthout van der Linde was sentenced “to be taken to the place of execution and there stripped of his arms, his sword to be broken at his feet, and he to be then tied in a sack and cast into the river and drowned until dead.” We do not have an indication of the date this sentence was carried out, if it were not immediate. It was an unusual execution for an unnatural crime: Quisthout had been found guilty of sodomizing...