Free Republic

Prayers up. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to speak plainly in the support of God,...

There’s always something new to report on New York’s housing follies. The accepted housing paradigm here in blue-model New York is that elite public policy geniuses with access to infinite taxpayer funds will create housing solutions to provide perfect housing fairness and justice to all. Somehow, they keep falling short. Nowhere is this more evident that with the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA. NYCHA is the ultimate socialist-model low income housing provider, by far the largest such housing authority in the country. It owns and manages about 180,000 apartments in what are known as The Projects, home to...

CHICAGO — A man was shot and critically wounded near the Cermak CTA station overnight, steps from where a man was shot and killed last weekend, Chicago police said. And a suspect is in custody, thanks to an angry crowd that detained him after the shooting. Chicago police issued a media statement saying the 31-year-old victim was shot during a fight in the first block of West Cermak around 2:08 a.m. Sunday. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Responding officers repeatedly called for back-up at the chaotic scene. Witnesses...

The Constitution does not require public schools to notify parents when their children adopt a gender identity at odds with their sex or receive parental consent "before using alternative names and pronouns" for their children, according to a federal court in California. U.S. District Judge John Mendez said he was observing judicial restraint by dismissing Aurora Regino's lawsuit alleging Chico Unified School District actively hide from Regino her fifth-grade daughter's stated identification as a boy. The district said it was bound by state law that gives students the sole choice to disclose. California may soon pose a new threat to...

@lukerosiak IRS targeted a conservative economist with the 'largest tax investigation in the world' but came up empty. Then leaked its investigation to the media, which offered his policy views on taxes as evidence of guilt. Then authorities cited 'negative press' to close his bank.

Thomas Sowell, now 93 years old, is one of the most esteemed and prolific authors and social commentators today. Trained as an economist at Harvard and the University of Chicago, he has written more than thirty books, and from 1991 to 2016, he had a nationally syndicated column. Sowell’s readers and admirers include the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. Pinker has characterized Sowell as the most underrated author in history. He also stated that, “Sowell is a libertarian conservative, which makes him taboo in mainstream intellectual circles, but even those who disagree are...

The Talk Shows July 16th, 2023 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Anchor Shannon Bream: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.); John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council. Panel: OutKick.com columnist Mary Katharine Ham; Politico congressional reporter Olivia Beavers; former George W. Bush White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen; and former Biden 2020 campaign surrogate Kevin Walling.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Hosted by Chuck U. Toad: National security adviser Jake Sullivan; Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska); Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and an Excerpted taped discussion (from Saturday) with Christopher Nolan, director of "Oppenheimer."...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemLuke 22 Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus 22 Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, 2 and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. 3 Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. 4 And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. 5 They were delighted and agreed to give him money. 6 He consented,...

Devout Catholic Norris was born in San Francisco on the 16th July 1880. When she was 19 years old, her parents died and she became the head of her family. She went on to become one of the highest paid female writers in America: "Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine." "For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape...

After 36 years as a full-time faculty member, I retired as a tenured professor from the University of Southern California on May 15, 2022. Retiring faculty members typically retain as an honorary title their last academic rank, for example “professor emeritus.” The designation is not automatic but pro forma in most circumstances. I watched as the members of my retirement cohort announced their new emeritus or emerita status to the rest of us in turn. At USC, the emeritus designation “indicates honorable retirement from assigned duties, recognizes faithful service worthy of high commendation, and expresses an anticipation of continued membership...

If, like me, you find the presidential debate format a rather meaningless exercise, you will be astonished at what one-on-one interviews by a skilled interrogator can accomplish. At the Iowa family Leader conference, Tucker Carlson interviewed several leading contenders for president Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis. If the participants thought this was going to be another tongue bath, they were certainly surprised. He asked hard questions and some of their answers exposed their muddled thinking. At least two of them – Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence -- were clear losers and can...

NEW YORK, July 16. /TASS/. Ukraine has lost about 20% of military equipment and weapons since it started its counteroffensive, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing US officials. Equipment losses have recently dropped to 10% as Ukrainian troops essentially stopped advancing in many areas, the report said. The newspaper said US officials agreed to disclose only the percentage of losses, declining to provide hard numbers of destroyed equipment.

As I recall from Gibbon, the Western Roman Empire went out with more of a whimper than a bang. By the time of Alaric and his Visigoths in 410 AD, Rome was so corrupt and weak there was little to stand in their way. In broad strokes it is fair to say that Roman society declined simultaneously with government. Long before the fall, Roman republican citizenship was a precious possession, a jewel of unsurpassed value. As such it was held closely and kept in short supply, for among other privileges, the Roman citizen wasn’t taxed. He was exempt from the...

Prayer for January 6 prisoners and their families.

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The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers. (snip) Nearby, in the occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, other Ukrainian civilians dug mass graves into the frozen ground for fellow prisoners who had not survived. One man who refused to dig was shot on the spot — yet another body for the grave. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it...

Russia sacked two generals in the past week, as Moscow’s Ministry of Defense reportedly continues to purge its top officers, pointing to a growing disarray in the military leadership following the aborted rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group. Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu canned Maj. Gen. Vladimir Seliverstov, commander of the Tula Airborne Division, this week, according to Belarusian news outlet Charter97. The governor of the Tula region, which borders Moscow, Alexei Dyumin, tried to stand up for Seliverstov, who was involved in the battles in Bakhmut, but to no avail, according to the Russian publication VChK-OGPU. Seliverstov’s reported...

@ChuckCallesto Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor takes a blow torch too Lindsay Graham — He does what his billionaire donors tell him to — Likens Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates to western oligarchs. (Video @ Link). He also says THIS: @DougAMacgregor The rest of the world looks upon us as the aggressor in Ukraine. If Russia were the aggressor that place would look like a parking lot and the Russians would be well on their way to the Polish border.

@shadeofsatoshi Piers do you regret getting the covid vaccine ? @piersmorgan No. Given how rough I had covid after having the jab, incl 7 months of long covid, it may have saved my life. The vaccines weren’t perfect (none are) but they saved a lot of lives and anyone who disputes that is a conspiracy theorist numpty.

On an unrecorded date in 995, Norwegian slave Tormod Kark became the first person beheaded under King Olaf I of Norway. A subsidiary character in a long and brutal struggle for supremacy in Norway and its neighbors to the east and west, Kark had betrayed his lord, the de facto Norweigan ruler Haakon Jarl (“Earl Haakon”), as Olaf Tryggvason’s army searched for him. Haakon had holed up on a farm with Kark and at least one other trusted associate, but when Kark heard of the reward for Haakon’s, he thought it more opportune to kill his lord than to wait...