Free Republic

This is a good one to bookmark for future reference. I have asserted confidently that Ron DeSantis is an empty vessel who carries the thoughts and opinions of others as his own. If you follow him closely you will see key moments when this is visible, one of them happened today.In this CBS interview with Nora O’Donnell (a deep state DOS narrative engineer), notice the framework of the first question that triggers the downstream consequence of nonsense. This is what happens when narrative engineers are working on points that are based entirely around cognitive dissonance.The first question frames the subject...

[Catholic Caucus] Synodal Secrecy: Is a Tightly-Controlled Information Flow the Best Way to Go?The Vatican spokesman has said media will have limited access to Synod on Synodality's sessions in keeping with past synods, and information reports on discussions will keep participants comments anonymous.One day 30 years ago, a priest engaged in media work for the Church and I stood chatting outside the Vatican’s massive, modernistic audience hall, the place where synods are held, when I had what I thought was a good idea: Why not a synod on communication?“Bad idea,” my companion corrected. “The media would tear us to pieces...

The reputation of “politician” precedes any civil servant, so right off the bat, I hold a less-than-flattering bias against those entering government (to put it mildly); it’s a “guilty until proven innocent” prejudice, but I will say, it’s evenly applied. Then last week, Michelle Wu, Boston’s hardcore leftist mayor, opened her big mouth and showed (again) just how right on the money one can be when you operate under the assumption that ineptitude and uselessness are shared traits amongst elected officials. On September 7th, Wu declared a “heat emergency” saying temperatures were expected to reach into the… ready for this?...

Thousands of Greeks rallied in Athens against the impending introduction of biometric ID cards, denouncing what they see as a move towards a surveillance society. "No to electronic slavery" and "democracy has referendums, fascism decrees," were two common slogans at Sunday's rally which police put at 2,500 strong. "We don't want our personal data to be used,", said one marcher, Dionysis Alexopoulos. "Perhaps with this new card they'll be able to control our access to hospitals or other public places if for example we aren't vaccinated," he added. "This serious subject should be put to a referendum and not decided...

Top New Hampshire politicians, including the speaker of the State House and State Senate president, sent a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State David Scanlan stating “there is no legal basis” to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot using the Fourteenth Amendment, as anti-Trump legal scholars have suggested. Senate President Jeb Bradley (R), New Hampshire House Speaker Sherman Packard (R), and former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith (R) headline the dozens of New Hampshire officials, including state senators, representatives, and executives, who signed the letter, which the Trump campaign shared via an emailed press release.“President Donald J. Trump...

Yellowstone today is on high alert for “touron” behavior, but in the Roaring ’20s it was an all-out petting zoo. Attractions included the popular feeding of the bears -- a nightly dinner show that became more popular than Old Faithful. Hardly a day has gone by this summer season where a tourist in Yellowstone National Park hasn’t been caught doing something illegal, dangerous, stupid — or all three. Facebook page Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of The Idiots! has become the TMZ of the NPS (National Park Service). Public shaming hasn’t seemed to slow offenders much. Healthy fines do not appear...

Everyone ages 6 months and older should get the updated Covid vaccines this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The move follows a vote from the CDC's advisory committee earlier in the day in favor of the recommendation. "We have more tools than ever to prevent the worst outcomes from Covid-19," the CDC's director, Dr. Mandy Cohen, said in a media statement. "CDC is now recommending updated COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 6 months and older to better protect you and your loved ones." The shots are expected to be available within the next 48 hours in...

Former Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic NBA player Brandon Hunter has died at the age of 42. His passing was announced by Ohio men's basketball coach Jeff Boals, who wrote: 'RIP to a Bobcat Great,' Boals wrote on Instagram and X. 'Gone way too soon.' The Magic also took to social media about his death, saying: 'We are terribly saddened to learn of the loss of our former teammate, Brandon Hunter. We send our deepest condolences to the entire Hunter family.' Ex-NBA point guard T.J. Ford also spoke about Hunter's death, saying on his Instagram: 'Lost another good brother. Rest...

BLM gunman who shot a driver in the head has charges dropped, sentence reduced, eligible for parole in 2026The public is forgetting a lot of things. The absurd theater surrounding the COVID pandemic and hysteria over vaccines seems like a distant memory. The huge outpouring of organized violence surrounding the death of George Floyd, probably the worst the nation has experienced in decades, is also slipping away. One incident that is often forgotten is the shooting that took place in the small town Alamosa, CO. In Alamosa we saw the familiar pattern of the riots: Black Lives Matter protestors would...

A leftist Portland, Ore. business owner who advocated for the city's destruction during the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 and 2021 announced he is closing his taproom after suffering significant financial losses since that time. Nat West, the owner of Reverend Nat's Hard Cider on Southeast 35th and Division Street, who identifies as he/him on social media, is permanently shuttering the doors to his taproom. The taproom's beverages are a former staple in the progressive city now struggling with surging crime, homicides and business closures following the 2020–21 riots. The shuttering of West's taproom is ironic given...

......" In the lead-up to the 2020 election, an Emerson poll suggested that Trump was poised to win one out of every five Black voters, only to secure a mere 8 percent of the Black vote that year." ...So, why do some on the Right insist on peddling this pipe dream? Beyond the allure of clicks, this narrative distracts Republicans from far more compelling evidence showing Trump losing support among White voters.... Our team analyzed every poll with publicly available crosstabs featured in RealClearPolitics in the month of August. Seven out of the nine studies showed Trump performing well below...

The University of Minnesota spent $219,633 developing a training course that teaches medical professionals about “structural racism” within the health care industry as a result of “white supremacy,” according to documents obtained by watchdog Do No Harm and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The course, created by Diversity Science, was developed to comply with Minnesota’s Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act, which went into effect earlier this year, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Do No Harm program manager Laura Morgan told the DCNF, “This is a substantial amount of money for a publicly funded school of...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has told CBS that former President Donald Trump 77, is too old to serve another four years in the Oval Office. DeSantis said the presidency is not a job for someone in their 80s, and even argued that America’s Founding Fathers were deficient in not adding an upper age restriction to run for the White House.“We need an energetic president, and I think that if the Founders could kind of look at this again, I do think they probably would have put an age limit on some of these offices,” DeSantis told the corporate media outlet...

Veteran pollster and researcher George Barna is reporting that less than 2% of parents with children under the age of 13 have a “biblical worldview,” according to his new book Raising Spiritual Champions: Nurturing Your Child’s Heart, Mind and Soul, with the overwhelming number of parents reporting a “hodge-podge mixture of competing and often conflicting worldviews.” In particular, he singles out uncommitted church-going Christian parents who have no plans or will to catechize their children, resulting in a “catastrophic decline in biblical worldview in America” Barna explains: Most parents, even born-again parents, do not really think the spiritual component of...

U.S. Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding an investigation into SpaceX, whose CEO Elon Musk could have disrupted Ukraine's attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet by refusing to connect the Starlink network in occupied Crimea, Bloomberg reported on Sept. 12. "The Congress needs to investigate what’s happened here and whether we have the adequate tools to make sure foreign policy is conducted by the government and not by one billionaire," Warren said. She also wants the Pentagon to examine its contractual relationship with the company. Musk is expected to attend a closed-door meeting with senators in the Capitol on...

"Francis' Mongolian Trip: The Abolition of Christianity" - by Abp. Héctor AgüerThe Catholic community in Mongolia is minuscule, numbering 1,500 faithful, which suggests that the country has not really been deeply evangelized. The presence there of the Successor of Peter presented an excellent opportunity: was it not possible, perhaps, to announce the name of Jesus Christ, with respect and cordiality towards the Buddhist listeners, and to present himself not as the bearer of a humanistic message but as what he is, the Vicar of Christ? Unfortunately, the Pope's trips are not evangelizing gestures but vaguely religious ones; the proclamation...

CNN — The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year, according to a government watchdog group. The surge stems largely from a sharp decline in tax revenues, coupled with an increase in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and interest payments, as well as in other areas. It follows a sharp drop in the budget shortfall in fiscal year 2022 after two years of giant deficits swollen by record government spending on Covid-19 pandemic relief measures.

Former President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, televangelist Paula White-Cain, recently claimed she helped Nelson Mandela abolish apartheid in South Africa. But his foundation says they have no record of her work with the iconic leader who died in December 2013. White-Cain, who serves as senior pastor of the City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, made the claim during a presentation at the Universal Peace Federation’s Peace Summit held on May 4. Her address begins at about the 20-minute mark of a more than 2-hour session featuring members of a group called the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace. The...

A recent uptick in COVID-19 cases, accompanied by the predictable hysterical media coverage, has spurred nationwide chatter about a possible return to pandemic restrictions, from school closures to mask mandates. This is not baseless supposition, as schools, universities, and hospital systems across the nation have recently reinstituted masking and quarantine requirements. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., recently reinstated a mask mandate in his Capitol Hill offices, while MSNBC pundit Mehdi Hassan has been working overtime to convince his audience that school closures did not actually harm children—a formidable task given the evidence refuting his claims. People living in hub cities and...

A federal judge on Wednesday issued an order setting limits on where and how former President Donald Trump can discuss classified information with his defense lawyers for the criminal case where he is charged with retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. The order by Judge Aileen Cannon in U.S. District Court for southern Florida instructing Trump ansd his lawyers to discuss that information in a secured location endorsed limitations sought by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith over the objections of Trump. But Cannon’s order was vague on the question of whether several concessions sought...