Free Republic

With a measure of teeth gnashing, and years of study—I became convinced that the preterist view of eschatology is the correct one. Here are some reasons why. 1. I could no longer ignore, in good conscience, the over 100 time-statements in the New Testament that limit fulfillment of the prophesied events to the lifetimes of the New Testament writers. (There really are over 100 of them.) Preterism 1012. I looked up every mention in the New Testament of the “last days,” “end,” or “end times” and found that all 19 such mentions are consistent. Without exception, the writers of the...

[Catholic Caucus] Dignitas Infinita: Lowering the BarIn my study of the current crisis in the Church, I have learned that it can all be summed up by one core problem: a collective lowering of the bar.Every parent, teacher, coach, manager, supervisor, or babysitter knows that children are overachievers. They will do anything they can to meet your expectations, no matter where they are set. So where you set them is of critical importance. We carry that childlike desire (and ability) to meet high standards into adulthood as we enter our careers or vocations.This has always been true in the life...

On this date in 1959, Leonard Shockley was gassed in Maryland. The appeals court that considered his case found it “perfectly clear that Leonard killed the victim in an attempt to perpetrate a robbery or a rape,” during a heist committed jointly with Leonard’s older brother. On that basis, young Shockley achieved the distinction of being the second-last person ever put to death for a crime committed as a 16-year-old. For a very long while, it really looked like he might be the last, but Oklahoma’s 1999 execution of Sean Sellers usurped the claim. While it makes little ethical difference,...

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the city’s first Muslim and Arab American mayor, is being mocked online over attempts to engage in “damage control” after the city’s residents were seen at a rally chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” On Sunday, a video of anti-Israel protesters in Dearborn, Michigan, closing out Ramadan by chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” during an International Al-Quds Day rally, went viral on social media.

EA AIR SPACE 2024 — The Navy is in the nascent stages of evaluating how to bring autonomous combat drones to the decks of aircraft carriers, but the service’s top official for unmanned programs says one thing is certain: The drones will have to be cheap, topping out at about $15 million per unit. To keep prices low, the Navy will likely sacrifice the longevity of each so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, said Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, the Navy’s program executive for unmanned systems and weapons. Instead of being sustained over a 40-year lifecycle, a single drone could be catapulted and...

ATLANTA — Former President Donald Trump stopped in an Atlanta Chick-fil-A restaurant on his way to a fundraiser on Wednesday. Trump landed in Atlanta shortly before noon and then, later, traveled to the Chick-fil-A in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood at 875 Martin Luther King Jr Dr. The former president and 2024 Republican nominee spoke to employees and customers at the restaurant, took pictures with guests and autographed a hat. He ordered 30 milkshakes and gave them out to people at the restaurant.

In the history of U.S. foreign and defense strategy, no presidential administration ever cultivated the rise of new, powerful groupings of nation states that oppose the United States in every sphere of meaningful human endeavor on the scale of the Biden administration. In a world of competing blocs, much of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and several European states are now united by events in Ukraine and the Middle East to overturn America’s global dominance. Seventy-four years ago, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed the hope that access to more accurate information would prevent future generations of Americans from...

VIDEOYou know how you know that The Young Turks Chunk Yogurt aka Cenk Uygur isn't getting millions of dollars in Democrat donor money this year as he has in the past? Because Chunk is now openly admitting what we already know. Namely that the Democrats CHEAT and RIG elections. To say that out loud is a YUUUUGE taboo for the Democrats and the media so look for Chunk and his sidekick Anna to be placed on the official non-person list. Of course, Chunk was forced by circumstances into making his admission. By previously buying completely into the Trump-Russia hoax, most...

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that former President Donald Trump had “simple-minded ideas about how the world works.” Bolton said, “I think it’s important to understand, and this is especially important for Trump critics to understand, he doesn’t have a philosophy. He doesn’t think in policy terms, as that’s conventionally understood in Washington. He thinks in anecdotal, ad hoc, transactional terms, seeing through the prism of how does this benefit Donald Trump.”

One of the worst kept secrets in Washington is no one actually knows just how much money the United States has spent in support of Ukraine. Over the past year, however, conservatives in Congress have been pushing President Joe Biden and his administration for the real number, and they’re finally getting some answers. In a letter sent to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young on Tuesday, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, along with Sens. Roger Marshall, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and twelve other members of Congress, chronicled the immense difficulty Congress...

The New York Times is weeping over the death penalty again, publishing a glowing review of Nashville reporter Steven Hale's book "Death Row Welcomes You." Obviously, it's an important book, since only 1 million journalists have already written about their touching and personal relationships with men sentenced to death. Although I am generally a hate-reader -- having, for example, at least skimmed nearly every book about Trump (he's a Russian asset, a threat to democracy, a conman and sociopath) -- I can't in good conscience contribute to an author who waxes on about his "friends" on death row, their "beautiful...

RON DESANTIS IS BACK TO RUNNING Florida’s government. But he hasn’t really stopped running for president. Next month, DeSantis hosts a two-day presidential-donor gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in South Florida that’s billed as—don’t call it a “fundraiser”—an “Investor Appreciation Retreat.” It’s the latest phase of an image makeover DeSantis started after he officially dropped out of the 2024 race on January 21 and endorsed Donald Trump. For the past month, DeSantis has hosted one-on-one thank-you calls with donors, small meetings with more of these “investors” in Naples and in Miami, and conference calls with former volunteers. In a...

INCOMING — A Ukraine aid bill (details very much TBA) is expected to come to the House floor for a vote next week, multiple outlets are reporting today. If it passes, the legislation could provide a crucial lifeline for Kyiv’s war to repel Russia — and the far-right revolt against Speaker MIKE JOHNSON could boil over. But first Johnson has a different imbroglio on his hands: A procedural vote for the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is expected to fail on the House floor today, as a handful Freedom Caucus members derail the process over privacy concerns. Reps....

Hidden Camera captures Principal Economist @federalreserve talking about Jerome Powell’s legacy as “somebody who held the line against like, Trump.” The influential agency responsible for maintaining a stable monetary system appears to not just be establishing interest rates, but to be setting policies for desired social outcomes. “Under Powell, the Fed has changed to think about equity issues, like racial issues, think about wealth inequality as part of the mandate, as part of the things we are following. Think about climate change.” Aurel Hizmo, Principal Economist at the Federal Reserve, who prior to working at the Fed was an Assistant...

The American Medical Association today insists that medicine is characterized by white supremacy.

Many years ago, I read a quite rational atheist commenter online who said that while he didn’t believe in God, he feared what a de-Christianized West would bring. Now, a couple of decades later, he’s perhaps joined in that sentiment by the man who’s probably the world’s most famous living atheist, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. On British talk-radio station LBC recently, Dawkins admitted that he enjoys living in a Christian society and considers himself a “cultural Christian.” While this isn’t exactly a road-to-Damascus moment, it’s nonetheless quite an admission from a once staunchly militant atheist most famous for writing the...

A bill that would reauthorize a crucial national security surveillance program was blocked Wednesday by a conservative revolt, pushing the prospects of final passage into uncertainty amid a looming deadline. The legislative impasse follows an edict earlier in the day from former President Donald Trump to “kill” the measure. The bill in question would renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization is currently tied to a series of reforms aimed at satisfying critics who...

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany's Lufthansa said on Wednesday it suspended flights to and from Tehran from April 6 until probably April 11, "due to the current situation in the Middle East". Countries in the region and the United States have been on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran in response to a suspected bombing by Israeli warplanes of the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1. "We are constantly monitoring the situation in the Middle East and are in close contact with the authorities. The safety of our guests and crew members is Lufthansa's top priority," a...

Targeted by anti-Israel activists, the dean of Berkeley's law school requested on Wednesday that security guards be stationed outside his home for protection after agitators disrupted a private dinner party he and his wife were hosting. Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean, and his wife, Professor Catherine Fisk, were hosting a dinner for a group of graduating law students on Tuesday evening, when a woman wearing a hijab stood up, and with a microphone in hand, began accusing the law school of complicity in genocide

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that recent Ukrainian attacks targeting Russian oil refineries could have a "knock-on effect" on the global energy market, Bloomberg reported on April 9. Ukrainian forces have launched a series of drone strikes aimed at damaging Russia's oil industry. A total of 12 Russian oil refineries were reportedly successfully hit in multiple regions deep inside Russian territory as of March 17.