Free Republic

ROME — Conservative Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was ousted from his Texas diocese by Pope Francis in 2023, has rebuked his fellow U.S. bishops as “silent shepherds” for their failure to speak out against “false messages” coming out of the Vatican. In an open letter addressed to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) during their 2024 fall plenary assembly in Baltimore this week, Bishop Strickland repeatedly asks what it will take for the bishops to “finally speak up against the false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis”: Almost all of you “stood by...

The overwhelming focus of the environmental movement over the past three decades and more has been the push to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels and transform the world’s energy system into something based on supposedly cleaner wind and sun. This effort has always been doomed to failure, because energy produced by wind and sun does not work satisfactorily and is wildly too expensive. So it has long been obvious to the well-informed that this whole effort will inevitably go away at some point. But after the desperate cries of crisis and alarm from thousands of activists for decades on...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said that Mike Huckabee, President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel, “has been making statements that [seem] to back up Netanyahu” and Netanyahu “has committed some war crimes with some of the actions that he’s taken in Gaza.” “And I just don’t think that Mike Huckabee is going to be someone who is going to hold Netanyahu to account. And that’s a pretty scary thought.” Duckworth said, “I do think that Mike Huckabee is someone that, when we bring him before the committee, we should...

150,000 employees across various federal agencies owe 1.5 billion in overdue taxes.

I have inherited my late grandpop's stamp collection from my late mother's estate. We're talking about 8 banker's boxes of tightly packed volumes. His son, my uncle, had previously taken them to a stamp appraiser but was told that the stamps were not mounted or handled correctly, and therefore have no marketable monetary or collector value beyond their face value. This was about 20 years ago, so I don't know if the landscape has changed since then. Can anyone in the know direct me to an authority or resource for determining the best move to make on these? I'd don't...

In the late-night hours of November 6 while most of the country was asleep, a “huge and improbable Dem vote dump,” to quote the “Shylock Holmes” (@shylockh) X / Twitter account that dropped the news, resulted in the Wisconsin Senate race being handed to Democrat Tammy Baldwin instead of Republican Eric Hovde. Two counties in particular, Dane and Winnebago, saw oddly improved Democratic vote counts at numerous points during the count. Every time the GOP started to pull ahead in the race, the Democrat vote spikes became observably more “extreme” to offset it. Also, in Milwaukee at 3:31am, there was...

The satirical news outlet the Onion has purchased Infowars, the rightwing media platform run by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, at a court-ordered auction. The news was confirmed on Thursday morning in a video by Jones himself, as well as the head of the Onion’s parent company. “I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the US trustee over our bankruptcy this morning, and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said in a video shared on X. “The Connecticut Democrats with the Onion newspaper bought...

US President-elect Donald Trump has launched lawsuits claiming damages against several media outlets. Days before the presidential election, Trump’s lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik issued a letter to the New York Times and Penguin Random House that demanded $10 billion in damages over articles critical of Trump. The letter, revealed by Columbia Journalism Review, accused the publications of “false and defamatory statements” about Trump, adding that the New York Times is a “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democratic party” that wages “industrial-scale libel against political opponents”.

credit: NASA/CSA/ESA, M. Xiao & P. A. Oesch (University of Geneva), G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute), Dawn JWST Archive Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered three massive galaxies from the early universe, revealing them to be as massive as the Milky Way and forming stars with surprising efficiency. This finding, which contradicts earlier models of slow stellar formation, suggests that star formation in the early universe was much more productive than previously believed. Three Galactic “Red Monsters” Discovered in the Early Universe An international research team, led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has discovered three ultra-massive...

The Pentagon is in “absolute disarray” with “generals scrambling” due to the incoming Trump administration’s plans to fire woke senior military leaders who prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over combat readiness, according to sources.One source compared it to a hornet’s nest being kicked over and that “DEI pages are starting to disappear off the main websites.”“They’re being archived as we speak. They are full-bore focused on cleaning up anything DEI-related,” the source said.Another source said people are trying to find out if they are on the list to be cut. “They are in panic mode,” the source said.The scramble...

Donald Trump hosted a star-studded Mar-a-Lago bash where he issued a stark warning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while announcing a novel plan to start his presidency two months early. The president-elect gave a speech at the America First Policy Conference Thursday night as guests including Sylvester Stallone attended the gala at his Palm Beach, Florida club. He also joked again about his new bromance with Elon Musk. 'I believe in high IQs and his is as high as it can get. What a job he does. He likes this place, I can't get him out of here! He likes...

With the GOP’s regained Senate majority, the freshly-branded Majority Leader John Thune has a mountain of work ahead of him once he takes the gavel. He must confirm President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees, pass legislation securing the border, and extend the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act benefiting more than 80% of individual taxpayers. But before any legislating can happen, the Senate must choose the membership of its committees. Thune must use his authority as Majority Leader to limit the committee assignments of one newly elected Senator: Democrat Adam Schiff of California. Schiff must be denied a position on any...

Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem (11/15/24)[Prayer]Names and Titles of God the Holy Spirit (Promise) Acts 6:55 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:King James Version________________________God Bless America.ML/LTOS

Democrat commissioners in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, voted on Thursday to allow undated and misdated ballots to be counted as defeated Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey gears up for a recount in the race he lost to Republican Senator-elect Dave McCormick. Bucks County Commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Robert Harvie moved to allow for undated or misdated ballots to be counted in the crucial swing county, despite a Nov. 1 state supreme court ruling that undated or misdated ballots cannot be counted. The commissioners voted to do so as the Casey-McCormick Senate race heads to a recount, with McCormick leading by about...

~Sixty-six days from America's uniquely unique peaceful transfer of power, the winning side is having a grand old time watching Trump troll a discredited and impotent not-so-mainstream media. The central criticism of every appointment - that this guy is not part of the club, not from the ranks of the uniparty ruling class - is, in fact, the minimum entry qualification if you're serious about pulling the US back from the looming cliff edge. If Merrick Garland and Lloyd Austin are what it means to be a sober respectable "public servant", Trump might as well hand out Cabinet positions from...

The Biden Justice Department has decided to go out the way it came in: as a blunt weapon wielded against perceived political enemies. That, at least, is what the FBI raid against Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan looks like. At 6 a.m. Wednesday, agents stormed his home to demand his phone and other devices. Why? Officially, as part of a criminal probe into the platform for allowing US users to bet on politics via VPN, in contravention of a previous agreement Polymarket made with regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That’s pretty deep in the weeds for a predawn raid....

The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race is over, even as this circus gets bogged down in a recount. It’s been over for quite some time, as incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey doesn’t have the votes to win. There are also not enough outstanding votes for him to overcome Republican Dave McCormick’s near-30,000 vote lead. A good chunk of the provisional ballots will be rejected, which is why everyone, including Democrats, knows that Casey lost and should concede. He refuses to do so, allowing liberal attorney Marc Elias to find ways to steal this race. . . . In this instance, we...

Even rank-and-file prosecutors involved in high-profile January 6 cases appear distraught at the possibility they might be held accountable for their conduct. From CNN: “One Justice employee told CNN that people inside the department are ‘safety planning.’ Another told CNN that some are considering whether they should hire lawyers. A third official told CNN that there is a ‘general sense of depression’ among attorneys who worked on legal cases that some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against, saying those attorneys are concerned their years of work will be ‘flushed down the drain.’”

Researchers are examining the Midcontinent Rift’s potential to produce clean hydrogen, a renewable energy source with low emissions. This work could advance the hydrogen economy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Researchers in Nebraska are exploring the Midcontinent Rift’s potential to produce renewable, carbon-free hydrogen, possibly meeting energy needs for centuries. Around 1.1 billion years ago, the North American continent almost split in two, leaving a 1,200-mile stretch of volcanic rock called the Midcontinent Rift. This geological feature holds the potential to produce substantial amounts of natural hydrogen, which could provide a vast supply of clean energy. University of...

In the days following President Trump’s massive electoral victory I have been in touch with hundreds of Americans who have asked me some variant of the simple question, “what now?” We have responsibilities as Americans to support this man, Donald J. Trump, who has done so much for us including, literally, facing death. Each of the main points below I want to convey all seem to start with the letter “P” for our nation’s 45th and 47th President. Praise. Before moving forward, we need to look up and offer genuine praise to God for having spared America from four more...