Free Republic

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from a Portuguese holiday apartment 18 years ago. In the intervening years, a huge, costly police operation has taken place across much of Europe and Madeleine has became one of the most high profile missing people. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry, say all they have ever wanted is to find their daughter. Now German police investigating her disappearance are holding fresh searches in Portugal. 2007On 3 May Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, is on holiday with her family at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal. • Her parents go for dinner with a group of...

A Native American Church affiliate in Southern California says a sheriff’s department seized and destroyed “thousands” of psychoactive plants revered as sacred, interfering with members’ religious practices.

Daily Readings from the USCCB“I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.” John 17:4–5Saint Ignatius of Loyola bases his spiritual masterpiece, The Spiritual Exercises, on one basic premise: Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. This is the essence of what Ignatius calls the “Principle and Foundation” of our lives. In other words, our goal in life is twofold: First, we must seek...

A Supreme Court more interested in playing politics than faithfully upholding the Constitution is one that will lose Americans’ trust. If there was any doubt left that a majority of Supreme Court justices are more interested in playing politics than upholding Americans’ constitutional rights, it was all flushed down the drain following the Monday release of the high court’s weekly order list. A week after refusing to defend the free speech rights of a Massachusetts minor, the nation’s highest court declined to take up two pertinent cases involving the Second Amendment. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, one involved a...

I wrote an article that I want to submit to a publisher. The subject is politics and history. I would appreciate it if some fellow freepers would review it and give me their frank opinions.Let me know and I will forward it to you.

Key Points The Party for Freedom will be departing the ruling coalition over the alliance's lack of support for their asylum proposals. The PVV won a landslide victory in the Netherlands' general election in 2023, knocking former Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party off the top spot. ======================================== The Dutch government collapsed on Tuesday after disagreements over immigration proposals led to far-right leader Geert Wilders withdrawing his party from the ruling coalition. Wilders said in a CNBC-translated post on the X social media platform that his Party for Freedom (PVV) party would be departing over the alliance's lack of support for...

Risk tolerance, the River, and why Democrats struggle with young men Carrie Levande asks: "SBSQ submission: as you noted in Risky Business, the Democrats’ groupthink around protecting Biden is emblematic of their Village tendencies. Lately I’ve been feeling like a lot of the country’s rejection of the Democratic Party can be traced back to their Village-ness: seeming “fake”, the groupthink they foster in cultural institutions and the media, wokeness (and the forces that created it), generally being insufferable. I’m curious your take on viewing today’s political climate through the village/river lens. Do you think the rise of trump and tech...

Russian forces have continued to advance in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, bringing the regional capital within range of their drones and artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and analysts. A spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, Ivan Shevtsov, said that in addition to trying to advance towards Sumy city, Russian forces were constantly shelling the area and more evacuations of civilians were taking place. “At the moment, the territory that the enemy has already occupied is about 15 kilometers along the front line and about 6-7 kilometers deep,” Shevtsov said. He added that the Russians were trying...

============================================================= NATIONAL EGG DAY National Egg Day falls on June 3 on the National Day Calendar and it's a perfect time to get a crack on celebrating this food holiday. #NationalEggDay Eggs are a nutrient-rich food that has gone back and forth with science and nutritionists over the decades with people asking how many eggs are too many for a healthy diet. Whatever the decision is this year, we know one egg provides an excellent source of protein and vitamin D. At 75 calories and 5 grams of fat, it's an easy choice to satisfy hunger, too. 5 Egg-celent Facts...

While Spiderweb played out on Telegram and television, Russian forces continued to advance – slowly, methodically, and without spectacle. Around Chasiv Yar, in the ruins of Avdiivka, and along the land bridge to Crimea, Moscow is doing the work that wins wars. It’s pushing lines. It’s holding ground. It’s breaking down Ukrainian defenses by weight of numbers, firepower, and time. That kind of warfare doesn’t trend on social media, but it changes maps.

The U.S. Army has announced that the MARS Inc, Barrett team has been selected as the winner of the xTech Soldier Lethality competition. The competition was done on a highly accelerated basis over six months. The system of semi-automatic launcher, optic, and projectiles is known as the Precision Grenadier System or PG22. The rifled grenade launcher prototype will fire a 30x42mm sophisticated grenade cartridge. The projectile will be capable of being programmed while loaded in the rifle. The rifle is semi-automatic with a five-round magazine. The rifle weighs just short of 14 lbs, without the optics.The weight of the XM...

ATLANTA (AP) — Before the oppressive summer heat descends on Atlanta, therapist Brittanee Sims usually gets her thick, curly hair braided at a salon to preserve her healthy mane. But it’s more expensive this year. So she’ll only pay for her teenage daughter and son to get their summer hairdos. Not having braided hair “creates more of a hassle for everything,” said Sims, who counts herself among the tens of millions of women who regularly spend on the Black hair care industry. Now, she said, she has to “go home and figure out what I’m gonna do to my hair...

The U.S. Department of Energy has ordered another power plant, this time an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania, to keep its turbines running through the hottest summer months as a precaution against electricity shortfalls in the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid. The department’s order to the grid operator, PJM Interconnection, regarding the Eddystone power plant just south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, is the department’s second use of federal power under President Donald Trump to require a power plant to keep operating on the mainland United States. Constellation Energy had planned to shut down Eddystone’s units 3 and 4 on...

Disturbing surveillance video obtained by The Post shows a city-funded babysitter repeatedly walloping three little kids with a belt and donning a creepy Santa Claus costume to scare them — and the horrified family is now demanding answers. La’keysha Jackson, 24, began working for Bronx mother Geraldine Jaramillo a year ago via a contractor paid for by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services that provides struggling families with babysitters to help with caretaking. The single mom said she discovered the violent treatment last month when the kids’ Pennsylvania-based grandma checked a home surveillance camera in the bedroom — and was...

Tapper and Thompson's mass media apologia is leaps and bounds more demented than the book's subject, Joe BidenI wasn’t going to do it, really. After stepping to the edge of nervous collapse of late, I promised, no more Conventional Wisdom Bestsellers. I saw Abundance in an airport and turned away before registering cover art. I had the same plan for Original Sin, the “controversial” book in which CNN’s Jake Tapper teams with Alex Thompson of Axios to get real about the media and Joe Biden’s health. One moment of late-night weakness later, I was reading from Chapter One, “He...

The rule of law has long stood as a pillar of liberal constitutional democracy—a commitment to neutral adjudication, impartial justice, and political fairness. Neutrality of this kind lends legitimacy to a regime of laws as opposed to one of mere men. Yet in recent years, particularly under the aggressive strategies of the progressive left, a dangerous transformation has occurred. The law is no longer a matter for maintaining order or resolving disputes. It has become a weapon—“lawfare”—wielded not for justice but for victory. Under the guise of legality, the left has harnessed the institutions of justice to pursue their political...

I realize there are many more pressing problems in our nation and world today than what I’m about to discuss, but these issues are already being addressed very well right now by others. What’s not getting much attention — and I feel needs to — are the ongoing failures within the US Postal Service. The USPS has been in a nosedive, downward spiral for years and it’s only getting worse. While this agency continues to raise prices and continues to operate as an unsustainable, failing business, the service has gotten so bad now I feel we must address the situation...

It happened again yesterday, this time in Boulder, with peaceful Jewish demonstrators set ablaze with a makeshift flamethrower by a vicious antisemite named Mohamed Sabry Soliman. But Jews are somehow modern Nazis? Yeah, right. PJ Media's own Sarah Anderson has all the details, so I won't repeat them here. But there are still a few things we need to talk about — even while Soliman’s victims remain hospitalized. As many others pointed out, perhaps the most worrisome thing about Sunday's violence is that it was not met with immediate retaliatory violence — what decent and reasonable people call "justice." It...

Five women from across England who were groomed and abused as children or young adults have told BBC Newsnight about the ongoing impact it has had on their lives. All were targeted by adult men, mainly from a British Asian background, often against the backdrop of chaotic upbringings. They shared their stories on the same day the government confirmed the publication of a review into grooming gangs has been delayed. Kate Elysia - not her real name - was abused by a gang of men of Pakistani origin in the Shropshire town of Telford. She was first raped when she...

UFO researcher Rhys Dalton-Morgan, host of “The UFO Program” podcast, interviewed News Nation special correspondent Ross Coulthart last week about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the potential of an impending disclosure by certain governments and reports of a massive earth-changing event taking place in 2027. “There’s certainly something gonna happen in 2027, and I don’t know what it is. I’ve also heard 2034 and I’ve also heard other dates, much later,” Coulthart said. 🔥🚨 BREAKING: News Nation journalist Ross Coulthart claims that an apocalyptic event will happen in 2027: “Everybody’s telling me we’re on borrowed time” “I cannot begin to emphasize...