Free Republic

A local therapy dog is in the running for a national award after providing much-needed support to first responders during the Los Angeles wildfires. Throw him a ball and 6-year-old Rudy will chase it. The poodle loves backrubs and playing with his buddies at their Chatsworth home, but when his vest comes on, he knows it's time for business. "We're trained by first responders, for first responders," said his owner, Steven Zonis. Zonis has been training Rudy to be a certified therapy dog since he was a puppy. It's become his passion after a long career as an engineer, where...

Perhaps the only thing that might stop the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates in a few weeks would be a surprisingly strong U.S. jobs report. Just don’t count on it. Hiring has slowed sharply since the spring after the Trump administration launched the biggest trade wars in decades. Even with those trade disputes dying down, businesses have been slow to add new employees. The U.S. economy added an average of only 35,000 new jobs from May through July, marking the smallest three-month increase since the pandemic in 2020. Wall Street isn’t expecting a big uptick in August, either. A...

[Catholic Caucus] How the Sinful Pride of the Vatican II Revolution Has Wrecked Souls and Societies If we think seriously about what it means for the Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, to suffer a crisis of internal infidelities rather than external attacks, we can conclude that we are facing something almost unparalleled in salvation history. If we can measure the magnitude of the fall by the spiritual dignity of the ones falling and the degree of the harms caused, the post-Vatican II crisis is arguably worse than any in history except those caused by the fall...

~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Scott Air Force Base, IllinoisScott Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in St. Clair County, Illinois, near Belleville and O'Fallon, 17 miles east-southeast of downtown St. Louis. Scott Field was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established after the United States entered World War I in April 1917. It is headquarters of Air Mobility Command (AMC), and is also the headquarters of the U.S. Transportation Command, a Unified Combatant Command that coordinates transportation across all the services.Air Mobility Command was activated June 1, 1992, with headquarters at Scott...

A new Berklee-sponsored study’s findings are ... not good.Researcher Lara Pellegrinelli and students at The New School compiled data from more than 200 jazz education programs for the 2021-22 academic year. The study, which was published by the Berklee College of Music earlier this week, measures the imbalance of female-identified employment in higher education. The full report is available online. The report — “Jazz Counts: Measuring the Jazz Faculty Gender Gap in Higher Education” — shows that out of more than 3,000 academic and staff positions, 15 percent were held by female-identified educators. That number decreased to eight percent...

Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY) will not be seeking reelection, according to The New York Times. The 78-year-old lawmaker said that someone younger will do a better job right now as the Democrat party tries to court the younger generation. Nadler, who spent 34 years in Congress, is the longest serving House member in New York. The New York Times reported:

President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that tariffs are driving more than $15 trillion in new U.S. investment and that if courts should strike them down, the U.S. would likely become a "Third World Nation." Trump’s post comes in direct response to a federal appeals court delivering a major legal setback to his trade policy, declaring most of his sweeping tariffs unlawful under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. The decision supports earlier rulings by the U.S. Court of International Trade. Although they are still in effect, the tariffs face an uncertain future unless the Supreme Court intervenes....

US President Donald Trump has defended his decision to issue 600,000 Chinese student visas, despite a backlash from some supporters.He told the Daily Caller on Sunday that it would be "insulting" to ban them, and said his move would benefit smaller universities.The president is reversing the hard line his administration has taken on this for months, as trade talks with China continue.Some of his allies in the Maga wing of Trump's Republican Party have expressed anger and confusion. "I just don't understand it for the life of me," said Fox News host Laura Ingraham. "Those are 600,000 spots that American...

Maricopa County officials are attempting to delete emails that potentially relate to the 2020 and 2022 elections, as well as irregularities in the 2024 elections, amid potential investigations by Trump Administration officials into the election fraud. In a letter to Maricopa County Manager Jen Pokorski, newly elected Republican County Recorder Justin Heap sounded the alarm on the Maricopa County Enterprise Technology and Innovation (ETI) department’s plans to delete archived emails from previous administrations. These documents are the subject of outstanding public records requests and may be of value in an official investigation. Heap argues that the destruction of these emails...

Britain's Queen Camilla once fended off the unwanted advances of a man on a train, according to a new book, which reveals that she told the story of how she took off her shoe "and whacked him in the nuts with the heel." The anecdote is part of an excerpt from "Power and the Palace" by Valentine Low, a former royal correspondent for Britain's The Times newspaper, which was published in the Sunday Times on Sunday. SNIP "But the serious conversation they had was about her being the victim of an attempted sexual assault when she was a schoolgirl," Harri...

Dances With Wolves icon Graham Greene has died aged 73 after a long illness. The acclaimed actor, who was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as Kicking Bird in the 1990 Kevin Costner epic, passed away in a Toronto hospital on Monday. His representative told Deadline: 'He was a great man of morals, ethics and character and will be eternally missed.' 'You are finally free. Susan Smith is meeting you at the gates of heaven,' he added, referencing the actor’s longtime agent who died in 2013. Greene was known as an acting trailblazer, who raised...

Former Gaza hostage Ilana Gritzewsky recalled in a Wednesday UN Security Council meeting that during her captivity, when she was moved locations, she was forced to walk hand in hand with a terrorist as if she were his wife, so nobody would notice she was a hostage. “They grabbed me by the hair, hit me in the stomach, causing me to lose my breath. They dragged me across the floor, lifted me, and threw me against the wall. They pointed guns at me, hit me, and tried to film me with my phone. "I raised my hands, told them I...

Graham Greene, a trailblazing Canadian First Nations actor who opened doors for Indigenous actors in Hollywood, died September 1 in a Toronto hospital after a long illness. The Oscar nominee from Dances With Wolves was 72. “He was a great man of morals, ethics and character and will be eternally missed,” Greene’s agent Michael Greene said in a statement to Deadline. “You are finally free. Susan Smith is meeting you at the gates of heaven,” he added, referencing the actor’s longtime agent who died in 2013.

Randy Boone from the popular Western TV show The Virginian has died at age 83. The North Carolina native passed away on August 28, his wife Lana told to The Hollywood Reporter. He played guitar-playing ranch hand Randy Benton on the long-running Western The Virginian. The star was on three of its seasons from 1964 until 1966. His other work included roles on Cimarron Strip, It's a Man's World, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Twilight Zone. The star was also in films such as 1966's Country Boy and 1973's Terminal Island. Boone's later work included an appearance on Kurt...

Deborah and Jael were an unlikely duo, the Thelma and Louise of the Old Testament. The book of Judges tells us of the way in which, together, they conquered the evil and powerful Canaanite general, Sisera, after he oppressed the people of Israel for twenty, long years. Theirs is a story of unlikely actors, surprising deception, a bloody casualty, and the promise of redemption. Deborah was a powerful and respected woman of Israel who guided her people and spoke the word of God as a prophetess (one of only three mentioned in the Old Testament). Her words and her actions...

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan criticized Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature over a lack of funding for Proposition 36 on this week’s edition of Inside California Politics. Mahan called the $100 million allocation ’embarrassing’ during a wide-ranging interview on homelessness, mental health services, crime and more. “I’m disappointed frankly,” Mahan told host Nikki Laurenzo. “We said during the Prop 36 campaign it’s a two-step process — the voters need to make clear that they expect accountability for retail theft and they want to see people get treatment, and then the governor and the legislature need to fund expanded...

Spent 6 hours on site... saw one white male friend group of four students I wonder how this happened, given the 14th Amendment and all....

Genesis 25 describes the infertility suffered by Rebekah (and Isaac), Isaac’s subsequent prayer and God’s affirmative response. …Isaac is exceptional among the patriarchs for foregoing polygamy, even when faced with a barren wife. Only he relies on prayer to solve his problem. …The biblical narratives present Rebekah in an especially active role, both in the story of her difficult pregnancy, in which she goes to consult with YHWH on her own, and in the story of the blessing of Jacob and Esau, in which she defies and manipulates her husband…

A potent cannibal solar storm has hit Earth and could put on a spectacular northern lights display across the U.S tonight. A fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME), launched by a long-duration M2.7 flare from sunspot AR 4199 on Aug. 30, slammed into Earth's magnetic field around 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Sept. 1, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The CME is likely to spark a G2 (moderate) to G3 (strong) geomagnetic storm, with a chance of reaching G4 (severe) levels, according to NOAA and the U.K. Met Office. That means auroras could extend much farther south...

Charges have been filed against both the coach and the umpire involved in an on-field brawl during a youth baseball tournament in Rosemead over the weekend. Video shows the intense moments the altercation takes place in front of dozens of players and their supporters at a tournament being held on Rosemead Park Fields. The coach is seen approaching the umpire on a few occasions, clearly agitated by a call made in a previous play, resulting in his ejection. Moments later, the two men begin to trade punches before the fight ends up on the dirt just in front of first...