Free Republic

Newspapers in late 1700s/early 1800s were delivered by postboys on horseback. In the New Year's edition, there would often be a single page poem insert that summarized the news of the year in a humorous way. This was exchanged by the postboy with his customers for a tip. Henry Livingston, Jr., argued by his family to be the actual author of Night Before Christmas, wrote Carrier Addresses for a variety of New York newspapers from 1787 to at least 1823. The 1803 Political Barometer Carriers Address gives a brief overview of news after an introduction and before a request for...

NIGERIA — President Trump has given dozens of ISIS terrorists the gift of getting to meet Allah for Christmas. After giving much thought to what they would like, Trump decided there was simply no better gift than sending them to meet Allah. "A one-way ticket to Allah! They're going to love this," said Trump as he wrote "Merry Christmas" on the missiles destined for Nigeria. "No one gives better gifts then me, your favorite President. It's a beautiful gift, very expensive, let me tell you. I spent millions of dollars on it, but it will all be worth it for...

Seven years ago, Mr Kelvin Seah Lee Nguon stepped back from his job to be a stay-at-home dad and eventually found himself struggling with loneliness and a lack of purpose. Here's how he learnt to appreciate life's small moments again. In late 2017, my wife and I learnt that the younger of our two sons has autism. We needed more support at home. So in 2018, I went from being a full-time polytechnic lecturer to part-time, and became a stay-at-home husband and dad. Since that transformative year, my day-to-day routine has pivoted to mostly household chores, parenting and some teaching....

Mervyn Kersh is proud of his country, and of the role he played in helping to defeat the Nazis in the Second World War. But the soon-to-be 101-year-old Jewish D-Day veteran, who also witnessed the horrors of the newly-liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, is not proud of what he sees as the current state of the nation. Speaking to the Daily Mail from his comfortable home in north London, Mervyn is despondent about modern Britain and the myriad crises it faces. He goes as far as saying that victory over Adolf Hitler was a 'waste of time', adding that...

A new billboard in Times Square is misguided in dangerous ways“Merry Christmas,” proclaims a billboard in Times Square: “Jesus is Palestinian.” Countless people will walk by the display or see it on social media, and many will believe it. So, let’s go through why that statement is such a mistake, once again. Jesus was a Jew. He was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised under Jewish law — traditionally, on Jan. 1, which is how that day became known as the Feast of the Circumcision — and lived as a Jew. He taught from the Hebrew Scriptures. He worshiped in...

A bizarre wildlife incident disrupted operations at La Coruña Airport on the morning of Saturday, December 27, when several wild boars breached the airport boundaries and began trotting along the runway, which led to a temporary closure for safety reasons. According to airport operator Aena, the presence of the animal(s) on the runway led to the suspension of flights starting early in the morning. Unlike typical disruptions caused by Galicia’s frequent fog, this incident was solely due to the boar intrusion. “Sorry, I regret having to bring you to Santiago,” pilot apologises Two incoming flights were diverted to Santiago de...

Watchdog group demands answers after ‘unbelievable security lapse’ by Trump’s Secret Service team The Secret Service continues to endanger the president’s life with lax security, and the government is sitting on information that might expose recent failures which allowed President Trump to get shouted down by Code Pink protesters during a recent outing to a Washington DC restaurant, advocates fear. “I’m just really concerned about the president’s safety,” Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch told The Post. “He was almost killed twice supposedly under the protection of the Secret Service and then they walked him into a potentially dangerous ambush,” he...

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, thieves broke into a parish church in the Sevillian town of Paradas, mistakenly stealing a replica of a painting by El Greco after believing it to be the original work. The incident occurred at the Church of San Eutropio, where both the authentic artwork and a publicly displayed copy are housed. The stolen piece was a replica of La Magdalena Penitente, a painting attributed to the 16th-century artist Doménikos Theotokópoulos, known as El Greco. The original painting remains inside the church and was not removed, as it is kept behind protective iron bars...

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was shocked by the "horrific killing spree" and pledged Israel would reinforce its security. A Palestinian man killed two Israelis in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in northern Israel on Friday, authorities said. The assault began Friday afternoon in Beit She'an, where the attacker drove into pedestrians, killing a 68-year-old man and injuring a teenage boy. He then drove onto a highway and fatally stabbed a 19-year-old woman and injured another person as he headed towards the nearby city of Afula, police said. Paramedics declared both victims dead at the scene.

A Pennsylvania principal whose antisemitic tirade about “Jew money” was inadvertently recorded has been fired. Lower Gwynedd Elementary School Principal Phillip Leddy was axed Tuesday by the Wissahickon School Board. Leddy, 45, was returning a call from a parent when he got the dad’s voicemail and left a message, but then apparently failed to end the call, Philadelphia’s ABC 7 reported.

Explanation: Jupiter looks a bit different in ultraviolet light. To better interpret Jupiter's cloud motions and to help NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft understand the planetary context of the small fields that it sees, the Hubble Space Telescope was being directed to regularly image the entire Jovian giant. The colors of Jupiter being monitored go beyond the normal human visual range to include both ultraviolet and (not pictured) infrared light. Featured from 2017, Jupiter appears different in near ultraviolet light, partly because the amount of sunlight reflected back is distinct, giving differing cloud heights and latitudes discrepant brightnesses. In the near...

We reported how a Christmas Eve jazz concert that was supposed to be held at the Trump Kennedy Center was cancelled. Musician Chuck Redd, who has hosted the concert for the last several years, said he cancelled the concert because of the Trump name going up on the building. Now Redd is finding out that actions have consequences. The Center's president, Richard Grenell, notified Redd that the Center intends to seek damages against him for pulling out for "partisan political reasons." “Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors...

In 2025, artificial intelligence played a huge role in our offices, social media feeds, music and film, and now – dictionaries, says this linguist from the University of Limerick.For us linguists, the flurry of “word of the year” announcements from dictionaries and publishers is a holiday tradition as anticipated as mince pies. The words of the year aren’t just a fun peek into new slang and language changes, they also tell us quite a bit about the worries, trends and obsessions of the English-speaking world. And this year’s list has one clear theme. In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) played a...

OMG. The Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission has voted to recommend a REDUCTION in penalties for child s*x offenders caught during sting operations. The proposal, which reflects the Democrat-sponsored Senate Bill 5312, aims to cut the maximum s*x offender registry time from 5 years to 3 years for offenders with no prior child s*x crimes. Democrats want to protect child predators.

An Oklahoma state lawmaker is urging his constituents to turn to prayer after city planning officials gave preliminary approval to a massive development in northern Oklahoma that includes a mosque and a retail center. City officials in Broken Arrow, the largest suburb of Tulsa, voted Dec. 18 to approve rezoning 15 acres of land for a proposed retail center and mosque, following hours of public comment from residents, according to local news outlet KJRH -TV. The Broken Arrow Planning Commission gave preliminary approval to the construction proposal at the commission’s regular meeting, where more than 60 people signed up to...

Rosie O’Donnell’s long-running feud with President Donald Trump flared up again after the Kennedy Center board voted to rename the iconic venue "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts." In a TikTok video shared with her 2.9 million followers, the comedian and former talk show host delivered a blistering rant from Ireland, where she now lives, unveiling a new nickname for Trump. O’Donnell titled her video "Saturday Night Ramble," opening with reflections on her Christmas celebrations. The monologue quickly pivoted to the subject of Trump as she refused to even say his...

Before I started writing at PJ Media, I spent about 15 years as an architectural designer. I never really loved the work, mostly because I never worked at a firm that tackled the kind of big, ambitious projects that really excited me. But even if I had, there's one project I would've hated regardless: the Obama Presidential Center. And trust me, it’s not just because it's Obama's vanity project. The building is hideous. The Obama Presidential Center is a 225-foot-tall gray monstrosity rising on Chicago's South Side, and it looks more like a prison than a museum. The project has...

The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon:In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles......and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon...

Saturday 27 December 2025 Saint John, Apostle, Evangelist Feast St. John the Apostle Catholic Church, Leesburg, VAReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: A(II).First reading1 John 1:1-4The Word, who is life - this is our subjectSomething which has existed since the beginning,that we have heard,and we have seen with our own eyes;that we have watchedand touched with our hands:the Word, who is life –this is our subject.That life was made visible:we saw it and we are giving our testimony,telling you of the eternal lifewhich was with the Father and has been made visible to us.What we have seen and heardwe are...

There are no documented survivors of Unit 731, the covert department of the Imperial Japanese army that conducted lethal experiments on thousands of civilians in occupied China. As it sought to develop chemical and nuclear weapons, the unit subjected its mostly Chinese victims to a catalogue of horrors beyond the human imagination between 1936 to 1945, when the Empire of Japan surrendered. Civilians were dissected alive without without anesthesia, infected with bubonic plague, typhus and cholera and used as human guinea-pigs for frost-bite treatments in spine-chilling torture laboratories. A new Chinese film called 'Evil Unbound' has brought to life the...