Free Republic

Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, never enjoyed the charisma or genuine popularity of his predecessor, ‘El Comandante’ Hugo Chávez. So all the murals, billboards and installations dotted around Caracas urging the release of the 63-year-old statesman – along with his wife Cilia Flores – from American captivity, don’t exactly feel like a grassroots effort. ‘Bring them home!’ reads one mural, evoking the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas. Meanwhile, a stopwatch installed in Caracas’s Bolivar Square counts how long it has been since the presidential couple were abducted by the US army in early January. Maduro currently resides in the Metropolitan...

The Columbia-class submarine program encountered early setbacks. The United States Navy’s effort to build its newest class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines is now expected to reach a key milestone in 2028, according to General Dynamics. The lead vessel, currently under construction, has faced schedule adjustments but is showing signs of steady progress as production challenges are gradually resolved. First submarine was planned for delivery earlier Reports revealed that the first submarine in this class was initially planned for delivery earlier, but complications during construction led to a revised target. Issues involving the supply of critical components, along with delays...

Who were the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales?We often remember the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales individually – each has a compelling and moving story – and their common witness to the Faith was marked in different ways and at different times.Of these 40, the martyrdoms break down into two timespans. The first eight – some of them the most memorable – were those killed under Henry VIII. Who can forget the scene relayed by St Thomas More to his daughter Meg when he witnessed the Carthusian martyrs going to their place of execution: “Lo, dost thou not...

Democrats performed well in the 2025 elections and now enjoy a favorable climate ahead of the 2026 midterms. Still, party insiders have expressed trepidation and even panic over leadership at the Democratic National Committee. According to The Bulwark, which bills itself as an outlet “founded to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy,” DNC members have spoken in private about a possible mutiny against DNC Chair Ken Martin. The report cited three sources “familiar with these conversations.” In the end, the mutinous DNC members shelved their plan because they lacked ready alternatives. Frustration with Martin, however, has...

A staffer for Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who was arrested last year for bringing a pistol into the Capitol without a license, saw the charges quickly dropped and walked away from the incident without further consequence, despite lingering questions. This is quite a surprise, especially given how radical the Democratic Party is about gun regulations, the Second Amendment, and gun-free zones. In an article published last week, Politico reported the Justice Department recently discovered that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia chose not to prosecute Kevin Batts in April 2025, about two weeks after...

It’s been more than a week since Sean Egan, a manager at Morrisons in Aldridge, announced that he’d been sacked just for doing his job – for stopping a thief nicking booze – and national outrage over the whole affair is still running high. Sean is on morning TV as I write, donations to pay for his appeal rising steadily. In part, the fuss is a measure of sympathy. Sean worked at Morrisons for 29 years and was liked by the people of Aldridge. He was sacked, the supermarket says, because it has a ‘deter, don’t detain’ policy – though...

1:24 VIDEO at link................... Hilarious..................

According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, an international team of researchers compared models for the distribution of three major mosquito complexes, paleoclimate models, and places where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between 5,000 and 74,000 years ago. The resulting map indicates that people avoided or died out in areas where Plasmodium falciparum-induced malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, was likely prevalent. "The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier," said Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge. "By fragmenting human societies across the landscape,...

The album artwork for Duran Duran’s Rio is an iconic part of ‘80s history. But despite its status as one of the era’s most recognizable covers, the band never got to meet its creator. It was Patrick Nagel who came up with the distinctive image. Duran Duran was introduced to his work by their manager, and Nagel's vivid pop art style immediately caught their attention. “[Our manager] was an avid reader of Playboy magazine,” Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes recalled during a recent appearance on the Rockonteurs podcast. “Because Nagel used to do all the early illustrations around then, the...

According to a statement released by Antiquity, analysis of skeletal remains recovered from a seventeenth-century hospital cemetery in Basel, Switzerland, suggests that young laborers were the people most likely to die during an outbreak of plague. As a trade center that drew people in from abroad, the city of Basel was vulnerable to the spread of Yersinia pestis bacteria and outbreaks of plague. The last recorded outbreak of the disease in Basel occurred between 1665 and 1670. Researchers led by osteoarchaeologist Laura Rindlisbacher of the University of Basel examined skeletal remains recovered from the hospital cemetery dated to this period,...

According to a statement released by the University of Copenhagen, analysis of the remains of 132 individuals unearthed near a megalithic tomb in northern France suggests that the site was initially used by one group of people, but that population declined around 3000 B.C. and was eventually replaced by another group. "We see a clear genetic break between the two periods," said Frederik Valeur Seersholm of the University of Copenhagen. Genetic testing revealed that the earlier group was composed of early farmers from northern France and Germany, while the later group was linked to people in southern France and the...

The Catholic Church is Necessary for SalvationEditor’s note: in light of yesterday’s news, pictured above, we publish this article from Dr. Kmita addressing the central dogma at stake. In an interesting article entitled “Baptism, salvation, and the necessity of the Church,” Dr. Larry Chapp discusses a challenging issue raised by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2015 interview (originally in Italian) recently translated and published on Catholic World Report:There is no doubt that on this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma (una profonda evoluzione del dogma). While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still...

Infamous Trump hater Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) recently revealed that she’s highly disturbed by the fact that so many people “disrespect” her, noting her self-proclaimed status as one of the most “powerful people in the country” with her position within the federal government. “I’m a black woman in America,” Crockett went on to say during an interview on the talk show “Sherri.” “So I mean – I mean some people are just like, oh, but you’re a congresswoman. I’m a black woman first,” Crockett added, before launching into a hissy fit over the amount of “disrespect” she gets on a...

Horrors! The latest atrocity in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera, is a wave of “luxurious” cafes and restaurants that have sprung up, “revealing a new genocidal reality.” That’s right: Israel-haters have yet another new definition of “genocide,” wherein “fancy” restaurants “built with expensive materials, carefully painted, furnished with tables, sofas, and elegant chairs, with glass facades and shining lights,” giving off a “luxury feel” are fresh proof of the “genocidal abnormality” that Israel has inflicted on the people of Gaza. It’s genocidal, you see, because not everyone in Gaza can afford to go there: “The expensive new establishments reflect the deeply...

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections. That map is expected to favor Republicans, who currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives but could pick up one or even two more under a revised map. The court’s decision drew sharp criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter. Jackson argued that the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media.This is the confidence we have in approaching God: That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Religion Forum threads labeled *Prayer* are closed to debate of any kind.1 John 5:20 "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true...

Map seeks to maximize GOP House seats ahead of midterms ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida’s new congressional map is now official. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on X.com that he signed the redistricting bill lawmakers passed last week with a simple post showing the map, with the words “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered.” A few hours later, the first lawsuit was announced. The new map redraws a number of districts, particularly in Central Florida, the Tampa area, and South Florida. DeSantis pushed for the mid-decade redistricting for a few reasons. 1. He said the influx of new residents after the 2020 Census necessitated...

Charlize Theron recently told The New York Times she thought it was “very reckless” for Timothée Chalamet to claim that “no one cares” about the opera or ballet... During “A CNN & Variety Town Hall Event,” Chalamet said that he doesn’t want theatrical movie going to end up like “ballet or opera,” where artists want to “keep this thing alive” even though “no one cares” about it anymore... Interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro then alluded to Chalamet’s now infamous statement, to which Theron replied, “Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day. That was a very reckless comment on an...

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace named several lawmakers Monday who she claims used a congressional “slush fund” to cover up alleged sex scandals. Mace said she uncovered 1,000 pages of documents detailing how certain lawmakers allegedly evaded consequences for sexual scandals, according to a Monday post on X. Mace originally subpoenaed the House Oversight Committee in March in light of a string of sexual scandals that resulted in two resignations from Congress. (RELATED: REPORT: Two GOP Lawmakers Go Head-To-Head In Push To Expel One Another) Notably, Mace said that these documents are only from the last 22 years, claiming...

Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was accused by multiple women of sending sexual messages, including “videos of him masturbating,” after becoming one of the first members of Congress to join Snapchat in an effort to restore “faith” in “democracy.” In a bombshell report on Sunday – less than a month after Swalwell resigned from Congress after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women – CNN spoke to “more than a dozen” women who claimed the congressman had made them feel uncomfortable, both in person and online, over the past decade. Several women told CNN that the congressman...