Free Republic

Observations on the Note “A Journey of Hope” by the Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith, Christian Unity, and Interreligious DialogueForeword: An Accusing DateThe Note A Journey of Hope, drafted for the sixtieth anniversary of Nostra Ætate, bears the signatures of Cardinals Fernández, Koch, and Koovakad. Leo XIV approved it and ordered its publication. It is dated September 16, the memorial of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian.I do not know whether the authors noticed the irony: St. Cyprian is the Father who bequeathed to the Church the formula salus extra Ecclesiam non est. He taught that he who does not...

A hijacked ship, a runaway congregation, jailed Baptist preachers, and a snowy churchyard in Madison County, Virginia By: Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, and Jill Glasspool Malone, PhD In January 1789, snow covered the ground around a plain wooden church at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Inside, a German-speaking Lutheran congregation finished its worship service. Two fiddlers played afterward, because this congregation loved music. Then the whole crowd went outside to hear two young Virginians argue about the new Constitution. One was James Madison, age thirty-seven. The other was James Monroe, age thirty. Both would later become President. That...

ransomnote: I'm concerned about potential abuse of Apple's ear bud technology, carefully designed with extensive built-in electrodes to obtain 'Mind Tapping' information from consumers. With voter ID gaining popularity, might Apple's 2023 patent point to the next gen 'alternative' to stealing elections?In a 2023 patent, Apple identified technology for a "Biosignal Sensing Device Using Dynamic Selection of Electrodes (Your earbudes can acquire information from your brain in a 'non-ivasive' manner.) Below I pulled together some information (Apple's patent, Grok, related articles) to try to determine if this patent was just the sensing portion of what actually became 'sensing-responding' technology (e.g.,...

As Xi Jinping visits President Trump in Washington, his country lags behind the United States on A.I. development in key areas — but Beijing has advantages elsewhere.There is no shortage of issues on the table for possible discussion as President Trump prepares to welcome the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, for a state visit beginning Wednesday evening, including the Iran war, Taiwan and tariffs.But no topic has captured global fascination in recent weeks more than whether the two sides can reach any agreements around the pace of artificial intelligence development. The rapidly shifting debate about the risks of A.I. has so...

Both their lives were ended by a bullet. But was the trigger pulled by the same finger? For 95 years, the death of Geli Raubal, Adolf Hitler’s niece, has been considered a suicide. However, new evidence may have added another victim to the millions whose lives were claimed by the Nazi dictator. Until now, Hitler has had one thing in his defence: an alibi that placed him in Nuremberg rather than his Munich apartment, where the 23-year-old’s body was found in 1931. But Harald Sandner, a German historian, said he had uncovered a “crushing mass” of evidence that placed Hitler...

Vice President JD Vance was reportedly the anonymous White House source behind a story that President Donald Trump’s administration is now pointing to as evidence for why Politico deserved to lose its White House access. The revelation, first reported Wednesday by Oliver Darcy’s Status, adds a striking wrinkle to the administration’s defense of its Friday decision to boot Politico from the White House grounds alongside CNN and MS NOW. The Washington Post reported just minutes earlier that the White House had identified six Politico stories in a Tuesday letter laying out its case against the outlet, accusing it of reporting...

The designer who became famous for her “Tax the Rich” message allegedly still hasn’t learned a basic financial lesson: pay your debts. Aurora James, who outfitted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her jaw-dropping 2021 Met Gala gown — a floor-length, ivory white dress with the words “Tax the Rich” emblazoned on the back in a stunning shade of red — allegedly owes more than $1 million for a ritzy gala benefitting her nonprofit, court records show. James, 42, and her nonprofit the 15 Percent Pledge are facing a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court from high-end event planning company The Gathery,...

Controversial Arizona pastor Steven Anderson is embroiled in a new controversy after recordings surfaced of him saying that it’s ‘evil’ and ‘wicked’ for wives to call the police if they are being physically abused by their husband, saying in a clip: “I’m not saying your husband should SLAP YOU DOWN, but if your husband slaps you down and you call the cops, YOU’RE EVIL…What an evil broad. What an evil woman.” Anderson, the firebrand KJV-Onlyist and NIFB leader of the 300-member Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ, has the dubious distinction of being banned from 34 countries, including every...

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal and theater critic for the New Criterion. Hs ia also a regular contributor to the Journal’s Free Expression site, which is accessible to nonsubscribers. His most recent Free Expression column is “You May Have Israel Derangement Syndrome.” This is how it opens: * * * * * The Israel Defense Forces may be the smartest and the most resourceful military on the face of the earth. Yet its most implacable foe is increasingly elusive, even as it spreads everywhere. It has already captured a gigantic prize: the minds of...

A lesbian minister at James Talarico’s longtime church doubts Jesus ever existed, rejects the virgin birth, and believes Christ “didn’t die to save our sins,” according to undercover footage obtained by The Daily Wire. Rev. Babs Miller, minister to the parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, flatly rejected core tenets of the Christian faith, even as fellow congregant James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee, routinely invokes his fringe view of the Gospel to appeal to voters in the Bible Belt’s largest state. Speaking to an undercover journalist, Miller was caught saying she believes the virgin birth was made...

Shareholders of The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the paper’s parent company on Wednesday morning, arguing the paper has failed to meet its obligation: to tell readers the truth and correct itself in a timely fashion when it doesn’t. The suit, filed by the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) in New York County Supreme Court, asks a judge to force the Times board of directors to hand over internal records the company has refused to produce for four months, the majority of which pertain to the paper’s...

A medical watchdog group is asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate Planned Parenthood’s medical coding practices, which they say could point to fraud. Do No Harm says Planned Parenthood affiliates may have used improper billing codes when prescribing cross-sex hormones to gender-confused young people, according to a new investigation. “Planned Parenthood affiliates may be deliberately miscoding services to mask their true purpose and to facilitate the improper reimbursement of cross-sex hormone treatments,” Do No Harm wrote in a letter to HHS Inspector General Thomas Bell that was exclusively reviewed by The Daily Wire. The watchdog group...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is urging “a resolution” to the Iran war, sending the strongest signal to date that Republicans on Capitol Hill are feeling the political sting of the long-drawn conflict heading into the midterm elections. “It’s been a priority and an objective of every administration, for 50 years nearly, to ensure that Iran didn’t have a nuclear capability. Now that’s done. Operation Epic Fury was an epic success. … The world is safer because of it,” Johnson said in an interview with a local TV station. “But now we’ve got to bring that to a resolution.” Johnson did...

An island meeting, texts between the leaders of Canada, France and Norway reveal an emerging alliance: ‘We’re in’Norway’s prime minister thumbed out a text message to an increasingly familiar contact on his phone—a fellow head of government he hoped would join a nascent plan of Western leaders to design a new framework to regulate artificial intelligence.Jonas Gahr Støre said that within 10 minutes, Canada’s Mark Carney had texted back: “Of course. We’re in.”Around the same time, Carney was discussing AI regulation with French President Emmanuel Macron on the French Atlantic archipelago of St. Pierre and Miquelon just off Newfoundland, as...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal Grech: Church is ‘synodal by nature’ but remains hierarchicalCardinal Mario Grech has said that while the Catholic Church is “synodal by nature” and there must be room for everyone, it remains “hierarchical by nature”, with bishops and the Pope retaining responsibility for decisions. “Our Church is synodal by nature. That means there’s room for everyone,” Cardinal Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of […]Cardinal Mario Grech has said that while the Catholic Church is “synodal by nature” and there must be room for everyone, it remains “hierarchical by nature”, with bishops and the Pope retaining responsibility for...

​The cost of housing is simply too high for many New Yorkers. The Mamdani administration has put in place plans to address the housing demand and build more affordable housing, while protecting tenants. But what are the realities of shaping housing policy in New York City and beyond? What varied interests and bureaucratic headwinds make delivering on housing promises a challenge? And how might leaders face these challenges head-on and make the system one that works for all New Yorkers? ​Join New York Focus for the second installment of our “Focus On” series as we unlock the complexities surrounding housing...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) officially threw her support behind Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) on Tuesday, despite recently calling him out for making Israel the “central villain” in his public gripes. But Nessel said she needed an answer straight from the horse’s mouth before backing him: does El-Sayed want Jewish Zionists like herself in the Democratic Party? She asked him the question during a joint interview on the For the Sake of Argument Podcast. “This is the conversation that I need to have with you right now, in that a lot of Jewish Democrats are in this position...

Javier Milei has condemned the UN as he warned that Argentina would take “matters into our own hands” in its dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. In a caustic speech at the general assembly in New York, the Argentinian president criticised the UN for being ineffective when it came to the long-running tensions over the British overseas territory known in Argentina as the Malvinas. “An organisation that set out to defend the territorial sovereignty of its members decided to look the other way regarding the situation of the Malvinas Islands,” Milei said of the UN, adding...

HOUSTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - US ultra-low-sulfur diesel futures fell 4% on Wednesday after Politico ‌reported that the White House is preparing a plan to ban diesel exports for 90 days, which the Trump Administration denied. Average US diesel prices are sitting near record highs at $6.52 a gallon, according to AAA, straining the farming, transportation and other industrial ​sectors that rely on the fuel. Wars in Iran and Ukraine have sharply cut exports ​from some of the biggest producers such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United ⁠Arab Emirates. The Reuters Power Up newsletter by columnist Ron Bousso provides...

On September 14, in an article in The New York Times about backlash to the documentary Naza, correspondent Isabel Kershner wrote that Israelis remained divided over the political and military failures preceding the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023. She went on to discount the criticism, writing, “But Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.” The sentence appeared directly after the article had already stated the plain facts — roughly 1,200 people killed and about 250 taken hostage — which meant the newspaper had the truth on the page and chose, in its very next sentence,...