Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] EXCLUSIVE: Amoris laetitia synthesis report to address Communion for divorced Catholics, but issue ‘not the centre’ A member of the committee responsible for the final synthesis report on Amoris laetitia has confirmed to AdVaticanum that the document will address Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, but insists the issue was “not the centre” of discussions, with Pope Leo XIV to review the report before its publicationA member of the committee responsible for reviewing the final report on the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia has confirmed to AdVaticanum that the document will address Holy Communion for divorced and...

Khan is set to replace Smith as the most popular surname for newborns next year following a surge in immigration and a decline in the native birth rate, according to an analysis of official data. The Telegraph has the story. Smith is believed to have been the most common family name in England for centuries but has been in decline for the past 30 years. Khan is poised to overtake it in 2027, with the traditionally Muslim name more than doubling in popularity in the last 30 years. Data showed that 4,102 babies were born with the surname Smith in...

Brian Cates - Political Columnist & Pundit repostedObserving Consciousness@holonabove·2hElon's comment to spin up Amazon competitor isn't a fluke... Amazon has major problems...Amazon has become a Chinese flea market operating inside an American distribution empire... 55.9% of its top 10,000 sellers are now China based, while American entrepreneurs invest in developing products, building brands, proving demand and creating the very markets that overseas competitors move in to capture...The pattern is well documented... an American inventor develops something successful, Chinese knockoffs flood the marketplace, prices collapse, original listings get hijacked, and fraudulent intellectual property complaints can even force legitimate sellers offline...Forearm Forklift...

Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to campaign in Florida next week for Democrat David Jolly. This will be Clinton’s first public appearance on the 2026 trail outside of earlier New York events. David Jolly spent the last year calling the Epstein file dump “dripping with depraved criminality” and telling Republicans to do the right thing. Now he’s happy to stand next to Bill Clinton the guy Epstein visited at the White House 17 times, who flew on the Lolita Express 26 times, who paid Paula Jones $850k, and who got impeached over the Lewinsky cigar. The outrage only applies...

[Catholic Caucus] Roche falsely claims Summorum Pontificum’s goal was SSPX ‘returning’ to Church Pope Benedict XVI has said it is ‘absolutely false’ that the ‘reauthorization’ of the Latin Mass was ‘primarily a concession’ to the SSPX.Anti-traditionalist Cardinal Arthur Roche has repeated the false claim that Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum to “smooth the way” for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) to “return to the Church.”The prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship told AdVaticanum in an interview published Tuesday that “Summorum Pontificum was created to accommodate, and also to smooth the way for, the Society of Saint...

Pennsylvania State University is recommending the closure of 47 undergraduate programs across its various campuses, including 11 programs at its flagship campus in University Park. ... The affected programs represent 11.5 percent of the 403 undergraduate programs that are offered across all Penn State campuses, affecting 784 students, equal to about 1.1% of Penn State's overall undergraduate population. The 11 programs flagged for closure at the University Park campus are professional photography (BDES), geobiology (BS), geosciences (BA), elementary and kindergarten education (BS), middle level education (BS), world languages education (BS), information sciences and technology (BS), security and risk analysis (BS),...

[Catholic Caucus] James Martin: Gays ‘treated like dirt’ by being asked not to receive Communion In a podcast with JD Flynn, James Martin erroneously called denial of Holy Communion to sexually active homosexuals mistreatment rather than fidelity to Jesus Christ.Notoriously heterodox Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, S.J., claimed in a recent interview that homosexuals are “treated like dirt” in parts of the Church, citing as an example the refusal of Holy Communion when a priest knows someone is “doing whatever and you’re gay.”In the October 12 episode of The Pillar Podcast titled “On bridges, with Fr. James Martin,” hosted by...

Kennedy stated that the purge would save taxpayers $738 million in 2026 alone and that future savings would reach an annualized rate of $1.5 billion. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced the purge of 189,000 subsidized Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP enrollments for deceased persons or duplicate enrollees, saying the move would stop more than $1 billion in erroneous payments to insurance companies annually. "In 2026, CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] identified 189,000 subsidized enrollments involving duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage on record showing the enrollee has died," he said in...

Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive1.) 💎🧵 Dean Logan has run elections in Los Angeles County since 2008. 5.2 million registered voters.Tuesday afternoon the Justice Department delivered a thumb drive to his office, with the password on a handwritten note.He has not plugged it in.Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive·1h2.) The letter is from Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. The drive holds names the federal government "believes are likely noncitizens" who were mailed a ballot for November 3.The ask: check every name in 48 hours. Noon Eastern, October 15.Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive·1h3.) For any name the county cannot confirm, the letter's word is "segregate." Not cancel....

Calls are growing for a deep cleaning of Santa Monica’s main library after an outside organization allegedly found fecal matter and E. coli on tables, computer keyboards and other surfaces. What they're saying: John Alle, with the Santa Monica Coalition, hired an outside organization to collect samples inside the library. He says the results raise concerns about sanitation and safety. "And what we found is awful," Alle said. Dr. Houman Hemmati, a Santa Monica resident and physician, discussed the alleged findings, saying fecal coliforms and E. coli should not be present on those surfaces. The coalition is also raising concerns...

Wisconsin election officials say a loss of trust in the U.S. Postal service is likely behind a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of absentee ballots received three weeks ahead of the November election. As of Tuesday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported clerks have gotten around 128,000 absentee ballots. Three weeks out from the 2022 election, clerks reported getting nearly 184,000 ballots by mail. During a Tuesday press conference in Madison, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe was joined by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell and acting Madison Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde. McDonell was asked why he thinks the number...

Mega-brokerage Compass is taking more listings offline, sparking backlash from rivals who say the practice is upending decades of market transparency Social-media battles. A cease and desist. Lawsuits and threats. The real-estate industry is tearing itself apart over a question that home buyers haven’t had to ask in decades: When you search for a home online, are you actually seeing every property for sale? For the better part of two decades, the answer to that question has largely been yes, with the vast majority of listings available on sites like Zillow and Trulia. But Compass—now the nation’s largest brokerage—is changing...

The Justice Department is threatening California with possible legal action after it says the state mailed ballots to noncitizens ahead of the midterm elections. The DOJ sent a letter on Tuesday to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber informing her that federal officials provided Los Angeles County election officials with a list of names of individuals who authorities believe to be noncitizens. Acting Deputy U.S. Attorney Trent McCotter warned that the state has 48 hours to confirm whether any of the individuals on the list were mailed ballots for the November 3 election. That deadline will expire later on Thursday....

September’s producer price index came in much hotter than economists forecast on Thursday, underscoring the continued inflationary pressure from energy amid the U.S. war with Iran. The measure of underlying inflation pressures climbed 1.3% in September and 6.3% on an annual basis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That marked the largest monthly and annual gains since March 2022 and December 2022, respectively. Both readings topped expectations of economists polled by Dow Jones, who forecast an advance of 0.6% on the month and 5.5% annually.

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico raised a record-breaking $64 million in three months — more than any Senate candidate ever in the third quarter — his campaign announced Thursday. The campaign said that brings Talarico's total fundraising to $134 million since he announced his candidacy last year. His Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, said earlier this month that he had raised $18 million in the same period. Talarico broke Jamie Harrison's record of $57 million, raised during the third quarter in his unsuccessful 2020 Senate campaign in South Carolina. Although a Democrat hasn't won a Senate election in...

A video taken by News4’s partners at The Baltimore Banner shows Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., telling a student reporter from the University of Maryland that she did not have permission to record him and threatening prosecution. “You do not have my permission to record! If you record, we will refer you to the prosecutor,” Harris told the student reporter. “Everyone in here is recording,” the student reporter said. But you are not allowed to. We are in a two-party state,” Harris said, citing Maryland’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, which makes it a felony to record private conversations without consent...

The University of New Mexico hasn’t said whether its recently abandoned plan to purchase one of northern New Mexico’s key rural hospitals was tied to a proposed reproductive healthcare center, following the expiration of a preliminary agreement last month. Alta Vista Regional Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Las Vegas, issued a news release Oct. 2 stating that “a preliminary letter of intent related to a potential transaction with the University of New Mexico” had expired Sept. 1. The letter referred to the university’s proposed “acquisition” of the hospital, according to university spokesperson Christopher Ramirez, who said the deal...

The Trump administration has put a focus on rooting out FRAUD, waste and abuse, and on Wednesday, regulators offered a look at progress to date in those efforts. CMS said in an announcement that so far this year it has identified 189,000 people who were enrolled in Affordable Care Act exchange plans and in duplicative Medicaid, Medicare or Children's Health Insurance Program coverage. The agency then acted to pull ACA subsidies for these enrollees. CMS believes that addressing these duplicate enrollments could save $1.5 billion in the next year. "No one is losing insurance coverage based on what's happening today,"...

Two top appointees of President Donald Trump, including the deputy secretary of State, have been embroiled in a monthslong fight that includes accusations of leaks to the media and “bizarre” threats of defamation — all over emails that at times included more than a dozen administration officials. The conflict centers on Paolo Zampolli, a personal friend of Trump’s and a special envoy at the State Department, and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, according to the messages obtained by POLITICO. The emails stretch over almost a year and show Zampolli and Landau disagreeing over chains of command as Landau admonishes...

As AI development rapidly expands, people are replicating paid-for desktop and mobile apps with free apps, potentially changing the future of legacy software. Last week, a Reddit user named Brandon Thomas shared a project called “ArtCraft” – essentially a free rebuild of the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes programmes such as Photoshop and Adobe PDF. The recreated services have been named PhotoCraft and PdfCraft. This software package usually costs individuals $779.99 per year if paid upfront or $69.99 per month on an annual contract. Earlier this week, ArtCraft also released copies of the Microsoft Office suite. As with the Adobe...